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diff --git a/9103-8.txt b/9103-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..88b8df0 --- /dev/null +++ b/9103-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5209 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Miracles of Our Lord, by George MacDonald + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Miracles of Our Lord + +Author: George MacDonald + +Posting Date: March 16, 2014 [EBook #9103] +Release Date: October, 2005 +First Posted: September 6, 2003 +Last Updated: September 13, 2017 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIRACLES OF OUR LORD *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Graham Smith and Distributed +Proofreaders. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + + + + + +THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD + +BY + +George MacDonald + + +THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD + +1870 + + + +CONTENTS + + I. INTRODUCTION + II. THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES + III. THE CURE OF SIMON'S WIFE'S MOTHER + IV. MIRACLES OF HEALING UNSOLICITED + V. MIRACLES OF HEALING SOLICITED BY THE SUFFERS + VI. MIRACLES GRANTED TO THE PRAYER OF FRIENDS + VII. THE CASTING OUT OF DEVILS + VIII. THE RAISING OF THE DEAD + IX. THE GOVERNMENT OF NATURE + X. MIRACLES OF DESTRUCTION + XI. THE RESURRECTION + XII. THE TRANSFIGURATION + + + + +I. INTRODUCTION. + + +I have been requested to write some papers on our Lord's miracles. I +venture the attempt in the belief that, seeing they are one of the modes +in which his unseen life found expression, we are bound through them to +arrive at some knowledge of that life. For he has come, The Word of God, +that we may know God: every word of his then, as needful to the knowing +of himself, is needful to the knowing of God, and we must understand, +as far as we may, every one of his words and every one of his actions, +which, with him, were only another form of word. I believe this the +immediate end of our creation. And I believe that this will at length +result in the unravelling for us of what must now, more or less, appear +to every man the knotted and twisted coil of the universe. + +It seems to me that it needs no great power of faith to believe in the +miracles--for true faith is a power, not a mere yielding. There are far +harder things to believe than the miracles. For a man is not required to +believe in them save as believing in Jesus. If a man can believe that +there is a God, he may well believe that, having made creatures capable +of hungering and thirsting for him, he must be capable of speaking a +word to guide them in their feeling after him. And if he is a grand +God, a God worthy of being God, yea (his metaphysics even may show the +seeker), if he is a God capable of being God, he will speak the clearest +grandest word of guidance which he can utter intelligible to his +creatures. For us, that word must simply be the gathering of all the +expressions of his visible works into an infinite human face, lighted up +by an infinite human soul behind it, namely, that potential essence of +man, if I may use a word of my own, which was in the beginning with God. +If God should _thus_ hear the cry of the noblest of his creatures, for +such are all they who do cry after him, and in very deed show them his +face, it is but natural to expect that the deeds of the great messenger +should be just the works of the Father done in little. If he came to +reveal his Father in miniature, as it were (for in these unspeakable +things we can but use figures, and the homeliest may be the holiest), to +tone down his great voice, which, too loud for men to hear it aright, +could but sound to them as an inarticulate thundering, into such a still +small voice as might enter their human ears in welcome human speech, +then the works that his Father does so widely, so grandly that they +transcend the vision of men, the Son must do briefly and sharply before +their very eyes. + +This, I think, is the true nature of the miracles, an epitome of God's +processes in nature beheld in immediate connection with their source--a +source as yet lost to the eyes and too often to the hearts of men in the +far-receding gradations of continuous law. That men might see the will +of God at work, Jesus did the works of his Father thus. + +Here I will suppose some honest, and therefore honourable, reader +objecting: But do you not thus place the miracles in dignity below the +ordinary processes of nature? I answer: The miracles are mightier far +than any goings on of nature as beheld by common eyes, dissociating them +from a living Will; but the miracles are surely less than those mighty +goings on of nature with God beheld at their heart. In the name of him +who delighted to say "My Father is greater than I," I will say that his +miracles in bread and in wine were far less grand and less beautiful +than the works of the Father they represented, in making the corn +to grow in the valleys, and the grapes to drink the sunlight on the +hill-sides of the world, with all their infinitudes of tender gradation +and delicate mystery of birth. But the Son of the Father be praised, +who, as it were, condensed these mysteries before us, and let us see +the precious gifts coming at once from gracious hands--hands that love +could kiss and nails could wound. + +There are some, I think, who would perhaps find it more possible to +accept the New Testament story if the miracles did not stand in the way. +But perhaps, again, it would be easier for them, to accept both if they +could once look into the true heart of these miracles. So long as they +regard only the surface of them, they will, most likely, see in them +only a violation of the laws of nature: when they behold the heart of +them, they will recognize there at least a possible fulfilment of her +deepest laws. + +With such, however, is not my main business now, any more than with +those who cannot believe in a God at all, and therefore to whom a +miracle is an absurdity. I may, however, just make this one remark with +respect to the latter--that perhaps it is better they should believe in +no God than believe in such a God as they have yet been able to imagine. +Perhaps thus they are nearer to a true faith--except indeed they prefer +the notion of the Unconscious generating the Conscious, to that of a +self-existent Love, creative in virtue of its being love. Such have +never loved woman or child save after a fashion which has left them +content that death should seize on the beloved and bear them back to the +maternal dust. But I doubt if there can be any who thus would choose a +sleep--walking Pan before a wakeful Father. At least, they cannot know +the Father and choose the Pan. + +Let us then recognize the works of the Father as epitomized in the +miracles of the Son. What in the hands of the Father are the mighty +motions and progresses and conquests of life, in the hands of the Son +are miracles. I do not myself believe that he valued the working of +these miracles as he valued the utterance of the truth in words; but all +that he did had the one root, _obedience_, in which alone can any son +be free. And what is the highest obedience? Simply a following of the +Father--a doing of what the Father does. Every true father wills that +his child should be as he is in his deepest love, in his highest hope. +All that Jesus does is of his Father. What we see in the Son is of the +Father. What his works mean concerning him, they mean concerning the +Father. + +Much as I shrink from the notion of a formal shaping out of design in +any great life, so unlike the endless freedom and spontaneity of nature +(and He is the Nature of nature), I cannot help observing that his first +miracle was one of creation--at least, is to our eyes more like creation +than almost any other--for who can say that it was creation, not knowing +in the least what creation is, or what was the process in this miracle? + + + + +II. THE BEGINNING OF MIRACLES. + + +Already Jesus had his disciples, although as yet he had done no mighty +works. They followed him for himself and for his mighty words. With his +mother they accompanied him to a merry-making at a wedding. With no +retiring regard, with no introverted look of self-consciousness or +self-withdrawal, but more human than any of the company, he regarded +their rejoicings with perfect sympathy, for, whatever suffering might +follow, none knew so well as he that-- + + "there is one + Who makes the joy the last in every song." + +The assertion in the old legendary description of his person and habits, +that he was never known to smile, I regard as an utter falsehood, for to +me it is incredible--almost as a geometrical absurdity. In that glad +company the eyes of a divine artist, following the spiritual lines of +the group, would have soon settled on his face as the centre whence +radiated all the gladness, where, as I seem to see him, he sat in the +background beside his mother. Even the sunny face of the bridegroom +would appear less full of light than his. But something is at hand which +will change his mood. For no true man had he been if his mood had never +changed. His high, holy, obedient will, his tender, pure, strong heart +never changed, but his mood, his feeling did change. For the mood must +often, and in many cases ought to be the human reflex of changing +circumstance. The change comes from his mother. She whispers to him that +they have no more wine. The bridegroom's liberality had reached the +limit of his means, for, like his guests, he was, most probably, of a +humble calling, a craftsman, say, or a fisherman. It must have been a +painful little trial to him if he knew the fact; but I doubt if he heard +of the want before it was supplied. + +There was nothing in this however to cause the change in our Lord's mood +of which I have spoken. It was no serious catastrophe, at least to him, +that the wine should fail. His mother had but told him the fact; only +there is more than words in every commonest speech that passes. It was +not his mother's words, but the tone and the look with which they were +interwoven that wrought the change. She knew that her son was no common +man, and she believed in him, with an unripe, unfeatured faith. This +faith, working with her ignorance and her fancy, led her to expect the +great things of the world from him. This was a faith which must fail +that it might grow. Imperfection must fail that strength may come in its +place. It is well for the weak that their faith should fail them, for +it may at the moment be resting its wings upon the twig of some brittle +fancy, instead of on a branch of the tree of life. + +But, again, what was it in his mother's look and tone that should work +the change in our Lord's mood? The request implied in her words could +give him no offence, for he granted that request; and he never would +have done a thing he did not approve, should his very mother ask him. +The _thoughts of_ the mother lay not in her words, but in the expression +that accompanied them, and it was to those thoughts that our Lord +replied. Hence his answer, which has little to do with her spoken +request, is the key both to her thoughts and to his. If we do not +understand his reply, we _may_ misunderstand the miracle--certainly we +are in danger of grievously misunderstanding him--a far worse evil. How +many children are troubled in heart that Jesus should have spoken to his +mother as our translation compels them to suppose he did speak! "Woman, +what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come." His hour for +working the miracle _had_ come, for he wrought it; and if he had to do +with one human soul at all, that soul must be his mother. The "woman," +too, sounds strange in our ears. This last, however, is our fault: we +allow words to sink from their high rank, and then put them to degraded +uses. What word so full of grace and tender imagings to any true man as +that one word! The Saviour did use it to his mother; and when he called +her _woman_, the good custom of the country and the time was glorified +in the word as it came from his lips _fulfilled_, of humanity; for those +lips were the open gates of a heart full of infinite meanings. Hence +whatever word he used had more of the human in it than that word had +ever held before. + +What he did say was this--"Woman, what is there common to thee and me? +My hour is not yet come." What! was not their humanity common to them? +Had she not been fit, therefore chosen, to bear him? Was she not his +mother? But his words had no reference to the relation between them; +they only referred to the present condition of her mind, or rather the +nature of the thought and expectation which now occupied it. Her hope +and his intent were at variance; there was no harmony between his +thought and hers; and it was to that thought and that hope of hers that +his words were now addressed. To paraphrase the words--and if I do so +with reverence and for the sake of the spirit which is higher than the +word, I think I am allowed to do so-- + +"Woman, what is there in your thoughts now that is in sympathy with +mine? Also the hour that you are expecting is not come yet." + +What, then, was in our Lord's thoughts? and what was in his mother's +thoughts to call forth his words? She was thinking the time had come for +making a show of his power--for revealing what a great man he was--for +beginning to let that glory shine, which was, in her notion, to +culminate in the grandeur of a righteous monarch--a second Solomon, +forsooth, who should set down the mighty in the dust, and exalt them of +low degree. Here was the opportunity for working like a prophet of old, +and revealing of what a mighty son she was the favoured mother. + +And of what did the glow of her face, the light in her eyes, and the +tone with which she uttered the words, "They have no wine," make Jesus +think? Perhaps of the decease which he must accomplish at Jerusalem; +perhaps of a throne of glory betwixt the two thieves; certainly of a +kingdom of heaven not such as filled her imagination, even although +her heaven-descended Son was the king thereof. A kingdom of exulting +obedience, not of acquiescence, still less of compulsion, lay germed in +his bosom, and he must be laid in the grave ere that germ could send +up its first green lobes into the air of the human world. No throne, +therefore, of earthly grandeur for him! no triumph for his blessed +mother such as she dreamed! There was nothing common in their visioned +ends. Hence came the change of mood to Jesus, and hence the words that +sound at first so strange, seeming to have so little to do with the +words of his mother. + +But no change of mood could change a feeling towards mother or friends. +The former, although she could ill understand what he meant, never +fancied in his words any unkindness to her. She, too, had the face of +the speaker to read; and from that face came such answer to her prayer +for her friends, that she awaited no confirming words, but in the +confidence of a mother who knew her child, said at once to the servants, +"Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." + +If any one object that I have here imagined too much, I would remark, +first, that the records in the Gospel are very brief and condensed; +second, that the germs of a true intelligence must lie in this small +seed, and our hearts are the soil in which it must unfold itself; third, +that we are bound to understand the story, and that the foregoing are +the suppositions on which I am able to understand it in a manner worthy +of what I have learned concerning Him. I am bound to refuse every +interpretation that seems to me unworthy of Him, for to accept such +would be to sin against the Holy Ghost. If I am wrong in my idea either +of that which I receive or of that which I reject, as soon as the fact +is revealed to me I must cast the one away and do justice to the other. +Meantime this interpretation seems to me to account for our Lord's words +in a manner he will not be displeased with even if it fail to reach +the mark of the fact. That St John saw, and might expect such an +interpretation to be found in the story, barely as he has told it, will +be rendered the more probable if we remember his own similar condition +and experience when he and his brother James prayed the Lord for the +highest rank in his kingdom, and received an answer which evidently +flowed from the same feeling to which I have attributed that given on +this occasion to his mother. + +"'Fill the water-pots with water.' And they filled them up to the brim. +'Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast.' And they bare +it. 