Article January 15, 1910 Issue

There are in the New Testament three Greek words...

Frederick Dixon

Jersey (Channel Islands) Times

There are in the New Testament three Greek words translated, at one time or another, miracle. That the translation is purely arbitrary is proved by the fact that these words are just as frequently translated differently. The world miracle is itself of Latin origin, and was an ordinary philosophic term of the pagan writers. It was never used in a supernatural sense until it had been adopted by Jerome, at a period subsequent to the compilation of the Vulgate.

Christ Jesus, preaching his gospel in the towns and villages of Palestine, made use of the miracle as an objectlesson. When, that is to say, the dense material sense of the people failed to grasp the spiritual signification of his words, he healed the sick and raised the dead, bidding his listeners, if they could believe for nothing else, believe for the very works' sake. He never, however, suggested that the working of miracles was to be limited to a particular time or place. Speaking of the whole world and of all time, he declared, "These signs shall follow them that believe." Now the word translated signs in this passage is a word translated over and over again, elsewhere in the Gospels, miracles. It might, therefore, every whit as well, have been translated miracle, and made to read, "These miracles shall follow them that believe." Now, the signs which were to follow included the casting out of devils, the speaking with new tongues, the handling of serpents, the drinking of poison unharmed, and the healing of the sick. The Founder of the Christian religion, therefore, obviously made the power to perform these miracles the test of belief.

Again in the Gospel of John, he is represented as distinctly saying that those who believed on him should do the works he did, and greater works than these. He was once more speaking not of himself, nor of his followers, but of believers in general, without any specification of time or place; and so for a second time we have the power to work miracles made by him the test of belief. A third time, and on this occasion in the concluding verses of the first Gospel, in the last earthly words of his recorded, he made a similar declaration. "Go ye therefore," he said, "and teach all nations, ... teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." If the healing of sickness was not one of these commands to the apostles, it would be difficult to say what was.

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