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POWERFUL DEEDS
After He had given out the new law of the imitation of God, Jesus came down from the Mount.
One cannot always remain on the heights. The moment we arrive on the summit of a mountain we are fated to descend. Every ascent is a pledge of descent, a promise to come down again. He who has something to say must make himself heard; if he always speaks on the summits, few will stay with him; it is cold on the summits for those who are not all on fire; and his voice will reach few. He who has come to give, cannot ask men, weak lungs, tired hearts, nerveless legs, to follow him upward, hobbling along to the heights. He must follow them down to the plain, into their houses; he must stoop to them if he is to lift them up.
Jesus knew that exalted teaching on the heights would not suffice to spread the good news to all. He knew that men need less abstract words, picture-making words, narrated words, words almost as tangible as facts. And He knew that even these words would not be enough.
The simple, rustic, coarse, humble people who followed Jesus were men whose lives were based on material things, men who could only understand spiritual things slowly, with great effort, through material proofs, signs and material symbols. They could not understand a spiritual truth without its material incarnation; without evidence simple enough for them to weigh, evidence stated in the terms of the everyday world. An illustrative fable can lead men to moral revelation; a prodigy is to them confirmation of a new truth, of a contested mission. Preaching, made up of abstract axioms and aphorisms, left these imaginative Orientals unsatisfied. Jesus had recourse to the marvelous and to poetry: he performed miracles and spoke in parables. For many moderns the miracles recounted by the Evangelists are a compelling reason for turning away from Jesus and the Bible. Their shriveled brains cannot take in the miraculous; therefore, they reason the Gospel lies, and if it lies in so many places none of it can be believed. It is out of the question that Jesus can ever have raised the dead: therefore, His words have no value.
The people who reason in this way reason ill. They give to miracles a weight and a meaning much greater than that which Jesus gave them. If they had read the four Gospels they would have seen that Jesus is always reluctant to perform miracles, that He does not feel this divine power of His is of supreme importance. Every time that He finds a fair reason for refusing, He refuses; if He yields, it is to reward the faith of the sorrowing man or woman who calls on Him; but the Gospels show that for Himself, for His own salvation, He never performs miracles. He performs no miracles in the wilderness with Satan, none at Nazareth when they wish to kill Him, none at Gethsemane when they come to arrest Him, nor on the cross when they challenge Him to save Himself. His power is only for others, to benefit His mortal brothers.
There are many who ask for a sign, a sign from Heaven, a sign to persuade the unbelievers that His word is the true word: “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the Prophet Jonas.” What is this sign? The writers of the gospel who wrote after the resurrection thought that Jonah emerging the third day from the whale symbolizes Jesus emerging the third day from the tomb, but the rest of what Jesus says shows that He meant something else. “The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the teaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.” Nineveh did not ask for prodigies: it was converted by the word alone. Men whom Jesus cannot convert by truths infinitely greater than those announced by Jonah, are below the level of the men of Nineveh, idolaters, barbarians. Faith must not rest on marvels alone, nevertheless let us remember that faith—though it is higher and more perfect when achieved without miracles—can by its very fervor accomplish miracles. Hardened hearts, locked shut against truth, are not converted even by the greatest miracles. “If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” He was neglected and rejected by the cities which were the scenes of the greatest prodigies. “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, in sack-cloth and ashes.”
Jesus never held that miracles were His exclusive privilege. When they came to tell Him that some man was driving out Demons in His name, He answered, “Forbid him not.” This power was not denied to the disciples. “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.”
Even charlatanical wizards could perform prodigies which seemed miracles. In His time a certain Simon was doing miracles in Samaria; even the disciples of the Pharisees performed miracles. But miracles are not enough to enter into the Kingdom. “Many shall say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Thy name and in Thy name cast out devils, and in Thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from Me, all ye workers of iniquity.” It is not enough to cast out devils, if thou has not cast out the devil in thee, the devil of pride and cupidity.
Even after His death men will see others perform miracles. “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” I have put you on your guard: do not believe in these signs and these wonders until thou shalt see the Son of Man. The miracles of false prophets do not prove the truth of what they say.
For all these reasons, Jesus abstained, as often as possible, from working miracles, but He could not always resist the pleadings of the sorrowful, and often His pity did not wait for the request. For a miracle is an attribute of faith, and His faith is infinite, and that of the believers very great. But often, as soon as the healing was complete, He asked the ones He had healed to keep it secret. “See thou tell no man; Go thy way.” Those who do not listen to the truth of Christ, because they are troubled by the miracles, should remember the profound saying which was addressed to Thomas, “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”