I think they were. The natural laws which Christ suspended, such as the law of increase, are laws of God. Being his laws, they are living and not dead laws, but they are not the highest law; there must be a law of God, a law of his mind, above them, or they would be dead tyrannous rules. Christ seems to me to have been asserting the freedom of that law of God by suspending these natural laws, and to have been claiming here again, as part of his and our birthright, dominion over natural laws. All the other miracles, I believe, stand on the same ground. None have been performed except by men who felt that they were witnessing for God, with glimpses of his order, full of zeal for the triumph of that order in the world, and working as Christ worked, in his spirit, and in the name of his Father, or of him. If there are any miracles which do not on a fair examination fulfil these conditions—which are such as a loving Father educating sons who had strayed from or rebelled against him would not have done—I am quite ready to give them up. CXVIII. You have another charge against Christianity. You say it is after all a selfish faith, in which, however beautiful and noble the moral teaching may be, the ultimate appeal has always been to the hope of reward and fear of punishment. You will tell me that in ninety-nine of our churches out of a hundred I shall hear this doctrine, and shall find it in ninety-nine out of every hundred of theological or religious works. If it be so I am sorry for it. But I am speaking of Christ’s Gospel, and I say that you will not find the doctrine you protest against there. I cannot go through our Lord’s teaching and his disciples’ to prove this. I ask you to read for yourselves, bringing honest and clear heads to the study, and not heads full of what you have thought, or this and the other man has preached or written, and I say that then you will give up this charge. But as I have tried to do in all other cases, so here, I will tell you exactly what my own faith on this matter is. Christ has told me that the only reward I shall ever get will be “life eternal,” and that life eternal is to know God and Him. That is all the reward I care about. The only punishment I can ever bring on myself will be, to banish myself from his presence and the presence of all who know him, to dwell apart from him and my brethren, shut up in myself. That is the only punishment I dread. But this reward he has given us already, here. He has given us to know God, and knowing God involves entering his kingdom, and dwelling in it. That kingdom Christ has opened to you, and to me, here. We, you and I may enter in any hour we please. If we don’t enter in now, and here, I can’t see how we are ever likely to enter in in another world. Why should not we enter in? It is worth trying. There are no conditions. It is given for the asking.