'Thou hast kept the good wine until now.'" It is such a thing of +course that, when our Lord gave them wine, it would be of the best, that +it seems almost absurd to remark upon it. What the Father would make and +will make, and that towards which he is ever working, is _the Best;_ and +when our Lord turns the water into wine it must be very good. + +It is like his Father, too, not to withhold good wine because men abuse +it. Enforced virtue is unworthy of the name. That men may rise above +temptation, it is needful that they should have temptation. It is the +will of him who makes the grapes and the wine. Men will even call Jesus +himself a wine-bibber. What matters it, so long as he works as the +Father works, and lives as the Father wills? + +I dare not here be misunderstood. God chooses that men should be tried, +but let a man beware of tempting his neighbour. God knows how and how +much, and where and when: man is his brother's keeper, and must keep him +according to his knowledge. A man may work the will of God for others, +and be condemned therein because he sought his own will and not God's. +That our Lord gave this company wine, does not prove that he would have +given any company wine. To some he refused even the bread they requested +at his hands. Because he gave wine to the wedding-guests, shall man dig +a pit at the corner of every street, that the poor may fall therein, +spending their money for that which is not bread, and their labour for +that which satisfieth not? Let the poor man be tempted as God wills, for +the end of God is victory; let not man tempt him, for his end is his +neighbour's fall, or at best he heeds it not for the sake of gain, and +he shall receive according to his works. + +To him who can thank God with free heart for his good wine, there is a +glad significance in the fact that our Lord's first miracle was this +turning of water into wine. It is a true symbol of what he has done for +the world in glorifying all things. With his divine alchemy he turns not +only water into wine, but common things into radiant mysteries, yea, +every meal into a eucharist, and the jaws of the sepulchre into an +outgoing gate. I do not mean that he makes any change in the things or +ways of God, but a mighty change in the hearts and eyes of men, so that +God's facts and God's meanings become their faiths and their hopes. The +destroying spirit, who works in the commonplace, is ever covering the +deep and clouding the high. For those who listen to that spirit great +things cannot be. Such are there, but they cannot see them, for in +themselves they do not aspire. They believe, perhaps, in the truth and +grace of their first child: when they have spoiled him, they laugh +at the praises of childhood. From all that is thus low and wretched, +incapable and fearful, he who made the water into wine delivers men, +revealing heaven around them, God in all things, truth in every +instinct, evil withering and hope springing even in the path of the +destroyer. + +That the wine should be his first miracle, and that the feeding of the +multitudes should be the only other creative miracle, will also suggest +many thoughts in connection with the symbol he has left us of his +relation to his brethren. In the wine and the bread of the eucharist, he +reminds us how utterly he has given, is giving, himself for the gladness +and the strength of his Father's children. Yea more; for in that he is +the radiation of the Father's glory, this bread and wine is the symbol +of how utterly the Father gives himself to his children, how earnestly +he would have them partakers of his own being. If Jesus was the son of +the Father, is it hard to believe that he should give men bread and +wine? + +It was not his power, however, but his glory, that Jesus showed forth +in the miracle. His power could not be hidden, but it was a poor thing +beside his glory. + +Yea, power in itself is a poor thing. If it could stand alone, which it +cannot, it would be a horror. No amount of lonely power could create. +It is the love that is at the root of power, the power of power, which +alone can create. What then was this his glory? What was it that made +him glorious? It was that, like his Father, he ministered to the wants +of men. Had they not needed the wine, not for the sake of whatever show +of his power would he have made it. The concurrence of man's need and +his love made it possible for that glory to shine forth. It is for this +glory most that we worship him. But power is no object of adoration, and +they who try to worship it are slaves. Their worship is no real worship. +Those who trembled at the thunder from the mountain went and worshipped +a golden calf; but Moses went into the thick darkness to find his God. + +How far the expectation of the mother Mary that her son would, by +majesty of might, appeal to the wedding guests, and arouse their +enthusiasm for himself, was from our Lord's thoughts, may be well seen +in the fact that the miracle was not beheld even by the ruler of the +feast; while the report of it would probably receive little credit from +at least many of those who partook of the good wine. So quietly was it +done, so entirely without pre-intimation of his intent, so stolenly, as +it were, in the two simple ordered acts, the filling of the water-pots +with water, and the drawing of it out again, as to make it manifest that +it was done for the ministration. He did not do it even for the show +of his goodness, but _to be good_. This alone could show his Father's +goodness. It was done because here was an opportunity in which all +circumstances combined with the bodily presence of the powerful and the +prayer of his mother, to render it fit that the love of his heart should +go forth in giving his merry-making brothers and sisters more and better +wine to drink. + +And herein we find another point in which this miracle of Jesus +resembles the working of his Father. For God ministers to us so gently, +so stolenly, as it were, with such a quiet, tender, loving absence of +display, that men often drink of his wine, as these wedding guests +drank, without knowing whence it comes--without thinking that the giver +is beside them, yea, in their very hearts. For God will not compel the +adoration of men: it would be but a pagan worship that would bring to +his altars. He will rouse in men a sense of need, which shall grow at +length into a longing; he will make them feel after him, until by their +search becoming able to behold him, he may at length reveal to them the +glory of their Father. He works silently--keeps quiet behind his works, +as it were, that he may truly reveal himself in the right time. With +this intent also, when men find his wine good and yet do not rise and +search for the giver, he will plague them with sore plagues, that the +good wine of life may not be to them, and therefore to him and the +universe, an evil thing. It would seem that the correlative of creation +is search; that as God has _made us_, we must _find_ him; that thus our +action must reflect his; that thus he glorifies us with a share in the +end of all things, which is that the Father and his children may be one +in thought, judgment, feeling, and intent, in a word, that they may +mean the same thing. St John says that Jesus thus "manifested forth +his glory, and his disciples believed on him." I doubt if any but his +disciples knew of the miracle; or of those others who might see or hear +of it, if any believed on him because of it. It is possible to see a +miracle, and not believe in it; while many of those who saw a miracle of +our Lord believed in the miracle, and yet did not believe in him. + +I wonder how many Christians there are who so thoroughly believe God +made them that they can laugh in God's name; who understand that God +invented laughter and gave it to his children. Such belief would add a +keenness to the zest in their enjoyment, and slay that sneering laughter +of which a man grimaces to the fiends, as well as that feeble laughter +in which neither heart nor intellect has a share. It would help them +also to understand the depth of this miracle. The Lord of gladness +delights in the laughter of a merry heart. These wedding guests could +have done without wine, surely without more wine and better wine. But +the Father looks with no esteem upon a bare existence, and is ever +working, even by suffering, to render life more rich and plentiful. +His gifts are to the overflowing of the cup; but when the cup would +overflow, he deepens its hollow, and widens its brim. Our Lord is +profuse like his Father, yea, will, at his own sternest cost, be lavish +to his brethren. He will give them wine indeed. But even they who know +whence the good wine comes, and joyously thank the giver, shall one day +cry out, like the praiseful ruler of the feast to him who gave it not, +"Thou hast kept the good wine until now." + + + + +III. THE CURE OF SIMON'S WIFE'S MOTHER. + + +In respect of the purpose I have in view, it is of little consequence in +what order I take the miracles. I choose for my second chapter the story +of the cure of St Peter's mother-in-law. Bare as the narrative is, +the event it records has elements which might have been moulded with +artistic effect--on the one side the woman tossing in the folds of the +fever, on the other the entering Life. But it is not from this side that +I care to view it. + +Neither do I wish to look at it from the point of view of the +bystanders, although it would appear that we had the testimony of three +of them in the three Gospels which contain the story. We might almost +determine the position in the group about the bed occupied by each of +the three, from the differences between their testimonies. One says +Jesus stood over her; another, he touched her hand; the third, he lifted +her up: they agree that the fever left her, and she ministered to +them.--In the present case, as in others behind, I mean to regard the +miracle from the point of view of the person healed. + +Pain, sickness, delirium, madness, as great infringements of the laws of +nature as the miracles themselves, are such veritable presences to the +human experience, that what bears no relation to their existence, cannot +be the God of the human race. And the man who cannot find his God in the +fog of suffering, no less than he who forgets his God in the sunshine of +health, has learned little either of St Paul or St John. The religion +whose light renders no dimmest glow across this evil air, cannot be more +than a dim reflex of the true. And who will mourn to find this out? +There are, perhaps, some so anxious about themselves that, rather than +say, "I have it not: it is a better thing than I have ever possessed," +they would say, "I have the precious thing, but in the hour of trial it +is of little avail." Let us rejoice that the glory is great, even if we +dare not say, It is mine. Then shall we try the more earnestly to lay +hold upon it. + +So long as men must toss in weary fancies all the dark night, crying, +"Would God it were morning," to find, it may be, when it arrives, but +little comfort in the grey dawn, so long must we regard God as one to be +seen or believed in--cried unto at least--across all the dreary flats of +distress or dark mountains of pain, and therefore those who would help +their fellows must sometimes look for him, as it were, through the eyes +of those who suffer, and try to help them to think, not from ours, but +from their own point of vision. I shall therefore now write almost +entirely for those to whom suffering is familiar, or at least well +known. And first I would remind them that all suffering is against the +ideal order of things. No man can love pain. It is an unlovely, an +ugly, abhorrent thing. The more true and delicate the bodily and mental +constitution, the more must it recoil from pain. No one, I think, could +dislike pain so much as the Saviour must have disliked it. God dislikes +it. He is then on our side in the matter. He knows it is grievous to +be borne, a thing he would cast out of his blessed universe, save for +reasons. + +But one will say--How can this help me when the agony racks me, and the +weariness rests on me like a gravestone?--Is it nothing, I answer, to be +reminded that suffering is in its nature transitory--that it is against +the first and final will of God--that it is a means only, not an end? +Is it nothing to be told that it will pass away? Is not that what you +would? God made man for lordly skies, great sunshine, gay colours, free +winds, and delicate odours; and however the fogs may be needful for the +soul, right gladly does he send them away, and cause the dayspring from +on high to revisit his children. While they suffer he is brooding over +them an eternal day, suffering with them but rejoicing in their future. +He is the God of the individual man, or he could be no God of the race. + +I believe it is possible--and that some have achieved it--so to believe +in and rest upon the immutable Health--so to regard one's own sickness +as a kind of passing aberration, that the soul is thereby sustained, +even as sometimes in a weary dream the man is comforted by telling +himself it is but a dream, and that waking is sure. God would have us +reasonable and strong. Every effort of his children to rise above +the invasion of evil in body or in mind is a pleasure to him. Few, I +suppose, attain to this; but there is a better thing which to many, I +trust, is easier--to say, Thy will be done. + +But now let us look at the miracle as received by the woman. + +She had "a great fever." She was tossing from side to side in vain +attempts to ease a nameless misery. Her head ached, and forms dreary, +even in their terror, kept rising before her in miserable and aimless +dreams; senseless words went on repeating themselves ill her very brain +was sick of them; she was destitute, afflicted, tormented; now the +centre for the convergence of innumerable atoms, now driven along in an +uproar of hideous globes; faces grinned and mocked at her; her mind +ever strove to recover itself, and was ever borne away in the rush of +invading fancies; but through it all was the nameless unrest, not an +aching, nor a burning, nor a stinging, but a bodily grief, dark, drear, +and nameless. How could they have borne such before He had come? + +A sudden ceasing of motions uncontrolled; a coolness gliding through +the burning skin; a sense of waking into repose; a consciousness of +all-pervading well-being, of strength conquering weakness, of light +displacing darkness, of urging life at the heart; and behold! she is +sitting up in her bed, a hand clasping hers, a face looking in hers. He +has judged the evil thing, and it is gone. He has saved her out of her +distresses. They fold away from off her like the cerements of death. She +is new-born--new-made--all things are new-born with her--and he who +makes all things new is there. From him, she knows, has the healing +flowed. He has given of his life to her. Away, afar behind her floats +the cloud of her suffering. She almost forgets it in her grateful joy. +She is herself now. She rises. The sun is shining. It had been shining +all the time--waiting for her. The lake of Galilee is glittering +joyously. That too sets forth the law of life. But the fulfilling of the +law is love: she rises and ministers. + +I am tempted to remark in passing, although I shall have better +opportunity of dealing with the matter involved, that there is no sign +of those whom our Lord cures desiring to retain the privileges of +the invalid. The joy of health is labour. He who is restored must be +fellow-worker with God. This woman, lifted out of the whelming sand of +the fever and set upon her feet, hastens to her ministrations. She has +been used to hard work. It is all right now; she must to it again. + +But who was he who had thus lifted her up? She saw a young man by her +side. Is it the young man, Jesus, of whom she has heard? for Capernaum +is not far from Nazareth, and the report of his wisdom and goodness must +have spread, for he had grown in favour with man as well as with God. Is +it he, to whom God has given such power, or is it John, of whom she has +also heard? Whether he was a prophet or a son of the prophets, whether +he was Jesus or John, she waits not to question; for here are guests; +here is something to be done. Questions will keep; work must be +despatched. It is the day, and the night is at hand. She rose and +ministered unto them. + +But if we ask who he is, this is the answer: He is the Son of God come +to do the works of his Father. Where, then, is the healing of the +Father? All the world over, in every man's life and knowledge, almost +in every man's personal experience, although it may be unrecognized +as such. For just as in certain moods of selfishness our hearts are +insensible to the tenderest love of our surrounding families, so the +degrading spirit of the commonplace _enables_ us to live in the midst of +ministrations, so far from knowing them as such, that it is hard for us +to believe that the very heart of God would care to do that which his +hand alone can do and is doing every moment. I remind my reader that I +have taken it for granted that he confesses there is a God, or at least +hopes there may be a God. If any one interposes, saying that science +nowadays will not permit him to believe in such a being, I answer it +is not for him I am now writing, but for such as have gone through a +different course of thought and experience from his. To him I may be +honoured to say a word some day. I do not think of him now. But to +the reader of my choice I do say that I see no middle course between +believing that every alleviation of pain, every dawning of hope across +the troubled atmosphere of the spirit, every case of growing well again, +is the doing of God, or that there is no God at all--none at least in +whom _I_ could believe. Had Christians been believing in God better, +more grandly, the present phase of unbelief, which no doubt is needful, +and must appear some time in the world's history, would not have +appeared in our day. No doubt it has come when it must, and will vanish +when it must; but those who do believe are more to blame for it, I +think, than those who do not believe. The common kind of belief in God +is rationally untenable. Half to an insensate nature, half to a living +God, is a worship that cannot stand. God is all in all, or no God at +all. The man who goes to church every Sunday, and yet trembles before +chance, is a Christian only because Christ has claimed him; is not a +Christian as having believed in Him. I would not be hard. There are so +many degrees in faith! A man may be on the right track, may be learning +of Christ, and be very poor and weak. But I say there is no _standing_ +room, no reality of reason, between absolute faith and absolute +unbelief. Either not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him, or there +is no