THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD
BY
George MacDonald
THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD
1870
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
II. THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES
III. THE CURE OF SIMON'S WIFE'S MOTHER
IV. MIRACLES OF HEALING UNSOLICITED
V. MIRACLES OF HEALING SOLICITED BY THE SUFFERS
VI. MIRACLES GRANTED TO THE PRAYER OF FRIENDS
VII. THE CASTING OUT OF DEVILS
VIII. THE RAISING OF THE DEAD
IX. THE GOVERNMENT OF NATURE
X. MIRACLES OF DESTRUCTION
XI. THE RESURRECTION
XII. THE TRANSFIGURATION
I. INTRODUCTION.
I have been requested to write some papers on our Lord's miracles. Iventure the attempt in the belief that, seeing they are one of the modesin which his unseen life found expression, we are bound through them toarrive at some knowledge of that life. For he has come, The Word of God,that we may know God: every word of his then, as needful to the knowingof himself, is needful to the knowing of God, and we must understand,as far as we may, every one of his words and every one of his actions,which, with him, were only another form of word. I believe this theimmediate end of our creation. And I believe that this will at lengthresult in the unravelling for us of what must now, more or less, appearto every man the knotted and twisted coil of the universe.
It seems to me that it needs no great power of faith to believe in themiracles—for true faith is a power, not a mere yielding. There are farharder things to believe than the miracles. For a man is not required tobelieve in them save as believing in Jesus. If a man can believe thatthere is a God, he may well believe that, having made creatures capableof hungering and thirsting for him, he must be capable of speaking aword to guide them in their feeling after him. And if he is a grandGod, a God worthy of being God, yea (his metaphysics even may show theseeker), if he is a God capable of being God, he will speak the clearestgrandest word of guidance which he can utter intelligible to hiscreatures. For us, that word must simply be the gathering of all theexpressions of his visible works into an infinite human face, lighted upby an infinite human soul behind it, namely, that potential essence ofman, if I may use a word of my own, which was in the beginning with God.If God should thus hear the cry of the noblest of his creatures, forsuch are all they who do cry after him, and in very deed show them hisface, it is but natural to expect that the deeds of the great messengershould be just the works of the Father done in little. If he came toreveal his Father in miniature, as it were (for in these unspeakablethings we can but use figures, and the homeliest may be the holiest), totone down his great voice, which, too loud for men to hear it aright,could but sound to them as an inarticulate thundering, into such a stillsmall voice as might enter their human ears in welcome human speech,then the works that his Father does so widely, so grandly that theytranscend the vision of men, the Son must do briefly and sharply beforetheir very eyes.
This, I think, is the true nature of the miracles, a