it unto thee even as thou wilt," "Thy faith hath saved thee," "If thou canst believe, all things are possible," "Believe ye that I am able to do this?" "Be not afraid, only believe"—these and similar expressions lead us to conclude that many of the "mighty works" of Jesus were conditional on faith. Perhaps it might startle you if I were to say that Jesus was not able to perform a "mighty work" unless faith was present; yet if I said this, I should only be repeating what St. Mark (vi. 5), the earliest of the Evangelists, says on a certain occasion, that on account of the general unbelief at Nazareth Jesus was not able (οὐκ ἐδύνατο) to do there any mighty work, "save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk and healed them." This confession is so frank and almost scandalizing in its plainness that we cannot be surprised that the later Evangelist, in his parallel narrative, softens it down by omitting the words "was not able," and by inserting "many."[1] We need by no means infer from this narrative that Jesus attempted "mighty works" and failed. It may be that He did not attempt them because He discerned the faithlessness of those around Him, and felt His own consequent inability. But, interpret it as we may, this passage remains a most important confirmation of the other passages in which Jesus Himself implies the necessity of faith. Where there was no faith, there Jesus "was not able to do any mighty work;" and this limit to His power Jesus Himself recognized.
Here then we find at once a remarkable difference between most of the "mighty works" of Jesus and the "miracles" of the Old Testament. The former were conditional on faith, and, this condition suggests that many of them may be explicable on natural laws; the latter
- ↑ St. Matthew ix. 58, "And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief." For a demonstrative proof that the Gospel of St. Mark contains the earliest tradition, see the beginning of the article "Gospels" in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
