over a disease of this nature. Or, lastly, as
psychical? But blindness is something so independent of the mental life,
so entirely corporeal, that the idea of its removal at all, still less
of its sudden removal by means of a mental operation, is not to be
entertained. We must, therefore, acknowledge that an historical
conception of these narratives is more than merely difficult to us; and
we proceed to inquire whether we cannot show it to be probable that
legends of this kind should arise unhistorically.... That these deeds of
Elisha were conceived, doubtless with reference to the passage of
Isaiah, as a real opening of the eyes of the blind, is proved by the
above rabbinical passage [stating that the Messiah would do all that in
ancient times had been done by the hands of the righteous, vol. i., p.
81, note], and hence cures of the blind were expected from the Messiah.
Now, if the Christian community, proceeding as it did from the bosom of
Judaism, held Jesus to be the Messianic personage, it must manifest the
tendency to ascribe to him every Messianic predicate, and, therefore,
the one in question" (Ibid, 292, 293).

Not only, then, are the miracles rendered doubtful by the dubious
character of the records in which they are found, but there is a clear
and reasonable explanation why we should expect to find them in any
history of a supposed Messiah. Christian apologists appear to have
overlooked the statement in the Gospels that Jesus objected to publicity
being given to his supposed miracles; the natural conclusion that
sceptics draw from this assertion, is that the miracles never took place
at all, and that the supposed modesty of Jesus is invented in order to
account for the ignorance of the people concerning the alleged marvels.
Judge Strange fairly remarks: "The appeal to miracles is a very
questionable resort. Now, as Jesus is repeatedly represented to have
exhorted those on whose behalf they were wrought to keep the matter
secret to themselves, and as when such signs, upon being asked for, were
refused to be accorded by him, and the desire to have them was repressed
as sinful, it is to be gathered, in spite of the sayings to the
contrary, that the writers were aware that there was no such public
sense of the occurrence of these marvels as must have attached to them
had they really been enacted, and we are left to the conclusion that
there were in fact no such demonstrations" ("The Portraiture and Mission
of Je