(3) Passing now to the last clause of Verse 19, we find these words: "So that from Jerusalem round about unto Illyricum, I have fulfilled the gospel of Christ." The word "fulfilled," which is the literal translation of what we render "fully preached," is highly suggestive. It implies that, in making his missionary circuit, the Apostle believed himself to be fulfilling a command of the Christian Founder to propagate his religion; or, as St. Paul himself puts it, "To make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed." We involuntarily compare the concluding passage of St. Matthew: "Go and disciple all nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." In executing the command St. Paul declares that he had been successful; but the point for us to observe is the reason he assigns for his success. It is a point which ushers us at once into the last apologetic question suggested by this Epistle, and in one sense the most important question with which the Christian apologist can be anywhere engaged. We shall try to treat it with calmness and impartiality.

(4) Verse 18, and the first clause of Verse 19, runs thus: " For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought by me, to make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed, through the might of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God." St. Paul virtually says this: " If I liked, it would be quite legitimate for me, and quite possible for me, to quote many testimonies to the supernatural power of the Gospel; but, for the sake of direct evidence, I am constrained to confine myself to those supernatural occurrences in the production of which I have myself been the direct agent." This is very bold language, and would seem to bring the apologetic question very near to a crisis. Yet it will be found that there are really two questions at issue, which we shall have to consider separately. The first is, does St. Paul, in the passage before us, claim, the power of working what we now call miracles? the second is, if we shall find that he does claim such a power, what bearing has· this upon the supernatural character of the Christ of history?

We shall put the first question in this form: Does St. Paul profess to work miracles in that sense in which the word is understood in our present Gospels? The author of "Supernatural Religion" says, No; he says that the miracles of Paul are mental changes, new thoughts, inward ecstatic experiences. We agree so far with the author of "Supernatural Religion," that all the miracles of St. Paul are conceived by the Apostle as having their root and their origin in mental changes; but we would call attention to the fact that this is the very point in which the miracles of our Gospels are distinguished from the miracles of all other religions. The Gospels make no distinction, in point of supernatural power, between a counteraction of natural law and a counteraction of moral law: " Whether is it easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise and walk"? but they make a great distinction between them in point of chronological sequence. They assert, not once, nor twice, but persistently and unvariedly, that the counteraction of the moral law must precede the power to counteract the natural one: " Why could not we cast him out?" ask the disciples concerning the possessing spirit; " Because of unbelief" is the immediate answer. In order to be healed a man is required to have faith: "If thou believest, all things are possible to him that believeth ": and on one occasion the Evangelist is not afraid to say of the Son of Man: " He could not do many mighty works among them, because of their unbelief." St. Paul's Epistles simply prove that this view of our Gospels is not mythical, that it belongs also to the primitive Christian age. We see there that, in the view of the Apostle, all wonders are conceived as having their beginning in the innermost parts of the soul, as taking their rise from changes in the subjective consciousness, as emanating from powers implanted by a new and a vivifying life. The Gospel is said to be " the power of God to every one that believeth "; and, in the passage immediately before us, the "mighty signs and wonders" are referred directly to a spiritual source-" the power of the Spirit of God."

The miracles of the Son of Man, as they appear in our Gospels, are the eruptions of a hidden supernatural Life: "This beginning of miracles did Jesus, and manifested forth his glory;" "as he prayed the fashion of his countenance was altered." When the miracle is a work wrought upon another human soul, its initiating process is the production in that soul of the same hidden life which was the germ of the work in the spirit of the Master. The wonders of our Gospel, therefore, are, in the first instance, inward wonders. But observe, as long as they are inward wonders, they are not and cannot be signs. A sign is a manifestation. In every New Testament passage in which the word is used, it signifies an external symbol intended to prove the existence of a power more inward than itself. The essence of a sign is its outwardness; it may be miraculous or not according as that which it is designed to prove is conceived to be a natural or a supernatural occurrence;¹ but its characteristic is that, whether natural or supernatural, it must be more outward than that which it is designed to prove. The sign is not intended for him who works the miracle, nor yet for him on whom the miracle is wrought; these are already supposed to be in possession of that hidden life which is its own evidence. The sign is meant for the outside world. It is to be, to men beyond the Christian pale, the indirect evidence of that which they cannot know directly; and, as such, it must be a distinctively outward manifestation addressed to the organs of sense, sufficiently outward to meet the unspiritual, sufficiently wonderful to authorize the belief in the unknown something called spirituality: St. Paul himself declares its purpose to have been "To make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed."

