It is impossible from the duty God owes us, that a man, concealing his evil doctrine, and only allowing the good to appear, pretending that he is in conformity with God and the Church, should work miracles to insinuate insensibly a false and subtle doctrine. This cannot be.
Those who follow Jesus Christ because of his miracles honour his power in all the miracles which it produces. But those who, making profession to follow him because of his miracles, only follow him indeed because he consoles them and satisfies them with worldly goods, disparage his miracles when they are contrary to their own convenience.
The age of miracles past! The age of miracles is for ever here.
Others: This house is of God, for in it strange miracles are done.
If miracles were wrought in bygone years, Why not to-day, why not to-day, O seers? This Leprous Age most needs a healing hand, Oh, why not heed his cries, and dry his tears?"
I prefer you to make mistakes in kindness than work miracles in unkindness.
_Rule._ We must judge of doctrine by miracles, we must judge of miracles by doctrine. All this is true, but there is no contradiction.
If because charity has grown cold the Church is left almost without true worshippers, miracles will raise them up.
We are not in these days obliged so to discriminate. Yet it is very easy to do so; those who deny neither God nor Jesus Christ work no miracles which are not quite certain.
Oh, the victories of prayer! They are the mountain-tops of the Bible. They take us back to the plains of Mamre, to the fords of Peniel, to the prison of Joseph, to the triumphs of Moses, to the transcendent victories of Joshua, to the deliverances of David, to the miracles of Elijah and Elisha, to the whole story of the Master's life, to the secret of Pentecost, to the key-note of Paul's unparalleled ministry, to the lives of saints and the deaths of martyrs, to all that is most sacred and sweet in the history of the Church and the experience of the children of God. And when, for us, the last conflict shall have passed, and the footstool of prayer shall have given place to the harp of praise, the spots of time that shall be gilded with the most celestial and eternal radiance, shall be those, often linked with deepest sorrow and darkest night, over which we have the inscription, "Jehovah-Shammah: The Lord was there!"--_A. B. Simpson._
God works not miracles in the ordinary conduct of his Church. It would be a strange miracle, did infallibility reside in one, but that it should dwell in a multitude appears so natural that the ways of God are concealed under nature, as all his other works.
If there be a God, faith in God must exist on earth. Now the miracles of Jesus Christ are not foretold by Antichrist, but the miracles of Antichrist are foretold by Jesus Christ. Thus if Jesus Christ were not the Messiah he would have certainly led into error, but Antichrist could not certainly lead into error.
Is _Est and non est_ received in faith as well as in miracles, and is it inseparable in the others?...
In the Old Testament and the New, miracles are wrought in connection with types. Salvation or an useless thing, if not to show that we must submit to the creature.--Figure of the sacraments.
It follows, then, that he judged miracles to be certain proofs of what he taught, and that the Jews were bound to believe him. And as a fact, it was the miracles especially which made the unbelief of the Jews so blameworthy.
Rejoice not that you work miracles, said Jesus Christ, but rather that your names are written in heaven.
Genius counts all its miracles poor and short.
But we have not to use this discrimination. Here is a sacred relic, here is a thorn from the crown of the Saviour of the world, on whom the prince of this world has no power, which works miracles by the immediate power of the blood that was shed for us. Thus God has himself chosen this house wherein openly to show forth his power.
The Jews had a doctrine of God as we have one of Jesus Christ, and confirmed by miracles; they were forbidden to believe every worker of miracles, and more, they were ordered to have recourse to the chief priests, on whom only they should rely.
The world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away. Come... dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg. Come, dry your eyes. And let's go home.
What says Saint Paul? Does he constantly speak of the bearing of prophecies? No, but of his miracles.
Who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles ... To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle...
But if miracles are true we cannot persuade men of all doctrine, for that will not come to pass: _Si angelus_....
But for the miracles there would have been no sin in not believing in Jesus Christ.
The Scripture says that Christ abideth for ever, and he said that he should die. Therefore, says Saint John, they believed him not, though he had done so many miracles, that the word of Isaiah might be fulfilled: _He hath blinded them, etc._
Any man can do what Mahomet did, for he wrought no miracles, he was confirmed by no prophecies. No man can do what Jesus Christ did.
The student of Nature wonders the more and is astonished the less, the more conversant he becomes with her operations; but of all the perennial miracles she offers to his inspection, perhaps the most worthy of admiration is the development of a plant or of an animal from its embryo.
