CREATIVE REVELATION.*
OF the lectures by Canon Simpson in this little book, the first two deal with the general question of miracles. The first lecture, "Miracle and Fact," makes the point, as against the Paley school of apologists, that it is the historical truth of the stories in the Gospels which is important rather than their so-called miraculousness ; at the same time it allows for a margin of error in the narratives. On the one hand it is laid down that the "real issue" is whether the events set forth in the historic creeds did in fact take place ; on the other hand, we need not suppose that everything must have happened precisely as the Gospels represent it. " We are not dribbling away the supernatural element in Jesus' personality if in one case or another we venture to suspect that the form in which the story is presented to the reader owes something to the personal equation of the narrator or to other accidents of transmission." The lecture, addressed by an orthodox theologian to orthodox hearers, is worth notice for this candid admission, and also for the generous allowance it makes for heretical views, while safeguarding the creed. " It is only • Creative Revelation: Four Lectures on the Miraculous Christ. By J. Ch. Simpson, D.D. London: A. B. Mowbray. [2s. net.] by the construction of imperfect explanations that in a constantly developing world the faith of Jesus advances to fuller intellectual expression." . . . " If we ban the expression of every opinion which wears the appearance of inadequacy, we shall but renounce the very method by which truth has invariably established itself." . . . " My own convic- tion may be, as indeed it is, that the connexion between the two things [the Resurrection and the empty tomb] is a necessary one, and that in the creed of the Church, as dis- tinguished from the faith of the individual, no such separation will ultimately_be found to be possible. But inadequate views of Christian truth have their uses." The second lecture, called " Miracle and Personality," criticises both the " mechanical " or scientific and the "immanential" or Pantheistic theories of the universe, and finds them wanting. What is advanced instead is a "personal" or creative conception, such a view, in fact, as would naturally be held by any man who theorized from his own actual experience in shaping matter to his own will. On this view of the world the spiritual act of the writer in " creating " his lecture, which had no existence until he made it, is seen to be, in its measure, " miraculous." "Personal action is dynamic, bending matter to ends superior to itself. Who shall say where this capacity ends even for man, still less for God P If the word miraole' is to be used at all, then every- thing spiritual is, from the point of view of matter, regarded as a thing in itself, miraculous."
The latter pair of lectures are devoted to the two chief miracles of the Christian creed, the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth. Upon each of these debated questions whole treatises have been written, and it cannot be said that these lectures add anything to the ordinary arguments. They may be sufficient to reassure those who need reassurance, but they will not convince those who need convincing. The first lecture, upon the Resurrection, is the more interesting; and it is remarkable for mentioning, though it cannot be said to face, a difficulty generally left on one side by apologists. Suppose it had been the custom for the Jews to burn and not to bury; there could have been no Empty Tomb ; would there not have been a Resurrection P If so, can the stories of the Empty Tomb be as necessary to faith as the appearances chronicled by St. Paul P It must be acknowledged, however, that on Canon Simpson's view of the miraculous, which rejects any a priori limitation of what is possible, the case for the Empty Tomb is strong, even stronger than he represents it. The latest criticism rejects M. Loisy's scepticism as to the story of Joseph of Arimathea'; and even Mr. Thompson, in his much-condemned book on Miracles in the New Testament, calls attention to the "looking up" of the women as they approached the tomb in the face of the rock, as "quite beyond the power of invention," while Professor Kirsopp Lake, who similarly accepts St. Mark's story, but rejects a physical resurrection, is driven to interpret the "young man's " words, "See the place where they laid Him," to mean, "You have come to the wrong tomb."
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