If we suppose that Christ really performed no miracles, and that those which are attributed to him were the product of self-deception mixed in some proportion or other with imposture, then no doubt the faith of St. Paul and St. John was an empty chimera, a mere misconception; but it is none the less true that those apparent miracles were essential to Christ's success, and that had he not pretended to perform them the Christian Church would never have been founded, and the name of Jesus of Nazareth would be known at this day only to the curious in Jewish antiquities.
But he goes on to point out what was the use which Christ made of miracles, and how it was that they did not, as they might have done, even impede His purpose of founding His kingdom on men's consciences and not on their terrors. In one of the most remarkable passages perhaps ever written on the Gospel miracles as they are seen when simply looked at as they are described, the writer says:—
He imposed upon himself a strict restraint in the dse of his supernatural powers. He adopted the principle that he was not sent to destroy men's lives but to save them, and rigidly abstained in practice from inflicting any kind of damage or harm. In this course he persevered so steadily that it became generally understood. Every one knew that this king, whose royal pretensions were so prominent, had an absolutely unlimited patience, and that he would endure the keenest criticism, the bitterest and most malignant personal attacks. Men's mouths were open to discuss his claims and character with perfect freedom; so far from regarding him with that excessive fear which might have prevented them from receiving his doctrine intelligently, they learnt gradually to treat him, even while they acknowledged his extraordinary power, with a reckless animosity which they would have been afraid to show towards an ordinary enemy. With curious inconsistency they openly charged him with being leagued with the devil; in other words, they acknowledged that he was capable of boundless mischief, and yet they were so little afraid of him that they were ready to provoke him to use his whole power against themselves. The truth was that they believed him to be disarmed by his own deliberate resolution, and they judged rightly. He punished their malice only by verbal reproofs, and they gradually gathered courage to attack the life of one whose miraculous powers they did not question.
Meantime, while this magnanimous self-restraint saved him from false friends and mercenary or servile flatterers, and saved the kingdom which he founded from the corruption of self-interest and worldliness, it gave him a power over the good such as nothing else could have given. For the noblest and most amiable thing that can be seen is power mixed with gentleness, the reposing, self-restraining attitude of strength. These are the "fine strains of honour," these are "the graces of the gods"—
To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the 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 was neither for his miracles nor for the beauty of his doctrine that Christ was worshipped. Nor was it for his winning personal character, nor for the persecutions he endured, nor for his martyrdom. It was for the inimitable unity which all these things made when taken together. In other words, it was for this that he whose power and greatness as shown in his miracles were overwhelming denied himself the use of his power, treated it as a slight thing, walked among men as though he were one of them, relieved them in distress, taught them to love each other, bore with undisturbed patience a perpetual hailstorm of calumny; and when his enemies grew fiercer, continued still to endure their attacks in silence, until, petrified and bewildered with astonishment, men saw him arrested and put to death with torture, refusing steadfastly to use in his own behalf the power he conceived he held for the benefit of others. It was the combination of greatness and self-sacrifice which won their hearts, the mighty powers held under a mighty control, the unspeakable condescension, the Cross of Christ.
And he goes on to describe the effect upon the world; and what it was that "drew all men unto Him":—
To sum up the results of this chapter. We began by remarking that an astonishing plan met with an astonishing success, and we raised the question to what instrumentality that success was due. Christ announced himself as the Founder and Legislator of a new Society, and as the Supreme Judge of men. Now by what means did he procure that these immense pretensions should be allowed? He might have done it by sheer power, he might have adopted persuasion, and pointed out the merits of the scheme and of the legislation he proposed to introduce. But he adopted a third plan, which had the effect not merely of securing obedience, but of exciting enthusiasm and devotion. He laid men under an immense obligation. He convinced them that he was a person of altogether transcendent greatness, one who needed nothing at their hands, one whom it was impossible to benefit by conferring riches, or fame, or dominion upon him, and that, being so great, he had devoted himself of mere benevolence to their good. He showed them that for their sakes he lived a hard and laborious life, and exposed himself to the utmost malice of powerful men. They saw him hungry, though they believed him able to turn the stones into bread; they saw his royal pretensions spurned, though they believed that he could in a moment take into his hand all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; they saw his life in danger; they saw him at last expire in agonies, though they believed that, had he so willed it, no danger could harm him, and that had he thrown himself from the topmost pinnacle of the temple he would have been softly received in the arms of ministering angels. Witnessing his sufferings, and convinced by the miracles they saw him work that they were voluntarily endured, men's hearts were touched, and pity for weakness blending strangely with wondering admiration of unlimited power, an agitation of gratitude, sympathy, and astonishment, such as nothing else could ever excite, sprang up in them; and when, turning from his deeds to his words, they found this very self-denial which had guided his own life prescribed as the principle which should guide theirs, gratitude broke forth in joyful obedience, self-denial produced self-denial, and the Law and Lawgiver together were enshrined in their inmost hearts for inseparable veneration.
It is plain that whatever there is novel in such a line of argument must depend upon the way in which it is handled; and it is the extraordinary and sustained power with which this is done which gives its character to the book. The writer's method consists in realising with a depth of feeling and thought which it would not be easy to match, what our Lord was in His human ministry, as that ministry is set before us by those who witnessed it; and next, in showing in detail the connection of that ministry, which wrought so much by teaching, but still more by the Divine example, "not sparing words but resting most on deeds," with all that is highest, purest, and best in the morality of Christendom, and with what is most fruitful and most hopeful in the differences between the old world and our own. We cannot think we are wrong when we say that no one could speak of our Lord as this writer speaks, with the enthusiasm, the overwhelming sense of His inexpressible authority, of His unapproachable perfection, with the profound faith which lays everything at His feet, and not also believe all that the Divine Society which Christ founded has believed about Him. And though for the present his subject is history, and human morality as it appears to have been revolutionised and finally fixed by that history, and not the theology which subsequent in date is yet the foundation of both, it is difficult to imagine any reader going along with him and not breaking out at length into the burst, "My Lord and my God." If it is not so, then the phenomenon is strange indeed; for a belief below the highest and truest has produced an appreciation, a reverence, an adoration which the highest belief has only produced in the choicest examples of those who have had it, and by the side of which the ordinary exhibitions of the divine history are pale and feeble. To few, indeed, as it seems to us, has it been given to feel, and to make others feel, what in all the marvellous complexity of high and low, and in all the Divine singleness of His goodness and power, the Son of Man appeared in the days of His flesh. It is not more vivid or more wonderful than what the Gospels with so much detail tell us of that awful ministry in real flesh and blood, with a human soul and with all the reality of man's nature; but most of us, after all, read the Gospels with sealed and unwondering eyes. But, dwelling on the Manhood, so as almost to overpower us with the contrast between the distinct and living truth and the dead and dull familiarity of our thoughts of routine and custom, he does so in such a way that it is impossible to doubt, though the word Incarnation never occurs in the volume, that all the while he has before his thoughts the "taking of the manhood into God." What is the Gospel picture?