Miracles of Our Lord | Page 2

eyes.
This, I think, is the true nature of the miracles, an epitome of God's
processes in nature beheld in immediate connection with their source--a
source as yet lost to the eyes and too often to the hearts of men in the
far-receding gradations of continuous law. That men might see the will
of God at work, Jesus did the works of his Father thus.
Here I will suppose some honest, and therefore honourable, reader
objecting: But do you not thus place the miracles in dignity below the

ordinary processes of nature? I answer: The miracles are mightier far
than any goings on of nature as beheld by common eyes, dissociating
them from a living Will; but the miracles are surely less than those
mighty goings on of nature with God beheld at their heart. In the name
of him who delighted to say "My Father is greater than I," I will say
that his miracles in bread and in wine were far less grand and less
beautiful than the works of the Father they represented, in making the
corn to grow in the valleys, and the grapes to drink the sunlight on the
hill-sides of the world, with all their infinitudes of tender gradation and
delicate mystery of birth. But the Son of the Father be praised, who, as
it were, condensed these mysteries before us, and let us see the precious
gifts coming at once from gracious hands--hands that love could kiss
and nails could wound.
There are some, I think, who would perhaps find it more possible to
accept the New Testament story if the miracles did not stand in the way.
But perhaps, again, it would be easier for them, to accept both if they
could once look into the true heart of these miracles. So long as they
regard only the surface of them, they will, most likely, see in them only
a violation of the laws of nature: when they behold the heart of them,
they will recognize there at least a possible fulfilment of her deepest
laws.
With such, however, is not my main business now, any more than with
those who cannot believe in a God at all, and therefore to whom a
miracle is an absurdity. I may, however, just make this one remark with
respect to the latter--that perhaps it is better they should believe in no
God than believe in such a God as they have yet been able to imagine.
Perhaps thus they are nearer to a true faith--except indeed they prefer
the notion of the Unconscious generating the Conscious, to that of a
self-existent Love, creative in virtue of its being love. Such have never
loved woman or child save after a fashion which has left them content
that death should seize on the beloved and bear them back to the
maternal dust. But I doubt if there can be any who thus would choose a
sleep--walking Pan before a wakeful Father. At least, they cannot know
the Father and choose the Pan.
Let us then recognize the works of the Father as epitomized in the
miracles of the Son. What in the hands of the Father are the mighty
motions and progresses and conquests of life, in the hands of the Son

are miracles. I do not myself believe that he valued the working of
these miracles as he valued the utterance of the truth in words; but all
that he did had the one root, _obedience_, in which alone can any son
be free. And what is the highest obedience? Simply a following of the
Father--a doing of what the Father does. Every true father wills that his
child should be as he is in his deepest love, in his highest hope. All that
Jesus does is of his Father. What we see in the Son is of the Father.
What his works mean concerning him, they mean concerning the
Father.
Much as I shrink from the notion of a formal shaping out of design in
any great life, so unlike the endless freedom and spontaneity of nature
(and He is the Nature of nature), I cannot help observing that his first
miracle was one of creation--at least, is to our eyes more like creation
than almost any other--for who can say that it was creation, not
knowing in the least what creation is, or what was the process in this
miracle?

II. THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES.
Already Jesus had his disciples, although as yet he had done no mighty
works. They followed him for himself and for his mighty words. With
his mother they accompanied him to a merry-making at a wedding.
With no retiring regard, with no introverted look of self-consciousness
or self-withdrawal, but more human than any of the company, he
regarded their