PROFESSOR FLOWER AT READING.
(To THE EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR.] Sift,—In your article on "Professor Flower at Reading," you say that the Clergy quake lest the doctrine of Evolution may interfere with the belief in miracle, and you seem to hope that -the Professor will supplement his address with further matter showing that the Clergy need not be quakers. I do not know whether Professor Flower may be able to supply the required consolation. To my mind, that would depend upon what you or what the Clergy mean by "miracle." It seems to me that -the objection of most scientific men to " miracle " is that that -expression implies and enforces mental indolence. Zei,c Ito im- plies that Zeus rains of his own volition, and there is an end of inquiry and speculation. "It rains," on the contrary, leaves us free to find out what rain is, and the how and why of it. A physical occurrence is always, according to the scientific creed, a fair subject of analysis. If a Mormon tells me that Joe Smith raised a man from the dead, the Mormon's mind is filled and satisfied with belief in Joe's supernatural power ; but to me, his assertion is absolutely meaningless, unless I have -opportunity of enlarging the facts which he represents in this way.
Bat the difficulty as to miracles is solid in winter only, and will melt in the spring which is, as I hope and believe, at hand. Only I am sorry that you should think " miracles " in any way essential to Christianity. Are you not binding upon, dist us say, the weaker brethren burdens not imposed by our Master ? Have we the slightest reason to think that he would have rejected a follower who doubted whether he had raised Lazarus ? To believe that the physical consequents on Christ's -death are scientifically inexplicable is the miraculous theory ; to believe that they are potentially explicable, i.e., explicable if -the facts were sufficiently known, is the non miraculous theory. Surely a man may hold either of these, and—if he love the Lord his God and his neighbour—be an excellent Christian. Or must we make that absolutely essential to our Christianity which is wholly foreign to the Christianity of Christ himself P- I am, Sir, &c.,
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