“Again, the skeptic tells you that there were and are no miracles. Presumptuous tongue that utters such denial! How do they know that there are no miracles?
“But what is a miracle? Is it necessary to set aside a law of nature in order to perform a miracle? Was not he who made the law wise enough to so frame it that without infringement he could perform wonders? The miracle of one age is the science of the next. Men do to-day without exciting wonder what a few centuries ago would have consigned them to the stake as magicians.
“The miracles of Christ were the acts of one having a perfect knowledge of the laws of the universe, and are a stronger proof of his divinity than any invasion of those laws could be. It was miraculous that a seeming man should have such knowledge.
“Another criticism of religious teachers in both the old and the new law is their ignorance of physical science, evident by commission as well as by omission. Whether they knew or not, common sense alone should teach us that if any one announcing a new religious truth should disturb the preconceptions of his hearers regarding physical truths he would in so much distract their attention from that which he wished to teach them; and their credulity, under this double attack, might fail to accept anything.
“Juvenal’s dictum, ‘bread and games,’ for the government of a people, is true of all mankind in a higher sense. Physical science is man’s circenses. It exercises his intellect, amuses him and his kind, and every new discovery should excite in him a higher admiration of the Creator. It was not necessary that the Son of God should become man, or rise from the dead in order to teach the movements of the starry spheres, or the secret workings of terrestrial powers. Circenses!
“What matters it to the interests of man’s immortal soul if the earth is a stationary platform, or a globe rolling through space with a double, perhaps a triple motion! What cares the dying man for the powers of steam, or electricity, or the laws of the ways of the wind! Circenses! Circenses!
“Christ came to bring the bread of life, the heavenly Panem, without which there is no life nor growth for the spirit.
“My children, you are counseled to patience and gentleness. But listen not in silence when any one reviles your King. Say little to them of the God, lest they blaspheme the more; but say, Behold the man! It is not pious people alone who have lauded him, nor theologians only who have borne testimony to him.
“Napoleon I., a warrior, an eagle among men, said of Jesus Christ: ‘I know man, and I tell you that Christ was not a man. Everything about Christ astonishes me. His spirit overwhelms and confounds me. There is no comparison between him and any other being. Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires; but on what rests the creation of our genius? On force. Jesus alone founded his empire on love.’
“You will find no peer of Napoleon I. among those who can see no greatness in Jesus Christ.