God, and we are fatherless children. Those who attempt to live in +such a limbo as lies between the two, are only driven of the wind and +tossed. + +Has my reader ever known the weariness of suffering, the clouding of the +inner sky, the haunting of spectral shapes, the misery of disordered +laws, when nature is wrong within him, and her music is out of tune and +harsh, when he is shot through with varied griefs and pains, and it +seems as there were no life more in the world, save of misery--"pain, +pain ever, for ever"? Then, surely, he has also known the turn of the +tide, when the pain begins to abate, when the sweet sleep falls upon +soul and body, when a faint hope doubtfully glimmers across the gloom! +Or has he known the sudden waking from sleep and from fever at once, the +consciousness that life is life, that life is the law of things, the +coolness and the gladness, when the garments of pain which, like that +fabled garment of Dejanira, enwrapped and ate into his being, have +folded back from head and heart, and he looks out again once more +new-born? It is God. This is his will, his law of life conquering the +law of death Tell me not of natural laws, as if I were ignorant of them, +or meant to deny them. The question is whether these laws go wheeling +on of themselves in a symmetry of mathematical shapes, or whether +their perfect order, their unbroken certainty of movement, is not the +expression of a perfect intellect informed by a perfect heart. Law is +truth: has it a soul of thought, or has it not? If not, then farewell +hope and love and possible perfection. But for me, I will hope on, +strive on, fight with the invading unbelief; for the horror of being the +sport of insensate law, the more perfect the more terrible, is hell and +utter perdition. If a man tells me that science says God is not a likely +being, I answer, Probably not--such as you, who have given your keen, +admirable, enviable powers to the observation of outer things only, are +capable of supposing him; but that the God I mean may not be the very +heart of the lovely order you see so much better than I, you have given +me no reason to fear. My God may be above and beyond and in all that. + +In this matter of healing, then, as in all the miracles, we find Jesus +doing the works of the Father. God is our Saviour: the Son of God comes +healing the sick--doing that, I repeat, before our eyes, which the +Father, for his own reasons, some of which I think I can see well +enough, does from behind the veil of his creation and its laws. The cure +comes by law, comes by the physician who brings the law to bear upon us; +we awake, and lo! I it is God the Saviour. Every recovery is as much his +work as the birth of a child; as much the work of the Father as if +it had been wrought by the word of the Son before the eyes of the +multitude. + +Need I, to combat again the vulgar notion that the essence of the +miracles lies in their power, dwell upon this miracle further? Surely, +no one who honours the Saviour will for a moment imagine him, as he +entered the chamber where the woman lay tormented, saying to himself, +"Here is an opportunity of showing how mighty my Father is!" No. There +was suffering; here was healing. What I could imagine him saying to +himself would be, "Here I can help! Here my Father will let me put forth +my healing, and give her back to her people." What should we think of a +rich man, who, suddenly brought into contact with the starving upon his +own estate, should think within himself, "Here is a chance for me! Now I +can let them see how rich I am!" and so plunge his hands in his pockets +and lay gold upon the bare table? The receivers might well be grateful; +but the arm of the poor neighbour put under the head of the dying man, +would gather a deeper gratitude, a return of tenderer love. It is heart +alone that can satisfy heart. It is the love of God alone that can +gather to itself the love of his children. To believe in an almighty +being is hardly to believe in a God at all. To believe in a being +who, in his weakness and poverty, if such could be, would die for his +creatures, would be to believe in a God indeed. + + + + +IV. MIRACLES OF HEALING UNSOLICITED. + + +In my last chapter I took the healing of Simon's wife's mother as a +type of all such miracles, viewed from the consciousness of the person +healed. In the multitude of cases--for it must not be forgotten that +there was a multitude of which we have no individual record--the +experience must have been very similar. The evil thing, the antagonist +of their life, departed; they knew in themselves that they were healed; +they beheld before them the face and form whence the healing power had +gone forth, and they believed in the man. What they believed _about_ +him, farther than that he had healed them and was good, I cannot pretend +to say. Some said he was one thing, some another, but they believed in +the man himself. They felt henceforth the strongest of ties binding his +life to their life. He was now the central thought of their being. Their +minds lay open to all his influences, operating in time and by holy +gradations. The well of life was henceforth to them an unsealed +fountain, and endless currents of essential life began to flow from it +through their existence. High love urging gratitude awoke the conscience +to intenser life; and the healed began to recoil from evil deeds and +vile thoughts as jarring with the new friendship. Mere acquaintance with +a good man is a powerful antidote to evil; but the knowledge of _such_ +a man, as those healed by him knew him, was the mightiest of divine +influences. + +In these miracles of healing our Lord must have laid one of the largest +of the foundation-stones of his church. The healed knew him henceforth, +not by comprehension, but with their whole being. Their very life +acknowledged him. They returned to their homes to recall and love +afresh. I wonder what their talk about him was like. What an insight +it would give into our common nature, to know how these men and women +thought and spoke concerning him! But the time soon arrived when they +had to be public martyrs--that is, witnesses to what they knew, come of +it what might. After our Lord's departure came the necessity for those +who loved him to gather together, thus bearing their testimony at once. +Next to his immediate disciples, those whom he had cured must have been +the very heart of the young church. Imagine the living strength of such +a heart--personal love to the personal helper the very core of it. The +church had begun with the first gush of affection in the heart of the +mother Mary, and now "great was the company of those that published" the +good news to the world. The works of the Father had drawn the hearts of +the children, and they spake of the Elder Brother who had brought those +works to their doors. The thoughtful remembrances of those who had heard +him speak; the grateful convictions of those whom he had healed; +the tender memories of those whom he had taken in his arms and +blessed--these were the fine fibrous multitudinous roots which were to +the church existence, growth, and continuance, for these were they which +sucked in the dews and rains of that descending Spirit which was the +life of the tree. Individual life is the life of the church. + +But one may say: Why then did he not cure all the sick in Judæa? Simply +because all were not ready to be cured. Many would not have believed in +him if he had cured them. Their illness had not yet wrought its work, +had not yet ripened them to the possibility of faith; his cure would +have left them deeper in evil than before. "He did not many mighty works +there because of their unbelief." God will cure a man, will give him a +fresh start of health and hope, and the man will be the better for it, +even without having _yet_ learned to thank him; but to behold the healer +and acknowledge the outstretched hand of help, yet not to believe in the +healer, is a terrible thing for the man; and I think the Lord kept his +personal healing for such as it would bring at once into some relation +of heart and will with himself; whence arose his frequent demand of +faith--a demand apparently always responded to: at the word, the +flickering belief, the smoking flax, burst into a flame. Evil, that is, +physical evil, is a moral good--a mighty means to a lofty end. Pain is +an evil; but a good as well, which it would be a great injury to take +from the man before it had wrought its end. Then it becomes all evil, +and must pass. + +I now proceed to a group of individual cases in which, as far as we +can judge from the narratives, our Lord gave the gift of restoration +unsolicited. There are other instances of the same, but they fall into +other groups, gathered because of other features. + +The first is that, recorded by St Luke alone, of the "woman which had a +spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in +no wise lift up herself." It may be that this belongs to the class of +demoniacal possession as well, but I prefer to take it here; for I am +very doubtful whether the expression in the narrative--"a spirit of +infirmity," even coupled with that of our Lord in defending her and +himself from the hypocritical attack of the ruler of the synagogue, +"this woman--whom Satan hath bound," renders it necessary to regard +it as one of the latter kind. This is, however, a matter of small +importance--at least from our present point of view. + +Bowed earthwards, the necessary blank of her eye the ground and not +the horizon, the form divine deformed towards that of the four-footed +animals, this woman had been in bondage eighteen years. Necessary as it +is to one's faith to believe every trouble fitted for the being who has +to bear it, every physical evil not merely the result of moral evil, but +antidotal thereto, no one ought to dare judge of the relation between +moral condition and physical suffering in individual cases. Our Lord has +warned us from that. But in proportion as love and truth prevail in +the hearts of men, physical evil will vanish from the earth. The +righteousness of his descendants will destroy the disease which the +unrighteousness of their ancestor has transmitted to them. But, I +repeat, to destroy this physical evil save by the destruction of its +cause, by the redemption of the human nature from moral evil, would be +to ruin the world. What in this woman it was that made it right she +should bear these bonds for eighteen years, who can tell? Certainly it +was not that God had forgotten her. What it may have preserved her +from, one may perhaps conjecture, but can hardly have a right to utter. +Neither can we tell how she had borne the sad affliction; whether in the +lovely patience common amongst the daughters of affliction, or with +the natural repining of one made to behold the sun, and doomed ever to +regard the ground upon which she trod. While patience would have its +glorious reward in the cure, it is possible that even the repinings +of prideful pain might be destroyed by the grand deliverance, that +gratitude might beget sorrow for vanished impatience. Anyhow the right +hour had come when the darkness must fly away. + +Supported, I presume, by the staff which yet more assimilated her to the +lower animals, she had crept to the synagogue--a good sign surely, for +the synagogue was not its ruler. There is no appearance from the story, +that she had come there to seek Jesus, or even that when in his presence +she saw him before the word of her deliverance had gone forth. Most +likely, being bowed together, she heard him before she saw him. + +But he saw her. Our translation says he called her to him. I do not +think this is correct. I think the word, although it might mean that, +does mean simply that he _addressed her_. Going to her, I think, and +saying, "Woman, thou art loosed from thy infirmity," "he laid his hands +on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God." What +an uplifting!--a type of all that God works in his human beings. +The head, down-bent with sin, care, sorrow, pain, is uplifted; the +grovelling will sends its gaze heavenward; the earth is no more the +one object of the aspiring spirit; we lift our eyes to God; we bend no +longer even to his will, but raise ourselves up towards his will, for +his will has become our will, and that will is our sanctification. + +Although the woman did not beg the Son to cure her, she may have prayed +the Father much. Anyhow proof that she was ready for the miracle is not +wanting. She glorified God. It is enough. She not merely thanked the man +who had wrought the cure, for of this we cannot doubt; but she glorified +the known Saviour, God, from whom cometh down every good gift and every +perfect gift. + +She had her share in the miracle I think too, as, in his perfect bounty, +God gives a share to every one in what work He does for him. I mean, +that, with the given power, _she_ had to _lift herself_ up. Such active +faith is the needful response in order that a man may be a child of God, +and not the mere instrument upon which his power plays a soulless tune. + +In this preventing of prayer, in this answering before the call, in this +bringing of the blessing to the door, according to which I have grouped +this with the following miracles, Jesus did as his Father is doing +every day. He was doing the works of his Father. If men had no help, no +deliverance from the ills which come upon them, even those which they +bring upon themselves, except such as came at their cry; if no salvation +descended from God, except such as they prayed for, where would the +world be? in what case would the generations of men find themselves? But +the help of God is ever coming, ever setting them free whom Satan hath +bound; ever giving them a fresh occasion and a fresh impulse to glorify +the God of their salvation. For with every such recovery the child in +the man is new-born--for some precious moments at least; a gentleness of +spirit, a wonder at the world, a sense of the blessedness of being, an +openness to calm yet rousing influences, appear in the man. These are +the descending angels of God. The passion that had blotted out the child +will revive; the strife of the world will renew wrath and hate; ambition +and greed will blot out the beauty of the earth; envy of others will +blind the man to his own blessedness; and self-conceit will revive in +him all those prejudices whose very strength lies in his weakness; but +the man has had a glimpse of the peace to gain which he must fight with +himself; he has for one moment felt what he might be if he trusted in +God; and the memory of it may return in the hour of temptation. As +the commonest things in nature are the most lovely, so the commonest +agencies in humanity are the most powerful. Sickness and recovery +therefrom have a larger share in the divine order of things for the +deliverance of men than can show itself to the keenest eyes. Isolated +in individuals, the facts are unknown; or, slow and obscure in their +operation, are forgotten by the time their effects appear. Many things +combine to render an enlarged view of the moral influences of sickness +and recovery impossible. The kingdom cometh not with observation, and +the working of the leaven of its approach must be chiefly unseen. Like +the creative energy itself, it works "in secret shadow, far from all +men's sight." + +The teaching of our Lord which immediately follows concerning the small +beginnings of his kingdom, symbolized in the grain of mustard seed and +the leaven, may, I think, have immediate reference to the cure of this +woman, and show that he regarded her glorifying of God for her recovery +as one of those beginnings of a mighty growth. We do find the same +similes in a different connection in St Matthew and St Mark; but even if +we had no instances of fact, it would be rational to suppose that the +Lord, in the varieties of place, audience, and occasion, in the dullness +likewise of his disciples, and the perfection of the similes he chose, +would again and again make use of the same. + +I now come to the second miracle of the group, namely that, recorded +by all the Evangelists except St John, of the cure of the man with the +withered hand. This, like the preceding, was done in the synagogue. And +I may remark, in passing, that all of this group, with the exception of +the last--one of very peculiar circumstance--were performed upon the +Sabbath, and each gave rise to discussion concerning the lawfulness of +the deed. St Mark says they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal +the man on the Sabbath-day; St Luke adds that he knew their thoughts, +and therefore met them with the question of its lawfulness; St Matthew +says they challenged him to the deed Joy asking him whether it was +lawful. The mere watching could hardly have taken place without the +man's perceiving something in motion which had to do with him. But there +is no indication of a request. + +There cannot surely be many who have reached half the average life of +man without at some time having felt the body a burden in some way, and +regarded a possible deliverance from it as an enfranchisement. If the +spirit of man were fulfilled of the Spirit of God, the body would simply +be a living house, an obedient servant--yes, a humble mediator, by the +senses, between his thoughts and God's thoughts; but when every breath +has, as it were, to be sent for and brought hither with much labour +and small consolation--when pain turns faith into a mere shadow of +hope--when the withered limb hangs irresponsive, lost and cumbersome, an +inert simulacrum of power, swinging lifeless to and fro;--then even the +physical man understands his share in the groaning of the creation after +the sonship. When, at a word issuing from such a mouth as that of Jesus +of Nazareth, the poor, withered, distorted, contemptible hand obeyed +and, responsive to the spirit within, spread forth its fingers, filled +with its old human might, became capable once more of the grasp of +friendship, of the caress of love, of the labour for the bread that +sustains the life, little would the man care that other men--even rulers +of synagogues, even Scribes and Pharisees, should question the rectitude +of him who had healed him. The power which restored the gift of God and +completed humanity, must be of God. Argument upon argument might follow +from old books and old customs and learned interpretations, wherein man +set forth the will of God as different from the laws of his world, but +the man whose hand was restored whole as the other, knew it fitting that +his hands should match. They might talk; he would thank God for the +crooked made straight. Bewilder his judgment they might with their +glosses upon commandment and observance; but they could not keep his +heart from gladness; and, being glad, whom should he praise but God? If +there was another giver of good things he knew nothing of him. The hand +was now as God had meant it to be. Nor could he behold the face of +Jesus, and doubt that such a man would do only that which was right. It +was not Satan, but God that had set him free. + +Here, plainly by the record, our Lord gave the man his share, not of +mere acquiescence, but of active will, in the miracle. If man is the +child of God, he must have a share in the works of the Father. Without +such share in the work as faith gives, cure will be of little avail. +"Stretch forth thine hand," said the Healer; and the man made the +effort; and the withered hand obeyed, and was no more withered. _In_ the +act came the cure, without which the act had been confined to the will, +and had never taken form in the outstretching. It is the same in all +spiritual redemption. + +Think for a moment with what delight the man would employ his new hand. +This right hand would henceforth be God's hand. But was not the other +hand God's too?