ese powers, but, being extremely compassionate, cannot
refuse to exercise them when afflicted people beg him to cure them, when
multitudes of people are hungry, and when his disciples are terrified by
storms on the lakes. He asks for no reward, but begs the people not
to mention these powers of his. There are two obvious reasons for his
dislike of being known as a worker of miracles. One is the natural
objection of all men who possess such powers, but have far more
important business in the world than to exhibit them, to be regarded
primarily as charlatans, besides being pestered to give exhibitions to
satisfy curiosity. The other is that his view of the effect of miracles
upon his mission is exactly that taken later on by Rousseau. He
perceives that they will discredit him and divert attention from his
doctrine by raising an entirely irrelevant issue between his disciples
and his opponents.

Possibly my readers may not have studied Rousseau's Letters Written From
The Mountain, which may be regarded as the classic work on miracles as
credentials of divine mission. Rousseau shows, as Jesus foresaw, that
the miracles are the main obstacle to the acceptance of Christianity,
because their incredibility (if they were not incredible they would not
be miracles) makes people sceptical as to the whole narrative, credible
enough in the main, in which they occur, and suspicious of the doctrine
with which they are thus associated. "Get rid of the miracles," said
Rousseau, "and the whole world will fall at the feet of Jesus Christ."
He points out that miracles offered as evidence of divinity, and failing
to convince, make divinity ridiculous. He says, in effect, there is
nothing in making a lame man walk: thousands of lame men have been cured
and have walked without any miracle. Bring me a man with only one leg
and make another grow instantaneously on him before my eyes; and I will
be really impressed; but mere cures of ailments that have often been
cured before are quite useless as evidence of anything else than desire
to help and power to cure.

Jesus, according to Matthew, agreed so entirely with Rousseau, and felt
the danger so strongly, that when people who were not ill or in trouble
came to him and asked him to exercise his powers as a sign of
his mission, he was irritated beyond measure, and refused with an
indignation which they, not seeing Rousseau's point, must have thought
very unreasonable. To be called "an evil and adu