THE MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL.

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. — SUPERIORITY OF THE NATURE OF JESUS: — Dreams.

— Star of the magi.

— SECOND SIGHT: Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.

— Kiss of Judas.

— Miraculous catch of fish.

— Calling of Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Matthew. — HEALINGS: Loss of blood.

— Blind man of Bethsaida. — Paralytic. — The ten lepers. — Withered hand.

— The bowed woman. — The paralytic of the pool.

— Man born blind. — Numerous healings of Jesus.

— THE POSSESSED.

— RESURRECTIONS: Daughter of Jairus.

— Son of the widow of Nain.

— OTHERS: Jesus walks upon the water. — Transfiguration. — Tempest calmed. — Wedding at Cana.

— Multiplication of the loaves.

— The leaven of the Pharisees.

— The bread of Heaven. — Temptation of Jesus. — Prodigies at the death of Jesus. — Apparition of Jesus, after his death.

— Disappearance of the body of Jesus.

Loss of blood.

— Then a woman, who for twelve years had suffered from a hemorrhage; who had suffered much at the hands of the physicians and who, having spent all her possessions, had obtained no relief, when she heard tell of Jesus, came with the multitude behind him and touched his garments, for she said: If I can but touch his garments, I shall be healed. At that very instant the flow of blood ceased and she felt in her body that she was cured of that infirmity. At once Jesus, knowing in himself the virtue that had gone out of him, turned about in the midst of the multitude and said: Who touched my garments? His disciples said to him: You see that the multitude presses you on all sides, and you ask who touched you? He looked around him in search of her who had touched him.

The woman, who knew what had taken place within her, seized with fear and dread, came and cast herself at his feet and declared to him the whole truth. Jesus said to her: My daughter, your faith has saved you: go in peace and be healed of your infirmity. (Saint Mark, Chap. V, vv. 25 to 34.)

— These words: “Knowing in himself the virtue that had gone out of him,” are significant; they express the fluidic movement that had taken place from Jesus toward the sick woman; both experienced the action that had just been produced.

It is to be noted that the effect was not provoked by any act of the will of Jesus; there was no magnetization, nor laying on of hands. The normal fluidic radiation sufficed to accomplish the cure.

But why did that radiation direct itself toward that woman and not toward other persons, since Jesus was not thinking of her and had the multitude surrounding him?

The reason is quite simple. Considered as therapeutic matter, the fluid must reach the organic matter in order to repair it; it can then be directed upon the ill by the will of the healer, or attracted by ardent desire, by confidence, in a word: by the faith of the sick person.

With respect to the fluidic current, the first acts as a force pump and the second as a suction pump.

Sometimes the simultaneity of the two actions is necessary; at other times, one alone suffices; the second case was what occurred in the circumstance with which we are dealing.

Jesus, therefore, had reason to say: “Your faith has saved you.”

It is understood that the faith to which he referred is not a mystical virtue, as many persons understand it, but a true attractive force, so that he who does not possess it opposes to the fluidic current a repulsive force, or, at the least, a force of inertia, that paralyzes the action.

This being so, it is also understood that, when two patients with the same infirmity present themselves to the healer, the one may be cured and the other not.

This is one of the most important principles of healing mediumship and one that explains certain apparent anomalies, pointing out for them a very natural cause. (Chap. XIV, nos. 31, 32, and 33.)

Blind man of Bethsaida.

— Having arrived at Bethsaida, they brought him a blind man and begged him to touch him.

Taking the blind man by the hand, he led him outside the village, put saliva on his eyes and, having laid his hands upon him, asked him whether he saw anything. The man, looking, said: I see men walking who seem to me like trees. Jesus again placed his hands upon his eyes and he began to see better. At last he was so perfectly cured that he saw all things distinctly.

He sent him home, saying to him: Go to your house; if you enter the village, tell no one what has happened to you. (Saint Mark, Chap. VIII, vv. 22 to 26.)

— Here the magnetic effect is evident; the cure was not instantaneous, but gradual and consequent upon a prolonged and reiterated action, though more rapid than in ordinary magnetization. The first sensation that the man had was exactly the one experienced by the blind when they recover their sight. Through an effect of optics, objects appear to them of exaggerated size. Paralytic.