--God's as much as this? Had not the power of God been +always present in that left hand, whose unwithered life had ministered +to him all these years? Was it not the life of God that inspired +his whole frame? By the loss and restoration in one part, he would +understand possession in the whole. + +But as the withered and restored limb to the man, so is the maimed and +healed man to his brethren. In every man the power by which he does the +commonest things is the power of God. The power is not _of us_. Our +power does it; but we do not make the power. This, plain as it is, +remains, however, the hardest lesson for a man to learn with conviction +and thanksgiving. For God has, as it were, put us just so far away +from Him that we can exercise the divine thing in us, our own will, in +returning towards our source. Then we shall learn the fact that we are +infinitely more great and blessed in being the outcome of a perfect +self-constituting will, than we could be by the conversion of any +imagined independence of origin into fact for us--a truth no man _can_ +understand, feel, or truly acknowledge, save in proportion as he has +become one with his perfect origin, the will of God. While opposition +exists between the thing made and the maker, there can be but discord +and confusion in the judgment of the creature. No true felicitous vision +of the facts of the relation between his God and him; no perception of +the mighty liberty constituted by the holy dependence wherein the will +of God is the absolutely free choice of the man; no perception of a +unity such as cannot exist between independent wills, but only in +unspeakable love and tenderness between the causing Will and the caused +will, can yet have place. Those who cannot see how the human will should +be free in dependence upon the will of God, have not realized that the +will of God made the will of man; that, when most it pants for freedom, +the will of man is the child of the will of God, and therefore that +there can be no natural opposition or strife between them. Nay, more, +the whole labour of God is that the will of man should be free as his +will is free--in the same way that his will is free--by the perfect love +of the man for that which is true, harmonious, lawful, creative. If a +man say, "But might not the will of God make my will with the intent of +over-riding and enslaving it?" I answer, such a Will could not create, +could not be God, for it involves the false and contrarious. That would +be to make a will in order that it might be no will. To create in order +to uncreate is something else than divine. But a free will is not the +liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one +sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming +impulse. There lies freedom indeed. + +I come now to the case of the man who had been paralysed for +eight-and-thirty years. There is great pathos in the story. For many, +at least, of these years, the man had haunted the borders of legendary +magic, for I regard the statement about the angel troubling the pool as +only the expression of a current superstition. Oh, how different from +the healing of our Lord! What he had to bestow was free to all. The cure +of no man by his hand weakened that hand for the cure of the rest. None +were poorer that one was made rich. But this legend of the troubling +of the pool fostered the evil passion of emulation, and that in a most +selfish kind. Nowhere in the divine arrangements is my gain another's +loss. If it be said that this was the mode in which God determined which +was to be healed, I answer that the effort necessary was contrary to all +we admire most in humanity. According to this rule, Sir Philip Sidney +ought to have drunk the water which he handed to the soldier instead. +Does the doctrine of Christ, and by that I insist we must interpret the +ways of God, countenance a man's hurrying to be before the rest, and +gain the boon in virtue t of having the least need of it, inasmuch as +he was the ablest to run and plunge first into the eddies left by the +fantastic angel? Or if the triumph were to be gained by the help of +friends, surely he was in most need of the cure who like this man--a man +such as we hope there are few--had no friends either to plunge him +in the waters of fabled hope, or to comfort him in the seasons of +disappointment which alone divided the weary months of a life passed in +empty expectation. + +But the Master comes near. In him the power of life rests as in "its own +calm home, its crystal shrine," and he that believeth in him shall not +need to make haste. He knew it was time this man should be healed, and +did not wait to be asked. Indeed the man did not know him; did not even +know his name. "Wilt thou be made whole?" "Sir, I have no man, when +the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, +another steppeth down before me." "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk." + +Our Lord delays the cure in this case with no further speech. The man +knows nothing about him, and he makes no demand upon his faith, except +that of obedience. He gives him something to do at once. He will find +him again by and by. The man obeys, takes up his bed, and walks. + +He sets an open path before us; _we_ must walk in it. More, we must be +willing to believe that the path is open, that we have strength to walk +in it. God's gift glides into man's choice. It is needful that we should +follow with our effort in the track of his foregoing power. To refuse is +to destroy the gift. His cure is not for such as choose to be invalids. +They must be willing to be made whole, even if it should involve the +carrying of their beds and walking. Some keep in bed who have strength +enough to get up and walk. There is a self-care and a self-pity, a +laziness and conceit of incapacity, which are as unhealing for the body +as they are unhealthy in the mind, corrupting all dignity and destroying +all sympathy. Who but invalids need like miracles wrought in them? Yet +some invalids are not cured because they will not be healed. They will +not stretch out the hand; they will not rise; they will not walk; above +all things, they will not work. Yet for their illness it may be that +the work so detested is the only cure, or if no cure yet the best +amelioration. Labour is not in itself an evil like the sickness, but +often a divine, a blissful remedy. Nor is the duty or the advantage +confined to those who ought to labour for their own support. No amount +of wealth sets one free from the obligation to work--in a world the God +of which is ever working. He who works not has not yet discovered what +God made him for, and is a false note in the orchestra of the universe. +The possession of wealth is as it were pre-payment, and involves an +obligation of honour to the doing of correspondent work. He who does not +know what to do has never seriously asked himself what he ought to do. + +But there is a class of persons, the very opposite of these, who, as +extremes meet, fall into a similar fault. They will not be healed +either. They will not take the repose in which God giveth to his +beloved. Some sicknesses are to be cured with rest, others with labour. + +The right way is all--to meet the sickness as God would have it met, to +submit or to resist according to the conditions of cure. Whatsoever is +not of faith is sin; and she who will not go to her couch and rest in +the Lord, is to blame even as she who will not rise and go to her work. + +There is reason to suppose that this man had brought his infirmity upon +himself--I do not mean by the mere neglect of physical laws, but by the +doing of what he knew to be wrong. For the Lord, although he allowed +the gladness of the deliverance full sway at first, when he found him +afterwards did not leave him without the lesson that all health and +well-being depend upon purity of life: "Behold, thou art made whole: +sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee." It is the only case of +recorded cure in which Jesus gives a warning of the kind. Therefore I +think the probability is as I have stated it. Hence, the fact that we +may be ourselves to blame for our sufferings is no reason why we should +not go to God to deliver us from them. David the king knew this, and set +it forth in that grand poem, the 107th Psalm. + +In the very next case we find that Jesus will not admit the cause of the +man's condition, blindness from his birth, to be the sin either of the +man himself, or of his parents. The probability seems, to judge from +their behaviour in the persecution that followed, that both the man and +his parents were people of character, thought, and honourable prudence. +He was born blind, Jesus said, "that the works of God should be made +manifest in him." What works, then? The work of creation for one, rather +than the work of healing. The man had suffered nothing in being born +blind. God had made him only not so blessed as his fellows, with +the intent of giving him equal faculty and even greater enjoyment +afterwards, with the honour of being employed for the revelation of his +works to men. In him Jesus created sight before men's eyes. For, as at +the first God said, "Let there be light," so the work of God is still +to give light to the world, and Jesus must work his work, and _be_ the +light of the world--light in all its degrees and kinds, reaching into +every corner where work may be done, arousing sleepy hearts, and opening +blind eyes. + +Jesus saw the man, the disciples asked their question, and he had no +sooner answered it, than "he spat on the ground, made clay of the +spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay."--Why +this mediating clay? Why the spittle and the touch?--Because the man +who could not see him must yet be brought into sensible contact with +him--must know that the healing came from the man who touched him. Our +Lord took pains about it because the man was blind. And for the man's +share in the miracle, having blinded him a second time as it were with +clay, he sends him to the pool to wash it away: clay and blindness +should depart together by the act of the man's faith. It was as if the +Lord said, "I blinded thee: now, go and see." Here, then, are the links +of the chain by which the Lord bound the man to himself. The voice, if +heard by the man, which defended him and his parents from the judgment +of his disciples; the assertion that he was the light of the world--a +something which others had and the blind man only knew as not possessed +by him; the sound of the spitting on the ground; the touch of the +speaker's fingers; the clay on his eyes; the command to wash; the +journey to the pool; the laving water; the astonished sight. "He went +his way, therefore, and washed, and came seeing." + +But who can imagine, save in a conception only less dim than the man's +blindness, the glory which burst upon him when, as the restoring clay +left his eyes, the light of the world invaded his astonished soul? The +very idea may well make one tremble. Blackness of darkness--not an +invading stranger, but the home-companion always there--the negation +never understood because the assertion was unknown--creation not erased +and treasured in the memory, but to his eyes uncreated!--Blackness of +darkness!.... The glory of the celestial blue! The towers of the +great Jerusalem dwelling in the awful space! The room! The life! The +tenfold-glorified being! Any wonder might follow on such a wonder. And +the whole vision was as fresh as if he had that moment been created, the +first of men. + +But the best remained behind. A man had said, "I am the light of the +world," and lo! here was the light of the world. The words had been +vague as a dark form in darkness, but now the thing itself had invaded +his innermost soul. But the face of the man who was this light of the +world he had not seen. The creator of his vision he had not yet beheld. +But he believed in him, for he defended him from the same charge of +wickedness from which Jesus had defended him. "Give God the praise," +they said; "we know that this man is a sinner." "God heareth not +sinners," he replied; "and this man hath opened my eyes." It is no +wonder that when Jesus found him and asked him, "Dost thou believe on +the Son of God?" he should reply, "Who is he, Lord, that I might believe +on him?" He was ready. He had only to know which was he, that he might +worship him. Here at length was the Light of the world before him--the +man who had said, "I am the light of the world," and straightway the +world burst upon him in light! Would this man ever need further proof +that there was indeed a God of men? I suspect he had a grander idea +of the Son of God than any of his disciples as yet. The would-be +refutations of experience, for "since the world began was it not heard +that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind;" the objections +of the religious authorities, "This man is not of God, because he +keepeth not the Sabbath day;" endless possible perplexities of the +understanding, and questions of the _how_ and the _why_, could never +touch that man to the shaking of his confidence: "One thing I know, that +whereas I was blind, now I see." The man could not convince the Jews +that Jesus must be a good man; neither could he doubt it himself, whose +very being, body and soul and spirit, had been enlightened and glorified +by him. With light in the eyes, in the brain, in the heart, light +permeating and unifying his physical and moral nature, asserting itself +in showing the man to himself one whole--how could he doubt! + +The miracles were for the persons on whom they passed. To the spectators +they were something, it is true; but they were of unspeakable value to, +and of endless influence upon their subjects. The true mode in which +they reached others was through the healed themselves. And the testimony +of their lives would go far beyond the testimony of their tongues. Their +tongues could but witness to a fact; their lives could witness to a +truth. + +In this miracle as in all the rest, Jesus did in little the great work +of the Father; for how many more are they to whom God has given the +marvel of vision than those blind whom the Lord enlightened! The remark +will sound feeble and far-fetched to the man whose familiar spirit is +that Mephistopheles of the commonplace. He who uses his vision only +for the care of his body or the indulgence of his mind--how should he +understand the gift of God in its marvel? But the man upon whose soul +the grandeur and glory of the heavens and the earth and the sea and +the fountains of waters have once arisen will understand what a divine +_invention_, what a mighty gift of God is this very common thing--these +eyes to see with--that light which enlightens the world, this sight +which is the result of both. He will understand what a believer the man +born blind must have become, yea, how the mighty inburst of splendour +might render him so capable of believing that nothing should be too +grand and good for him to believe thereafter--not even the doctrine +hardest to commonplace humanity, though the most natural and reasonable +to those who have beheld it--that the God of the light is a faithful, +loving, upright, honest, and self-denying being, yea utterly devoted to +the uttermost good of those whom he has made. + +Such is the Father of lights who enlightens the world and every man that +cometh into it. Every pulsation of light on every brain is from him. +Every feeling of law and order is from him. Every hint of right, every +desire after the true, whatever we call aspiration, all longing for the +light, every perception that this is true, that that ought to be done, +is from the Father of lights. His infinite and varied light gathered +into one point--for how shall we speak at all of these things if we do +not speak in figures?