It was used as an evidence of His divine
mission. It was a miraculous gift. The gift of working miracles was not
bestowed upon His Church at large. His original disciples, the twelve
apostles, received this gift, as a necessity of the critical epoch of
Christianity--the founding of the Church. Traces of the power lingered
on, in weakening activity, until they gradually ceased, and the normal
condition of the Church was entered upon, in which miracles are no
longer possible.

We accept this, unconsciously, as the true state of things in
Christianity. But it is a conception which will not bear a moment's
examination. There is not the slightest suggestion upon record that
Christ set any limit to this charge which He gave His disciples. On the
contrary, there are not lacking hints that He looked for the possession
and exercise of this power wherever His spirit breathed in men.

Even if the concluding paragraph of St. Mark's Gospel were a later
appendix, it may none the less have been a faithful echo of words of
the Master, as it certainly is a trustworthy record of the belief of the
early Christians as to the thought of Jesus concerning His followers.
In that interesting passage, Jesus, after His death, appeared to the
eleven, and formally commissioned them, again, to take up His work in
the world; bidding them, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel
to every creature." "And these signs," He tells them, "shall follow them
that believe"--not the apostles only, but "them that believe," without
limit of time; "in My name they shall cast out devils... they shall lay
hands on the sick and they shall recover." The concluding discourse to
the disciples, recorded in the Gospel according to St. John, affirms the
same expectation on the part of Jesus; emphasizing it in His solemn way:
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that
I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do."

APPENDIX F

Few will deny that an intelligence apart from man formed and governs the
spiritual universe and man; and this intelligence is the eternal
Mind, and neither matter nor man created this intelligence and divine
Principle; nor can this Principle produce aught unlike itself. All that
we term sin, sickness, and death is comprised in the belief of matter.
The realm of the real is spiritual; the opposite of Spirit is matter;
and the opposite of the real is unreal or material. Matter is an err