(2) That leads me finally to the positive value to us of the signs and powers wrought by Jesus Christ in' his saving ministry. They were all congruous with the revelation of his character and the character of his revelation.
(i) First of all they annowice that powers reach us through Christ that transcend the forces we are better acquainted with in "ur imperfect nature—the "law of the spirit of life' as distinguished from "the law of sin and of death." (The Apostle you notice does not speak of the paralysis or breaking of law—as the miracle-talkers ¢o, 1 he distinctly says that the Lord of Life and Prince of Glory acts according to a higher type of law). That is the first ingredient of our faith and it can only be expressed through such signs of the conquest of Nature as are given us in the Gospels. Christ's meaning for us can never be summed up in. the words that he spoke. He is essentially a power of personality overcoming laws of nature, sin and death by virtue of the higher laws of his own being. That is food for. py soul, that is the core of my POWERS OF LOVE, bolized and guaranteed by who (li) And the second thing sym
powers and signs of the Gospel is the quality of his revelation and ministry. I have mentioned Christ's repudiation of wonders. There are no show-off miracles in the Gospels: they are all illustre tions of powers harnessed to service, dedicated to love. They help us to understand better than words can do the character of our Lord's dealing with us, the generosity of his help, the tenderness of his interest. This then is what,-1t seems to me, we have to do with the so-called miracles of Christ, (1) Decline to be led on to the arena of argument about the possibility of miracle—an arena which has been entirely deserted through the more recent discoveries of nae! tural science and studies in psychology. (2) Decide to let those signs and powers colour your faith in Christ, give you assurance that the both cam and will overcome in you the evil that seems lodged in your nature, that ig entangled both with sin and with death. The so-called miracles of Jesus are of use not to prove something that happened once but to guarantee to us what may happen now at any time—the hand of God im the hour of our helplessness.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.