page 224).  Well argued, Dr. Paley; and in the man who sat outside the beautiful gate of the Temple, who examined the limb, or questioned the patient?  Canons I. and II. exclude the Gospel miracles, unless the Gospels are proved to be written by those whose names they bear, and even then there is no proof that either Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, published their Gospels in Judaea, or that their accounts were “received at home.”  The doubt and obscurity hanging over the origin of the Gospels themselves, throws the like doubt and obscurity on all that they relate.  “Transient rumours,” “false perception,” “imposture,” “doubtful,” and “exaggeration”—­there is a door open to all these things in the slow and gradual putting together of the collection of legends now known as “the Gospels.”  We argue that the witness of the Gospels to the miracles cannot be accepted until the Gospels themselves are authenticated, and that the evidence in support of the miracles is, therefore, insufficient.  Strauss shows us very clearly how the miracles recorded in the Gospels became ascribed to Jesus.  “That the Jewish people in the time of Jesus expected miracles from the Messiah is in itself natural, since the Messiah was a second Moses, and the greatest of the prophets, and to Moses and the prophets the national legend attributed miracles of all kinds....  But not only was it pre-determined in the popular expectation that the Messiah should work miracles in general—­the particular kinds of miracles which he was to perform were fixed, also in accordance with Old Testament types and declarations.  Moses dispensed meat and drink to the people in a supernatural manner (Ex. xvi. xvii.):  the same was expected, as the rabbis explicitly say, from the Messiah.  At the prayer of Elisha, eyes were in one case closed, in another, opened supernaturally (2 Kings vi.):  the Messiah also was to open the eyes of the blind.  By this prophet and his master, even the dead had been raised (1 Kings xvii; 2 Kings iv.); hence to the Messiah also power over death could not be wanting.  Among the prophecies, Is. xxxv, 5, 6 (comp. xlii. 7), was especially influential in forming this part of the Messianic idea.  It is here said of the Messianic times:  Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing” ("Life of Jesus,” vol. ii., pp. 235, 236.) In dealing with the alleged healing of the blind, Strauss remarks:  “How should we represent to ourselves the sudden restoration of vision to a blind eye by a word or a touch? as purely miraculous and magical?  That would be to give up thinking on the subject.  As magnetic?  There is no precedent of magnetism having influence over a disease of this nature.  Or, lastly, as psychical?  But blindness is something so independent of the mental life, so entirely corporeal, that the idea of its removal at all, still less of its sudden removal by means of a mental operation,