those distant ages which have preceded us? Do we merit to have been looked forward to like celestial men, who were to fill the earth with sanctity and righteousness? Have not those ages been deceived in their expectation of the Christian people? Were the just of those distant times to return upon the earth, could we present ourselves to them, and say, Behold those celestial, spiritual, temperate, believing, and charitable men, whom you expected? Alas! my brethren, the just of former times were Christians before the birth of faith; and we are still Jews, under all the advantages of the Gospel: we live solely for the earth: we know no true riches but the present good: our whole religion is grounded in the senses: we have received more assistances, but we are not more believing.
To the lustre of the prophecies which have announced Jesus Christ, we must add that of his works and of his miracles: — second resplendent character of his ministry. Yes, my brethren, even admitting that Heaven had not promised him to the earth with such magnificence; that the manner in which he was to appear to the earth had not constituted, during all these first ages, the sole occupation and expectation of the universe; did ever man appear more wonderful, more divine in his actions, and in all the circumstances of his life?
I say, first, in his actions and in his miracles. I know, and we come from saying it, that, in the ages which preceded him, extraordinary men had appeared upon the earth, to whom the Lord seemed to have delegated his omnipotence and virtue: in Egypt and in the desert Moses appeared the master of heaven and earth; in the following ages Elijah came to present the same sight to men. But, when we narrowly examine their power itself, we find that all these miraculous men always bore with them the marks of weakness and dependence.
Moses only operated his miracles with his mysterious rod; without it he was no longer but a weak and powerless man; and it would seem that the Lord had attached the virtue of miracles to that morsel of parched wood for the purpose of making the Israelites sensible that, in his hands, Moses himself was but a weak and fragile instrument, whom he was pleased to employ in the operation of grand effects: Jesus Christ operates the grandest miracles, even without speaking; and the sole touch of his garment cures inveterate infirmities. Moses communicates not to his disciples the power of operating miracles; for it was an extraneous gift which he had received from Heaven, and which he had not the power of delegating: Jesus Christ leaves to his disciples a still greater efficacy than had appeared even in himself. Moses always acts in the name of the Lord: Jesus Christ operates all in his own name; and the works of his Father are his. Nevertheless, this Moses, who had not been prophesied of like Jesus Christ, who remitted not sins as he did, who never gave himself out as equal to God, but only as his faithful servant, — this Moses, dreading that, after his death, his miracles should make him pass for a god, takes
