Note 171 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

This kind of agency on the part of Jesus is, according to the admission even of such commentators as have not generally any repugnance to the miraculous, attended with special difficulty, because from the want of the personal presence of Jesus, and its beneficial influence on the patient, we are deprived of every possibility of rendering the cure conceivable by means of an analogy observable in nature.171 According to Olshausen, indeed, this distant influence has its analogies; namely, in animal magnetism.172 I will not directly contest this, but only point out the limits within which, so far as my knowledge extends, this phenomenon confines itself in the domain of animal magnetism. According to our experience hitherto, the cases in which one person can exert an influence over another at a distance are only two: first, the magnetizer or an individual in magnetic relation to him can act thus on the somnambule, but this distant action must always be preceded by immediate contact,—a preliminary which is not supposed in the relation of Jesus to the patient in our narrative; secondly, such an influence is found to exist in persons who are themselves somnambules, or otherwise under a disordered state of the nerves: neither of which descriptions can apply to Jesus. If thus such a cure of distant persons as is ascribed to Jesus in our narratives, far outsteps the extreme limits of natural causation, as exhibited in magnetism and the kindred phenomena; then must Jesus have been, so far as the above narratives can lay claim to historical credit, a supernatural being. But before we admit him to have been so really, it is worth our while as critical inquirers, ta examine whether the narrative under consideration could not have arisen without any historical foundation; especially as by the very fact of the various forms which it has taken in the different gospels it shows itself to contain legendary ingredients. And here it is evident that the miraculous cures of Jesus by merely touching the patient, such as we have examples of in that of the leper, Matt. viii. 3, and in that of the blind men, Matt. ix. 29, might by a natural climax rise, first into the cure of persons when in his presence, by a mere word, as in the case of the demoniacs, of the lepers, Luke xvii. 14, and other sufferers; and then into the cure even of the absent by a word; of which there is a strongly marked precedent in the Old Testament. In 2 Kings v. 9 ff. we read that when the Syrian general Naaman came before the dwelling of the prophet Elisha that he might be cured of his leprosy, the prophet came not out to meet him, but sent to him by a servant the direction to wash himself seven times in the river Jordan. At this the Syrian was so indignant that he was about to return home without regarding the direction of the prophet. He had expected, he said, that the prophet would come to him, and calling on his God, strike his hand over the leprous place; that without any personal procedure of this kind, the prophet merely directed him to go to the river Jordan and wash, discouraged and irritated him, since if water were the thing required, he might have had it better at home than here in Israel. By this Old Testament history we see what was ordinarily expected from a prophet, namely, that he should be able to cure when present by bodily contact; that he could do so without contact, and at a distance, was not presupposed. Elisha effected the cure of the leprous general in the latter manner (for the washing was not the cause of cure here, any more than in John ix., but the miraculous power of the prophet, who saw fit to annex its influence to this external act), and hereby proved himself a highly distinguished prophet: ought then the Messiah in this particular to fall short of the prophet? Thus our New Testament narrative is manifested to be a necessary reflection of that Old Testament story. As, there, the sick person will not believe in the possibility of his cure unless the prophet comes out of his house; so here according to one edition of the story the applicant likewise doubts the possibility of a cure, unless Jesus will come in to his house; according to the other editions, he is convinced of the power of Jesus to heal even without this; and all agree that Jesus, like the prophet, succeeded in the performance of this especially difficult miracle.