Miracles of Jesus

“ As time went on, and Christianity spread wider and wider among the multitudes, and with less and less of control from the personal influence of Jesus, Christianity developed more and more its side of miracle and legend; until to believe Jesus to be the Son of God meant to believe the points of the legend,—his preternatural conception and birth, his miracles, his descent into hell, his bodily resurrection, his ascent into heaven, and his future triumphant return to judgment. ”

“ And again: if Jesus really performed the miracles as related in the Gospels, and was perfectly acquainted with the thoughts and designs of men, his divine mission cannot be doubted. Lastly: if he really foretold his own death and resurrection, the descent of the Holy Ghost, its miraculous effects, the sufferings of the Apostles, the call of the Gentiles, and the destruction of Jerusalem, it necessarily follows that he spake by the authority of God himself. ”

“ The scribes and the Pharisees came to Jesus, saying, "Master, we would have a sign from Thee. But He answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign." What then is the purpose of miracles? Miracles come as the result of faith; they do not come to create faith. In His own country, Jesus even could perform no mighty work because the people had not faith in Him. Miracles are a kind of reward of faith, and serve to strengthen faith already born. ”

“ Certain of them drew on their boundless imaginations to evolve what they considered proof positive of a fantastic theory that the story of the Gospel is no more than a legend from which we can reconstruct the natural life of Jesus as a man, one-third prophet, one-third necromancer, one-third demagogue, a man who wrought no miracles except the hypnotic cure of some obsessed devotees, who did not die on the cross, but came to Himself in the chill of the sepulcher and reappeared with mysterious airs to delude men into believing that He had risen from the dead. ”

“ After this the disciples fled, and Jesus was conducted bound into Jerusalem.
We are surprised to find that this miracle did not produce any conviction of the Divine mission of our Saviour upon the minds of the priests, Pharisees, and others who witnessed it: We can only suppose that they had become familiar with miracles, and that those men whose interest or pride led them to oppose the teaching of Jesus, tried to persuade themselves that these miracles were not done through a power derived from God. Yet the character of the miracles ought to have removed the possibility of doubt. ”

“ The whole Christian era has been an era of faith or the exercise of the Mystic Sense. No great work can be found in it, in science, literature or religion which has not been made possible by the stimulus given to faith by the influence of Jesus. Miracles do not cease to be miraculous when they cease to be mysterious, and the Christian centuries are strewn with such miracles—many of them, works of healing and moral restoration, as great as those of Jesus. ”

“ I recollect once, when on my travels, hearing some divines try to prove that everybody ought to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ because of the miracles he wrought. When they had argued some time I took the liberty of saying, "Gentlemen, who were they who testified of these great miracles that you speak of?" ”

“ And yet Jesus for his curing the sore Eyes of a poor Man with an Ointment, must be had in veneration for a divine and miraculous Operator, as much as if by the breath of his Mouth he had removed an huge Mountain!
A Miracle, if I mistake not the Notion of our Divines about it, is a supernatural Event, or a Work out of the Power of Nature or Art to effect. ”

“ There is no one that lives upon the earth but what is, more or less, enlightened by the Spirit of the Lord Jesus. It is said of him, that he is the light of the world. He lighteth every man that comes into the world, and every person, at times, has the light of the Spirit of truth upon him.
When we look at the conduct of the Jews and of the Romans in Jerusalem, and other nations around, among whom Jesus traveled, we find that it was very little influenced by those mighty miracles that we think, talk and preach so much about. I mean the Christian world. ”

“ As to the Christian miracles, there can be no reasonable doubt that "mighty works," deemed by many of his contemporaries superhuman, were wrought by Jesus. These, whatever they were, must be regarded as the natural effluence of a transcendently endowed life. ”

“ There are some believers, who place little confidence in the evidence of the miracles said to have been performed by Jesus, who yet say that the establishment of such a religion as his, by such means as were employed after his death, is of itself a convincing miracle. ”

“ As to Jesus's Miracle in this Story, which consisted in his healing a Man, of no body knows what Infirmity, there neither is nor can be proved any Thing supernatural in it, or there had been an express Description of the Disease, without which it is impossible to say, there was a miraculous Cure wrought. ”

“ How empty would devotion or religion be if one's spiritual well-being depended on whether one believed in miracles or no!” “The truly miraculous thing about Jesus is Himself, the purity and serene holiness of His character, which is, notwithstanding, genuinely human, and adapted to the imitation and emulation of mankind.” ”

“ Jesus not only did the miracles himself, but did solemnly promise that, wherever his disciples should continue to obey him in all things, they should be able, by faith in his name, to do thaumaturgical works even unto the end of time ”

“ As this assent becomes weaker or stronger, in proportion to the clearness and force of the evidence by which it is produced, a full assurance of faith is that high degree of it which admits of no suspicion. Hence, you are convinced that Jesus Christ came into this world—that he sojourned in the land of Judea—that he performed the miracles which are ascribed to him—that he died on the cross to expiate the guilt of sin—rose from the dead—and is now seated on the right hand of the majesty on high, receiving there the ascriptions of praise from the lips of the redeemed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This parade about miracles, being designed to introduce christianity, and confirm and attest all genuine revelation, is a humbug that has always been started whenever a new revelation was given to man. The pious Jews insisted constantly that the disciples should prove their authority by miracles. It was about the first and last thing that they ever said to Jesus: WORK A MIRACLE! come down from the cross and we will believe. ”

