whole Church. And the "American Baptist Educational Commission" are planning for a universal Centennial celebration. They propose to act through "Advisory Committees" "in Boston, Chicago, Richmond, and Nashville;' the Central Commission having its office in New York. "The members of the Advisory Committees are from many States, and it will be the duty of these committees, through those members, to promote local organizations in all the States of their respective sections. State Conventions can take measures to promote associational organizations, and these last will have completed the task of organization only when every Church and congregation shall be the theater of the operations of a Centennial society or Church. This is the ideal of organization -to the extent to which it is made real, other things being equal, the celebration will be universal and universally successful." Already they are publishing a periodical called "The Centennial," from which the above is quoted; and we earnestly pray that they may, and entertain no doubt that they will, have abundant success. We expect to see them raise several million dollars for their educational institutions in 1876.

So far as we are informed, the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in their address to the General Conference of 1872, were the first to recommend a celebration of this kind. The initiatory steps are thus taken, but it is pre-eminently an enterprise that requires systematic labor. The object of this article is to call attention to this great work. More than any similar preceding enterprise it is intrusted to the spontaneous interest of the people. It confides less in machinery, more in heart. Never was a nation from whom gratitude was more becoming than the United States of America; never a body of Christians more earnestly and reasonably called upon to express their gratitude than the "Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America." The Bishops have made the motion, the General Conference has seconded it; what will be the decision of the ministers and people?

ART. II. -DR. BENDER ON THE NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF MIRACLES.

PREPARED FROM THE GERMAN BY PROF. J. P. LACROIX.

[ARTICLE SECOND.]

3. Miracles in the realm of nature and in the person of Christ.

It is remarkable that the occurrences to be considered under this head-occurrences which present the miracle at the acme of its supernatural greatness, and which by their results seem, as it were, to transcend the miracle-conception entertained by the sacred writers-do not in reality change this conception in the least. Only this much is striking in their narratives-that their personal judgment seems to be struck dumb in the presence of the inexplicable divine reality of which they feel the workings. The rise in their descriptions does not keep pace with the rise in the wonderfulness of the occurrences described. On the contrary, their explanatory hints and observations fall tamer into the background, precisely at the points where we would have expected that they should portray them in the highest and most magic colors of the miraculous.

Their fancy, very evidently, did not add anything to the pictures. In the presence of the earnest, incomprehensible, transcendent majesty of these most miraculous of miracles, their mere human judgment bowed itself in adoring silence, so as to let the miracles themselves speak all the more eloquently. No exclamation of astonishment, no intentional displaying of the wonderful, no curious intrusion into its secret, no pleasure-taking in miracle-portraiture, disturbs or renders suspicious the plain realistic narrative. The miracles themselves are made to proclaim the glory of God, who works such wonders in the interest of man.

1. We consider here, first, the miraculous feeding of multitudes. The disciples are just returned from their first mission, and have related to their Master the great things which they had wrought. Jesus, needing repose himself, and wishing the same to them, desires to retire with them into the quiet region beyond the Sea of Galilee. But the people, stirred up by "the

As

former signs which he had done," anticipate his purpose. he disembarks from the lake he finds a multitude before him, as a herd without a shepherd, and is moved to deep compassion. He forgets his weariness, and turns about and teaches the people until toward night. And the people, absorbed in his words of life, forget that their food is consumed, that their homes are afar, and that little or nothing is to be had on the spot, until, at last, the disciples interrupt the interesting scene, and remind the Lord that man needs not only heavenly but also earthly bread. He at once perceives the helpless condition of the people, the approaching night, and the barrenness of the neighborhood. Why should not God, who had given him power to heal the sick and raise the dead, also give him the power to make much out of little, in order to quiet the hunger of the thousands who had been brought into this condition by their intent listening to his words of life?

Such was the significant occasion of the miracle. The miracle itself is familiar to all. Jesus gives thanks, and distributes to his disciples the few loaves and fishes, that they may therewith feed the multitude. The writers do not explain how this was done. That, however, their idea is that of a miraculous increase of the scant store, and not that of a miraculous satiation of so many thousands with so little, is very clear from the fact that all of them eat, and that Jesus enjoins upon them the gathering up of what remained-not to show how great a miracle had been wrought, but " that nothing be lost" of that which God had graciously granted.

