faithful to believe in him. Yet what checks to this paramount and all-governing belief of theirs do they report from Jesus himself! Everybody will be able to recall such checks, although he may never yet have been accustomed to consider their full significance. Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe![1]—as much as to say: 'Believe on right grounds you cannot, and you must needs believe on wrong!' And again: 'Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe for the very works' sake!'[2]—as much as to say: 'Acknowledge me on the ground of my healing and restoring acts being miraculous, if you must; but it is not the right ground.' No, not the right ground; and when Nicodemus came and would put conversion on this ground ('We know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no one can do the miracles that thou doest except God be with him'), Jesus rejoined: 'Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born from above he cannot see the kingdom of God!' thus tacitly changing his disciple's ground and correcting him.[3] Even distress and impatience at this false ground being taken is visible sometimes: 'Jesus groaned in his spirit and said, Why doth this generation ask for a sign? Verily I say unto you, there shall no sign be given to this generation!'[4] Who does not see what double and treble importance these checks from Jesus to the reliance on miracles gain, through their being reported by those who relied on miracles devoutly? Who does not see what a clue they offer as to the real mind of Jesus? To convey at all to such hearers of him that there was any objection to miracles, his own sense of the objection must have been profound; and to get them, who neither shared nor understood it, to repeat it a few times, he must have repeated it many times.
Page:Literature and Dogma (1883).djvu/151
