assent, miracles are then rather warnings to us that we keep aloof, for they tell us that not merely lies are here, for to that the conscience bore witness already, but that he who utters them is more than a common deceiver, is eminently a liar and an Antichrist,' a false prophet,-standing in more immediate connexion than other deceived and evil men to the kingdom of darkness, so that Satan has given him his power (Rev. xiii. 2), is using him to be an especial organ of his, and to do a special work for him.'

But if these things are so, there might seem a twofold danger to which the simple and unlearned Christian would be exposed the danger, first, of not receiving that which indeed comes from God, or secondly, of receiving that which comes from an evil source. But indeed these dangers do not beset the unlearned and the simple more than they beset and are part of the trial and temptation of every man; the safeguard from either of these fatal errors lying altogether in men's moral and spiritual, and not at all in their intellectual, condition. They only find the witness which the truth bears to itself to be no witness, they only believe the lying wonders, in whom the moral sense is already perverted; they have not before received the love of the truth, that they might

sed ratione mentis præponenda eorum esset auctoritas. So to the Manichæans he says (Con. Faust. xiii. 5): Miracula non facitis; quæ si faceretis, etiam ipsa in vobis caveremus, præstruente nos Domino, et dicente, Exsurgent multi pseudo-christi et pseudo-prophetæ, et facient signa et prodigia multa. Theodoret too comments on Deut. xiii. 3 thus : διδασκό μεθα μὴ προσέχειν σημείοις, ὅταν ὁ ταῦτα ὁρῶν ἐναντία τῇ εὐσεβείᾳ διδάσκει. 1 Thus Irenæus (Adv. Hær. II. xxxi. 3) calls such deceitful workers 'precursors of the great Dragon,' quos similiter atque illum devitare oportet, et quanto majore phantasmate operari dicuntur, tanto magis observare eos, quasi majorem nequitiæ spiritum perceperint. And Tertullian, refuting Gnostics, who argued that there was no need that Christ should have been prophesied of beforehand, since He could at once prove his mission by his miracles [per documenta virtutum], replies (Adv. Marc. iii. 3): At ego negabo solam hanc illi speciem ad testimonium competisse, quam et Ipse postmodum exauctoravit. Siquidem edicens multos venturos, et signa facturos, et virtutes magnas edituros, aversionem [eversionem?] etiam electorum; nec ideo tamen admittendos, temerariam signorum et virtutum fidem ostendit, ut etiam apud pseudo-christos facillimarum.

be saved from believing a lie. Thus, then, their believing this lie and rejecting that truth is, in fact, but the final judgment upon them that have had pleasure in unrighteousness. With this view exactly agree the memorable words of St. Paul (2 Thess. ii. 9-12), wherein he declares that it is the anterior state of every man which shall decide whether he shall receive the lying wonders of Antichrist or reject them (cf. John v. 43). For while these come with all deceivableness of unrighteousness' to them whose previous condition has fitted them to embrace them, who have been ripening themselves for this extreme judgment, there is ever something in these wonders, something false, or immoral, or ostentatious, or something merely idle, which detects and lays them bare to a simple faith, and for that at once broadly differences them from those which belong to the kingdom of the truth.2

3

These differences have been often brought out. Such miracles are immoral; or if not immoral, they are idle, leading to and ending in nothing. For as the miracle, standing in connexion with highest moral ends, must not be itself an immoral act, as little may it be an act merely

1 Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xx. 19): Seducentur eis signis atque prodigiis qui seduci merebuntur. Proinde judicati seducentur, et seducti

judicabuntur.

2You complain,' says Dr. Arnold, in a letter to Dr. Hawkins (Life, vol. ii. p. 226), of those persons who judge of a revelation not by its evidence, but by its substance. It has always seemed to me that its substance is a most essential part of its evidence; and that miracles wrought in favour of what was foolish or wicked, would only prove Manicheism. We are so perfectly ignorant of the unseen world, that the character of any supernatural power can only be judged by the moral character of the statements which it sanctions. Thus only can we tell whether it be a revelation from God or from the Devil.'

3 Thus Arnobius (Adv. Gen. i. 43) of the heathen wonder-workers: Quis enim hos nesciat aut imminentia studere prænoscere, quæ necessario (velint nolint) suis ordinationibus veniunt? aut mortiferam immittere quibus libuerit tabem, aut familiarium dirumpere caritates: aut sine clavibus reserare, quæ clausa sunt; aut ora silentio vincire, aut in curriculis equos debilitare, incitare, tardare; aut uxoribus et liberis alienis (sive illi mares sint, sive feminei generis) inconcessi amoris flammas et furiales immittere cupiditates? Cf. Irenæus, Adv. Hær. II. 31. 2, 3.

