By E.J. Waggoner

A belief in miracles is a necessary consequence of a belief in God. He who does not believe in miracles does not believe in God. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." Isa. 55:8, 9. Miracles, therefore, are simply God's natural actions. His smallest acts must be miraculous in the eyes of men, simply because He is God. Since God is infinitely above man, and His ways are as much higher than man's ways as the heavens are higher than the earth, it follows that no one can deny the existence of miracles at the present day without denying that God lives and directs the affairs of the universe.

It is idle to speculate as to whether or not miracles are a setting aside of the laws of nature. What are commonly known as the "laws of nature," are nothing less than God's ways of working in the inanimate world. We cease to wonder at them because they are so common that we do not recognise God in them. Familiar as the phenomena of the weather are to us, no man can make it rain. The most learned botanist cannot make a single blade of grass. No matter how deeply scientists may explore the operations of nature, there is still something in every one of them which they cannot explain.

The life of Jesus on earth, from His birth to His ascension was a miracle, because it was the life of God.
Thousands of people who never heard of Jesus, had tried to live sinless lives, but not one had been able to do so. Philosophers had set forth lofty moral sentiments, but not one had been able to live out his own teachings. But Christ lived a sinless life, in the face of such temptations as all the world together had never known. It was because He lived the life of the infinite God.

"God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself." 2 Cor. 5:19. All His acts were the acts of the Father, who dwelt in Him. Said He: "Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself; but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works." John 14:10. So the miracles that Christ did were the natural working of that life of God, which was His life.

These miracles were wrought for a definite purpose. After having told of many miracles that Jesus did, and His resurrection as the crowning one of the whole series, the apostle John said: "And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name." John 20: 30, 31.

Every miracle of Jesus, therefore, was for the purpose of showing us how we may receive His life, and have the same miracle wrought in us. It is truly said that His miracles of healing were the natural outgrowth of His sympathetic loving nature; "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16. Love to man prompted every step in the plan of salvation. Christ did not perform the miracles simply for the purpose of calling attention to Himself, but to show the love and the power of God toward man. The healing of the bodies of men was only an object lesson. They were aids to faith, to enable men to grasp unseen realities; to show them the power of Christ to heal the disease of the soul. Whoever reads the accounts of the miracles of Jesus with this in mind, and not as stories told for our entertainment, will receive of the life which was manifested in the doing of those miracles. Each one illustrates some phase of the work of Christ in supplying man's spiritual needs.

In subsequent numbers of this paper we shall study some of these miracles, to the end that we may receive life through His name.