Yet it is evident that He did not set it high in the moral order, nor did He restrict it to Himself; for He recognised the power of wonder-working in others who are not His disciples, and conferred the privilege upon certain of His own followers. A miracle is like an earthquake. It disturbs human calculation, destroys the continuity of daily life, and confuses our forecast of the future. We do not take as our celestial chart the occasional blaze of a meteor, but the soft radiance of the constant stars.

The Zone of

There is also a distinct zone to

Miracles. which miracles are confined. He realised better than any onlooker that He could only give temporary relief to physical and mental trouble. Within that zone the strength of His own personality, and the exercise of a law lying outside of ordinary human knowledge, would in no sense conflict with the general law of the universe. We cannot overlook that mental influence which has ranged itself among therapeutics, hypnotism, nor leave out of account telepathy, which is even now faintly knocking at the door of Science. These powers would be exercised by Jesus without that amount of conscious effort which is demanded from an ordinary individual who attempts to use them. These may well explain the healing of certain cases of nervous complaint and of some fevers. A reinforcement of the vital forces of the human

body, like the rallying of a scattered army, will drive back the assaults of disease, and recover the citadel to its rightful owner. The physiology

of death itself still remains obscure. Restoration to life has taken place after animation has been long suspended. It is extremely difficult in cases of death from drowning, and from particular nervous seizures, to determine the precise moment at which all hope of a return vanishes. The recall of the dead by Jesus Christ carries only these conditions a little farther, and does not necessarily imply a positive break across the law of human existence. When He went to the grave of Lazarus, confident of the immediate return of the dead man, anticipating the thankful joy of the sorrowing sisters, He did not stand before that grave as a conqueror Who had abolished death. There was no triumph in His voice. Upon His heart rolled the vision of innumerable graves, the long farewells, the shudder of the living as the earth closes upon its dead, the loneliness of bereavement, the hopelessness of the silence. He had come that man might have life, and that he might have it more abundantly; but it would come by degrees, and not yet. There would be a second burial of Lazarus from which there could be no further awakening in this world. And so at the very moment of His success, as He drives back Death a little distance from its prey, standing in front of a grave from which the stone had been already rolled away-Jesus wept.

In the case of two miracles-the turning of the water into wine, and the feeding of several thousands-we do not actually require a literal multiplication of loaves and fishes, or a positive change of the water into that vintage which delighted the governor of the feast. A powerful

hypnotic suggestion, affecting the minds of all present, would give the result that was wanted. The people were faint with hunger through remaining so long under the spell of Christ's teaching. He Who could attract and retain a mixed multitude so that they forgot their own physical wants could have produced the satisfying effect of food for them: and the illusion was complete when it appeared as if the loaves and fishes had not only multiplied sufficiently to meet the wants of the entire people, but that the waste remnants of the feast had again filled the baskets. The illusion was only the outer form of the miracle; the accomplished fact was identical with the idea. A respite to hunger was given, and the multitude dispersed without any injury due to unsatisfied craving. So in the kindred case of the changing of the water into wine, there was something lacking to the feast; but men had well drunk, and there might have been harm in an actual addition to the native wines of Galilee. If, however, the drinking of the water appeared to be as wine the necessary condition was fulfilled without risk. There should not be any difficulty raised on the ground of illusion. Illusion and deception are separated by the chasm of moral condition. There are

Illusion and many sights and sounds in Nature Deception. which are illusory, but which cannot on that account be called deceptive. An element of illusion must have entered into other parts of the gospel story. The Transfiguration was an apparition permitted to the three disciples who accompanied their Master

into the mountain, but it was undoubtedly denied to others. There is no proof that Jesus and His disciples were out of sight of other people during those moments of revelation. It was in the day-time, at no inaccessible height, and possibly, as ancient paintings depict, within sight of the multitude gathered about the demoniac on the plain beneath. To the crowd it was only a patch of bright sunlight on the hill, followed by a sudden eclipse of cloud. To the three disciples it was a peep into the Unseen, a forecast of the exodus their Master was about to accomplish at Jerusalem, a physical change in His appearance to be explained by post-resurrection events. There was an element of mystery, a cloud that overshadowed them, from which they deduced their own subjective impression. It seemed fitting to them that a typical representative, both of the Law and of the Prophets, should converse with their Lord, but whether their identification of the two figures with Moses and Elias was correct may be doubted. The illusion was a parabolic form in which a truth came to them, and they translated it into their own Jewish vernacular. It was of a nature not yet ripe for discussion, not to be treated like an ordinary ghost story. "Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of Man be risen again from the dead." The desert bush only burns with fire for a few privileged souls, "the rest sit round and pull blackberries." So to shepherds watching their flocks by night came the dream of glory whilst Jerusalem and Bethlehem slept unmoved. The great illusion of Joan of Arc saved France,

and the little peasant girl of Lourdes, at the mouth of the grotto, may surely have been touched by some divine thing reproducing itself through her human imagination in the star-crowned Virgin of the village chapel. Impressions from the Unseen are bound to be at second hand, flashed from a mirror.

The miracles of Jesus Christ do not, therefore, require to be divided into classes, as credible or incredible, or to be cast aside as corruptions of the gospel story. They were no peculiar emanations of a neurotic temperament, brilliant expressions of disease like the pearl in the oyster. They were drawn out of Him by compassion, used for moral and spiritual purposes, subordinated to the will of His Father. He looked up to heaven, He blessed, He break. If He be a great personality, clothed with a power all His own, we should expect that His passage through the world would be accompanied by manifestations altogether beyond the common experience of mankind.