rror in which
all the prophetic spirit of Israel had read the future. The Christian
school, perhaps even in the lifetime of its founder, endeavored to
prove that Jesus responded perfectly to all that the prophets had
predicted of the Messiah.[1] In many cases, these comparisons were
quite superficial, and are scarcely appreciable by us. They were most
frequently fortuitous or insignificant circumstances in the life of
the master which recalled to the disciples certain passages of the
Psalms and the Prophets, in which, in consequence of their constant
preoccupation, they saw images of him.[2] The exegesis of the time
consisted thus almost entirely in a play upon words, and in quotations
made in an artificial and arbitrary manner. The synagogue had no
officially settled list of the passages which related to the future
reign. The Messianic references were very liberally created, and
constituted artifices of style rather than serious reasoning.

[Footnote 1: For example, Matt. i. 22, ii. 5, 6, 15, 18, iv. 15.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. i. 23, iv. 6, 14, xxvi. 31, 54, 56, xxvii. 9, 35;
Mark xiv. 27, xv. 28; John xii. 14. 15, xviii. 9, xix. 19, 24, 28,
36.]

As to miracles, they were regarded at this period as the indispensable
mark of the divine, and as the sign of the prophetic vocation. The
legends of Elijah and Elisha were full of them. It was commonly
believed that the Messiah would perform many.[1] In Samaria, a few
leagues from where Jesus was, a magician, named Simon, acquired an
almost divine character by his illusions.[2] Afterward, when it was
sought to establish the reputation of Apollonius of Tyana, and to
prove that his life had been the sojourn of a god upon the earth, it
was not thought possible to succeed therein except by inventing a vast
cycle of miracles.[3] The Alexandrian philosophers themselves,
Plotinus and others, are reported to have performed several.[4] Jesus
was, therefore, obliged to choose between these two
alternatives--either to renounce his mission, or to become a
thaumaturgus. It must be remembered that all antiquity, with the
exception of the great scientific schools of Greece and their Roman
disciples, accepted miracles; and that Jesus not only believed
therein, but had not the least idea of an order of Nature regulated by
fixed laws. His knowledge on this point was in no way superior to that
of his contemporaries. Nay, more, one of his most deeply rooted
opinions was, that by faith and pray