— Having gone aboard a boat, Jesus crossed the lake and came to his city (Capernaum). When they presented to him a paralytic lying on his bed, Jesus, noting his faith, said to the paralytic: My son, have confidence; your sins are forgiven you.

At once some scribes said among themselves: This man blasphemes. Jesus, having perceived what they were thinking, asked them: Why do you harbor evil thoughts in your hearts? For which is easier to say: Your sins are forgiven you, or to say: Rise up and walk? — Now, that you may know that the Son of Man has on Earth the power to forgive sins: Rise up, he then said to the paralytic, take up your bed and go to your house. The paralytic rose immediately and went to his house. Seeing that miracle, the people were filled with awe and rendered thanks to God for having granted such power to men. (Saint Matthew, Chap. IX, vv. 1 to 8.)

— What might those words mean: “Your sins are forgiven you,” and how could they have an influence on the cure?

Spiritism gives the explanation for them, as for an infinity of other words misunderstood until today; by means of the plurality of existences, it teaches that the ills and afflictions of life are often expiations of the past, as also that we suffer in the present life the consequences of the faults we committed in a previous existence and thus, until we have paid the debt of our imperfections, since the existences are bound up with one another.

If, therefore, that man’s infirmity was an expiation of the evil he had practiced, for Jesus to say to him: “Your sins are forgiven you,” was equivalent to saying to him: “You have paid your debt; the faith you now possess has redeemed the cause of your infirmity; consequently, you deserve to be freed from it.”

Hence his having said to the scribes: “It is as easy to say: Your sins are forgiven you, as: Rise up and walk.” The cause having ceased, the effect must cease.

It is precisely the case of the prisoner to whom it is declared: “Your crime is expiated and forgiven,” which would be equivalent to saying to him: “You may leave the prison.” The ten lepers.

— One day, as he was going to Jerusalem, he passed through the borders of Samaria and Galilee and, being about to enter a village, ten lepers came to meet him and, keeping themselves at a distance, cried out in loud voices: Jesus, our Lord, have pity on us. Coming upon them, Jesus said to them: Go and show yourselves to the priests. As they were on the way, they were healed. One of them, seeing himself healed, returned upon his steps, glorifying God in loud voices; and went to cast himself at the feet of Jesus, with his face to the ground, to render him thanks. This one was a Samaritan.

Then Jesus said: Were not all ten healed? Where are the other nine?

Was there none of them who returned and glorified God, except this stranger? And he said to him: Rise up; go; your faith has saved you. (Saint Luke, Chap. XVII, vv. 11 to 19.)

— The Samaritans were schismatics, more or less as the Protestants with respect to the Catholics, and the Jews held them in contempt, as heretics.

By healing without distinction the Jews and the Samaritans, Jesus gave, at the same time, a lesson and an example of tolerance; and by bringing out that only the Samaritan had returned to glorify God, he showed that there was in him a greater sum of true faith and of gratitude than in those who called themselves orthodox.

By adding: “Your faith has saved you,” he made it seen that God considers what is in the depths of the heart and not the outward form of worship.

Nevertheless, the others too had been healed. It was necessary that such should be verified, so that he might give the lesson he had in view and make their ingratitude evident to them. Who knows, however, what may have resulted from it for them; who knows whether they may have benefited from the grace that was granted to them?

By saying to the Samaritan: “Your faith has saved you,” Jesus gives to understand that the same did not happen to the others. Withered hand.

— Another time Jesus entered the temple and there found a man who had one of his hands withered. And they observed him to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath day, that they might have a motive to accuse him. Then he said to the man who had the withered hand: Rise up and place yourself there in the midst. Afterward, he said to them: Is it permitted on the Sabbath day to do good or evil, to save life or to take it? They remained in silence. He, however, facing them with indignation, so much did the hardness of their hearts afflict him, said to the man: Stretch out your hand. He stretched it out and it became sound. At once the Pharisees went out and gathered against him in a secret council with the Herodians, upon the means of destroying him. But Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, accompanied by a great multitude of people from Galilee and from Judea, from Jerusalem, from Idumea and from beyond the Jordan: and those from the regions of Tyre and Sidon, having heard tell of the things he did, came in great number to meet him. (Saint Mark, Chap. III, vv. 1 to 8.)

The bowed woman.

