This, too, is a very original feature. It is certainly not one that the popular imagination would create, because the motive to create it was wanting. It is not to be supposed that the popular imagination would first coiTCCt it.self and then embody the correction in a fictitious narra- tive. Here again we are driven to the conclusion that the narrative tridy reflects the facts.
(5) In yet another way do the accounts of the miracles work in with the total jiicture of the Life of Christ. They have a didactic value, which makes them round off the cycle of the teaching. This fact perhaps leaves some opening for the possibility that here and there what was origin- ally parable may in course of transmission have hai'dened into miracle. An example of such a possiliilitv would be the withering of the Fig-tree (.Mk lli-'-i4 2i>--'.' II compared with Lk 13«-»). But, on the other hand, it is just as possible that parable and mirai-le may stand side by side as a double enfivrei'inent of the same lesson. The story of the Temptation is proof that Jesus would not hesitate to clothe His teaching in a form at once natiU'al and imjiressive to that generation, though it is less so to ours. In this He only takes up a marked characteristic of the OT Prophets.
(v.) Ilislnricdl Xecessitij 0/ Miracles. — ^The truth is that the historian who tries to construct a reasoned picture of the Life of Christ linds that he cannot disi>eiise with miracles. He is con- fronled with the fact that no sooner had the Life of Jesus ended in apparent failure and shame than the great body of Christians — not an individual here and there, but the mass of the Church — passed over at once to the fixed belief that He was God. By what conceivable process could the men of that day have arrived at such a conclusion, if there had been really nothing in His life to distinguish it from that of ordinary men ? We have seen that He dill not work the kind of miracles which they expected. The miracles in themselves in any case came short of their expectations. But this makes it all the more nece.s.sary that there must have been .something about the Life, abroad and substantial ehiiieiit in it, wliich tlieij cmilil ric<n;iii:e <i.i super- natural and divine — not that we can recognize, but which they couhl recognize with the ideas of the time. Kliminate miracles from the career of Je.su.s, and the belief of Christians, from the first monient that we have undoubted contemporary evidence of it (say A. II. ."iO>, becomes an insoluble enigma.
(vi.) Xnlural Cmx/ruilii n/ Minidis. — And now, if from the belief of the Karly Church we turn to the beliif of the Church in our day, there a dilTi'icnt kind of coiiirruity ai'|iears. but a con-
gruity that is no less stringent. If we still believe that ChrLst was God, not merely on the testimony of the Early Church, but on the proof afforded by nineteen centuries of Cliri.stianity, there will be nothing to suiprise us in the phenomena of miracles. ' If the Incarnation was a fact, and Jesus Christ was what He claimed to be. His miracles, so far from being improbable, will appear the most natural thing in the world. . . . 'J'liey are so essentially ;i part of the cliara(;ter depicted in the Gospels, that without them that character would entirely disappear. They flow naturally from a Person who, despite His obvious humanity, im- presses us througliout as being at home in two worlds. . . . We cannot separate the wonderful life, or the wonderful teaching, from the wonder- ful works. They involve and interpenetrate and presuppose each other, and form in their indis- soluble combination one harmonious picture ' (lllingwortb, Divine Iiumaiifnri', pp. 8H-00).
If we .seek to express the rationale or inner congruity of miracles in Biblical language, we shall find this abundantly done for us in the (jospel of St. Jolin. Miracles arise from the in- timate association of the Son with the Father in the ordering of the universe, especially in all tliiit relates to the redeini)tion of man. When challenged by the Jews for healing a sick man upon the Sabbath, Jesus replied, ' My Father worketh even until now (i.e. since, and in spite of the institution of the Sabbatical Best), I am working also ' (Jn 6'") ; the same law holds for the actions of the Son as for the conserv.ation of the universe. And He goes on, ' Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing : for what things sfiever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth hiir all things that himself doeth : and greater works than these will he show him, that ye may marvel' (ill. vv. w-i)). Many other pa.ssages at once suggest themselves to the same effect (Jn ll^ S^f U' ')• The Son is -sent' by the Father, and He is invested with full powers for the accomplishment of that mission ; or rather with reference to it and for the purpose of it, He and the Father are one (Jn Kl'').
The sayings of this character are all from the Fourth Gospel. But there is a near approach to them in the well-known pa.ssage Jit 11-" 1| ('AH things have been delivered unto me of my Father'); and this does but form a natural climax to others, which, without it, would seem to leave something wanting and incomplete.