His miraculous conception is adduced as another proof of his divinity. Is this the only miraculous conception claimed in the Bible? It is not. Isaac, Samson, Samuel and John the Baptist are all claimed to have been miraculously conceived (Genesis xviii, 10, 11; xxi, 1-3; Judges xiii, 2, 3, 24; 1 Samuel i, 9-11, 20; Luke i, 7-13). 493 His miracles, it is claimed, attest his divinity. Were he and his disciples the only ones who performed miracles? These alleged miracles were performed before his time--the Old Testament abounds with them--and they have been performed since his time. They were performed by others in his own time--were performed by those who ignored and rejected him--were performed by the disciples of Satan himself (Matthew vii, 22; xii, 27; Mark ix, 38; xiii, 22; Luke ix, 49). "Supernatural Religion" says: "The supposed miraculous evidence for the divine revelation, moreover, is without any special divine character, being avowedly common also to Satanic agency, but it is not original either in conception or details. Similar miracles to those which are supposed to attest it are reported long antecedent to the promulgation of Christianity, and continued to be performed for centuries after it. A stream of miraculous pretension, in fact, has flowed through all human history, deep and broad as it has passed through the darker ages, but dwindling down to a thread as it has entered days of enlightenment. The evidence was too hackneyed and commonplace to make any impression upon those before whom the Christian miracles are said to have been performed, and it altogether failed to convince the people to whom the revelation was primarily addressed. The selection of such evidence, for such a purpose, is much more characteristic of human weakness than of divine power" (p. 699). Archbishop Trench says: "Side by side with the miracles which serve for the furthering of the kingdom of God runs another line of wonders, the counter-workings of him who is ever the ape of the Most High.... This fact that the kingdom of lies has its wonders no less than the kingdom of truth, is itself sufficient evidence that miracles cannot be appealed to absolutely and finally, in proof of the doctrine which the worker of them proclaims" (Miracles of Our Lord, p. 22). The miracles of Christ, like the miracles of Satan, existed only in the minds of his credulous and deluded followers. "Ye shall have miracles, aye, sound ones too, Seen, heard, attested, everything but true." --Thomas Moore. 494 Prophecy is appealed to in support of his divinity. It is claimed that the writers of the Old Testament predicted his coming. Do such predictions exist? In his work on "The Bible," as well as in a previous chapter of this work, the writer has shown that there is not a single passage in the Old Testament that, in the original text, refers in the remotest degree to Jesus Christ.