hich he claimed. The accounts
which we have of these miracles may be exaggerated; it is possible
that in some special cases stories have been related which have no
foundation whatever; but on the whole, miracles play so important
a part in Christ's scheme, that any theory which would represent
them as due entirely to the imagination of his followers or of a
later age destroys the credibility of the documents not partially
but wholly, and leaves Christ a personage as mythical as Hercules.
Now, the present treatise aims to show that the Christ of the
Gospels is not mythical, by showing that the character those
biographies portray is in all its large features strikingly
consistent, and at the same time so peculiar as to be altogether
beyond the reach of invention both by individual genius and still
more by what is called the "consciousness of an age." Now, if the
character depicted in the Gospels is in the main real and
historical, they must be generally trustworthy, and if so, the
responsibility of miracles is fixed on Christ. In this case the
reality of the miracles themselves depends in a great degree on
the opinion we form of Christ's veracity, and this opinion must
arise gradually from the careful examination of his whole life.
For our present purpose, which is to investigate the plan which
Christ formed and the way in which he executed it, it matters
nothing whether the miracles were real or imaginary; in either
case, being believed to be real, they had the same effect.
Provisionally, therefore, we may speak of them as real.

Without the belief in miracles, as he says, it is impossible to
conceive the history of the Church:--

If we suppose that Christ really performed no miracles, and that
those which are attributed to him were the product of
self-deception mixed in some proportion or other with imposture,
then no doubt the faith of St. Paul and St. John was an empty
chimera, a mere misconception; but it is none the less true that
those apparent miracles were essential to Christ's success, and
that had he not pretended to perform them the Christian Church
would never have been founded, and the name of Jesus of Nazareth
would be known at this day only to the curious in Jewish
antiquities.

But he goes on to point out what was the use which Christ made of
miracles, and how it was