St. Augustine answered that
objection centuries ago, by the same argument as I am now using. Allow
Jesus to have been the Lord of Creation, and what was he doing then, but
what he does in the maturing of every grape--transformed from air and
water even as that wine in Cana? Goethe, himself, unwittingly, has made
Mephistopheles even say as much as that--
"Wine is sap, and grapes are wood,
The wooden board yields wine as good."
"But the time?--so infinitely shorter than that which Nature usually
occupies in the process?"
"Time and space are no Gods, as a wise German says; and as the electric
telegraph ought already to have taught you. They are customs, but who has
proved them to be laws of Nature? No; analyse these miracles one by one,
fairly, carefully, scientifically, and you will find that if you want
prodigies really blasphemous and absurd, infractions of the laws of Nature,
amputated limbs growing again, and dead men walking away with their heads
under their arms, you must go to the Popish legends, but not to the
miracles of the Gospels. And now for your 'but'--"
"The raising of the dead to life? Surely death is the appointed end of
every animal--ay, of every species, and of man among the rest.
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