“Again,” you continue, “even if I put aside your contention that Jesus
is the Word of God, there remains your assertion that He is sinless. Now
a sinless Jesus is, in Himself, a miracle; and if you call on me to
believe that Jesus was without sin, you ought to see no antecedent
improbability, nay, you ought to see an antecedent probability, that He
would work miracles.”
Well, I feel that we are walking in a slippery region—this land of
antecedent metaphysical probabilities; but I will try to follow you. Let
me take your second objection first. Does it then really seem to you no
less antecedently probable that the Word of God, made man, should have
the power (say) of walking on water, than that He should be sinless?
Surely we see in the best men approximations to sinlessness, but no
approximations at all to what spiritualists (I believe) call
“levitation”! In proportion as men approximate to our conception of God,
in that proportion they are free from sin, but they do not “levitate;”
hence, while we are led to believe that the Man who completely
represents God (the Word of God Incarnate) will be absolutely sinless,
we are led to no such conclusion as to “levitation.” Or will you
maintain that the best men shew any germ of any the least power to
suspend any the least law of nature? There is no vestige of any such
tendency around us; and your only support for such a belief would be
found in the miracles of the Old Testament, which you yourself deny, and
as to which I shall have something to say in a future letter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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