CHAPTER X.

THE BIBLE SUPERNATURAL Illustrations- The Supernatural at Sinai - The Burning Bush-Moses at the Red Sea - Compare these with the Hindoo, Greek and Scandinavian Myths - The Moral Grandeur-Elijah the Tishbite The very Natural rising into the Supernatural - The Supernatural in the Life of Christ -Its constant Indwelling Presence-More Impressive than any outward Miraculous Manifestation - "Thou art the Christ the Son of the Living God"-Commands to conceal the Supernatural Power — The Transfiguration - Christ Walking on the Sea Was it meant for a Display?—Or was it the true Outgoing of an Ecstatic Spiritual Condition? - Mark 6: 48, "He would have passed them by" It followed a Night of Prayer - Was this an Isolated Case? - The Scriptures give us but Glimpses even of Christ's Natural Life.

THE thought presented in the close of the preceding chapter receives its illustrations in almost every part of the Scriptures. Its importance demands that they should be given at some length, although it may require for that purpose many consecutive pages. Let us commence with the stupen

dous exhibition that was made on Sinai. Taken by itself it might seem utterly incredible, although its superhuman grandeur would ever prevent its association with the myths of any other religion. Such a breach in nature, we say, surpasses belief when viewed alone. But when we have read all that precedes, when we have followed on in that flow of events, ever deepening in the intensity of its interest, ever taking in a wider field of vision, ever rising to a loftier region of thought, when the mind has thus become filled with the utmost power of the attending associations, when it is lifted up to the spiritual altitude of the scene, then all things else assume a like elevation; the darkness and the flames, the fearful thunderings, the quaking earth, the "sound of the trumpet waxing long and loud," even the awful voice, become consistent and probable events; yea, they would even seem to be natural events. When, moreover, the thought is carried onward to the remote historical consequences of that great an

nouncement of a law from heaven, when we take into view the influence it has exercised and still exercises in our world, then it is that the wonder ceases-we were going to say,but no, the grandeur, the mystery, the surpassing marvellousness, remain undiminished : it is the incredibility that has vanished; for the marvellous, the extraordinary, may be credible, yea, under certain conditions, the most credible of supposed occurrences. When the soul is thus filled with both the emotion and the reason of the scene, it seems to us just the right interposition, at the right time, in the right way, and for the most rational ends. God proclaiming a law to a people chosen as the conservators of the highest religious truth; what more reasonable than this? His accompanying that proclamation by an outward attesting majesty as shown in corresponding phenomena of the outward physical world; what in itself more credible? Would it not, on the other hand, be something strange to think of, that a world should be

created, a race of intelligent and religious beings brought into existence, and that race pass away without any such communication from its unseen maker, without any exhibition of unearthly glory to cast a ray upon its bewildering night of nature, or to relieve the dreary materiality of its long unvaried physical continuance? There are two positions. which are out of harmony both for the reason and the imagination: the astoundingly supernatural in the creation of man, the unbroken natural, or the total absence of the superhuman, in all God's dealings with him since. One or the other of these must be given up. The human race is uncreated, or He who made it can speak to it, and does sometimes speak to it. Nature is from eternity, or it may be interrupted, and has been interrupted, in time. The rejection of the supernatural all the way up to creation, is the rejection of creation itself, both for man and the world. It is well for the truth, that in these latter days of keen inquiry, all un

tenable middle grounds are clearing up, and the mind is being brought face to face with sharp and decisive issues.

But to proceed with our illustrations; there is, perhaps, nothing in the Scriptures that presents more clearly the holy, religious supernatural in distinction from what may be called the monstrous, or the legendary, than that wondrous sight of the desert, "the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed." On the scale of magnitude and outward force it is surpassed by the convulsions of nature that took place in the deluge, or that attended the descent of God upon Sinai; but for silent grandeur there is nothing beyond it in the Bible. So noiseless and motionless the scene, so calm in its impressiveness, it would seem, in outward display, hardly to rise above the natural, the strange natural, we may say, that belonged to that remarkable place. The rationalist might, with some plausibility, attempt to explain it as a mirage of the desert. It is its unearth