~Milton.~--His poetry reminds us of the miracles of Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairy land, are embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses and myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche.--_Macaulay._
The miracles prove the power which God has over hearts by that which he exercises over the body.
Jesus Christ has verified that he was the Messiah, never in verifying his doctrine by Scripture and the prophecies, but always by his miracles.
Even the prophecies could not prove Jesus Christ during his life, and thus if miracles had not sufficed without doctrine, men would not have been blameworthy who did not believe in him before his death. Now those who did not believe in him during his life were sinners, as he says himself, and without excuse. Therefore they must have resisted a conclusive proof. Now they had not our proof, but only miracles, therefore miracles are enough when doctrine is not contrary, and they ought to be believed.
I am too much a believer in Butler and in the great principle of the "Analogy" that "there is no absurdity in theology so great that you cannot parallel it by a greater absurdity of Nature" (it is not commonly stated in this way), to have any difficulties about miracles. I have never had the least sympathy with the _a priori_ reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school.
The six ages, the six Fathers of the six ages, the six miracles at the opening of the six ages, the six mornings at the opening of the six ages.
They destroy perpetuity by probability, good life by their morality, miracles in destroying either their truth or their consequence.
Such are the occasions on which we exclude certain miracles from credence. There need be no other exclusions.
I wish to work miracles. I may have less than other and less energetic men; and those who wish to grow rich in a day live a long time in great poverty, as happens, and will always happen, to alchemists, who seek to make gold and silver, and to the engineers who wish from still {180} water to obtain life and perpetual motion, and to the supreme fool,--the necromancer and the magician.
Here forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing … Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity — by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles...
_The beginning._--Miracles are the test of doctrine, and doctrine is the test of miracles.
Antichrist and the false prophets foretold by both Testaments, will speak openly against God, and against Jesus Christ, who is not hidden. Whoever will be a secret enemy, God will not permit that he work miracles openly.
It is due to the psychological necessities of human nature, under the inspiring influence of religious enthusiasm, that so many of the true signs and wonders performed by the founders of religion have so often been exaggerated, and, in spite of the strongest protests of these founders themselves, degraded into mere jugglery. It is true that all this does not form an essential element of religion, as we now understand religion. Miracles are no longer used as arguments in support of the truth of religious doctrines. Miracles have often been called helps to faith, but they have so often proved stumbling-blocks to faith, and no one in our days would venture to say that the truth as taught by any religion must stand or fall by certain prodigious events which may or may not have happened, which may or may not have been rightly apprehended by the followers of Buddha, Christ, or Mohammed.
In the trial by miracles truth always prevails. The two crosses.
Men owe it to God to receive the Religion which he sends them. God owes it to men not to lead them into error. Now they would be led into error, if the workers of miracles should announce a doctrine which did not appear visibly false to the light of common sense, and if a greater worker of miracles had not already given warning not to believe in them.
_Nisi videritis signa non creditis._ He does not blame them for not believing without there having been miracles, but without their having been themselves witnesses of them.
We must not judge of truth by miracles, but of miracles by truth.
We are the miracle of miracles--the great inscrutable mystery of God. We cannot understand it, we know not how to speak of it; but we may feel and know, if we like, that it is verily so.
O human folly! dost thou not perceive that thou hast been with thyself all thy life, and thou art not yet aware of the thing which more fully than any other thing thou dost possess, namely, thy own folly? And thou desirest with the multitude of sophists to deceive thyself and others, despising the mathematical sciences in which truth dwells and the knowledge of the things which they contain; and then thou dost busy thyself with miracles, and writest that thou hast attained to the knowledge of those things which the human mind cannot comprehend, which cannot be proved by any instance in nature, and thou deemest that thou hast wrought a miracle in spoiling the work of some speculative mind; and thou perceivest not that thy error is the same as that of a man who strips a plant of the ornament of its branches covered with leaves, mingled with fragrant flowers and fruits. Just as Justinius did when he abridged the stories written by Trogus Pompeius, who had written elaborately the noble deeds of his forefathers, which were full of wonderful beauties of style; and thus {19} he composed a barren work, worthy only of the impatient spirits who deem that they are wasting the time which they might usefully employ in studying the works of nature and mortal affairs. But let such men remain in company with the beasts; let dogs and other animals full of rapine be their courtiers, and let them be accompanied with these running ever at their heels! and let the harmless animals follow, which in the season of the snows come to the houses begging alms as from their master.