--concentrated and embodied in Jesus, became _the_ +light of the world. For the light is no longer only diffused, but in him +man "beholds the light _and whence it flows_." Not merely is our chamber +enlightened, but we see the lamp. And so we turn again to God, the +Father of lights, yea even of The Light of the World. Henceforth we know +that all the light wherever diffused has its centre in God, as the light +that enlightened the blind man flowed from its centre in Jesus. In other +words, we have a glimmering, faint, human perception of the absolute +glory. We know what God is in recognizing him as our God. + +Jesus did the works of the Father. + +The next miracle--recorded by St Luke alone--is the cure of the man with +the dropsy, wrought also upon the Sabbath, but in the house of one +of the chief of the Pharisees. Thither our Lord had gone to an +entertainment, apparently large, for the following parable is spoken "to +those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief +rooms." + +[Footnote: 1. Not _rooms_, but _reclining places_ at the table.] Hence +the possibility at least is suggested, that the man was one of the +guests. No doubt their houses were more accessible than ours, and it +was not difficult for one uninvited to make his way in, especially upon +occasion of such a gathering. But I think the word translated _before +him_ means _opposite to him_ at the table; and that the man was not too +ill to appear as a guest. The "took him and healed him and let him go," +of our translation, is against the notion rather, but merely from its +indefiniteness being capable of meaning that he sent him away; but such +is not the meaning of the original. That merely implies that he _took +him_, went to him and laid his hands upon him, thus connecting the cure +with himself, and then released him, set him free, took his hands off +him, turning at once to the other guests and justifying himself by +appealing to their own righteous conduct towards the ass and the ox. I +think the man remained reclining at the table, to enjoy the appetite of +health at a good meal; if, indeed, the gladness of the relieved breath, +the sense of lightness and strength, the consciousness of a restored +obedience of body, not to speak of the presence of him who had cured +him, did not make him too happy to care about his dinner. I come now to +the last of the group, exceptional in its nature, inasmuch as it was +not the curing of a disease or natural defect, but the reparation of an +injury, or hurt at least, inflicted by one of his own followers. This +miracle also is recorded by St Luke alone. The other evangelists relate +the occasion of the miracle, but not the miracle itself; they record the +blow, but not the touch. I shall not, therefore, compare their accounts, +which have considerable variety, but no inconsistency. I shall confine +myself to the story as told by St Luke. Peter, intending, doubtless, to +cleave the head of a servant of the high priest who had come out to take +Jesus, with unaccustomed hand, probably trembling with rage and perhaps +with fear, missed his well-meant aim, and only cut off the man's ear. +Jesus said, "Suffer ye thus far." I think the words should have a point +of interrogation after them, to mean, "Is it thus far ye suffer?" "Is +this the limit of your patience?" but I do not know. With the words, "he +touched his ear and healed him." Hardly had the wound reached the true +sting of its pain, before the gentle hand of him whom the servant had +come to drag to the torture, dismissed the agony as if it had never +been. Whether he restored the ear, or left the loss of it for a reminder +to the man of the part he had taken against his Lord, and the return the +Lord had made him, we do not know. Neither do we know whether he turned +back ashamed and contrite, now that in his own person he had felt the +life that dwelt in Jesus, or followed out the capture to the end. +Possibly the blow of Peter was the form which the favour of God took, +preparing the way, like the blindness from the birth, for the glory that +was to be manifested in him. But the Lord would countenance no violence +done in his defence. They might do to him as they would. If his Father +would not defend him, neither would he defend himself. + +Within sight of the fearful death that awaited him, his heart was no +whit hardened to the pain of another. Neither did it make any difference +that it was the pain of an enemy--even an enemy who was taking him to +the cross. There was suffering; here was healing. He came to do the +works of him that sent him. He did good to them that hated him, for his +Father is the Saviour of men, saving "them out of their distresses." + + + + +V. MIRACLES OF HEALING SOLICITED BY THE SUFFERERS. + + +I come now to the second group of miracles, those granted to the +prayers of the sufferers. But before I make any general remarks on the +speciality of these, I must speak of one case which appears to lie +between the preceding group and this. It is that of the woman who came +behind Jesus in the crowd; and involves peculiar difficulties, in +connection with the facts which render its classification uncertain. + +At Capernaum, apparently, our Lord was upon his way with Jairus to visit +his daughter, accompanied by a crowd of people who had heard the request +of the ruler of the synagogue. A woman who had been ill for twelve +years, came behind him and touched the hem of his garment. This we may +regard as a prayer in so far as she came to him, saying "within herself, +If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole." But, on the other +hand, it was no true prayer in as far as she expected to be healed +without the knowledge and will of the healer. Although she came to him, +she did not ask him to heal her. She thought with innocent theft to +steal from him a cure. + +What follows according to St Matthew's account, occasions me no +difficulty. He does not say that the woman was cured by the touch; he +says nothing of her cure until Jesus had turned and seen her, and spoken +the word to her, whereupon he adds: "And the woman was made whole from +that hour." But St Mark and St Luke represent that the woman was cured +upon the touch, and that the cure was only confirmed afterwards by the +words of our Lord. They likewise represent Jesus as ignorant of what had +taken place, except in so far as he knew that, without his volition, +some cure had been wrought by contact with his person, of which he was +aware by the passing from him of a saving influence. By this, in the +heart of a crowd which pressed upon him so that many must have come into +bodily contact with him, he knew that some one had touched him with +special intent. No perplexity arises from the difference between the +accounts, for there is only difference, not incongruity: the two tell +more than the one; it is from the nature of the added circumstances that +it springs, for those circumstances necessarily involve inquiries of the +most difficult nature. Nor can I in the least pretend to have satisfied +myself concerning them. In the first place comes the mode of the cure, +which _seems_ at first sight (dissociated, observe, from the will of +the healer) to partake of the nature of magic--an influence without +a sufficient origin. Not for a moment would I therefore yield to an +inclination to reject the testimony. I have no right to do so, for +it deals with circumstances concerning which my ignorance is all but +complete. I cannot rest, however, without seeking to come into some +spiritual relation with the narrative, that is, to find some credible +supposition upon which, without derogating from the lustre of the object +of the whole history, the thing might take place. The difficulty, I +repeat, is, that the woman could be cured by the garment of Jesus, +without (not against) the will of Jesus. I think that the whole +difficulty arises from our ignorance--a helpless ignorance--of the +relations of thought and matter. I use the word _thought_ rather than +spirit, because in reflecting upon spirit (which is thought), people +generally represent to themselves a vague form of matter. All religion +is founded on the belief or instinct--call it what we will--that matter +is the result of mind, spirit, thought. The relation between them is +therefore simply too close, too near for us to understand. Here is what +I am able to suggest concerning the account of the miracle as given by +St Mark and St Luke. + +If even in what we call inanimate things there lies a healing power in +various kinds; if, as is not absurd, there may lie in the world absolute +cure existing in analysis, that is parted into a thousand kinds and +forms, who can tell what cure may lie in a perfect body, informed, yea, +caused, by a perfect spirit? If stones and plants can heal by the will +of God in them, might there not dwell in the perfect health of a body, +in which dwelt the Son of God, a necessarily healing power? It may seem +that in the fact of the many crowding about him, concerning whom we +have no testimony of influence received, there lies a refutation of +his supposition. But who can tell what he may have done even for them +without their recognizing it save in conscious well-being? Besides, +those who crowded nearest him would mostly be of the strongest who were +least in need of a physician, and in whose being consequently there lay +not that bare open channel hungering for the precious life-current. And +who can tell how the faith of the heart, calming or arousing the whole +nature, may have rendered the very person of the woman more fit than +the persons of others in the crowd to receive the sacred influence? For +although she did not pray, she had the faith as alive though as small as +the mustard seed. Why might not health from the fountain of health flow +then into the empty channel of the woman's weakness? It may have been +so. I shrink from the subject, I confess, because of the vulgar forms +such speculations have assumed in our days, especially in the hands of +those who savour unspeakably more of the charlatan than the prophet. +Still, one must be honest and truthful even in regard to what he has to +distinguish, as he can, into probable and impossible. Fact is not the +sole legitimate object of human inquiry. If it were, farewell to all +that elevates and glorifies human nature--farewell to God, to religion, +to hope! It is that which lies at the root of fact, yea, at the root of +law, after which the human soul hungers and longs. + +In the preceding remarks I have anticipated a chapter to follow--a +chapter of speculation, which may God make humble and right. But some +remark was needful here. What must be to some a far greater difficulty +has yet to be considered. It is the representation of the Lord's +ignorance of the cure, save from the reaction upon his own person of the +influence which went out from him to fill that vacuum of suffering which +the divine nature abhors: he did not know that his body was about to +radiate health. But this gives me no concern. Our Lord himself tells us +in one case, at least, that he did not know, that only his Father knew. +He could discern a necessary result in the future, but not the day or +the hour thereof. Omniscience is a consequence, not an essential of the +divine nature. God knows because he creates. The Father knows because he +orders. The Son knows because he obeys. The knowledge of the Father must +be perfect; such knowledge the Son neither needs nor desires. His +sole care is to do the will of the Father. Herein lies his essential +divinity. Although he knew that one of his apostles should betray him, I +doubt much whether, when he chose Judas, he knew that he was that one. +We must take his own words as true. Not only does he not claim perfect +knowledge, but he disclaims it. He speaks once, at least, to his Father +with an _if it be possible_. Those who believe omniscience essential to +divinity, will therefore be driven to say that Christ was not divine. +This will be their punishment for placing knowledge on a level with +love. No one who does so can worship in spirit and in truth, can lift +up his heart in pure adoration. He will suppose he does, but his heaven +will be in the clouds, not in the sky. + +But now we come to the holy of holies of the story--the divinest of its +divinity. Jesus could not leave the woman with the half of a gift. He +could not let her away so poor. She had stolen the half: she must fetch +the other half--come and take it from his hand. That is, she must know +who had healed her. Her will and his must come together; and for this +her eyes and his, her voice and his ears, her ears and his voice must +meet. It is the only case recorded in which he says _Daughter_. It could +not have been because she was younger than himself; there could not have +been much difference between their ages in that direction. Let us see +what lies in the word. + +With the modesty belonging to her as a woman, intensified by the painful +shrinking which had its origin in the peculiar nature of her suffering, +she dared not present herself to the eyes of the Lord, but thought +merely to gather from under his table a crumb unseen. And I do not +believe that our Lord in calling her had any desire to make her tell her +tale of grief, and, in her eyes, of shame. It would have been enough to +him if she had come and stood before him, and said nothing. Nor had she +to appear before his face with only that poor remnant of strength which +had sufficed to bring her to the hem of his garment behind him; for +now she knew in herself that she was healed of her plague, and the +consciousness must have been strength. Yet she trembled when she came. +Filled with awe and gratitude, she could not stand before him; she fell +down at his feet. There, hiding her face in her hands, I presume, she +forgot the surrounding multitude, and was alone in the chamber of her +consciousness with the Son of Man. Her love, her gratitude, her holy +awe unite in an impulse to tell him all. When the lower approaches the +higher in love, even between men, the longing is to be known; the prayer +is "Know me." This was David's prayer to God, "Search me and know me." +There should be no more concealment. Besides, painful as it was to her +to speak, he had a right to know all, and know it he should. It was her +sacrifice offered unto the Lord. She told him all the truth. To conceal +anything from him now would be greater pain than to tell all, for the +thing concealed would be as a barrier between him and her; she would be +simple--one-fold; her whole being should lie open before him. I do not +for a moment mean that such thoughts, not to say words, took shape in +her mind; but sometimes we can represent a single consciousness only by +analysing it into twenty thoughts. And he accepted the offering. He let +her speak, and tell all. + +But it was painful. He understood it well. His heart yearned towards the +woman to shield her from her own innocent shame, to make as it were a +heaven about her whose radiance should render it "by clarity invisible." +Her story appealed to all that was tenderest in humanity; for the secret +which her modesty had hidden, her conscience had spoken aloud. Therefore +the tenderest word that the language could afford must be hers. +"Daughter," he said. It was the fullest reward, the richest +acknowledgment he could find of the honour in which he held her, his +satisfaction with her conduct, and the perfect love he bore her. The +degrading spirit of which I have spoken, the spirit of the commonplace, +which lowers everything to the level of its own capacity of belief, will +say that the word was an eastern mode in more common use than with us. I +say that whatever Jesus did or said, he did and said like other men--he +did and said as no other man did or said. If he said _Daughter_, it +meant what any man would mean by it; it meant what no man could mean by +it--what no man was good enough, great enough, loving enough to mean +by it. In him the Father spoke to this one the eternal truth of his +relation to all his daughters, to all the women he has made, though +individually it can be heard only by those who lift up the filial eyes, +lay bare the filial heart. He did the works, he spoke the words of him +that sent him. Well might this woman, if she dared not lift the downcast +eye before the men present, yet depart in shameless peace: he who had +healed her had called her _Daughter_. Everything on earth is paltry +before such a word. It was the deepest gift of the divine nature--the +recognition of the eternal in her by him who had made it. Between the +true father and the true daughter nothing is painful. I think also that +very possibly some compunction arose in her mind, the moment she knew +herself healed, at the mode in which she had gained her cure. Hence +when the Lord called her she may have thought he was offended with her +because of it. Possibly her contrition for the little fault, if fault +indeed it was, may have increased the agony of feeling with which she +forced rather than poured out her confession. But he soothes her with +gentle, consoling, restoring words: "Be of good comfort." He heals the +shy suffering spirit, "wherein old dints of deep wounds did remain." He +confirms the cure she feared perhaps might be taken from her again. "Go +in peace, and be whole of thy plague." Nay, more, he attributes her +cure to her own faith. "Thy faith hath made thee whole." What wealth +of tenderness! She must not be left in her ignorance to the danger of +associating power with the mere garment of the divine. She must be +brought face to face with her healer. She must not be left kneeling on +the outer threshold of the temple. She