nature, such as the conversion of water into wine, the feeding of many thousands with a few loaves and fishes, and walking upon the sea, all of which were done in such circumstances that there is no room for questioning their reality, let us examine some that were performed upon the persons of men.  Palsy, dropsy, withered limbs, blindness, the want of hearing and speech, leprosy, confirmed lunacy—­all these were as well known in their outward symptoms eighteen hundred years ago as they are to-day.  Persons could not be afflicted with such maladies in a corner.  The neighbors must have known then, as they do now, the particulars of such cases, and have been unexceptionable witnesses to their reality.  Persons may feign blindness and other infirmities among strangers, but no man can pass himself off as palsied, deaf and dumb, blind, (especially blind from birth,) halt, withered, in his own community.  The reality of the maladies then is beyond all question; and so is also the reality of their instantaneous removal by the immediate power of the Saviour.  Here we must not fail to take into account the immense number of our Lord’s miracles, their diversified character, and the fact that they were performed everywhere, as well without as with previous notice, and in the most open and public manner.  Modern pretenders to miraculous power have a select circle of marvellous feats, the exhibition of which is restricted to particular places.  No one of them would venture to undertake the cure of a man born blind, or that had a withered limb, or that had been a paralytic for thirty-eight years.  But Jesus of Nazareth went about the cities and villages of Judea for the space of three years, healing all manner of disease.  With him there was no distinction of easy and difficult, since to Divine power nothing is hard.  With the same word he rebuked a raging fever, cleansed from leprosy, gave strength to the paralytic, healed the withered limb, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and speech to the dumb, and raised the dead to life.  The same voice that said to the man at Bethesda, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk,” said also to Lazarus, who had lain four days in the grave, “Come forth.”

6.  It is with reason that we lay special stress upon the fact that Christ performed many of his greatest miracles in the presence of his enemies, who had both the means and the will to institute a searching investigation concerning them, and who would have denied their reality had it been in their power to do so.  Sad indeed is the record of the perverse opposition and calumny which our Lord encountered on the part of the Jewish rulers.  But even this has a bright side.  It shows us that the Saviour’s miracles could endure the severest scrutiny—­that after every means which power and wealth and patronage and official influence could command had been used for their disparagement, their divine origin still shone forth like the unclouded sun at noon-day.  If any