lakes. He asks for no reward, but begs the people not to mention
these powers of his. There are two obvious reasons for his
dislike of being known as a worker of miracles. One is the
natural objection of all men who possess such powers, but have
far more important business in the world than to exhibit them, to
be regarded primarily as charlatans, besides being pestered to
give exhibitions to satisfy curiosity. The other is that his view
of the effect of miracles upon his mission is exactly that taken
later on by Rousseau. He perceives that they will discredit him
and divert attention from his doctrine by raising an entirely
irrelevant issue between his disciples and his opponents.

Possibly my readers may not have studied Rousseau's Letters
Written From The Mountain, which may be regarded as the classic
work on miracles as credentials of divine mission. Rousseau
shows, as Jesus foresaw, that the miracles are the main obstacle
to the acceptance of Christianity, because their incredibility
(if they were not incredible they would not be miracles) makes
people sceptical as to the whole narrative, credible enough in
the main, in which they occur, and suspicious of the doctrine
with which they are thus associated. "Get rid of the miracles,"
said Rousseau, "and the whole world will fall at the feet of
Jesus Christ." He points out that miracles offered as evidence of
divinity, and failing to convince, make divinity ridiculous. He
says, in effect, there is nothing in making a lame man walk:
thousands of lame men have been cured and have walked without any
miracle. Bring me a man with only one leg and make another grow
instantaneously on him before my eyes; and I will be really
impressed; but mere cures of ailments that have often been cured
before are quite useless as evidence of anything else than desire