_Perpetuity._--Men have always believed in a Messiah. The tradition from Adam was still fresh in Noah and in Moses. After these the prophets bore witness, at the same time foretelling other things which being from time to time fulfilled in the eyes of all, demonstrated the truth of their mission, and consequently that of their promises touching the Messiah. Jesus Christ worked miracles, and the Apostles also, who converted all the Gentiles; and the prophecies being thus once accomplished, the Messiah is for ever proved.
Abraham and Gideon confirmed faith by miracles.
If miracles are wrought, it is the mark of their heresy.
When the people believed on him because of his miracles, the pharisees said: "This people, which doeth not the law, is accursed, but there is none of the princes or the pharisees who has believed on him, for we know that out of Galilee ariseth no prophet." Nicodemus answered, "Doth our law judge any man before it heareth him?"
When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist.
I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day, and I believe in miracles
The Jews blinded themselves in judging of miracles by the Scripture. God has never left his true worshippers.
It is difficulties that give birth to miracles.
Never since Aaron's rod went out of practice, or even before it, was there such a wonder-working tool as a pen; greater than all recorded miracles have been performed by pens.
If miracles are wrought among them, it is no mark of holiness, but rather a suspicion of heresy.
Here is no country for truth, she wanders unknown among men. God has covered her with a veil which leaves her unrecognised by those who hear not her voice; the way is open for blasphemy even against those truths which are at the least very apparent. If the truths of the Gospel are published, the contrary is also published, and questions are obscured, so that the people cannot discern, and they ask us, "What have you to make you believed rather than others? what sign do you give? you have words only, so have we, if you have miracles, good." That doctrine must be supported by miracle is a truth of which they make a pretext to blaspheme against doctrine. And if miracles happen, it is said that miracles are not enough without doctrine, and that is another way of blaspheming against miracles.
They say miracles are past.
When, therefore, we see miracles and doctrine not open to suspicion both on one side, there is no difficulty. But when we see miracles and suspicious doctrine on the same side we must see which is the clearest. Jesus Christ was suspected.
Out of difficulties grow miracles.
I suppose that men believe the miracles:
_Title: How it happens that men believe so many liars, who say they have seen miracles, and do not believe any of those who say they have secrets to make men immortal or render them young again._--Having considered how it happens that men have believed so many impostors, who pretend they have remedies, often to the length of putting their lives into their hands, it appears to me that the true cause is that there are true remedies. For it would not be possible there should be so many false, to which so much credence is given, were there none true. Were there no remedy for any evil, and were all diseases incurable, it is impossible that men should ever have imagined that they could give remedies, and still more impossible that so many others should have believed those who boasted that they had them. Just as if a man boasted that he could prevent death, no one would believe him because there is no example of this. But as there are a number of remedies which are approved as true, even by the knowledge of the greatest men, the belief of men is thereby inclined; and since the thing was known to be possible, it has been therefore concluded that it was. For the public as a rule reasons thus: A thing is possible, therefore it is; because the thing cannot be denied generally, since there are particular effects which are true, the people, who cannot discriminate which among particular effects are true, believe them all. This is the reason that so many false effects are attributed to the moon, because there are some true, such as the tide.
The miracles of the creation and the deluge being forgotten, God sent the law and the miracles of Moses, the prophets who prophesied particular things, and to prepare an abiding miracle he prepares prophecies and their fulfilment. But as the prophecies might be suspected he wishes to make them beyond suspicion, etc.
If we believe them, the Church has nothing to do with perpetuity, a holy life, or miracles.
He had said to the Jews as well as to the Christians, that they should not always believe the prophets; but nevertheless the pharisees and scribes made much of his miracles, and tried to show that they were false or worked by the devil, since they were bound to be convinced, if they admitted that these were of God.
And yet they were very blameworthy in refusing the prophets because of their miracles, and had not been blameworthy had they not seen the miracles. _Nisi fecissem, peccatum non haberent._
The foundation of religion. This is miracle. Does God then speak against miracles, against the foundations of the faith which we have in him?
Rahab was smitten with astonishment. “A god that feeds his people by raining bread from heaven.” “Oh, that’s only one of the miracles that God has given to us.” Othniel went on to tell about how water flowed from a solid rock in the desert when the people were thirsty and there was no water. He told about how God had miraculously cared for Israel during its long wanderings. “It’s been forty years now, and God’s taken care of us.” “Tell me about yourself,” Rahab said. “About me? Well, there’s nothing much to tell. My parents are dead. Ardon up there on the roof, he’s my cousin.” He laughed shortly and said, “He’s the good one. I’m the bad one.
