and power has been altogether exceptional.  Here and there, through the history of these centuries, there have been those who have entered into this belief of their own privilege and duty, and have used the gift which they recognized.  The Church has never been left without a line of witnesses to this aspect of the discipleship of Christ.  But she has come to accept it as the normal order of things that what was once the rule in the Christian Church should be now only the exception.  Orthodoxy has framed a theory of the words of Jesus to account for this strange departure of His Church from them.  It teaches us to believe that His example was not meant to be followed, in this respect, by all His disciples.  The power of healing which was in Him was a purely exceptional power.  It was used as an evidence of His divine mission.  It was a miraculous gift.  The gift of working miracles was not bestowed upon His Church at large.  His original disciples, the twelve apostles, received this gift, as a necessity of the critical epoch of Christianity —­the founding of the Church.  Traces of the power lingered on, in weakening activity, until they gradually ceased, and the normal condition of the Church was entered upon, in which miracles are no longer possible.

We accept this, unconsciously, as the true state of things in Christianity.  But it is a conception which will not bear a moment’s examination.  There is not the slightest suggestion upon record that Christ set any limit to this charge which He gave His disciples.  On the contrary, there are not lacking hints that He looked for the possession and exercise of this power wherever His spirit breathed in men.

Even if the concluding paragraph of St. Mark’s Gospel were a later appendix, it may none the less have been a faithful echo of words of the Master, as it certainly is a trustworthy record of the belief of the early Christians as to the thought of Jesus concerning His followers.  In that interesting passage, Jesus, after His death, appeared to the eleven, and formally commissioned them, again, to take up His work in the world; bidding them, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”  “And these signs,” He tells them, “shall follow them that believe”—­not the apostles only, but “them that believe,” without limit of time; “in My name they shall cast out devils . . . they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.”  The concluding discourse to the disciples, recorded in the Gospel according to St. John, affirms the same expectation on the part of Jesus; emphasizing it in His solemn way:  “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.”

APPENDIX F