Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/128

 The sensuous content thus becomes something wholly different, it becomes altered into another kind of content, and what is demanded is that this should be proved to be true. The object has undergone a complete alteration, and from being a material, empirically existing element, it has become a divine moment, an essentially supreme moment in God Himself. This content is no longer anything material, and therefore when the demand is made that it should be verified in the material fashion just referred to, this method is at once seen to be insufficient, because the object is of a wholly different nature.

If miracles are supposed to contain the immediate verification of the truth, still in-and-for-themselves they supply a merely relative verification or a proof of a subordinate sort. Christ says, by way of reproof, “Unless ye see miracles, ye will not believe.” “Many will come and say to Me: Have we not done many signs in Thy name? And I will say to them: I have not known you; depart from Me.” What is the kind of interest that can here any longer attach to this working of miracles? The relative element could have an interest or importance only for those who stood outside, for the instruction of Jews and heathen. But the Spiritual Community, which has taken a definite form, no longer stands in need of this relative kind of proof, it has the Spirit in itself, which leads into all truth, and which, by means of its truth as Spirit, exercises upon Spirit the true kind of force, a power in which Spirit has left to it its absolute freedom. The miracle represents a force which influences the natural connections of things, and is consequently a force which is exercised only upon Spirit when it is confined within the consciousness of this limited connection between things. How is it possible that the eternal Idea itself could reach consciousness through the conception of a force of this kind?

When the content is defined to mean that the miracles of Christ are themselves material phenomena