to save them, than in this circumstance, that when he needed in this very love to declare, not in word only but in act, what would be the consequences of an obstinate unfruitfulness and resistance to his grace, and thus to make manifest the severe side of his ministry, he should have chosen for the showing out of this, not one among all the sinners who were about him, but should rather have displayed his power upon a tree, which, itself incapable of feeling, might yet effectually serve as a sign and warning to men. He will not allow even a single exception to the rule of grace and love*. When he blesses, it is men; but when he smites, it is an unfeeling treet. More upon this matter must be

Compare Lord Bacon's excellent remarks, in his Meditt. Sac., where on the words, Benè omnia fecit, (Mark vii. 35,) in which he sees rightly an allusion to Gen. i. 31, he says: Verus plausus: Deus cùm universa crearet, vidit quod singula et omnia erant bona nimis. Deus Verbum in miraculis quæ edidit (omne autem miraculum est nova creatio, et non ex lege primæ creationis) nil facere voluit, quod non gratiam et beneficentiam omnino spiraret. Moses edidit miracula, et profligavit Ægyptios pestibus multis: Elias edidit, et occlusit cœlum ne plueret super terram; et rursus eduxit de cœlo ignem Dei super duces et cohortes: Elizæus edidit, et evocavit ursas e deserto, quæ laniarent impuberes; Petrus Ananiam sacrilegum hypocritam morte, Paulus Elymam magum cæcitate, percussit: sed nihil hujusmodi fecit Jesus. Descendit super eum Spiritus in formâ columbæ, de quo dixit, Nescitis cujus Spiritûs sitis. Spiritus Jesu, spiritus columbinus: fuerunt illi servi Dei tanquam boves Dei triturantes granum, et conculcantes paleam; sed Jesus agnus Dei sine irâ et judiciis. Omnia ejus miracula circa corpus humanum, et doctrina ejus circa animam humanam. Indiget corpus hominis alimento, defensione ab externis, et curâ. Ille multitudinem piscium in retibus congregavit, ut uberiorem victum hominibus præberet: ille alimentum aquæ in dignius alimentum vini ad exhilirandum cor hominis convertit'; ille ficum quod officio suo ad quod destinatum fuit, ad cibum hominis videlicet, non fungeretur, arefieri jussit: ille penuriam panum et piscium ad alendum exercitum populi dilatavit: ille ventos, quòd navigantibus minarentur, corripuit. . . . Nullum miraculum judicii, omnia beneficentiæ, et circa corpus humanum.

...

It is from this point of view that we should explain our Saviour's rebuke to the sons of Zebedee, when they wanted to call down fire from heaven on a village of the Samaritans, "as Elias did ;" (Luke ix. 54 ;) to repeat, that is, an Old Testament miracle. Christ's answer, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of," is not, as it is often explained, "Ye are mistaking a spirit of bitter zeal for a spirit of love to me;"-but the rebuke is gentler,

deferred till the time comes for treating that miracle in its order.

It is also noticeable that the region in which the miracles of the Old Testament chiefly move, is that of external nature; they are the cleaving of the sea, (Exod. xiv. 21,) or of a river, (Josh. iii. 14,) yawnings of the earth, (Num. xvi. 31,) fire falling down from heaven, (2 Kin. i. 10, 12,) furnaces which have lost their power to consume, (Dan. iii.,) wild beasts which have laid aside their inborn fierceness, (Dan. vi.,) and such as these: not of course these exclusively, but this nature is the haunt and main region of the miracle in the Old Testament, as in the New it is mainly the sphere of man's life in which it is at home. And consistently with this, the earlier miracles, done as the greater number of them were, in the presence of the giant powers of heathendom, have oftentimes a colossal character: those powers of the world are strong, but the God of Israel will shew himself to be stronger yet. Thus is it with the miracles of Egypt, the miracles of Babylon: they are miracles eminently of strength*: for under the influence of the great nature-worships of those lands, all religion had assumed a colossal grandeur. Compared with our Lord's works wrought in the days of his flesh, those were the whirlwind and the fire, and his as the still small voice which followed. In that old time God was

"Ye are mistaking and confounding the different standing points of the Old and New Covenant, taking your stand upon the old, that of an avenging righteousness, when you should rejoice to take it upon the new, that of a forgiving love."

* We find the false Christs who were so plentiful about the time of our Lord's coming, professing and promising to do exactly the same works as those wrought of yore,-to repeat even on a larger scale these Old Testament miracles. Thus "that Egyptian" whom the Roman tribune supposed that he saw in Paul, (Acts xxi. 38,) and of whom Josephus gives us a fuller account, (Antt., 1. 20, c. 8, § 6,) led a tumultuous crowd to the Mount of Olives, promising to shew them from thence how, as a second and a greater Joshua, he would cause the walls, not of Jericho, but of Jerusalem, to fall to the ground at his bidding. (See Vitringa's interesting Essay, De Signis â Messiâ edendis, in his Obss. Sac., v. 1, p. 482.)

teaching his people, he was teaching also the nations with whom his people were brought wonderfully into contact, that he who had entered into covenant with one among all the nations, was not one God among many, the God of the hills or the God of the plains, (1 Kin. xx. 23,) but that the God of Israel was the Lord of the whole earth.

