he air.
And yet to charge the sulphur with a bolt
That shall but rive an oak.

And while he did no mischief under any provocation, his power
flowed in acts of beneficence on every side. Men could approach
near to him, could eat and drink with him, could listen to his
talk and ask him questions, and they found him not accessible
only, but warmhearted, and not occupied so much with his own plans
that he could not attend to a case of distress or mental
perplexity. They found him full of sympathy and appreciation,
dropping words of praise, ejaculations of admiration, tears. He
surrounded himself with those who had tasted of his bounty, sick
people whom he had cured, lepers whose death-in-life, demoniacs
whose hell-in-life, he had terminated with a single powerful word.
Among these came loving hearts who thanked him for friends and
relatives rescued for them out of the jaws of premature death, and
others whom he had saved, by a power which did not seem different,
from vice and degradation.

This temperance in the use of supernatural power is the
masterpiece of Christ. It is a moral miracle superinduced upon a
physical one. This repose in greatness makes him surely the most
sublime image ever offered to the human imagination. And it is
precisely this trait which gave him his immense and immediate
ascendency over men. If the question be put--Why was Christ so
successful?--Why did men gather round him at his call, form
themselves into a new society according to his wish, and accept
him with unbounded devotion as their legislator and judge? some
will answer, Because of the miracles which attested his divine
character; others, Because of the intrinsic beauty and divinity of
the great law of love which he propounded. But miracles, as we
have seen, have not by themselves this persuasive power. That a
man possesses a strange power which I cannot understand is no
reason why I should receive his words as divine oracles of truth.
The powerful man is not of necessity also wise; his power may
terrify and yet not convince. On the other hand, the law of love,
however divine, was but a precept. Undoubtedly it deserved that
men should accept it for its intrinsic worth, but men are not
commonly so eager to receive the words of wise men nor so
unbounded in their gratitude to them. It