And if we
had lived at the time and could have had our eyes opened to see the
spiritual power of the Christian Faith, we might have believed without
any external evidence at all. But the first receivers of the message, to
whom the revelation was new, and, as must have often happened and we
actually know did happen, to whom it was hard to reconcile that
revelation with previous teaching, how sure were they to need some
other and outer evidence that it really came from God. The supernatural
in the form of miracles can never be the highest kind of evidence, can
never stand alone as evidence; but it seems to have been needed for the
first reception. And there seem to be minds that need it still, and to
all it is a help to find that reasonable ground can be shown for holding
that such evidence was originally given.
Revelation, in short, takes a higher stand than belongs to all other
teaching, and except for its having taken that higher stand it does not
appear that the highest teaching would have been possible. To look back
afterwards and say that we find a development or an evolution is easy.
And at first sight it seems to follow that, being an evolution, it may
well be no more than the outcome of the working of the natural forces.
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