— Every Sabbath day Jesus taught in a synagogue. One day, he saw there a woman possessed of a Spirit that had made her sick for eighteen years; she was so bowed down that she could not look upward. Seeing her, Jesus called her and said to her: Woman, you are freed from your infirmity. He laid his hands upon her at the same time and she, straightening herself, rendered thanks to God. But the chief of the synagogue, indignant that Jesus had performed a cure on the Sabbath day, said to the people: There are six days appointed for work; come on those days to be healed and not on the Sabbath days.

The Lord, taking the word, said to him: Hypocrite, which of you does not loose from its burden his ox or his ass on the Sabbath day and lead it to drink? Why then should not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had kept bound for eighteen years, be freed, on the Sabbath day, from the bonds that held her?

At these words, all his adversaries were put to confusion and all the people were delighted to see him perform so many glorious deeds. (Saint Luke, Chap. XIII, vv. 10 to 17.)

— This fact proves that in that epoch the greater part of infirmities was attributed to the demon and that all confounded, as still today, the possessed with the sick, but in the inverse sense, that is, today, those who do not believe in evil Spirits confound obsessions with pathological maladies.

The paralytic of the pool.

— After this, the feast of the Jews having arrived, Jesus went to Jerusalem. Now, there was in Jerusalem the pool of the Sheep, which is called in Hebrew Bethsaida, which had five galleries where, in great number, sick, blind, lame, and those who had withered limbs lay, all awaiting the stirring of the waters. For the angel of the Lord descended at certain times into that pool and moved its water and whoever was the first to enter into it, after the water had been moved, was healed, whatever his disease might be. Now, there was there a man who had been sick for thirty-eight years. Jesus, having seen him lying and knowing him to have been sick for a long time, asked him: Do you wish to be healed? The sick man answered: Lord, I have no one to cast me into the pool after the water has been moved; and, during the time it takes me to get there, another descends before me. Jesus said to him: Rise up, take up your bed and go. At that very instant the man found himself healed and, taking up his bed, set himself to walking. Now, that day was a Sabbath. Then the Jews said to him who had been healed: It is not permitted you to carry your bed. The man answered: He who healed me said: Take up your bed and walk. They then asked him: Who was it that said to you: Take up your bed and walk? But not even he who had been healed knew who had healed him, for Jesus had withdrawn from the midst of the multitude that was there.

Afterward, finding that man in the temple, Jesus said to him: You see that you have been healed; do not sin again in the future, so that nothing worse may happen to you.

The man went to the Jews and told them that it was Jesus who had healed him. It was for this that the Jews persecuted Jesus, because he did these things on the Sabbath day. Then Jesus said to them: My Father does not cease to work until the present and I too work incessantly. (Saint John, Chap. V, vv. 1 to 17.)

— Pool (from the Latin word piscis, fish): among the Romans, the reservoirs or fishponds where fish were raised were so called. Later, the term became extended to the tanks intended for bathing in common.

The pool of Bethsaida, in Jerusalem, was a cistern, near the Temple, fed by a natural spring, whose water seems to have had curative properties. It was, without doubt, an intermittent spring that, at certain times, gushed forth with force, stirring the water. According to the common belief, this was the moment most propitious to cures. Perhaps that, in reality, when the water sprang from the spring, its properties were more active, or that the agitation which the gushing produced in the water brought to the surface the mud salutary for some maladies.

Such effects are very natural and perfectly known today; but, then, the sciences were little advanced and to the majority of the misunderstood phenomena a supernatural cause was attributed.

The Jews, then, held the agitation of the water to be due to the presence of an angel and those beliefs seemed to them all the more founded as they saw that, on those occasions, the water showed itself more curative.

After having healed that paralytic, Jesus said to him: “For the future do not sin again, so that nothing worse may happen to you.”

By these words, he gave him to understand that his disease was a punishment and that, if he did not better himself, he might come to be punished anew and with more rigor, a doctrine entirely conformable to that of Spiritism.

— Jesus seemed to make a point of working his cures on the Sabbath day, in order to have occasion to protest against the rigorism of the Pharisees in regard to the keeping of that day.

He wished to show them that true piety does not consist in the observance of outward practices and formalities; that piety lies in the sentiments of the heart.

He justified himself, declaring: “My Father does not cease to work until the present and I too work incessantly.” That is to say: God does not interrupt his works, nor his action upon the things of Nature, on the Sabbath day. He does not cease to cause to be produced all that is necessary for your nourishment and your health; I follow his example. Man born blind.

