No branch of Scriptural faith attracted more of the wrath and irony of the Rationalists than miracles. They saw how important their service was to the authority of the Bible, and therefore bent all their energies for their overthrow. They denied their possibility in the strongest terms, averring that they degrade the character of God, and violate that noble nature of the human mind, which is necessarily bound to the most certain laws of experience, and can discern no positive marks of supernatural agency.[49] The miracles of the New Testament receive no better treatment than those of the Old. In every case they have no foundation in history. Various reasons are assigned for their presence in the Bible; in some cases they are only legends of mythologic days; in others, the pure fancy of the writer; and in others, hyperbolical descriptions of natural occurrences. Thus, while there was a diversity of opinion concerning the narratives, there was perfect union as to the purely natural character of the events. We may particularize, in order to present more clearly the Rationalistic method of interpreting miracles. When Korah, Dathan and Abiram, with their fellow-unfortunates, were swallowed up, they only suffered what many others have done since,--destruction by a natural earthquake. This was the opinion of Michaelis. Others, more ingenious, thought that Moses had taken care to undermine privately the whole of the ground on which the tents of the sinners were; and, therefore, it was not surprising, either that they fell into the cavity, or that Moses should know this would be their fate. Eichhorn held that the three offenders, with their property, were burned by the order of Moses. Dinter explained Jacob's struggle with an angel by relating a recent dream. His brother having lately died, Dinter dreamed soon after that a man, with a little peep-show, presented to his view all sorts of pictures, and at length showed him his dead brother. The vision said, "To show you that I am really your brother, I will print a blue mark on your finger." The dreamer awoke and found not a blue mark but a pain which lasted some days. This profound exegete then asks, "Could not something similar have happened in Jacob's case? Even the less lively occidentalist sometimes relates as real what only happened in his mind. Why should we be surprised at a similar occurrence in the warmer fancy of the Eastern man?"