The incident related by John, of the turning of water into wine by Jesus at Cana, is dignified above all comparison with a mere external, intended miracle of display, by the fact that it is called forth by the embarrassment of the marriage family, and is wrought only at the moment when this embarrassment threatened sadly to interrupt the flow of the joyous occasion. The miracle is, therefore, morally conditioned. Jesus meets the moral exigency by an extraordinary call upon nature. Here, also, the sacred writer is sparing of his words; there is no display; there is not the least attempt at describing the process of the wonderful change. The request of his mother, which betrayed a total misconception of the moral conditionment of his miracle-working power, he rejects with emphasis. Instead

of the miracle of display which she desired, he bides his time, and then works only a miracle of modest, helpful love, and known as such only to the disciples. (John ii.)

2. In close connection with the above-mentioned miraculous feeding of the multitude stands the account of Jesus's miraculous walking upon the waters of the Lake of Gennesaret. The miracle of feeding had brought the popular conviction of his Messianic character to very emphatic expression. To avoid being tumultuously proclaimed king of Israel he had to flee. When, at a later hour, he looked about for his disciples, they were already far out upon the lake. Hence the occasion for him to overtake them over the billowy pathway. The body of Jesus seems either to have stood here above the laws of ordinary gravitation, or the spiritual will inhabiting it offered to them a neutralizing counterpoise. Christ's answer to sinking Peter implies, at least, that the miracle was not simply the magical expression of a superhuman power, but rather the expression of a faith-inspired personal capability of spiritually influencing his material body. (Mark vi, 45, and parallels.)

The idea of the spiritual quality of the body of Jesus, not to say of its inmateriality—as implied in his transfiguration, in his post-resurrection appearings, and in the sentiment of Peter (Acts ii, 24) that death could not hold him fast-is implied also in the account of Luke (iv, 30) as to his rescuing himself from a murderous-minded mob in Nazareth. This assumption, however, of his bodily nature into his spiritual essence (if we may use this enigmatical expression for a very enigmatical thing) appears only on the rarest and most critical moments of his life to have, as it were, overcome or metamorphosed the materiality of his corporeity.

3. This wonderful spiritual power of Jesus seems to find its highest expression when he directly utters a command to physical nature, and is obeyed. The miracle of the stilling of the sea lies not in the stilling itself, but in its being suddenly stilled at the word of the Master.

The seemingly most capricious use of his power is where Jesus's will acts like a magnet in drawing hundreds of fishes into the nets of the disciples-as typical of the success of their future fishing for men. But the narrative bears all the marks of authenticity. The incident that Peter, in astonishment,

falls at his Master's feet and begs forgiveness for his unbelief, (Luke v, 8,) could hardly have been invented. So deep was the impression made upon the disciples by this, that the Lord, when risen, repeats the same miracle (John xxi) in order to impress upon the doubting apostles that it is now the very same Lord who would renew his impressive charge to them of "feeding his lambs."

4. A very different kind of miracle in the person of Jesus was a certain kind of knowledge-a knowledge of a clear and intuitive character, which needed not the help of the usual mediate links of sensuous and spiritual experience. We do not so much refer to his predictions of his own death and of the downfall of Jerusalem, (which he might logically have inferred as moral and historical necessities ;) nor to his knowledge of divine things, for which he possessed, in his Divine nature and in his substantial union with God, supernatural sources; nor to his prediction of his resurrection, which might have been assured to him by his own consciousness of the immortality of his spiritual character; but we refer especially to a large number of incidental remarks of Jesus, which seem to imply a knowledge as contrary to all usual experience as do his miracles on the field of nature; such, for example, as his detailed direction as to where a certain colt should be found, (Mark xi, 2,) as to where a man bearing a pitcher should be met, (Luke xxii, 10,) also John xi, 11, and other similar cases.

5. We come, lastly, to the crowning miracle in the person of Jesus-his resurrection. It is very natural that, in the details as to this stupendous occurrence, there should be slight discrepancies. A certain series of facts, however, is well vouched for. It is certain that Jesus died on the cross in great anguish of soul. This is attested, not only by the Gospels, but by the collective body of the Epistles. In fact, the whole New Testament bases the certainty of the forgiving grace of the Father upon the death and resurrection of the Son. Death came upon Christ sooner than usual in such cases; for before Pilate gives the body to Joseph he feels the need of ascertaining that Jesus was already really dead.

On the second morning after his decease certain female disciples find his grave empty. An angel explains this, and bids them to look for the Risen One in Galilee. Other disciples