But if several of the scripture “miracles” are mere wanton exhibitions of super-human power, not a few others are puerile in the extreme. Witness that of Elijah beating the Jordan with his cloak to make himself a passage across the river (2 Kings, ii., 8), a “miracle” repeated by Elisha, after the ascent of the Tishbite (2 Kings, ii., 14). Witness the tale told of Elisha respecting the woodman’s axe: The woodman dropped his axe in the river, and Elisha attracted the iron head to the surface of the water, merely by “casting a stick into the river” (2 Kings, vi., 6). Witness the petty wrath of the Shunamite against the children of Bethel. These thoughtless children mocked him, saying, “Go up, bald-pate!” and the enraged prophet “cursed the children in the name of the Lord,” when, lo! “two she-bears out of the wood tare forty-and-two of them.” In regard to Elisha, however, it must be said that his miracles outnumber all the rest of the miracles of the Old Testament put together, and they are none of them free from serious objection. The whole argument generally advanced in support of the miracles of Jesus is singularly weak. It is said that miracles were needful to show that Jesus was the “Sent of God;” that the working of miracles is the seal of the Almighty to the credentials of Christ, as Nicodemus pleaded (John iii., 2), “No one can do these miracles which thou doest, except God be with him,” and Christ himself endorsed the same plea when he said to the disbelieving Jews, “Believe me for my works’ sake” (John xiv., 11). It is notorious that false prophets, and even Satan himself, are said to be workers of miracles. It is said that miracles are performed to deceive and lead astray, as well as to convince and lead to God. In fact miracles prove nothing—neither mission from God, nor approval of God, nor the truth of a doctrine, nor the power of God working in the person who performs them. They are restricted to the Jews, and nobody knows anything of the historians who have avouched them. Thus the great miracle workers of the Old Testament were Elijah and Elisha; but no one knows who wrote the Books of Kings, which describe their wonderful works, nor whether those records were compiled before or after the Captivity. The miracles of Christ are recorded in four Gospels, and who were the authors of these memorials? Luke was no eye-witness—he himself acknowledges that his Gospel was compiled from several existing ones (i., 1–4); but we are nowhere told by what guiding power he made his selection, nor why his compilation is better or more worthy of credit than the originals. Mark, like Luke, was no apostle, and no one knows who he was, when he wrote, or where his Gospel was written. The very fact that he was the John Mark referred to in the Acts (xii., 25) is a mere conjecture, and even if admitted would not prove that he was one of those who “companied” with the apostles from the baptism to the resurrection.