Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/127

 *ited, he subdued all the dragons and other baneful creatures to his will (G. O. M., p. 227).

If the founder of the Mussulman religion did not claim any direct power of performing miracles, yet the communication to him of the Suras which compose the the Koran was a standing miracle. He professed to fall into an ecstatic condition, in which he received the direct instructions of his God; and his care, when entering the sick-room of a friend, to avoid treading on the angels' wings which he saw extended in all directions, indicates a pretension to more than human faculties. The present votaries of the Mohammedan faith believe in the power of their saints to work miracles, for we read of the sick being taken to their Sheik to be cured by the imposition of his feet (Dervishes, p. 347).

That the Christian religion was largely indebted to miracles for its success during its early years need hardly be remarked. Not only did Christ himself perform miracles of the most extraordinary kind, but the power was, if not wholly, yet to some extent, transmitted to his apostles, and was frequently exercised by the saints and Fathers of the early Church. Jesus himself, according to tradition, relied largely on his miracles as proofs of his divine mission; for when John the Baptist sent disciples to inquire who he was, he replied by telling them to report to their master that the blind received sight, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard, the dead were raised up, and the poor had the gospel preached to them. So that the possession of this unusual gift of healing and re-animating, was regarded by him (or, more accurately, by his biographers) as a sufficient answer to the doubt entertained by John whether he were really the Messiah, or whether another were to come.

How great was the importance attached to the possession of miraculous powers by the early Christian Church, may be gathered from a passage in which Irenæus endeavors to cover certain heretics with confusion, by asserting that they are unable to do the things that are commonly done by the adherents of the true faith. "For they can neither confer sight on the blind, nor hearing on the deaf, nor chase away all sorts of demons—[none, indeed], except those that are sent into others