1. Signs were suggested to the Jewish mind whenever that people thought of the past history of their nation. Almost every page of their sacred books spoke of signs either past or to come. Their faith had signs for its surest proof. Their greatest men had exhibited most startling signs. Those epochs to which they looked back with most pride were marked by a greater display of signs. And so it was no wonder that with the advent of the Messiah they expected signs in greater number and of more surpassing brilliancy than ever before.
2. Indeed they had signs in exceeding plenty, and of a character such as, from the past history of their nation, they might have expected. Jesus Christ of Nazareth confined His miracles to no one district, to no one section of the Jewish race above another. Everywhere, before all the people, He did wonders, which in number, power, and beneficence surpassed anything of the kind that had ever occurred in their history. These miracles, indeed, were so many signs from heaven to them, but they were not signs to their mind. They really did not know what they would be at. They wanted signs, and yet more signs ! For it is of the nature of this desire to rise higher and
i CORINTHIANS i. 22-24 7
higher in proportion as it is satisfied. On the morrow after the multiplication of the loaves the multitudes ask : What signs doest thou then ? Every stroke of power must be surpassed by a following one yet more marvellous.
If There is in the farther course of some Christians that which is the counterpart of the Slough of Despond at the commencement of it. There were cartloads of Gospel encouragements cast into the Slough of Despond, and yet it was the Slough of Despond still; and so into this there are carted distinctions and marks of saving grace, yet it remains the counterpart of the Slough of Despond still. There is no dealing with such persons ; for if you give them signs of grace, they will ask for signs of the signs.1
3. The Gospel, now as then, has to encounter the demand of those who ask for signs. Do we not see the craving for the sign — for the display, that is, of supernatural power to crush and silence all doubt resulting in the superstitious corruptions of Christianity ? For what is superstition but an appeal from wisdom to power, an effort to silence the reason by the terrors of the senses ? The demand for a religion which shall dispense with the exercise of reason and the discipline of thought is ever punished by belief in a religion which outrages all reason and, at last, silences all thought. Superstition is still the Nemesis, not of faith, but of unbelief. And every such superstition necessarily grows always grosser and darker as it grows older. For the desire of the teacher for power, combining with the desire of the taught for certainty, must tend always to efforts at making the sign, which is to secure both, still more awful and convincing, by still greater and more awful attestations. A fresh miracle must be provided to silence each fresh heresy, a new prodigy to confirm each new dogma.
^f When Carlyle said of God, the God in whom Christians believe, " He does nothing," he gave expression to precisely this mental temper. It is the temper of all to whom it is a religious difficulty that there is a constitution and course of nature and of human life in which things go on according to general laws, and in which there is much that is baffling, mysterious, and unjust. If we are to believe in God, they say, let Him do something.2
Tf The Jews asked for signs, a request which is not necessarily indicative of a thirst ; it may be an asking behind which there is
1 "Rabbi" Duncan, in Brown's Memoir of John Duncan, 426.
2 J. Denney, The Way Everlasting, 14.
8 POWER AND WISDOM OF GOD
no parched and aching spirit. That is the bane and peril of all externalism. It may gratify a feverish curiosity without awaken- ing the energies of a holy life. The Jews asked for signs. " Now when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad," for he hoped to see a sign. It was a restless curiosity, itching for the sensation of some novel entertainment ; it is not the pang of a faint and weary heart hungering for bread. — " He answered him nothing." The Jews asked for signs, a request which is frequently indicative of a life of moral alienation. Externalism abounds in moral gifts, and in externalisms men often discover drugs by which they can benumb the painful sense of their own excesses. " An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign." They try to resolve into merely physical sensations and sensationalisms what can be apprehended only by the delicate, tender tendrils of a penitent and aspiring heart.1
Tf F. W. Eobertson in his diary makes the following resolution : To endeavour to get over the adulterous-generation-habit of seeking a sign. I want a loud voice from Heaven to tell me a thing is wrong, whereas a little experience of its results is enough to prove that God is against it. It does not cohere with the everlasting laws of the universe.2