That we must love one God only is a thing so plain, that no miracles are needed to prove it.
I should not be a Christian were it not for the miracles, said Saint Augustine.
It is not possible to believe reasonably against miracles.
It is strange that men will talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains.--_Thoreau._
That religion, great as she is in miracles, with holy and blameless Fathers, learned and great witnesses, with martyrs and kings, as David, and Isaiah, a prince of the blood; great as she is in science, after having displayed all her miracles and all her wisdom, rejects it all, and says she has neither wisdom nor signs, but only the cross and foolishness.
Jesus Christ worked miracles, then the apostles, and the early saints in great number, because the prophecies not being yet fulfilled, but only in the way of fulfilment by them, miracles were their only witness. It was foretold that the Messiah should convert the nations, and this prophecy could not be fulfilled without the conversion of the nations. Nor could the nations be converted to Messiah unless they saw the final effect of the prophecies concerning him. Till therefore he died and rose again, and had converted the nations, all was not fulfilled, wherefore miracles were needed during that time. We now need no more miracles against the Jews, for the fulfilment of prophecy is an enduring miracle.
Either God has confounded the false miracles or he has foretold them, and both by the one and the other he has raised himself above the supernatural in regard to us, and has raised us also.
This is what God cannot do, which nevertheless he would do, if in an obscure question he wrought miracles on the side of falsehood.
"If you believe not in me, believe at least in the miracles." He puts them forward as the strongest.
Jesus Christ worked no miracles at the sepulchre.
Of the nature of the eye. Here are the forms, here the colours, here the form of every part of the universe are concentrated in a point, and that point is so great a marvel! O marvellous and stupendous necessity! thou dost compel by thy law, and by the most direct path, every effect to proceed from its cause. These things are verily miracles! I wrote in my Anatomy how in so small a space the visual faculty can be reproduced and formed again in its whole expanse.
I hope the time will come when the subterranean area of human religion will be rendered more and more accessible, ... and that the Science of Religion, which at present is but a desire and a seed, will in time become a fulfilment, a plenteous harvest. When that time of harvest has come, when the deepest foundations of all the religions of the world have been laid free and restored, who knows but that those very foundations may serve once more, like the catacombs, or like the crypts beneath our old cathedrals, as a place of refuge for those who, to whatever creed they may belong, long for something better, purer, older, and truer than what they can find in the statutable sacrifices, services, and sermons of the days in which their lot on earth has been cast; some who have learnt to put away childish things, call them genealogies, legends, miracles, or oracles, but who cannot part with the childlike faith of their heart. Each believer may bring down with him into that quiet crypt what he values most, his own pearl of great price--the Hindu, his innate disbelief in this world, his unhesitating belief in another world; the Buddhist, his perception of an eternal law, his submission to it, his gentleness, his pity; the Mohammedan, if nothing else, his sobriety; the Jew, his clinging through good and evil days to the one God, who loveth righteousness and whose name is 'I am'; the Christian, that which is better than all, if those who doubt it would only try it--our love of God, call Him what you like, the infinite, the invisible, the immortal, the father, the highest Self, above all, and through all, and in all, manifested in our love of man, our love of the living, our love of the dead, our living and undying love.
Hitherto all miracles have been wrought by thought, and henceforth innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these days, witness some.
The incredulous are the most credulous. They believe the miracles of Vespasian in order that they may not believe those of Moses.
I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.
The hardness of the Jesuits therefore surpasses that of the Jews, since those refused to believe Jesus Christ innocent only because they doubted if his miracles were of God. But on the contrary, though the Jesuits cannot doubt that the Port Royal miracles were of God, they still continue to doubt the innocency of that house.
When Jesus Christ foretold the miracles of Antichrist, did he think of destroying faith in his own miracles?
"Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows."
Were there no rule to test them, miracles would be useless, and there would be no reason for belief.
These three different kinds of enemies generally assail her in different ways, but here they assail her in the same fashion. As they are all without miracles, and as the Church has always had miracles against them, they have all had the same interest in eluding them; and all avail themselves of this pretext, that we must not judge of doctrine by miracles, but of miracles by doctrine. There were two parties among those who heard Jesus Christ, those who followed his doctrine by reason of his miracles; others who said.... There were two parties in the time of Calvin. There are now the Jesuits, etc.