must be taken to the heart of the +Saviour, and so redeemed, then only redeemed utterly. There is no word, +no backward look of reproach upon the thing she had condemned. If it was +evil it was gone from between them for ever. Confessed, it vanished. Her +faith was an ignorant faith, but, however obscured in her consciousness, +it was a true faith. She believed in the man, and our Lord loved the +modesty that kept her from pressing into his presence. It may indeed +have been the very strength of her faith working in her ignorance that +caused her to extend his power even to the skirts of his garments. And +there he met the ignorance, not with rebuke, but with the more grace. If +even her ignorance was so full of faith, of what mighty confidence was +she not capable! Even the skirt of his garment would minister to such a +faith. It should be as she would. Through the garment of his Son, the +Father would cure her who believed enough to put forth her hand and +touch it. The kernel-faith was none the worse that it was closed in the +uncomely shell of ignorance and mistake. The Lord was satisfied with it. +When did he ever quench the smoking flax? See how he praises her. He is +never slow to commend. The first quiver of the upturning eyelid is to +him faith. He welcomes the sign, and acknowledges it; commends the +feeblest faith in the ignorant soul, rebukes it as little only in +apostolic souls where it ought to be greater. "Thy faith hath saved +thee." However poor it was, it was enough for that. Between death and +the least movement of life there is a gulf wider than that fixed between +the gates of heaven and the depths of hell. He said "_Daughter_." + +I come now to the first instance of plain request--that of the leper who +fell down before him, saying, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me +clean"--a prayer lovely in the simplicity of its human pleading--appeal +to the power which lay in the man to whom he spoke: his power was the +man's claim; the relation between them was of the strongest--that +between plenty and need, between strength and weakness, between health +and disease--poor bonds comparatively between man and man, for man's +plenty, strength, and health can only supplement, not satisfy the need; +support the weakness, not change it into strength; mitigate the disease +of his fellow, not slay it with invading life; but in regard to God, all +whose power is creative, any necessity of his creatures is a perfect +bond between them and him; his magnificence must flow into the channels +of the indigence he has created. + +Observe how Jesus responds in the terms of the man's request. The woman +found the healing where she sought it--in the hem of his garment. One +man says, "Come with me;" the Lord goes. Another says, "Come not under +my roof, I am not worthy;" the Lord remains. Here the man says, "If thou +wilt;" the Lord answers, "I will." But he goes far beyond the man's +request. + +I need say nothing of the grievous complaint under which he laboured. +It was sore to the mind as well as the body, for it made of the man an +outcast and ashamed. No one would come near him lest he should share his +condemnation. Physical evil had, as it were, come to the surface in him. +He was "full of leprosy." Men shrink more from skin-diseases than from +any other.[2] [Footnote 2: And they are amongst the hardest to cure; +just as the skin-diseases of the soul linger long after the heart is +greatly cured. Witness the petulance, fastidiousness, censoriousness, +social self-assertion, general disagreeableness of so many good +people--all in the moral skin--repulsive exceedingly. I say good people; +I do not say _very good_, nor do I say Christ-_like_, for that they are +not.] + +Jesus could have cured him with a word. There was no need he should +touch him. _No need_ did I say? There was every need. For no one else +would touch him. The healthy human hand, always more or less healing, +was never laid on him; he was despised and rejected. It was a poor thing +for the Lord to cure his body; he must comfort and cure his sore heart. +Of all men a leper, I say, needed to be touched with the hand of love. +Spenser says, "Entire affection hateth nicer hands." It was not for our +master, our brother, our ideal man, to draw around him the skirts of his +garments and speak a lofty word of healing, that the man might at least +be clean before he touched him. The man was his brother, and an evil +disease cleaved fast unto him. Out went the loving hand to the ugly +skin, and there was his brother as he should be--with the flesh of a +child. I thank God that the touch went before the word. Nor do I think +it was the touch of a finger, or of the finger-tips. It was a kindly +healing touch in its nature as in its power. Oh blessed leper! thou +knowest henceforth what kind of a God there is in the earth--not the God +of the priests, but a God such as himself only can reveal to the hearts +of his own. That touch was more than the healing. It was to the leper +what the word _Daughter_ was to the woman in the crowd, what the +_Neither do I_ was to the woman in the temple--the sign of the perfect +presence. Outer and inner are one with him: the outermost sign is the +revelation of the innermost heart. + +Let me linger one moment upon this coming together of creative health +and destroying disease. The health must flow forth; the disease could +not enter: Jesus was not defiled by the touch. Not that even if he would +have been, he would have shrunk and refrained; he respected the human +body in most evil case, and thus he acknowledged it his own. But my +reader must call up for himself the analogies--only I cannot admit that +they are mere analogies--between the cure of the body and the cure of +the soul: here they were combined in one act, for that touch went to the +man's heart. I can only hint at them here. Hand to hand is enough for +the cure of the bodily disease; but heart to heart will Jesus visit +the man who in deepest defilement of evil habits, yet lifts to him a +despairing cry. The healthful heart of the Lord will cure the heart +spotted with the plague: it will come again as the heart of a child. +_Only this kind goeth not out save by prayer and abstinence_. + +The Lord gave him something to do at once, and something not to do. He +was to go to the priest, and to hold his tongue. It is easier to do than +to abstain; he went to the priest; he did not hold his tongue. + +That the Lord should send him to the priest requires no explanation. +The sacred customs of his country our Lord in his own person constantly +recognized. That he saw in them more than the priests themselves was no +reason for passing them by. The testimony which he wished the man to +bear concerning him lay in the offering of the gift which Moses had +commanded. His healing was in harmony with all the forms of the ancient +law; for it came from the same source, and would in the lapse of ages +complete what the law had but begun. This the man was to manifest for +him. The only other thing he required of him--silence--the man would +not, at least did not, yield. The probability is that he needed the +injunction for his own sake more than for the master's sake; that he was +a talkative, demonstrative man, whose better life was ever in danger of +evaporating in words; and that the Lord required silence of him, that he +might think, and give the seed time to root itself well before it shot +its leaves out into the world. Are there not some in our own day, who, +having had a glimpse of truth across the darkness of a moral leprosy, +instantly begin to blaze abroad the matter, as if it were their part at +once to call to their fellows, and teach them out of an intellectual +twilight, in which they can as yet see men only as trees walking, +instead of retiring into the wilderness, for a time at least, to commune +with their own hearts, and be still? But he meant well, nor is it any +wonder that such a man should be incapable of such a sacrifice. The Lord +had touched him. His nature was all in commotion with gratitude. His +self-conceit swelled high. His tongue would not be still. Perhaps he +judged himself a leper favoured above his fellow-lepers. Nothing would +more tend to talkativeness than such a selfish mistake. He would be +grateful. He would befriend his healer against his will. He would work +for him--alas! only to impede the labours of the Wise; for the Lord +found his popularity a great obstacle to the only success he sought. "He +went out and began to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could +no more openly enter into the city." His nature could not yet understand +the kingdom that cometh not with observation, and from presumption +mingled with affection, he would serve the Lord after a better fashion +than that of doing his will. And he had his reward. He had his share in +bringing his healer to the cross. + +Obedience is the only service. + + * * * * * + +I take now the cure of the ten lepers, done apparently in a village of +Galilee towards Samaria. They stood afar off in a group, probably afraid +of offending him by any nearer approach, and cried aloud, "Jesus, +Master, have mercy on us." Instead of at once uttering their cure, he +desired them to go and show themselves to the priests. This may have +been partly for the sake of the priests, partly perhaps for the +justification of his own mission, but more certainly for the sake of the +men themselves, that he might, in accordance with his frequent practice, +give them something wherein to be obedient. It served also, as the +sequel shows, to individualize their relation to him. The relation as a +group was not sufficient for the men. Between him and them it must be +the relation of man to man. Individual faith must, as it were, break up +the group--to favour a far deeper reunion. Its bond was now a common +suffering; it must be changed to a common faith in the healer of it. His +intention wrought in them--at first with but small apparent result. They +obeyed, and went to go to the priests, probably wondering whether they +would be healed or not, for the beginnings of faith are so small that +they can hardly be recognized as such. Going, they found themselves +cured. Nine of them held on their way, obedient; while the tenth, +forgetting for the moment in his gratitude the word of the Master, +turned back and fell at his feet. A moral martinet, a scribe, or a +Pharisee, might have said "The nine were right, the tenth was wrong: he +ought to have kept to the letter of the command." Not so the Master: he +accepted the gratitude as the germ of an infinite obedience. Real love +is obedience and all things beside. The Lord's own devotion was that +which burns up the letter with the consuming fire of love, fulfilling +and setting it aside. High love needs no letter to guide it. Doubtless +the letter is all that weak faith is capable of, and it is well for +those who keep it! But it is ill for those who do not outgrow and forget +it! Forget it, I say, _by outgrowing it_. The Lord cared little for the +letter of his own commands; he cared all for the spirit, for that was +life. + +This man was a stranger, as the Jews called him, a Samaritan. Therefore +the Lord praised him to his followers. It was as if he had said, "See, +Jews, who think yourselves the great praisers of God! here are ten +lepers cleansed: where are the nine? One comes back to glorify God--a +Samaritan!" To the man himself he says, "Arise, go thy way; thy faith +hath made thee whole." Again this commending of individual faith! "Was +it not the faith of the others too that had healed them?" Doubtless. If +they had had enough to bring them back, he would have told them that +their faith had saved them. But they were content to be healed, and +until their love, which is the deeper faith, brought them to the +Master's feet, their faith was not ripe for praise. But it was not for +their blame, it was for the Samaritan's praise that he spoke. Probably +this man's faith had caused the cry of all the ten; probably he was the +salt of the little group of outcasts--the tenth, the righteous man. +Hence they were contented, for the time, with their cure: he forgot the +cure itself in his gratitude. A moment more, and with obedient feet he +would overtake them on their way to the priest. + +I may not find a better place for remarking on the variety of our Lord's +treatment of those whom he cured; that is, the variety of the form in +which he conveyed the cure. In the record I do not think we find two +cases treated in the same manner. There is no massing of the people with +him. In his behaviour to men, just as in their relation to his Father, +every man is alone with him. In this case of the ten, as I have said, I +think he sent them away, partly, that this individuality might have an +opportunity of asserting itself. They had stood afar off, therefore he +could not lay the hand of love on each. But now one left the group +and brought his gratitude to the Master's feet, and with a loud voice +glorified God the Healer. + +In reflecting then on the details of the various cures we must seek the +causes of their diversity mainly in the individual differences of the +persons cured, not forgetting, at the same time, that all the accounts +are brief, and that our capacity is poor for the task. The whole divine +treatment of man is that of a father to his children--only a father +infinitely more a father than any man can be. Before him stands each, as +much an individual child as if there were no one but him. The relation +is awful in its singleness. Even when God deals with a nation as a +nation, it is only as by this dealing the individual is aroused to +a sense of his own wrong, that he can understand how the nation has +sinned, or can turn himself to work a change. The nation cannot change +save as its members change; and the few who begin the change are the +elect of that nation. Ten righteous individuals would have been just +enough to restore life to the festering masses of Sodom--festering +masses because individual life had ceased, and the nation or community +was nowhere. Even nine could not do it: Sodom must perish. The +individuals must perish now; the nation had perished long since. All +communities are for the divine sake of individual life, for the sake of +the love and truth that is in each heart, and is not cumulative--cannot +be in two as one result. But all that is precious in the individual +heart depends for existence on the relation the individual bears to +other individuals: alone--how can he love? alone--where is his truth? It +is for and by the individuals that the individual lives. A community is +the true development of individual relations. Its very possibility lies +in the conscience of its men and women. No setting right can be done in +the _mass_. There are no masses save in corruption. Vital organizations +result alone from individualities and consequent necessities, which +fitting the one into the other, and working for each other, make +combination not only possible but unavoidable. Then the truth which has +_informed_ in the community reacts on the individual to perfect his +individuality. In a word, the man, in virtue of standing alone in God, +stands _with_ his fellows, and receives from them divine influences +without which he cannot be made perfect. It is in virtue of the living +consciences of its individuals that a common conscience is possible to a +nation. + +I cannot work this out here, but I would avoid being misunderstood. +Although I say, every man stands alone in God, I yet say two or many can +meet in God as they cannot meet save in God; nay, that only in God can +two or many truly meet; only as they recognize their oneness with God +can they become one with each other. + +In the variety then of his individual treatment of the sick, Jesus did +the works of his Father _as_ his Father does them. For the Spirit of +God speaks to the spirit of the man, and the Providence of God arranges +everything for the best good of the individual--counting the very hairs +of his head. Every man had a cure of his own; every woman had a cure +of her own--all one and the same in principle, each individual in the +application of the principle. This was the foundation of the true +church. And yet the members of that church will try to separate upon +individual and unavoidable differences! + +But once more the question recurs: Why say so often that this and +that one's faith had saved him? Was it not enough that he had saved +them?