Son likewise.' 21. 'As the Father raiseth up the dead, even so the Son.' And thus we approach the question of the motive of the wonder-working of Jesus.

We cannot consider it either as a sufficient, or even as any, reply to this question, if it is answered, that a request addressed to Him, and the pity awakened by it, caused our Lord to use His miraculous power. Granted that Christ did numerous miracles in consequence of the call for His help; and further, that He never withstood a request for release from suffering (in the end He showed compassion even to the Canaanitish woman); lastly, let it be allowed that He performed all His miracles, as stands to reason, on account of His love; still this interpretation only applies to the limited number of those cases with which Schleiervery macher was able to agree. To the rest it does not apply. No one will assert that Jesus performed His miracles on nature in consequence of being requested (even in several healings of the sick, John v. and ix., Luke vi., xiii., and xiv., we miss any previous request). Still less will one judge that He was always moved to do so by pity; He did not procure the 'piece of money, nor did He curse the fig-tree out of pity. But apart from these subordinate reflections, even to

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1 This theologian, from his illustration of the present question, arrived at the proposition that Jesus never performed a miracle for the sake of show. This has been admitted much too easily. It is only true in so far as the word ideíğıç is used in the sense which is meant in Scripture by the expression μETÀ TAρατпρńσews; otherwise it is wrong. The effect of the miracle at Cana which ' manifested forth His glory, and His disciples believed on Him,' was one intended by Jesus. The awakening of Lazarus, which was nothing less than a work of mercy, and which had quite a different motive than the raising to life of the young man at Nain, was expressly introduced with the intention, 'that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.'

2 Tarp, the word used in the original, as also in the Latin and German translations, was a silver coin of the value of four drachmas.-St. Jerome, quoted by Freund.-TR.

say nothing of the cause and motive being often confounded with one another, we do not at present wish to treat of the motive of Jesus in a few single miracles, but of the motive of His working miracles in general. This last is not at all affected by the issue we have refuted.

We should receive a more satisfactory answer if we were to pursue still further the analogy we have pointed out between the miracle-working of the Father and that of the Son. In Church dogmatics this has always been asserted, as Twesten (Dogm. ii. p. 178) thus expresses it: 'In reality, the chief biblical miracle is the origin of the kingdom of God, and that in its twofold evolution: first, the preparation for it in the Israelite theocracy; and then the fulfilment in the origin of Christianity.' Other miracles are only presented as its accompanying phenomena-yes, in fact, all others. Let us look at the miracles in the Old Testament. Where do we first meet with them in the history of Holy Scripture? Some of the older theologians are certainly wrong in pointing out the creation as the first miracle; for as a miracle and a law of nature are correlative conceptions, we cannot put in the former category the act of God by which the latter was first laid down. On the other hand, those who consider the birth of Isaac to Abraham and Sarah as a miracle of God have the Apostle Paul as their authority (Rom. iv. 19-21). We know that by the election and call of Abraham, and by the promise made to him, the path of the history of redemption was laid down. We meet further with the miracles of Moses, but the connection in which these stand to the foundation of the Old Testament kingdom of God cannot easily be disputed. Later we meet with the miracles of Elijah and Elisha. They happened at a time when the falling away from the Lord was very great, when the theocracy was com

ing to an end, and when it was important to keep a band of such who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Lastly, those miracles which the Father with His own hand performed on His only-begotten Son,-the miracle by which He introduced Him into this world; the miracle by which He raised from the dead this great Shepherd of the sheep,-bear quite unmistakeably on their face the teleological relation we have pointed out. For if the wonder-working of God stands in this relation to His kingdom, we must also in the very same way seek for the end in view of the wonder-working of Him whom the Father sent into the world to found the 'kingdom of heaven.' How expressly and in what manner Christ Himself has brought out this point of view, will be seen directly. At present we will only remark, that the Lord has explained in the same way the endowment of His apostles with miraculous powers;1 that even the apostles themselves never understood otherwise the endowment of the gracious gifts they received.2 Thus the wonder-working of

Jesus can be conceived in its connection with the kingdom of God.3

1 Compare His instructions to the Twelve in Matt. x. 7, 8: 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils;' as also in Luke ix. 2, x. 9; Acts x. 36-39.

