face, it is but natural to expect that the deeds of the great messenger
should be just the works of the Father done in little. If he came to
reveal his Father in miniature, as it were (for in these unspeakable
things we can but use figures, and the homeliest may be the holiest), to
tone down his great voice, which, too loud for men to hear it aright,
could but sound to them as an inarticulate thundering, into such a still
small voice as might enter their human ears in welcome human speech,
then the works that his Father does so widely, so grandly that they
transcend the vision of men, the Son must do briefly and sharply before
their very eyes.

This, I think, is the true nature of the miracles, an epitome of God's
processes in nature beheld in immediate connection with their source--a
source as yet lost to the eyes and too often to the hearts of men in the
far-receding gradations of continuous law. That men might see the will
of God at work, Jesus did the works of his Father thus.

Here I will suppose some honest, and therefore honourable, reader
objecting: But do you not thus place the miracles in dignity below the
ordinary processes of nature? I answer: The miracles are mightier far
than any goings on of nature as beheld by common eyes, dissociating them
from a living Will; but the miracles are surely less than those mighty
goings on of nature with God beheld at their heart. In the name of him
who delighted to say "My Father is greater than I," I will say that his
miracles in bread and in wine were far less grand and less beautiful
than the works of the Father they represented, in making the corn
to grow in the valleys, and the grapes to drink the sunlight on the
hill-sides of the world, with all their infinitudes of tender gradation
and delicate mystery of birth. But the Son of the Father be praised,
who, as it were, condensed these mysteries before us, and let us see