Let us now ask if the Pauline miracles are such as we should have expected on the supposition that our Gospels are true. Are they such as would find their germ in our authorized historical narrative? Paul gives us a catalogue of them in 1 Corinthians xii. 8-10. One of them is translated, "Working of miracles "—a very unhappy rendering, because it ignores the fact that, in the view of St. Paul, all were equally supernatural; it seems to us that the simplest rendering would be "operation of powers," understanding by the word "powers" dynamical forces within the man, impelling him, and enabling him, to do great things; when, we turn to Galatians iii. 5 we find that there "powers" are directly referred to the influence of faith; we recall the fact that in our present Gospel there is ascribed to faith a dynamical efficacy which is symbolized in the power to arrest the growth of the fig tree or to command the mountain to be removed into the midst of the sea. Another class of the Pauline miracles is described as "gifts of healing"; and the connection of this with our Gospels requires no comment. A third order of men are said to be endowed with the power to " discern spirits "; on the supposition that our Gospels are true, this would seem to us to have its basis in the ability to distinguish the subjects of demoniacal possession, and the power to separate between the man's own consciousness and the foreign consciousness which had been thrust upon him. The " divers kinds of tongues " would find their beginning and their germ, or, at all events, their parable and prophecy, in those works by which the Master had restored speech to the dumb. The " gift of prophecy " would have its warrant in the promise of a Spirit which should reveal the things to come-not simply the foretelling of what should be, but the revelation of what in the nature of things must be. The " word of wisdom " and the " word of knowledge" would derive their claim to a supernatural origin from those declarations of the Christian Founder in which He maintained that flesh and blood could not reveal, but only the Spirit of the Father. All this might be clearly and legitimately deduced on the assumption that our Gospels are true; in the absence of that assumption we may not go so far: but we are entitled with absolute confidence to say that the method of the Pauline miracles is that identical method with which we have been made familiar by our Gospel narratives.

We now come to the second question involved in this subject. If we shall find, and we must find it, that St. Paul claims the power of working miracles, how does that affect the Christ of history? The common answer is, it proves the Christ of history to have Himself possessed that power; because it would be a contradiction in terms to suppose that the power of the disciple was inferior to that of the Master. Logical as the inference is, it greatly underrates the strength of the case. According to St. Paul, it was the Christ alone who possessed the power of working miracles. He says, in the very passage under consideration, " I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought by me." He does not say that he has wrought them through Christ; he is only a member of the Divine body; he lives because Christ lives in him. His claim to work miracles is, with him, no more than a claim to be in union with the person of the Christian Founder; and he values the working of the miracle chiefly as a proof and symbol of his being united to the life of that Founder. It may be said, it has been said, Why does not Paul appeal as evidences of Christianity to the personal earthly works of the historical Christ? The answer seems to us not to be far away. It never occurred to Paul for a moment to suppose that he was separated from the Christ of history by any spatial or temporal barrier. It never occurred to him that he was enjoying an inferior privilege to those whom we now call contemporaries of the Son of Man; he held himself to be a contemporary. The continuity of his consciousness of the Master had never been broken; the resurrection of Christ was to him a fact as historical as the death. To the eye of our nineteenth century, Christianity presents the aspect of a temporary interruption to the world's order which speedily faded away into the old routine. To the eye of St. Paul, Christianity presented the aspect of a new revelation of this world's order, which was to constitute the permanent light through which man was to gaze on nature. The earthly ministry of the Son of Man was to him an eternal ministry; it had never been closed by death, for death itself had been superseded by resurrection. To the mind of the Apostle, the history of the past had no need yet to be written; for the past was to him still the present. The things of yesterday bad, for him, no distinctive or peculiar interest; for the Being whom he recognized as the Founder of Christianity was one whom he could have described, in the language of one of his own school, as "the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever."