And so it goes on. "What appears most probable" is that Jesus had already "passed some time in solitude. A time of reflection and of preparation was indispensable between the life of the carpenter and the manifestation of the preacher of the evangel. Pushed to the desert by the sentiment of his vocation, Jesus was bound (devait) to be pursued by a more and more clear consciousness of that vocation." Thus M. Loisy can after all expand his sources. It was after the imprisonment of the Baptist that Jesus felt he "was to replace him, and by the better title because he felt himself predestined to become the human chief of the Kingdom, there to fill the function of Messiah." But "almost in spite of himself" he worked miracles. From his first stay at Capernaum the sick were brought to him to heal; and, fearing that the thaumaturg might hurt the preacher of the Kingdom, he left the place, only to be followed up and forced to make cures. "He operated with a peculiar efficacy on the category of patients supposed to be specially possessed by the demon.... He spoke to them with authority, and calm returned, at least for a time, to those troubled and unquiet souls." As to the greater cures, M. Loisy observes that "perhaps" there was ascribed to the healer the revivification of a dead maiden. On the instantaneous cures of lepers and the blind he naturally says nothing whatever. The dilemma of M. Loisy here recalls that of Professor Schmiedel over the same problem. The latter, claiming that it would be "difficult to deny" healing powers to Jesus, in view of the testimonies, is fain to argue that the Healer's personal claim (Mt. xi, 5; Lk. vii, 22; not in Mk.) to have healed the sick, the blind, the deaf, the lepers, and raised the dead, meant only a spiritual ministration, inasmuch as the claim concludes: "the poor also have the Gospel preached to them." On this view the assumed healing power really counts for nothing; and the last clause, which Schmiedel contends would be an anti-climax if the healings were real, becomes absolutely an anti-climax of the most hopeless kind. One day men will dismiss such confusions by noting that the theory of spiritual healing, an attempt to evade the mass of miracle, is only miracle-mongering of another kind. Are we to take it that regeneration of the morally dead, deaf, blind, and leprous is to be effected wholesale by a little preaching? Did the Christian community then consist wholly or mainly of these?