131. Plain it is from this that a faith induced by miracles is not faith,
but persuasion. For it has nothing rational in it, still less anything
spiritual, as it is only external without an internal. This is true of
everything a man does from such persuasive faith, whether he is
acknowledging God, worshiping Him at home or in church, or doing good
deeds. When only a miracle leads a person to acknowledgment of God and to
adoration and piety, he acts from the natural and not the spiritual man.
For a miracle infuses belief by an external and not an internal way, thus
from the world and not from heaven. The Lord enters man by an internal
way, by the Word and by doctrine and preaching from it. As miracles close
this way, no miracles are done today.

132. That miracles are of this nature can be clearly established from
those performed in the presence of the people of Judah and Israel.
Although they beheld many miracles in the land of Egypt and later at the
Red Sea and others in the Wilderness and particularly on Mt. Sinai when
the Law was promulgated, nevertheless, in a month's time while Moses
tarried on that mountain, they made themselves a golden calf and hailed
it as Jehovah who had led them out of the land of Egypt (Ex 32:4-6).
Again, it is plain from the miracles done later in the land of Canaan;
nevertheless the people fell away time and again from the prescribed
worship. It is equally plain from the miracles which the Lord did before
their eyes when He was in the world; yet they crucified Him.

[2] Miracles were done among the Jews and Israelites because they were
altogether external men and had been brought into the land of Canaan
merely to represent a church and its eternal verities by the
externalities of worship--something a bad man as well as a good man can
do. For the externals are rituals which with that people signified