— As he was passing, Jesus saw a man who had been blind from his birth; and his disciples put this question to him: Master, was it the sin of this man, or of those who brought him into the world, that gave cause for his being born blind?

Jesus answered them: It is not by his sin, nor that of those who brought him into the world; but, that the works of the power of God may be made manifest in him. I must do the works of him who sent me, while it is day; afterward comes the night, in which no one can do works. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

Having said this, he spat on the ground and, having made mud with his saliva, anointed with that mud the eyes of the blind man and said to him: Go and wash yourself in the pool of Siloam, which means Sent. He went, washed himself, and returned seeing clearly.

His neighbors and those who had seen him before begging alms said: Is not this the one who sat and begged alms? Some answered: It is he; others said: No, it is one who resembles him. The man, however, said to them: I am the very one. They then asked him: How were your eyes opened? He answered: That man who is called Jesus made a little mud and put it on my eyes, saying: Go to the pool of Siloam and wash yourself. I went, washed myself, and I see. They said to him: Where is he? The man answered: I do not know. They then brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Now, it was on a Sabbath day that Jesus had made that mud and opened his eyes.

The Pharisees too interrogated him to learn how he had recovered his sight. He said to them: He put mud on my eyes, I washed myself and I see. To which some Pharisees retorted: That man is not sent of God, since he does not keep the Sabbath. Others, however, said: How could an evil man perform such prodigies? There was, on this account, dissension among them.

They said again to him who had been blind: And you, what do you say of that man who opened your eyes? He answered: I say that he is a prophet. But the Jews did not believe that that man had been blind and had recovered his sight, until they had brought his father and mother and interrogated them thus: Is this your son, whom you say was born blind? How is it that he now sees? The father and the mother answered: We know that this is our son and that he was born blind; we do not know, however, how he now sees and neither do we know who opened his eyes. Interrogate him; he is of age, let him answer for himself. His father and his mother spoke in this manner, because they feared the Jews, seeing that these had already resolved in common that whoever should acknowledge Jesus as being the Christ would be expelled from the synagogue. This is what obliged the young man’s father and mother to answer: He is of age; interrogate him.

They called a second time the man who had been blind and said to him: Glorify God: we know that this man is a sinner. He answered them: Whether he is a sinner, I do not know; all that I know is that I was blind and now I see. They asked him again: What did he do to you and how did he open your eyes? The man answered: I have already told you and you heard it well; why do you wish to hear it a second time? Could it be that you wish to become his disciples? Whereupon they loaded him with insults and said to him: Be you his disciple; as for us, we are disciples of Moses. We know that God spoke to Moses, whereas of this one we do not know whence he came. The man answered them: It is astonishing that you do not know whence he is and that he has opened my eyes. Now, we know that God does not exalt sinners; but, him who honors him and does his will, that man God exalts. Since the world has existed, it has never been heard said that anyone has opened the eyes of one born blind. If that man were not one sent of God, he could do nothing of all that he has done. The Pharisees said to him: You are all sin, from your mother’s womb, and you wish to teach us? And they expelled him. (Saint John, Chap. IX, vv. 1 to 34.)

— This narrative, so simple and plain, bears within it the evident mark of veracity.

There is nothing in it of the fanciful, nor of the marvelous; it is a scene of real life caught in the act.

The language of the blind man is exactly that of those simple men in whom good sense supplies the lack of learning and who retort with good humor to the arguments of their adversaries, setting forth reasons in which neither justness nor opportuneness is lacking.

The tone of the Pharisees, on the other hand, is that of the proud who admit nothing above their own intelligences and who fill with indignation at the mere idea that a man of the people might make observations to them.

Apart from the local color of the names, the fact would be said to be of our own time.

To be expelled from the synagogue was equivalent to being put outside the Church; it was a kind of excommunication.

The Spiritists, whose doctrine is that of the Christ in accordance with the progress of present-day enlightenment, are treated like the Jews who recognized in Jesus the Messiah; by excommunicating them, the Church puts them outside its bosom, as the scribes and the Pharisees did with the followers of the Christ.

Thus, here is a man who is expelled because he cannot admit that he who had healed him is one possessed of the demon and because he renders thanks to God for his cure!