2 Notice especially the manner in which Peter speaks of the miracle performed on the lame man at the gate of the temple. In Acts iii. 12-26, he shows it as a manifestation of Christ by the Father, as a call to repentance, to faith, to enter into the kingdom of heaven, to which the Jews are called as children of the covenant; and in chap. iv. 8 and foll. he places the fact in its relation to the circumstance, that the builders have rejected the chief corner-stone, but that at the same time there was no other salvation, but only in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

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3 By this is explained the objection which was raised by Strauss (it has also already been used by Schleiermacher in his Glaubenslehre, vol. i. p. 101). Strauss declares (Leben Jesu, 147; Eng. transl. i. p. 196): If the Christian faith calls upon science . . not indeed to disallow the miracle altogether, but to allow it to have existed within the circle of original Christianity, . . . it cannot indulge so narrow a pretension, and will say: I will recognise miracle as possible, either in all provinces of religious history, or in none.

Undoubtedly nothing is gained by this formula except a safe point of departure. For the present, we can from this ground only say, that a miracle of Jesus would be inconceivable to us, or would appear to us a monstrous phenomenon, if this connection was not recognisable; and that just as satisfactory an answer proceeds from this position, if it is asked why Jesus did not here and there employ His miraculous power.1 But there occurs immediately the further question: In what, then, does the connection ⚫ between the wonder-working of Jesus and the foundation of the kingdom of God consist? We cannot give a simple answer to this new question now, because we are only treating cursorily of the conceivableness of the wonder-working of Jesus in general, while our real task requires us to show it in each single miracle. But we cannot and may not assert that all the miracles of our Lord are to be reckoned in like manner, as having their purpose in showing the foundation of the kingdom of God, and also in like manner were really effective towards it, however confidently we may consider them collectively as 'miracula proprie et rigoroso However,' he adds, 'in the alternative she does not intend to be serious, because to do so would be simply to abandon herself' with it in all these departments. This objection only occurs to those who will know nothing of a kingdom of God and a history of it in the world; but for those of the opposite view it completely disappears. A revelation such as the Apostle Paul claims for the heathen (Rom. i. 19, 20) excludes miracles, just as much as that intended for the foundation of a kingdom of God on earth includes it.

1The most extraordinary of this kind of questions is that raised by Schleiermacher, Leben Jesu, pp. 224, 242: 'Why did not Christ make use of His miraculous power when His life was in danger?' It also struck Strauss, and he justly declares that the attempt to explain it by saying that Jesus was obliged to acknowledge human authority, the Roman as well as that of the Sanhedrim, has failed. But when he himself informs us that Christ did not possess at all such a miraculous power (d. Christus des Glaubens, etc., p. 122), we certainly prefer the answer given by our Lord, ‘It must thus happen, or how would the Scripture be fulfilled?' or how otherwise could God's kingdom come on earth?

sensu sic dicta.' Our answer must accordingly be arranged in different divisions, by the connection of which a complete one will be attained. For good reasons we proceed, keeping in mind the expression used in Scripture for the miracles of Jesus. The opinion is advanced, that in the New Testament several designations are employed for them. Our attention is called to passages such as Acts ii. 22, where Peter preaches that Jesus of Nazareth was proved a man of God by dvváμεις, τέρατα, and σημεία. We have no reason to object to the distinction which Schleiermacher has made between these expressions in his Leben Jesu, p. 206, where he says, 'In onμeîov the most prominent thing is the significance of what we should deduce from the result; in dúvaμis, the chief thing is the nature of the actor-that he has in himself such a power; and in répas, the comparison of this result with other results.'1 However, even according to this exposition, only one of the three expressions gives us any instructive light, and it is the one made use of throughout the fourth Gospel, particularly in order to illustrate the teleological point of view. It It may indeed appear as if the onμeîov characterizes the miracle simply as an appearance happening in a sense pointing to a higher supernatural region, that is, to the kingdom of God: τὸ σημεῖον σημαίνει. However, by examining the use made in Scripture of this expression, and by considering the elements dependent on it, we shall be led to

1 It is, at any rate, more correct than that given by Ammonius, 'Tέpaš παρὰ φύσιν, σημεῖον παρὰ συνήθειαν γίνεται —which was adopted by Theophylact and Valckenaer; it is also more correct than what has been proposed by later theologians-Reiche, Flatt, and Lücke. See the copious excursus on these expressions by Fritzsche, in his Commentar z. Brief an d. Römer, Th. iii. p. 270 and foll. Osiander agrees with Schleiermacher in his commentary on 2 Cor. xii. 12.

[An interesting article on the use of the word divaμs will be found in Cremer's Wörterb. d. Neutest. Gräcität, 2d Auflage, p. 218; Eng transl., Edinburgh 1872, p. 200.—Tr.]