as
witnesses to a Gospel which included miracles both among its evidences
and as part of its substance. It is not possible to get rid of miracles
nor the belief in miracles from the history of the Apostles. They
testify to our Lord's Resurrection as to an actual fact, and make it the
basis of all their preaching. They testify to our Lord's miracles as
part of the character of His life. It is necessary to maintain that they
were mere fanatics with no claim to respect but rather to the pity which
we feel for utterly ignorant goodness, if we are to hold that no miracle
was ever wrought by our Lord. It is difficult to maintain even their
honesty if they preached the Resurrection of our Lord without any basis
of fact to rest on. No man who is not determined to uphold an opinion
at all hazards can question that St. Paul and St. Peter believed that
our Lord rose from the dead, and that they died for and in that belief.

But, in the second place, behind the Apostles stands our Lord Himself,
and whatever may be said of the documents that compose the New
Testament, they are at any rate sufficient to show that our Lord was
universally believed by His disciples to have the power of working
miracles and to have often worked them. There is no hesitation in regard
to this; no hint of any doubt. But not only so, there is no hint of any
disclaimer on His part. He must have known whether He could work
miracles or not. He must have known that His disciples believed Him to
possess the power. There is not the slightest trace of His ever having
implied that this was a misconception. He did sometimes disclaim what
was ascribed to Him, even when what was ascribed to Him was truly His,
but was ascribed to Him without real knowledge of what it implied. 'Why
callest thou Me good? There is none good but One, that is, God,' we
DO find. But 'Why askest thou Me to do this? There is none
that can do this but One, that is God,' we do NOT find. It is
plain that He accepted the belief that assigned Him powers above those
of other men--powers given Him by His Father in heaven--and never
discouraged it. Nay, He demanded it. Take the lowest ground, and admit
for argument's sake that the New Testament contains a legendary element,
and still you cannot cut the miracles out of the Gospels and Epistles
without altering them beyond recognition. The Jesus Christ presented to
us in the New Testament would become a different person if the miracles
were removed. An