--Our Lord would knit the bond between him and each man by arousing +the man's individuality, which is, in deepest fact, his conscience. The +cure of a man depended upon no uncertain or arbitrary movement of the +feelings of Jesus. He was always ready to heal. No one was ever refused +who asked him. It rested with the man: the healing could not have its +way and enter in, save the man would open his door. It was there for him +if he would take it, or rather when he would allow him to bestow it. +Hence the question and the praise of the patient's faith. There was no +danger then of that diseased self-consciousness which nowadays is always +asking, "Have I faith? Have I faith?" searching, in fact, for grounds of +self-confidence, and turning away the eyes in the search from the only +source whence confidence can flow--the natal home of power and love. How +shall faith be born but of the beholding of the faithful? This diseased +self-contemplation was not indeed a Jewish complaint at all, nor +possible in the bodily presence of the Master. Hence the praise given +to a man's faith could not hurt him; it only made him glad and more +faithful still. This disease itself is in more need of his curing hand +than all the leprosies of Judaea and Samaria. + +The cases which remain of this group are of blind men--the first, that +recorded by St Matthew of the two who followed Jesus, crying, "Thou Son +of David, have mercy on us." He asked them if they believed that he was +able to do the thing for them, drawing, I say, the bond between them +closer thereby. They said they did believe it, and at once he touched +their eyes--again the bodily contact, as in the case of the blind man +already considered--especially needful in the case of the blind, to +associate the healing with the healer. But there are differences between +the cases. The man who had not asked to be healed was as it were put +through a longer process of cure--I think that his faith and his will +might be called into exercise; and the bodily contact was made closer to +help the development of his faith and will: he made clay and put it +on his eyes, and the man had to go and wash. Where the prayer and the +confession of faith reveal the spiritual contact already effected, the +cure is immediate. "According to your faith," the Lord said, "be it unto +you." + +On these men, as on the leper, he laid the charge of silence, by them, +as by him, sadly disregarded. The fact that he went into the house, and +allowed them to follow him there before he cured them, also shows that +he desired in their case, doubtless because of circumstances, to avoid +publicity, a desire which they foiled. Their gladness overcame, if not +their gratitude, yet the higher faith that is one with obedience. When +the other leper turned back to speak his gratitude, it was but the delay +of a moment in the fulfilling of the command. But the gratitude that +disobeys an injunction, that does what the man is told not to do, and +so plunges into the irretrievable, is a virtue that needs a development +amounting almost to a metamorphosis. + +In the one remaining case there is a slight confusion in the records. St +Luke says that it was performed as Jesus entered into Jericho; St Mark +says it was as he went out of Jericho, and gives the name and parentage +of the blind beggar; indeed his account is considerably more minute than +that of the others. St Matthew agrees with St Mark as to the occasion, +but says there were two blind men. We shall follow the account of St +Mark. + +Bartimaeus, having learned the cause of the tumultuous passing of feet, +calls, like those former two blind men, upon the Son of David to have +mercy on him.[3] [Footnote 3: In these two cases, the cry is upon the +_Son of David_: I wonder if this had come to be considered by the blind +the correct formula of address to the new prophet. But the cases are +almost too few to justify even a passing conjecture at generalization.] + +The multitude finds fault with his crying and calling. I presume he was +noisy in his eagerness after his vanished vision, and the multitude +considered it indecorous. Or perhaps the rebuke arose from that common +resentment of a crowd against any one who makes himself what they +consider unreasonably conspicuous, claiming a share in the attention +of the potentate to which they cannot themselves pretend. But the Lord +stops, and tells them to call the man; and some of them, either being +his friends, or changing their tone when the great man takes notice of +him, begin to congratulate and comfort him. He, casting away his garment +in his eagerness, rises, and is led through the yielding crowd to +the presence of the Lord. To enter in some degree into the personal +knowledge of the man before curing him, and to consolidate his faith, +Jesus, the tones of whose voice, full of the life of God, the cultivated +hearing of a blind man would be best able to interpret, began to talk a +little with him. + +"What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?" + +"Lord, that I might receive my sight." + +"Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole." + +Immediately he saw; and the first use he made of his sight was to follow +him who had given it. + +Neither St Mark nor St Luke, whose accounts are almost exactly the same, +says that he touched the man's eyes. St Matthew says he touched the eyes +of the _two_ blind men whom his account places in otherwise identical +circumstances. With a surrounding crowd who knew them, I think the +touching was less necessary than in private; but there is no need to +inquire which is the more correct account. The former two may have +omitted a fact, or St Matthew _may_ have combined the story with that of +the two blind men already noticed, of which he is the sole narrator. But +in any case there are, I think, but two recorded instances of the blind +praying for cure. Most likely there were more, perhaps there were many +such. + +I have now to consider, as suggested by the idea of this group, the +question of prayer generally; for Jesus did the works of him who sent +him: as Jesus did so God does. + +I have not seen an argument against what is called the efficacy of +prayer which appears to me to have any force but what is derived from +some narrow conception of the divine nature. If there be a God at all, +it is absurd to suppose that his ways of working should be such as to +destroy his side of the highest relation that can exist between him and +those whom he has cared to make--to destroy, I mean, the relation of the +will of the creator to the individual will of his creature. That God +should bind himself in an iron net of his own laws--that his laws should +bind him in any way, seeing they are just his nature in action--is +sufficiently absurd; but that such laws should interfere with his +deepest relation to his creatures, should be inconsistent with the +highest consequences of that creation which alone gives occasion for +those laws--that, in fact, the will of God should be at strife with the +foregoing action of God, not to say with the very nature of God--that he +should, with an unchangeable order of material causes and effects, cage +in for ever the winged aspirations of the human will which he has made +in the image of his own will, towards its natural air of freedom in His +will, would be pronounced inconceivable, were it not that it has been +conceived and uttered--conceived and uttered, however, only by minds to +which the fact of this relation was, if at all present, then only in the +vaguest and most incomplete form. That he should not leave himself any +_willing_ room towards those to whom he gave need, room to go wrong, +will to turn and look up and pray and hope, is to me grotesquely absurd. +It is far easier to believe that as both--the laws of nature, namely, +and the human will--proceed from the same eternally harmonious thought, +they too are so in harmony, that for the perfect operation of either no +infringement upon the other is needful; and that what seems to be such +infringement would show itself to a deeper knowledge of both as a +perfectly harmonious co-operation. Nor would it matter that we know so +little, were it not that with each fresh discovery we are so ready to +fancy anew that now, at last, we know all about it. We have neither +humility enough to be faithful, nor faith enough to be humble. Unfit to +grasp any whole, yet with an inborn idea of wholeness which ought to be +our safety in urging us ever on towards the Unity, we are constantly +calling each new part the whole, saying we have found the idea, and +casting ourselves on the couch of self-glorification. Thus the very need +of unity is by our pride perverted to our ruin. We say we have found +it, when we have it not. Hence, also, it becomes easy to refuse certain +considerations, yea, certain facts, a place in our system--for +the system will cease to be a system at all the moment they are +acknowledged. They may have in them the very germ of life and truth; but +what is that, if they destroy this Babylon that we have built? Are not +its forms stately and fair? Yea, _can_ there be statelier and fairer? +The main point is simply this, that what it would not be well for God to +give before a man had asked for it, it may be not only well, but best, +to give when he has asked. [Footnote 4: _Well_ and _Best_ must be the +same thing with God when he acts.] + +I believe that the first half of our training is up to the asking point; +after that the treatment has a grand new element in it. For God can give +when a man is in the fit condition to receive it, what he cannot give +before because the man cannot receive it. How give instruction in the +harmony of colours or tones to a man who cannot yet distinguish between +shade and shade or tone and tone, upon which distinction all harmony +depends? A man cannot receive except another will give; no more can a +man give if another will not receive; he can only offer. Doubtless, God +works on every man, else he _could_ have no divine tendency at all; +there would be no _thither_ for him to turn his face towards; there +could be at best but a sense of want. But the moment the man has given +in to God--to use a homely phrase--the spirit for which he prays can +work in him all with him, not now (as it _appeared_ then) _against_ him. +Every parent at all worthy of the relation must know that occasions +occur in which the asking of the child makes the giving of the parent +the natural correlative. In a way infinitely higher, yet the same at the +root, for all is of God, He can give when the man asks what he could not +give without, because in the latter case the man would take only the +husk of the gift, and cast the kernel away--a husk poisonous without the +kernel, although wholesome and comforting with it. + +But some will say, "We may ask, but it is certain we shall not have +everything we ask for." + +No, thank God, certainly not; we shall have nothing which we ourselves, +when capable of judging and choosing with open eyes to its true relation +to ourselves, would not wish and choose to have. If God should give +otherwise, it must be as a healing punishment of inordinate and hurtful +desire. The parable of the father dividing his living at the prayer of +the younger son, must be true of God's individual sons, else it could +not have been true of the Jews on the one hand and the Gentiles on the +other. He will grant some such prayers because he knows that the swine +and their husks will send back his son with quite another prayer on his +lips. + +If my supposed interlocutor answers, "What then is the good of praying, +if it is not to go by what I want?" I can only answer, "You have to +learn, and it may be by a hard road." In the kinds of things which men +desire, there are essential differences. In physical well-being, there +is a divine good. In sufficient food and raiment, there is a divine +fitness. In wealth, as such, there is _none_. A man may pray for money +to pay his debts, for healing of the sickness which incapacitates +him for labour or good work, for just judgment in the eyes of his +fellow-men, with an altogether different confidence from that with which +he could pray for wealth, or for bodily might to surpass his fellows, or +for vengeance upon those whose judgment of his merits differed from his +own; although even then the divine soul will with his Saviour say, "If +it be possible: Not my will but thine." For he will know that God gives +only the best. + +"But God does not even cure every one who asks him. And so with the +other things you say are good to pray for." + +Jesus did not cure all the ills in Judaea. But those he did cure were at +least real ills and real needs. There was a fitness in the condition of +some, a fitness favoured by his own bodily presence amongst them, which +met the virtue ready to go out from him. But God is ever present, and I +have yet to learn that any man prayed for money to be honest with and +to meet the necessities of his family, and did the work of him who had +called him from the market-place of the nation, who did not receive his +penny a-day. If to any one it seems otherwise, I believe the apparent +contradiction will one day be cleared up to his satisfaction. God has +not to satisfy the judgment of men as they are, but as they will be and +must be, having learned the high and perfectly honest and grand way of +things which is his will. For God to give men just what they want would +often be the same as for a man to give gin to the night-wanderer whom he +had it in his power to take home and set to work for wages. But I must +believe that many of the ills of which men complain would be speedily +cured if they would work in the strength of prayer. If the man had +not taken up his bed when Christ bade him, he would have been a great +authority with the scribes and chief priests against the divine mission +of Jesus. The power to work is a diviner gift than a great legacy. But +these are individual affairs to be settled individually between God +and his child. They cannot be pronounced upon generally because of +individual differences. But here as there, now as then, the lack is +_faith_. A man may say, "How can I have faith?" I answer, "How can you +indeed, who do the thing you know you ought not to do, and have not +begun to do the thing you know you ought to do? How should you have +faith? It is not well that you should be cured yet. It would have hurt +these men to cure them if they would not ask. And you do not pray." The +man who has prayed most is, I suspect, the least doubtful whether God +hears prayer now as Jesus heard it then. That we doubt is well, for we +are not yet in the empyrean of simple faith. But I think the man who +believes and prays now, has answers to his prayers even better than +those which came to the sick in Judæa; for although the bodily presence +of Jesus made a difference in their favour, I do believe that the Spirit +of God, after widening its channels for nearly nineteen hundred years, +can flow in greater plenty and richness now. Hence the answers to prayer +must not only not be of quite the same character as then, but they must +be better, coming yet closer to the heart of the need, whether known as +such by him who prays, or not. But the change lies in man's power of +reception, for God is always the same to his children. Only, being +infinite, he must speak to them and act for them in the endless +diversity which their growth and change render necessary. Thus only they +can receive of his fulness who is all in all and unchangeable. + +In our imperfect condition both of faith and of understanding, the whole +question of asking and receiving must necessarily be surrounded with +mist and the possibility of mistake. It can be successfully encountered +only by the man who for himself asks and hopes. It lies in too lofty +regions and involves too many unknown conditions to be reduced to +formulas of ours; for God must do only the best, and man is greater and +more needy than himself can know. + +Yet he who asks _shall_ receive--of the very best. One promise without +reserve, and only one, because it includes all, remains: the promise of +the Holy Spirit to them who ask it. He who has the Spirit of God, God +himself, in him, has the Life in him, possesses the final cure of all +ill, has in himself the answer to all possible prayer. + + + + +VI. MIRACLES GRANTED TO THE PRAYER OF FRIENDS. + + +If we allow that prayer may in any case be heard for the man himself, it +almost follows that it must be heard for others. It cannot well be in +accordance with the spirit of Christianity, whose essential expression +lies in the sacrifice of its founder, that a man should be heard only +when he prays for himself. The fact that in cases of the preceding group +faith was required on the part of the person healed as essential to his +cure, represents no different principle from that which operates in the +cases of the present group. True, in these the condition is not faith on +the part of the person cured, but faith on the part of him who asks for +his cure. But the possession of faith by the patient was not in the +least essential, as far as the power of Jesus was concerned, to his +bodily cure, although no doubt favourable thereto; it was necessary +only to that spiritual healing, that higher cure, for the sake of +which chiefly the Master brought about the lower. In both cases, the +requisition of faith is for the sake of those who ask--whether for +themselves or for their friends, it matters not. It is a breath to blow +the smoking flax into a flame--a word to draw into closer contact with +himself. He cured many without such demand, as his Father is ever curing +without prayer. Cure itself shall sometimes generate prayer and faith. +Well, therefore, might the cure of others be sometimes granted to +prayer. + +Beyond this, however, there is a great fitness in the thing. For so are +men bound together, that no good can come to one but all must share +in it. The children suffer for the father, the father suffers for the +children, and they are also blessed together. If a spiritual good +descend upon the heart of a leader of the nation, the whole people might +rejoice for themselves, for they must be partakers of the unspeakable +gift. To increase the faith of the father may be more for the faith of +the child, healed in answer to his prayer, than anything done for the +child himself. It is an enlarging of one of the many channels in which +the divinest gifts flow. For those gifts chiefly, at first, flow to men +through the hearts and souls of those of their fellows who are nearer +the Father than they, until at length they are thus brought themselves +to speak to God face to face. + +Lonely as every man in his highest moments of spiritual vision, yea +in his simplest consciousness of duty, turns his face towards the one +Father, his own individual maker and necessity of his life; painfully +as he may then feel that the best beloved understands not as he +understands, feels not as he feels; he is yet, in his most isolated +adoration of the Father of his spirit, nearer every one of the beloved +than when