Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 77

The Element of Miracle

The Element of Miracle.

But the confines of the common ground representing "that basis upon which all religious and all ethical teaching may be raised' are far exceeded by the majority of the New Testament lessons; and the selection evinces no attempt to avoid occasions of controversy, no desire to compromise with the difficulties which to many thoughtful and perfectly reverent minds constitute real stumbling-blocks in the gospel story. The miraculous and supernatural elements in these narratives are given exactly the same prominence which they would properly receive in a Sunday-school where parents, teachers, and managing authority had all settled these problems in one and the same way. The Junior New Testament Lessons are taken almost exclusively from the Gospel of St. Mark, and lesson after lesson appears in which the subject matter is miracle, and miracle not merely as an incident but as the pith and substance of the whole lesson. All but five of the miracles recorded by the second evangelist are thus included, and of these five one takes its place among the Intermediate Lessons, and the two already mentioned, those of the Gadarene swine and the barren fig tree, can alone have been sacrificed to a possible regard for the difficulties of children, parents, or teachers. More than three dozen of the lessons in the whole book are occupied solely with miracle, and as samples we may mention that the feeding of the five thousand and the stilling of the tempest are to be found among the Junior Lessons, whilst the Senior course includes the turning of water into wine and the raising of Lazarus. Some of the miraculous circumstances attending the birth of Jesus are fully recorded, but not the Virgin birth itself—an omission which has brought upon those responsible the charges of "Unitarian bias," but is quite clearly to be justified by the unsuitable-ness of the subject matter for children on physiological grounds alone. On the other hand, the narratives of the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension are set out in full in three different versions, the Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John being drawn upon for the Junior, Intermediate and Senior Lessons respectively.