In return for this argument about the New Testament let me supply you with a similarly sceptical one about the Old Testament, and ask you whether you are prepared consistently to adopt it. “For our knowledge of the children of Israel, we depend almost entirely upon the Old Testament; now the Old Testament contains accounts of miracles; these miracles we are unable to accept as historical; consequently the Old Testament must be regarded as non-historical, and the story of the descendants of Israel becomes a myth.”
Now are you really satisfied with this argument? The so-called Law of Moses, the wandering in the Wilderness, the conquest of Canaan, the lives of the wonder-working Gideon and of Barak, the wars and songs of David, the denunciations, warnings, consolations, sorrows, visions, of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the other prophets, are they indeed, in your judgment, converted into mere myths by the admixture of the miraculous element? Are they even made so far mythical as not to reveal the story of the training of one of the most remarkable of nations, a nation theologically quite singular upon earth? I contend on the contrary, that the removal of the miraculous element results in a two-fold advantage, on the one hand placing the story of Israel in the province of history, and on the other hand, not bringing it down to the level of the common-place, but elevating it to a pinnacle among the histories of nations, and making it in a certain sense more wonderful than before. If Moses was a plenipotentiary miracle-worker from God, then there was nothing unexpected or wonderful in the spiritual results that he achieved; and the wonder rather is that he achieved so little. Give me the thunders of Sinai, with power to burn, blast, and plague my opponents; add to these the power of producing without labour and without delay miraculous supplies of manna, quails, and water, and I myself would undertake to terrify or allure any nation into obeying a far less noble and attractive code of laws than was set forth in the name of Moses. But when I see a lawgiver with no such powers, doing what Moses did, and shaping, or preparing the way for shaping, one of the most carnal and unspiritual of races into a nation of Priests and Prophets for the civilised world, then I am ready to fall upon my face and to take my shoes from off my feet, saying from the depth of my heart, “Truly God is in this place.” “But,” say you, “the so-called Law of Moses is no more due to Moses than trial by jury is due to Alfred.” That matters not. It is not any one Israelite; it is Israel as a whole, Israel and its lawgivers and poets and prophets collectively; it is the evolution of the spiritual from the carnal Israel that I revere; and all the more, if that evolution be natural. Regarded as miraculous, the history of Israel is somewhat of a failure and a bathos; but, regarded as non-miraculous, it becomes a most miraculous triumph of divine intention and persistence, even though the walls of Jericho succumbed to the trumpets of Israel only in hyperbole, and although the sun stood still at the bidding of Joshua only in the impassioned language of an Oriental poet.