(i) Has the age of miracles long ceased? It has long been assumed by religious minds, as a kind of axiomatic truth, that this is so. They have seen in the healing miracles of Christ the unique exercise of a power specifically Divine, a power which was continued for a time, with other extraordinary gifts, to the early Church for reasons which no longer held good when once she had taken firm root in the world. But we have already shown reasons for the opinion that, unique as is our Lord’s Humanity, we are to regard it as conditioned by those laws of nature and material existence which are the expression in the visible sphere of the Creative will. ‘It behoved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren.’[48] And there is strong reason to hold that the true believer will be permitted, in virtue of his fellowship with Christ, to do ‘greater works’ than those which Christ Himself wrought,[49] greater, that is to say, not in a material but a spiritual way. That the works in question were wrought ‘in the spirit’ is unquestioned. Consider what those ‘spiritual’ methods of the Great Healer were. He wrought His mighty works in the Father’s name. Not only does He lay down for others the principle of intercessory prayer, but as Man He exercises it Himself. Of the demoniac boy He says: ‘This kind goeth forth not but by prayer and fasting.’ St. Luke records the fact that He made the importunity of the multitude, who sought His teaching and healing grace, a fresh occasion for retirement and prayer.[50] The same Gospel tells us of a night spent in prayer before the election of the Twelve Apostles.[51] They received His commission to heal and to teach on the succeeding day, which saw also the vast concourse of people resorting to Him once more from all quarters. In the account of the raising of Lazarus it is clearly laid down that Jesus Christ knew the Father’s will in virtue of fellowship with Him in prayer and meditation, and that He exercised His own life-giving powers in accordance with that Will. [48] Heb. ii. 17. [49] John xiv. 12. [50] Luke v. 15, 16. [51] Luke vi. 12.