This argument

futile, issuing in vanity and nothingness. Origen continually uses, when plied with the alleged miracles of heathen saints and sages. He counts, and rightly, that he has abundantly convinced them of falsehood, when he has asked, and obtained no answer to, this question. 'What came of these? In what did they issue? Where is the society which has been founded by their help? What is there in the world's history which they have helped forward, to show that they lay deep in the mind and counsel of God? The miracles of Moses issued in a Jewish polity; those of Jesus Christ in a Christian Church; whole nations were knit together through their help. What have your boasted Apollonius or Esculapius to show as the fruit of theirs? traces have they left behind them?' And not merely, he goes on to say, were Christ's miracles effectual, but effectual for good, and such good was their distinct purpose and aim; for this is the characteristic distinction between the dealer in false shows of power and the true worker of divine works, that the latter has ever the reformation of men in his eye, and seeks always to forward this; while the first, whose own work is built upon fraud and lies, can have no such purpose of destroying that very kingdom out of which he himself grows.3

What

These, too, are marks of the true miracle, and marks very nearly connected with the foregoing, that it is never a mere freak of power, done as in wantonness, with no need compelling, for show and ostentation. With good right in that remarkable religious romance of earliest Christian times, The Recognitions of Clement, and in the cognate Clementine Homilies, Peter draws a contrast between the wonderful works of Christ and those alleged by the followers of Simon 1 Con. Cels. ii. 51: ̓Εθνῶν ὅλων συστάντων μετὰ τὰ σημεῖα αὐτῶν.

3 Ibid. i. 67 : Δεικνύτωσαν ἡμῖν Ελληνες τῶν κατειλεγμένων τινὸς βιωφελές, λαμπρὸν, καὶ παρατεῖναν ἐπὶ τὰς ὕστερον γενεὰς, καὶ τηλικοῦτον ἔργον, ὡς ἐμποιεῖν πιθανότητα τῷ περὶ αὐτῶν μύθῳ, λέγοντι ἀπὸ θείας αὐτοὺς γεγονέναι σποράς.

3 Con. Cels. i. 68; cf. Eusebius, Dem. Evang. iii. 6.

♦ iii. 6 (Cotelerii Patt. Apost. vol. i. p. 529).

5 Hom. ii. 32-44 (ibid. p. 629).

Magus to have been wrought by their master. What profit, he asks, what significance was there in Simon's speaking statues, his dogs of brass or stone that barked, his flights through the air, his transformations of himself now into a serpent, now into a goat, his putting on of two faces, his rolling himself unhurt upon burning coals, and the like?—which even if he had done, the works possessed no meaning; they stood in relation to nothing; they were not, what each true miracle is always more or less, redemptive acts; in other words, works not merely of power but of grace, each one an index and a prophecy of the inner work of man's deliverance, which it accompanies and helps forward.' But, as we should justly expect, it was preeminently thus with the miracles of Christ. Each of these is in small, and upon one side or another, a partial and transient realization of the great work, which He came that in the end He might accomplish perfectly and for ever. They are all pledges, in that they are themselves firstfruits, of his power; in each of them the word of salvation is incorporated in an act of salvation. Only when regarded in this light do they appear not merely as illustrious examples of his might, but also as glorious manifestations of his holy love.

It is worth while to follow this a little in detail. What evils are they, which hinder man from reaching the true end and aim of his creation, and from which he needs a redemption? It may briefly be answered that they are sin in its moral and in its physical manifestations. If we regard its moral manifestations, in the darkness of the understanding, in the wild discords of the spiritual life, none were such fearful

1 iii. 60 (ibid. p. 529): Nam dic, quæso, quæ utilitas est ostendere statuas ambulantes? latrare æreos aut lapideos canes ? salire montes? volare per aërem? et alia his similia, quæ dicitis fecisse Simonem? Quæ autem a Bono sunt, ad hominum salutem deferuntur; ut sunt illa quæ fecit Dominus noster, qui fecit cæcos videre, fecit surdos audire; debiles et claudos erexit, languores et dæmones effugavit. . . . . Ista ergo signa quæ ad salutem hominum prosunt, et aliquid boni hominibus conferunt, Malignus facere non potest. Cf. Irenæus, Con. Hær. II. xxxii. 3.

....

examples of its tyranny as the demoniacs; they were special objects, therefore, of the miraculous power of the Lord. Then if we ask ourselves what are the physical manifestations of sin; they are sicknesses of all kinds, fevers, palsies, leprosies, blindness, each of these death beginning, a partial deathand finally, the death absolute of the body. This region therefore is fitly another, as it is the widest region, of his redemptive grace. In the conquering and removing of these evils, He eminently bodied forth the idea of Himself as the Redeemer of men., But besides these, sin has its manifestations more purely physical; it reveals itself and its consequences in the tumults and strife of the elements among themselves, as in the rebellion of nature against man; for the destinies of the natural world were linked to the destinies of man; and when he fell, he drew after him his whole inheritance, which became subject to the same vanity as himself. Therefore do we behold Him, in whom the lost prerogatives of the race were recovered, walking on the stormy waves, or quelling the menace of the sea with his word; incorporating in these acts the deliverance of man from the rebellious powers of nature, which had risen up against him, and instead of his willing servants, were oftentimes now his tyrants and his destroyers. These also were redemptive acts. Even the two or three of his works which do not range themselves so readily under any of these heads, yet are not indeed exceptions. Take for example, the multiplying of the bread. The original curse of sin was the curse of barrenness,-the earth yielding hard-won and scanty returns to the sweat and labour of man; but here this curse is removed, and in its stead the primeval abundance for a moment re-appears. All scantness and scarceness, such as this lack of bread in the wilderness, that failing of the wine at the marriage-feast, were not man's portion at the first; for all the earth was appointed to serve him, and to pour the fulness of its treasure into his lap. That he ever should hunger or thirst, that he should ever have lack of anything, was a consequence of