us, that our Lord
could have given a sign of His almighty power if He had chosen; and such
a sign as no man, even the dullest, could have mistaken. What prodigy
could He not have performed, before Scribes and Pharisees, Herod, and
Pontius Pilate? "Thinkest thou," He said Himself, "that I cannot now
pray to My Father, and He will send Me presently more than twelve legions
of angels?" Yet how did our Lord use that miraculous and almighty power
of His? Sparingly, and secretly. Sparingly; for He used it almost
entirely in curing the diseases of poor people; and secretly; for He used
it almost entirely in remote places. Jerusalem itself, recollect, was at
best a remote city compared with any of the great cities of the Roman
empire. And even there He refused to cast Himself down from a pinnacle
of the temple, for a sign and wonder to the Jews. If He, the Lord of the
world, had meant to convert the world by prodigious miracles, He would
surely have gone to Rome itself, the very heart and centre of the
civilized world, and have shewn such signs and wonders therein, as would
have made the Caesar himself come down from his throne, and worship Him,
the Lord of all.

But no. Our Lord wished for the obedience, not of men's lips, but of
their hearts. It was their hearts which He wished to win, that they
might love Him--and be loyal to Him--for the sake of His goodness; and
not fear and tremble before Him for the sake of His power. And therefore
He kept, so to speak, His power in the background, and put His goodness
foremost; only shewing His power in miracles of healing and mercy; that
so poor neglected, oppressed, hardworked souls might understand that
whoever did not care for them, Christ their Lord did; and that their
disease and misery were not His will; nor the will of His Father and
their Father in heaven.

But because, also, Christ was Lord of heaven and earth; therefore--if I
may make so bold as to guess at the reason for anything which He did--He
seems to have interfered as little as possible with those regular rules
and customs of this world about us, which we now call the Laws of Nature.
He did not offer--as the magicians of His time did offer--and as too many
have pretended since to do--to change the courses of the elements, to
bring down tempests or thunderbolts, to shew prodigies in the heaven
above, and in the earth beneath. Why should He? Heaven and earth, moon
and stars, fire and tempest, and all the ph