It is worthy of consideration whether our Lord’s primary purpose in performing supernatural actions was always directly evidential. I have already drawn attention to their twofold aspect, as divine manifestations, and as evidential miracles. A considerable number of the miracles recorded in the Gospels are represented as performed by him because he was moved with compassion. These evidently belong to the former class of his supernatural workings. But although this was their primary object it did not deprive them of an evidential value. But there is also another remarkable class of supernatural actions attributed to him, viz., those in which he is recorded to have expressly forbidden the persons whom he healed to publish the fact. As it is evident that these miracles could only have become extensively known by the persons cured disobeying his orders, it is clear that they could not have been directly performed for evidential purposes, but were the manifestations of the divine which resided in his person. Such are the supernatural actions attributed to Jesus Christ in the New Testament, respecting which as a whole, whether performed for purposes avowedly evidential or not, he himself affirms, that they bore witness of him, that the Father had sent him. Two other classes of miracles, affirmed to have been performed by his followers, require notice. The whole of these are stated to have been performed by a delegated power and commission. The great majority of them are described as having been performed in the name of Jesus Christ. They are affirmed to have been performed for two purposes; to prove the divine commission of those who wrought them, and to attest the reality of their Master’s resurrection, by giving exhibitions of his present power. These therefore are distinctly affirmed to have been evidential miracles. A few others were providential interferences in favour of the infant Church. There is also another class of supernatural actions referred to in the Acts of the Apostles, such as the passing of St. Peter’s shadow, and the supposed supernatural effects resulting from it, and the conveyance from St. Paul’s person of handkerchiefs and aprons to the sick, and one or two other instances. These involve special manifestations of supernatural power, and belong to supernatural occurrences in their aspect of wonders, or very extraordinary events, and as such were specially adapted for drawing attention to the message of the Apostles. But the New Testament also affirms another and very peculiar form of the manifestation of the supernatural, as then actually existing in the Apostolic Church. I need hardly say that I allude to the various gifts of the Spirit, with which large numbers of its members believed themselves to be endowed. I shall not consider them any further here, as it will be necessary for me to enter largely on the subject in a subsequent portion of this work. Their use and purpose was to