es of Christ were
of such a kind that the most scientific doubter could have no more
accounted for them than the most ignorant. The miracle of which, next to
our Lord's own Resurrection, we have the fullest evidence, is that of
the feeding of the 5,000; for it is recorded by each one of the four
Evangelists. Now, if this miracle had been performed in the presence of
the members of all the scientific societies now in existence, their
knowledge of natural laws could have contributed nothing to its
detection or explanation. They could have merely laid it down to trick
or deception, just as any of the unscientific persons present could have
done, and perhaps did. The miracle was performed in the open. Our Lord
must have been on some elevated ground where His voice could have
reached some considerable part of the multitude, and on which every act
of His could be observed. More than a thousand loaves would have been
necessary, requiring the assistance of, say a hundred men, to collect
them and bring them from a distance. This, too, is not one of those
miracles which can be explained by the convenient hypothesis of a
"substratum of truth." It is either a direct exhibition of the creative
power of God, or a fiction as unworthy of a moment's serious
consideration as a story in the "Arabian Nights."

It is folly to imagine that such an act required scientific men to
verify it. If the matter was either a reality, or presented that
appearance of reality which the narrative implies, then the scientific
person would have been stupefied, or in trembling and astonishment he
would have fallen on his face like another opponent of the truth; or,
may be, his very reason would have been shattered at the discovery that
here before him was that very supernatural and divine Working in Whose
existence he had been doing his best to persuade his fellow creatures to
disbelieve.

The Scripture narratives, if they are not altogether devoid of truth,
lead us to believe that our Lord performed His miracles in the face of
three sects or parties of enemies, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians;
each one rejecting His claims on grounds of its own. They were also
performed in a populous city, of which all the rulers and the mass of
the inhabitants were hostile to His pretensions. Such a place could
never have been chosen as the scene of a miraculous event, known by
those who promulgated it to have had no foundation in truth, and withal
assumed to have be