But Israel at the time of the Incarnation had thoroughly learned that lesson, much else as it had left unlearned: and the whole civilized world had practically outgrown polytheism, however it may have lingered still as the popular superstition. And thus the works of our Lord, though they bear not on their front the imposing character which did those of old, yet contain higher and deeper truths. They are eminently miracles of the Incarnation-of the Son of God, who had taken our flesh, and taking, would heal it. They have predominantly a relation to man's body and his spirit. Miracles of nature take now altogether a subordinate place: they still survive, even as we could have ill afforded wholly to have lost them; for this region of nature must still be claimed as part of Christ's dominion, though not its chiefest or its noblest province. Man, and not nature, is now the main subject of these mighty powers; and thus it comes to pass that, with less of outward pomp, less to startle and amaze, the new have a yet deeper inward significance than the old *.

2. THE MIRACLES OF THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS.

The apocryphal gospels, abject productions as, whether contemplated in a literary or moral point of view, they must be allowed to be, are yet instructive in this respect, that they shew us what manner of gospels were the result, when men drew from their own fancy, and devised Christs of their

Julian the Apostate had indeed so little an eye for the glory of such works as these, that in one place he says, (CYRILL., Adv. Jul., 1. 6.,) Jesus did nothing wonderful, "unless any should esteem that to have healed some lame and blind, and exorcised some demoniacs in villages like Bethsaida and Bethany, were very wonderful works."

own, instead of resting upon the basis of historic fact, and delivering faithfully to the world true records of him who indeed had lived and died among them. Here, as ever, the glory of the true comes out into strongest light by comparison with the false. But in nothing, perhaps, are these apocryphal gospels more worthy of note, than in the difference between the main features of their miracles and those of the canonical Gospels. Thus in the canonical, the miracle is indeed essential, yet, at the same time, ever subordinated to the doctrine which it confirms, a link in the great chain of God's manifestation of himself to men; its ethical significance never falls into the background, but the act of grace and power has, in every case where this can find room, nearer or remoter reference to the moral condition of the person or persons in whose behalf it is wrought. The miracles ever lead us off from themselves to their Author; they appear as emanations from the glory of the Son of God; but it is in him we rest, and not in them,they are but the halo round him; having their worth from him, not contrariwise, he from them, They are held, too, together by his strong and central personality, which does not leave them a conglomerate of marvellous anecdotes accidentally heaped together, but parts of a great organic whole, of which every part is in vital coherence with every other. But it is altogether otherwise in these apocryphal narratives. To say that the miracles occupy in them the foremost place would very inadequately express the facts of the case. They are everything. Some of these so-called histories are nothing else but a string of these; which yet (and this too is singularly characteristic) stand wholly disconnected from the ministry of Christ. Not one of them belongs to the period after his Baptism, but they are all miracles of the Infancy,-in other words, of that time whereof the canonical Gospels relate no miracle, and not merely do not relate any, but are remarkably at pains to tell us that during it no miracle was wrought, that in Cana of Galilee being his first. (John ii. 11.)

It follows of necessity that they are never seals of a word and doctrine which has gone before; they are never "signs," but at the best wonders and portents. Any high purpose and aim is clearly altogether absent from them. It is never felt that the writer is writing out of any higher motive than to excite and feed a childish love of the marvellous-never that he could say, "These are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name." (John xx. 31.) Indeed, so far from having a religious, they are often wanting in a moral element. The Lord Jesus appears in them as a wayward, capricious, passionate child, to be feared indeed, seeing that he is furnished with such formidable powers of avenging every wrong or accidental injury which he meets; and so bearing himself, that the request which the parents of some other children are represented as making, that he may be kept within the house, for he brings harm and mischief whereever he comes, is perfectly justified by the facts.

It may be well to cite a few examples in proof, however harshly some of them may jar on the Christian ear. Thus some children refuse to play with him, hiding themselves from him; he pursues and turns them into kids*. Another child by accident runs against him and throws him down; whereupon he, being exasperated †, exclaims, "As thou hast made me to fall, so shalt thou fall and not rise;" at the same hour the child fell down and expired. He has a dispute with the master who is teaching him letters, concerning the order in which he shall go through the Hebrew alphabet, and his master strikes him; whereupon Jesus curses him, and straightway his arm is withered, and he falls on his face and

* Evang. Infant., c. 40, in THILO's Cod. Apocr., p. 115; to whose admirable edition of the apocryphal gospels the references in this section are made throughout.

* Πικρανθείς.

+ Evang. Infant., c. 47, p. 123; cf. Evang. Thomæ, c. 4, p. 234