No; we
must think of nothing save what is set down in Holy Writ.
And yet, alas! we cannot use in our days, that which eighteen hundred
years ago was the most simple and obvious test of our Lord's
truthfulness, namely His miraculous powers. The folly and sin of man
have robbed us of what is, as it were, one of the natural rights of
reasoning, man. Lying prodigies and juggleries, forged and pretended
miracles, even--oh, shame!--imitations of His most sacred wounds, have,
up to our own time, made all rational men more and more afraid of aught
which seems to savour of the miraculous; till most of us, I think, would
have to ask forgiveness--as I myself should have to ask,--if, tantalized
and insulted again and again by counterfeit miracles, we failed to
recognise real miracles, and Him who performed them. Therefore, for good
or evil, we should be driven back upon that test alone, which, after all,
perhaps, is the most sure as well as the most convincing--the moral test-
-the test of character. What manner of personage would He be did He
condescend to appear among us? Of that, thank God, the Gospels ought to
leave us in no doubt.
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