d the purposes of God;
and, secondly, that they serve as evidence that Jesus was the revealer
of the Father. They not only authenticate the revelation; they
themselves reveal God. They not only direct attention to the Teacher;
they are themselves the lessons He teaches.

During the Irish famine agents were sent from England to the distressed
districts. Some were sent to make inquiries, and had credentials
explaining who they were and on what mission; they carried documents
identifying and authenticating them. Other agents went with money and
waggon-loads of flour, which were their own authentication. The
charitable gifts told their own story; and while they accomplished the
object the charitable senders of the mission had in view, they made it
easy of belief that they came from the charitable in England. So the
miracles of Christ were not bare credentials accomplishing nothing else
than this--that they certified that Christ was sent from God; they were
at the same time, and in the first place, actual expressions of God's
love, revealing God to men as their Father.

Our Lord always refused to show any bare authentication. He refused to
leap off a pinnacle of the Temple, which could serve no other purpose
than to prove He had power to work miracles. He resolutely and uniformly
declined to work mere wonders. When the people clamoured for a miracle,
and cried, "How long dost Thou make us doubt?" when they pressed Him to
the uttermost to perform some marvellous work solely and merely for the
sake of proving His Messiahship or His mission, He regularly declined.
On no occasion did He admit that such authentication of Himself was a
sufficient cause for a miracle. The main object, then, of the miracles
plainly was not evidential. They were not wrought chiefly, still less
solely, for the purpose of convincing the onlookers that Jesus wielded
super-human power.

What, then, was their object? Why did Jesus so constantly work them? He
wrought them because of His sympathy with suffering men,--never for
Himself, always for others; never to accomplish political designs or to
aggrandise the rich, but to heal the sick, to relieve the mourning;
never to excite wonder, but to accomplish some practical good. He
wrought them because in His heart He bore a Divine compassion for men
and felt for us in all that distresses and destroys. His heart was
burdened by the great, universal griefs and weaknesses of men: "Himself
took our infirmities