Moreover, the miracles--which are as thick on the pages of the bible as blackberries on a bush--what good did they do to the people for whose benefit they were performed? If the Egyptians perished in their homes, the Jews perished in the wilderness; if the Egyptians lost their slaves, the Jews lost their sons and daughters--lost themselves. What good did all the miracles performed in their behalf do for them? Their city, Jerusalem, was set on fire, their homes pillaged, their children put to the edge of the sword, over and over again. What benefit did they derive from the ten thousand miracles lavished upon them? And look at the Greeks! Not one miracle did Jehovah perform for them. Yet they rose to be the masters of the world, and are still by their worth and genius, the teachers of mankind. The most unexpected and impossible things are said and done in the bible. When Abraham was bom, his father, Terah, was seventy years old. In every other book, as the father grows older, the son, too, would advance in years. But in the bible, while Terah grows older, Abraham grows younger, or stops growing altogether, so that when his father is two hundred and five years old, he himself is only seventy-five years old, making him sixty years younger than he should be by all the laws of arithmetic. But what is arithmetic to a magician? When the theologian says three times one is one, he is not thinking of so little a thing as mathematics--there are no impossibilities for the magician. He can make the three one, and the one three. Listen to one of the great Christian Fathers, Tertullian: _What have the philosopher and the Christian in common? The disciple of Greece, and the disciple of heaven? What have Athens and Jerusalem, the church and the academy, heretics and Christians in common? There is no more inquiry for us, now that Christ has come, nor any occasion for further investigation, since we have the gospel.... The Son of God is dead; it is right credible because it is absurd; being buried he has arisen; it is certain, because it is impossible._ There are no difficulties for theologians. If "Isaiah, the prophet, cried unto the Lord, and he brought the shadow (of the sun) ten degrees backward... in the dial," * why could not Abraham grow backward? If Joshua could arrest the sun, what is a little miracle like that of Abraham standing still while the whole world moved on? If Jesus could be bom without a father, why could not Melchisedec be bom without either a father or a mother? This personage was, perhaps, one of the most wonderful in bible history. He had neither beginning nor ending, neither a father nor a mother. _For this Melchisedec... to whom also Abraham gave a tenth (of the spoils)... without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God._ ** * II Kings xix, ii. ** Hebrews vii, 1-3.