George MacDonald

Miracles of Our Lord George MacDonald

I have been requested to write some papers on our Lord's miracles. I venture the attempt inthe belief that, seeing they are one of the modes in which his unseen life found expression, weare bound through them to arrive at some knowledge of that life. For he has come, The Word ofGod, that we may know God: every word of his then, as needful to the knowing of himself, isneedful to the knowing of God, and we must understand, as far as we may, every one of hiswords and every one of his actions, which, with him, were only another form of word. I believethis the immediate end of our creation. And I believe that this will at length result in theunravelling for us of what must now, more or less, appear to every man the knotted and twistedcoil of the universe. It seems to me that it needs no great power of faith to believe in the miracles-for true faithis a power, not a mere yielding. There are far harder things to believe than the miracles. For aman is not required to believe in them save as believing in Jesus. If a man can believe that thereis a God, he may well believe that, having made creatures capable of hungering and thirsting forhim, he must be capable of speaking a word to guide them in their feeling after him. And if he isa grand God, a God worthy of being God, yea (his metaphysics even may show the seeker), if heis a God capable of being God, he will speak the clearest grandest word of guidance which hecan utter intelligible to his creatures. For us, that word must simply be the gathering of all theexpressions of his visible works into an infinite human face, lighted up by an infinite human soulbehind it, namely, that potential essence of man, if I may use a word of my own, which was inthe beginning with God. If God should thus hear the cry of the noblest of his creatures, for suchare all they who do cry after him, and in very deed show them his face, it is but natural to expectthat the deeds of the great messenger should be just the works of the Father done in little. If hecame to reveal his Father in miniature, as it were (for in these unspeakable things we can but usefigures, and the homeliest may be the holiest), to tone down his great voice, which, too loud formen to hear it aright, could but sound to them as an inarticulate thundering, into such a still smallvoice as might enter their human ears in welcome human speech, then the works that his Fatherdoes so widely, so grandly that they transcend the vision of men, the Son must do briefly andsharply before their very eyes.