Is this not what they do with the Spiritists?

To obtain from the Spirits salutary counsels, reconciliation with God and with the good, cures, all this is the work of the devil and upon those who obtain it anathema is cast.

Have priests not been seen to declare, from the height of the pulpit, that it is better for a person to remain unbelieving than to recover faith by means of Spiritism?

Are there not those who say to the sick that they ought not to have sought to be cured by the Spiritists who possess that gift, because that gift is satanic?

Are there not those who preach that the needy ought not to accept the bread that the Spiritists distribute, because that bread is of the devil?

What else did the Jewish priests and the Pharisees say or do? Moreover, we have been warned that everything today must come to pass as in the time of the Christ.

The question of the disciples: Was it some sin of this man that gave cause for his being born blind? reveals that they had the intuition of a previous existence, for, otherwise, it would lack sense, seeing that a sin can only be the cause of an infirmity from birth if committed before birth, therefore, in a previous existence.

If Jesus considered such an idea false, he would have said to them: “How could this man have sinned before being born?”

Instead of this, however, he says that that man was blind, not because he had sinned, but that the power of God might be made manifest in him, that is, that he might serve as an instrument for a manifestation of the power of God.

If it was not an expiation of the past, it was a trial appropriate to the progress of that Spirit, for God, who is just, would not impose upon him a suffering without utility.

As to the means employed for his cure, evidently that kind of mud made of saliva and earth could enclose no virtue, except through the action of the curative fluid with which it had been impregnated; 20 it is thus that the most insignificant substances, such as water, for example, can acquire powerful and effective qualities, under the action of the spiritual or magnetic fluid, to which they serve as vehicle, or, if you will, as reservoir. Numerous healings of Jesus.

— Jesus went throughout all Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, preaching the Gospel of the kingdom and healing all the languors and all the infirmities in the midst of the people. His reputation having spread throughout all Syria;

they brought to him those who were sick and afflicted with diverse pains and ills, the possessed, the lunatics, the paralytics and he healed them all. There accompanied him a great multitude of people from Galilee, from Decapolis, from Jerusalem, from Judea and from beyond the Jordan. (Saint Matthew, Chap. IV, vv. 23, 24, 25.)

— Of all the facts that bear witness to the power of Jesus, the most numerous are, there is no contesting it, the cures; 2 he wished in this way to prove that true power is that of him who does good; 3 that his aim was to be useful and not to satisfy the curiosity of the indifferent, by means of extraordinary things.

By relieving sufferings, he bound creatures to himself by the heart and made proselytes more numerous and sincere than if he had merely amazed them with spectacles for the eyes.

In that way, he made himself loved, whereas, had he limited himself to producing surprising material facts, as the Pharisees demanded, the majority of persons would have seen in him only a sorcerer, or a skillful magician, whom the idle would go to appreciate in order to amuse themselves.

Thus, when John the Baptist sends, through his disciples, to ask him whether he was the Christ, his answer was not: “I am he,” as any impostor could have said; 7 neither does he speak to them of prodigies, nor of marvelous things; he answers them simply: “Go and tell John: the blind see, the sick are healed, the deaf hear, the Gospel is announced to the poor.”

It was the same as saying: “Recognize me by my works; judge the tree by its fruit,” for this was the true character of his divine mission.

— Spiritism, likewise, by the good it does is how it proves its providential mission.

It cures physical ills, but it cures, above all, the moral diseases and these are the greatest prodigies that attest its origin.

Its most sincere adepts are not those who feel themselves touched by the observation of extraordinary phenomena, but those who receive from it the consolation for their souls; 4 those whom it frees from the tortures of doubt; 5 those whose spirits it has raised up in affliction, who have drawn strength from the certainty it has brought them, concerning the future, in the knowledge of their spiritual being and of their destinies.

These are those of unshakable faith, because they feel and understand.

Those who in Spiritism seek only material effects cannot understand its moral force; 8 hence it comes that the unbelievers, who know it only through phenomena whose primary cause they do not admit, consider the Spiritists mere conjurers and charlatans.

It will not be, then, by means of prodigies that Spiritism will triumph over incredulity: it will be by the multiplication of its moral benefits, 10 for, if it is certain that the unbelievers do not admit prodigies, it is no less certain that they know, like everyone, suffering and afflictions and no one refuses relief and consolation.