“ Those who believe in the divinity of Christ, but not in His supernatural birth and bodily resurrection, do not, as a rule, make those miracles the subject of their meditations, but find their spiritual sustenance in communion with the 'Christ who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Those who regard Jesus only as a prophet sent by God to reveal the Father, generally pray only to the God whom He revealed, and cherish the memory of Jesus with no other feelings than supreme gratitude and veneration. ”

“ That this unqualified repudiation by Jesus of miracles should have been preserved at all in Mark, a gospel full of miracles, is a guarantee of the genuineness of the incident, and of the comparative earliness of some parts of that gospel. The period of sophistication was not far advanced. Miracles require time to grow. ”

“ Another Story of a miraculous Cure perform'd by Jesus on another Woman, and that is on her, who [100] had a Spirit of Infirmity, eighteen Years, and was bow'd together, and could in no wise lift up herself——being bound of Satan, &c. This too, as I suppose, is with our Divines a great Miracle, and one of the greatest that Jesus wrought, or it had not been specify'd, but cast indiscriminately into the Number of all manner of Diseases, which he heal'd. ”

“ Augustine asserts that miracles are still performed in his day in the name of Jesus Christ, either by means of his sacraments or by the prayers or relics of his saints, although they are not so well-known as those of old, and he gives an account of many miracles which had recently taken place. ”

“ I have put you 133on your guard: do not believe in these signs and these wonders until thou shalt see the Son of Man. The miracles of false prophets do not prove the truth of what they say.
For all these reasons, Jesus abstained, as often as possible, from working miracles, but He could not always resist the pleadings of the sorrowful, and often His pity did not wait for the request. For a miracle is an attribute of faith, and His faith is infinite, and that of the believers very great. ”

“ Jesus rais'd the dead, and wrought other Miracles, say our Divines often, not only to manifest his own Power and Glory, but his Love to Mankind, and his Inclination to do them good: For which Reason his Miracles are useful and beneficial as well as stupendous and supernatural Acts, on purpose to conciliate Men's Affections as well as their Faith to him. On this Topick our Divines are copious and rhetorical, when they write on Jesus's Miracles, as if no more useful and wonderful Works could be done, than what he did. ”

“ It is impossible, among the miraculous narratives so tediously enumerated in the Gospels, to distinguish the miracles attributed to Jesus by public opinion from those in which he consented to play an active part. ”

“ It is impossible upon any but arbitrary grounds, and from a foregone conclusion, to maintain that a work commencing with a detailed history of the birth and infancy of Jesus, his genealogy, and the preaching of John the Baptist, and concluding with an equally minute history of his betrayal, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection, and which relates all the miracles and has for its evident aim throughout the demonstration that Messianic prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus, could be entitled [——] —] : the oracles or discourses of the Lord. ”

“ Miracles, however, are integral parts of the story of Jesus' life, and those who attempt to write that life eliminating the supernatural are constrained to recognize that he had marvellous power as an exorcist and healer of some forms of nervous disease. So E. A. Abbott, The Spirit on the Waters, 169-201. Our knowledge of nature does not warrant a dogmatic definition of the limits of the possible; see James, The Will to Believe, vii.-xiii., 299-327. ”

“ The miracles with which the gospels have filled the record of Jesus' life have caused perplexity to many, and they belong with other mysterious things recorded for us in the story of the past or occurring under the incredulous observation of our scientific generation. They all pale, however, before the unaccountable exception presented to universal human experience by this Man of Nazareth. ”

“ These miracles were wrought to alarm and awaken a stupid careless world, and turn them from dumb and lame idols to the living God; and men were startled by them, but not converted till a greater wonder was done in that land, in the appearing of Jesus Christ, Matt. ”

“ The prophecies and miracles set forth and recorded in the sacred Scriptures are the fiction of poets, and the mysteries of the Christian faith the result of philosophical investigations. In the books of the Old and New Testament there are contained mythical inventions, and Jesus Christ is himself a myth. ”

“ If by σημειον is to be understood simply a miracle, then it is not true that Jesus, whom Paul preached, was or could be on that account a stumbling block to the Jews, it being allowed on all hands that many and great miracles did shew forth themselves through him. ”

“ He adds, “Neither in Scripture, nor in profane authors, nor in common use, is anything called a miracle but what falls under the cognizance of the senses; a miracle being nothing else but a supernatural effect evident to sense, the great end and design whereof is to be the sensible proof and conviction of something that we do not see.” The church of Rome affirms that, in the celebration of the mass, the bread and wine are changed into the very body and blood, soul and Divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ ”

“ The connection of the word or the act of Jesus with the restoration of the blind, lame and dead, to sight, and health, and life, as cause and effect, is a conclusion which our reason is compelled to admit, from the uniformity of their concurrence, in such a multitude of instances, as well as from the universal conviction of all, whether friends or foes, who beheld the miracles which he wrought. ”