Page "religion" Paragraph 75

Our endeavor to capture even a faint sense of how strenuous was the fight is muffled by our indifference to the very issue which in the Boston of 1848 seemed to be the central hope of its Christian survival, that of the literal, factual historicity of the miracles as reported in the Four Gospels.

It is idle to ask why we are no longer disturbed if somebody, professing the deepest piety, decides anew that it is of no importance whether or not Christ transformed the water into wine at eleven A.M. on the third of August, A.D. 32.

We have no answer as to why we are not alarmed.

So we are the more prepared to give Parker the credit for having taken the right side in an unnecessary controversy, to salute his courage, and to pass on, happily forgetting both him and the entire episode.

We have not the leisure, or the patience, or the skill, to comprehend what was working in the mind and heart of a then recent graduate from the Harvard Divinity School who would muster the audacity to contradict his most formidable instructor, the majesterial Andrews Norton, by saying that, while he believed Jesus `` like other religious teachers '', worked miracles, `` I see not how a miracle proves a doctrine ''.