Читать книгу Pastor Pastorum; Or, The Schooling of the Apostles by Our Lord - Henry Latham - Страница 5

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It has been already observed that there is one feature of our Lord's way of revealing truths to men which distinguishes Him from all teachers before or since. This is the use of Signs.

Miracles may have been attributed to those who have promulgated creeds at various times, but these miracles did not form a constituent part of the teaching; they were not blended with it as those of our Lord were. They are introduced only to serve for credentials, so that an appeal to them may silence incredulity; they convey no lesson, they only serve for proof. I hope to shew that it was otherwise with the signs wrought by Christ.

My especial concern in this chapter is not with the nature or the credibility of miracles in general, but only with the purposes for which Christ introduced them; and with the questions of how far they were performed with a view to draw men to listen and to set forth God's kingdom, and how far for the purpose of working conviction. In the first [pg 075] chapter I have stated certain Laws, which our Lord observed in working Signs. These I shall presently discuss; but what I am concerned with now is the general question “Why did our Lord work Signs?”

I use the word “Signs” instead of miracles because it is our Lord's own word. The latter expression fastens attention on the wonderment which these deeds raised in men. But our Lord uses the word “Sign,” which implies that these acts were tokens of some underlying power which, in these instances, passed into operation in an exceptional way. To our Lord, they of course were not wonders, and He never dwells on their wondrousness.

In the accounts of St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke, the word “Signs” is that most commonly employed by our Lord when speaking of His own working of miracles; while in the Gospel of St. John, the term “works” is generally found in the like case, though “powers” sometimes takes its place. The expression “Signs and wonders” means, not two separate sorts of works, but signs that make men wonder: it means prodigies, worked to shew a divine commission, taken on the side of the awe they inspire. Our Lord only uses this expression twice—once when He says that false prophets shall come and “shew great signs and wonders,”24 and again in His answers to the nobleman [pg 076] whose son was sick at Capernaum, “Unless ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe.”25 On these occasions the term refers to the popular conception of the form which Divine interposition would take. The expression “signs and wonders” occurs very frequently in the Acts of the Apostles.

When, as here, we are in search of the purposes which our Lord had in view, in something that He did, it is of service to ask, “What purpose or purposes did it actually fulfil?” What He did would not be likely to fail in producing the effect intended, or to bring about a result not contemplated by Him. So we must try to unravel the complex effects of these signs, and to discriminate the several ways in which they worked.

Some were witnessed both by the people and by the disciples, and some by the disciples and apostles only. The function of the miracles may have been different in the different cases. But, besides their effect on the actual witnesses, the record of these mighty doings has had a prodigious effect on generation after generation, from the time when our Lord walked in Galilee to the present day; and we may suppose that this posthumous effect was included in the Divine design.

The character of our Lord's miracles we shall find to be determined by the nature of the work He came to do. The work and miracles were adapted each to the other, and, owing to this, the study of [pg 077] the miracles throws a light on His purpose, and the more insight we get into His purpose the more reason we see for the miracles being of the kind they were.

We will consider, under different heads, the various functions which Our Lord's miracles fulfilled. That which comes naturally first in order is