(ii) Christ’s healing activity was therefore strictly limited in scope. It may be asked, Was it a ‘unique manifestation of a unique Personality’[23] or did it differ in degree rather than in kind from the wonderful works of human healers, or, at all events, of healers who have wrought ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’? The latter view by no means commits its advocates to a ‘humanitarian’ view of the Person of Jesus Christ: while it amply satisfies the facts. Again, it is not necessary, for the purpose of the present discussion, to digress into the field of New Testament criticism. Renan, in his ‘Vie de Jésus,’ feels himself constrained to apologise for the miraculous action of Christ, on the ground that ‘the rôle of thaumaturge was unwelcome to him, but was imposed upon him by his contemporaries.’[24] To Loisy, a critic of profounder learning and far more reverent temper, it appears that the miracles were in reality ‘works of mercy ... and not a direct argument in favour of the Messiahship of the Saviour,’ a complexion which was afterwards put upon them more or less unconsciously by the Evangelists.[25] But it is quite consistent with a reverent acknowledgment of the Divinity of our Lord, and an acceptance of the Gospel records in substance as they stand, to hold that the miracles of healing--with the nature-miracles we are not here concerned--were the simple outcome of that all-embracing human pity which, in itself, betokened the expected Messiah; rather than an immediate exercise of Almighty power, and the utterance, within the physical order, of the Eternal Word. We find our Lord proclaiming Himself, in the synagogue of Nazareth, the Fulfiller of that great prophecy of Isaiah in his sixty-first chapter, in which the Messianic mission is set forth in language in which a spiritual and a physical deliverance are inseparably intertwined.[26] Similarly, in answer to the Baptist’s message, the same blending of evangelical teaching and spiritual healing is to be noticed; and, once again, sin and disease stand out as the dominant factors in the condition of this present world. [23] Illingworth, _Divine Immanence_, p. 119. [24] Renan, _Vie de Jésus_, p. 264. [25] Loisy, _L’Évangile et l’Église_, p. 17. [26] Luke iv. 18: note the double sense in the words