Note 148 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

But even the account of Matthew we cannot regard as a true narrative of a fact. It has indeed been attempted to represent the result as a natural one, by explaining the state of the man to be a nervous weakness, the worst symptom of which was the idea of the sick man that his disease must continue as a punishment of his sin;148 reference has been made to analogous cases of a rapid psychical cure of lameness;149 and a subsequent use of long-continued curative means has been supposed.150 But the first and last expedients are purely arbitrary; and if in the alleged analogies there may be some truth, yet it is always incomparably more probable that histories of cures of the lame and paralytic in accordance with messianic expectation, should be formed by the legend, than that they should really have happened. In the passage of Isaiah already quoted (xxxv. 6), it was promised in relation to the messianic time: then shall the lame man leap as a hart, τότε ἁλεῖται ὡς ἕλαφος ὁ χωλὸς, and in the same connexion, v. 3, the prophet addresses to the feeble knees γόνατα παραλελυμένα the exhortation, Be strong, ἰσχύσατε, which, with the accompanying particulars, must have been understood literally, of a miracle to be expected from the Messiah, since Jesus, as we have already mentioned, among other proofs that he was the ἐρχόμενος adduced this: χωλοὶ περιπατοῦσι, the lame walk.