eye meets eye, heart beats responsive to heart, and the poor +dumb hand seeks by varied pressure to tell the emotion within. Often +then the soul, with its many organs of utterance, feels itself but a +songless bird, whose broken twitter hardens into a cage around it; but +even with all those organs of utterance in full play, he is yet farther +from his fellow-man than when he is praying to the Father in a desert +place apart. The man who prays, in proportion to the purity of his +prayer, becomes a spiritual power, a nerve from the divine brain, yea, +perhaps a ganglion as we call it, whence power anew goes forth upon his +fellows. He is a redistributor, as it were, of the divine blessing; not +in the exercise of his own will--that is the cesspool towards which +all notions of priestly mediation naturally sink--but as the +self-forgetting, God-loving brother of his kind, who would be in the world +as Christ was in the world. When a man prays for his fellow-man, for wife +or child, mother or father, sister or brother or friend, the connection +between the two is so close in God, that the blessing begged may well +flow to the end of the prayer. Such a one then is, in his poor, far-off +way, an advocate with the Father, like his master, Jesus Christ, The +Righteous. He takes his friend into the presence with him, or if not +into the presence, he leaves him with but the veil between them, and +they touch through the veil. + +The first instance we have in this kind, occurred at Cana, in the centre +of Galilee, where the first miracle was wrought. It is the second +miracle in St John's record, and is recorded by him only. Doubtless +these two had especially attracted his nature--the turning of water into +wine, and the restoration of a son to his father. The Fatherhood of God +created the fatherhood in man; God's love man's love. And what shall he +do to whom a son is given whom yet he cannot keep? The divine love in +his heart cleaves to the child, and the child is vanishing! What can +this nobleman do but seek the man of whom such wondrous rumours have +reached his ears? + +Between Cana and Tiberias, from which came the father with his prayer, +was somewhere about twenty miles. + +"He is at the point of death," said the father. + +"Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe," said Jesus. + +"Sir, come down ere my child die." + +"Go thy way, thy son liveth." + +If the nobleman might have understood the remark the Lord made, he was +in no mood for principles, and respectfully he expostulates with our +Lord for spending time in words when the need was so urgent. The sun of +his life was going down into the darkness. He might deserve reproof, but +even reproof has its season. "Sir, come down ere my child die." Whatever +the Lord meant by the words he urged it no farther. He sends him home +with the assurance of the boy's recovery, showing him none of the signs +or wonders of which he had spoken. Had the man been of unbelieving kind +he would, when he returned and found that all had occurred in the most +natural fashion, that neither here had there been sign or wonder, have +gradually reverted to his old carelessness as to a higher will and its +ordering of things below. But instead of this, when he heard that the +boy began to get better the very hour when Jesus spoke the word--a fact +quite easy to set down as a remarkable coincidence--he believed, and all +his people with him. Probably he was in ideal reality the head of his +house, the main source of household influences--if such, then a man of +faith, for, where a man does not himself look up to the higher, the +lower will hardly look faithfully up to him--surely a fit man to +intercede for his son, with all his house ready to believe with him. It +may be said they too shared in the evidence--such as it was--not much of +a sign or wonder to them. True; but people are not ready to believe +the best evidence except they are predisposed in the direction of that +evidence. If it be said, "they should have thought for themselves," I +answer--To think with their head was no bad sign that they did think for +themselves. A great deal of what is called freedom of thought is merely +the self-assertion which would persuade itself of a freedom it would +possess but cannot without an effort too painful for ignorance and +self-indulgence. The man would _feel_ free without being free. To assert +one's individuality is not necessarily to be free: it _may_ indeed be +but the outcome of absolute slavery. + +But if this nobleman was a faithful man, whence our Lord's word, "Except +ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe"? I am not sure. It may +have been as a rebuke to those about him. This man--perhaps, as is said, +a nobleman of Herod's court--may not have been a pure-bred Jew, and +hence our Lord's remark would bear an import such as he uttered more +plainly in the two cases following, that of the Greek woman, and that +of the Roman centurion: "Except _ye_ see signs and wonders ye will not +believe; _but this man_--." With this meaning I should probably have +been content, were it not that the words were plainly addressed to the +man. I do not think this would destroy the interpretation, for the Lord +may have wished to draw the man out, and make him, a Gentile or doubtful +kind of Jew, rebuke the disciples; only the man's love for his son stood +in the way: he could think of nothing, speak of nothing save his son; +but it makes it unsatisfactory. And indeed I prefer the following +interpretation, because we have the other meaning in other places; +also because this is of universal application, and to us of these days +appears to me of special significance and value, applying to the men of +science on the one hand, and the men of superstition on the other. + +My impression is, that our Lord, seeing the great faith of the nobleman, +grounded on what he had heard of the Master from others, chiefly of his +signs and wonders, did in this remark require of him a higher faith +still. It sounds to me an expostulation with him. To express in the best +way my feeling concerning it, I would dare to imagine our Lord speaking +in this fashion:-- + +"Why did you not pray the Father? Why do you want always to _see_? The +door of prayer has been open since ever God made man in his own image: +why are signs and wonders necessary to your faith? But I will do just as +my Father would have done if you had asked him. Only when I do it, it is +a sign and a wonder that you may believe; and I wish you could believe +without it. But believe then for the very work's sake, if you cannot +believe for the word and the truth's sake. Go thy way, thy son liveth." + +I would not be understood to say that the Lord _blamed_ him, or others +in him, for needing signs and wonders: it was rather, I think, that the +Lord spoke out of the fulness of his knowledge to awake in them some +infant sense of what constituted all his life--the presence of God; +just as the fingers of the light go searching in the dark mould for the +sleeping seeds, to touch and awake them. The order of creation, the +goings on of life, were ceaselessly flowing from the very heart of the +Father: why should they seek signs and wonders differing from common +things only in being uncommon? In essence there was no difference. +Uncommonness is not excellence, even as commonness is not inferiority. +The sign, the wonder is, in fact, the lower thing, granted only because +of men's hardness of heart and slowness to believe--in itself of +inferior nature to God's chosen way. Yet, if signs and wonders could +help them, have them they should, for neither were they at variance +with the holy laws of life and faithfulness: they were but less usual +utterances of the same. "Go thy way: thy son liveth." The man, noble-man +certainly in this, obeyed, and found his obedience justify his faith. + +But his son would have to work out his belief upon grounds differing +from those his father had. In himself he could but recognize the +resumption of the _natural_ sway of life. He would not necessarily know +that it was God working in him. For the cause of his cure, he would only +hear the story of it from his father--good evidence--but he himself had +not seen the face of the Holy One as his father had. In one sense or +another, he must seek and find him. Every generation must do its own +seeking and its own finding. The fault of the fathers often is that +they expect their finding to stand in place of their children's +seeking--expect the children to receive that which has satisfied the +need of their fathers upon their testimony; whereas rightly, their +testimony is not ground for their children's belief, only for their +children's search. That search is faith in the bud. No man can be sure +till he has found for himself. All that is required of the faithful +nature is a willingness to seek. He cannot even know the true nature of +the thing he wants until he has found it; he has but a dim notion of it, +a faint star to guide him eastward to the sunrise. Hopefully, the belief +of the father has the heart in it which will satisfy the need of the +child; but the doubt of this in the child, is the father's first ground +for hoping that the child with his new needs will find for himself the +same well of life--to draw from it with a new bucket, it may be, because +the old will hold water no longer: its staves may be good, but its hoops +are worn asunder; or, rather, it will be but a new rope it needs, which +he has to twist from the hemp growing in his own garden. The son who +was healed might have many questions to ask which the father could not +answer, had never thought of. He had heard of the miracle of Cana; he +had heard of many things done since: he believed that the man could cure +his son, and he had cured him. "Yes," the son might say, "but I must +know more of him; for, if what I hear now be true, I must cast all +at his feet. He cannot be a healer only; he must be the very Lord of +Life--it may be of the Universe." His simple human presence had in +it something against the supposition--contained in it what must +have _appeared_ reason for doubting this conclusion from his deeds, +especially to one who had not seen his divine countenance. But to one at +length enlightened of the great Spirit, his humanity would contain the +highest ground for believing in his divinity, for what it meant would +come out ever and ever loftier and grander. The Lord who had made the +Universe--how _should_ he show it but as the Healer did? He could not +make the universe over again in the eyes of every man. If he did, the +heart of the man could not hold the sight. He must reveal himself as the +curing God--the God who set things which had gone wrong, right again: +_that could_ be done in the eyes of each individual man. This man may be +he--the Messiah--Immanuel, God with-us. + +We can imagine such the further thoughts of the son--possibly of the +father first--only he had been so full of the answer to his prayer, of +the cure of his son, that he could not all at once follow things towards +their grand conclusions. + +In this case, as in the two which follow, the Lord heals from a +distance. I have not much to remark upon this. There were reasons for +it; one perhaps the necessity of an immediate answer to the prayer; +another probably lay in its fitness to the faith of the supplicants. For +to heal thus, although less of a sign or a wonder to the unbelieving, +had in it an element of finer power upon the faith of such as came not +for the sign or the wonder, but for the cure of the beloved; for he who +loves can believe what he who loves not cannot believe; and he who +loves most can believe most. In this respect, these cures were like the +healing granted to prayer in all ages--not that God is afar off, for +he is closer to every man than his own conscious being is to his +unconscious being--but that we receive the aid from the Unseen. Though +there be no distance with God, it looks like it to men; and when Jesus +cured thus, he cured with the same appearances which attended God's +ordinary healing. + +The next case I take up is similar. It belongs to another of my classes, +but as a case of possession there is little distinctive about it, while +as the record of the devotion of a mother to her daughter--a devotion +quickening in her faith so rare and lovely as to delight the very heart +of Jesus with its humble intensity--it is one of the most beautiful of +all the stories of healing. + +The woman was a Greek, and had not had the training of the Jew for a +belief in the Messiah. Her misconceptions concerning the healer of whom +she had heard must have been full of fancies derived from the legends of +her race. But she had yet been trained to believe, for her mighty +love of her own child was the best power for the development of the +child-like in herself. + +No woman can understand the possible depths of her own affection for her +daughter. I say _daughter_, not _child_, because although love is the +same everywhere, it is nowhere the same. No two loves of individuals in +the same correlation are the same. Much more the love of a woman for her +daughter differs from the love of a father for his son--differs as the +woman differs from the man. There is in it a peculiar tenderness from +the sense of the same womanly consciousness in both of undefendedness +and self-accountable modesty--a modesty, in this case, how terribly +tortured in the mother by the wild behaviour of the daughter under the +impulses of the unclean spirit! Surely if ever there was a misery to +drive a woman to the Healer in an agony of rightful claim and prostrate +entreaty, it was the misery of a mother whose daughter was thus +possessed. The divine nature of her motherhood, of her womanhood, drew +her back to its source to find help for one who shared in the same, but +in whom its waters were sorely troubled and grievously defiled. + +She came crying to him. About him stood his disciples, proud of being +Jews. For their sakes this chosen Gentile must be pained a little +further, must bear with her Saviour her part of suffering for the +redemption even of his chosen apostles. They counted themselves the +children, and such as she the dogs. He must show them the divine nature +dwelling in her. For the sake of this revelation he must try her sorely, +but not for long. + +"Have mercy on me," she cried, "O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter +is grievously vexed with a devil." + +But not a word of reply came from the lips of the Healer. His disciples +must speak first. They must supplicate for their Gentile sister. He +would arouse in them the disapproval of their own exclusiveness, by +putting it on for a moment that they might see it apart from themselves. + +Their hearts were moved for the woman. + +"Send her away," they said, meaning, "Give her what she wants;" but +to move the heart of love to grant the prayer, they--poor +intercessors--added a selfish reason to justify the deed of goodness, +either that they would avoid being supposed to acknowledge her claim on +a level with that of a Jewess, and would make of it what both Puritans +and priests would call "an uncovenanted mercy," or that they actually +thought it would help to overcome the scruples of the Master. Possibly +it was both. "She crieth after us," they said--meaning, "She is +troublesome." They would have him give as the ungenerous and the unjust +give to the importunate. + +But no healing could be granted on such a ground--not even to the prayer +of an apostle. The woman herself must give a better. + +"I am not sent," he said, "but unto the lost sheep of the house of +Israel." + +They understood the words falsely. We know that he did come for the +Gentiles, and he was training them to see what they were so slow to +understand, that he had other sheep which were not of this fold. He had +need to begin with them thus early. Most of the troubles of his latest, +perhaps greatest apostle, came from the indignation of Jewish Christians +that he preached the good news to the Gentiles as if it had been +originally meant for them. They would have had them enter into its +privileges by the gates of Judaism. + +What they did at length understand by these words is expressed in the +additional word of our Lord given by St Mark: "Let the children first be +filled." But even this they could not understand until afterwards. They +could not see that it was for the sake of the Gentiles as much as the +Jews that Jesus came to the Jews first. For whatever glorious exceptions +there were amongst the Gentiles, surpassing even similar amongst the +Jews; and whatever the wide-spread refusal of the Jewish nation, he +_could_ not have been received amongst the Gentiles as amongst the Jews. +In Judæa alone could the leaven work; there alone could the mustard-seed +take fitting root. Once rooted and up, it would become a great tree, and +the birds of the world would nestle in its branches. It was not that God +loved the Jews more than the Gentiles that he chose them first, but that +he must begin somewhere: _why,_ God himself knows, and perhaps has given +us glimmerings. + +Upheld by her God-given love, not yet would the woman turn away. Even +such hard words as these could not repulse her. + +She came now and fell at his feet. It is as the Master would have it: +she presses only the nearer, she insists only the more; for the devil +has a hold of her daughter. + +"Lord, help me," is her cry; for the trouble of her daughter is her own. +The "Help _me_" is far more profound and pathetic than the most vivid +blazon of the daughter's sufferings. + +But he answered and said,-- + +"It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs." +Terrible words! more dreadful far than any he ever spoke besides! Surely +now she will depart in despair! But the Lord did not mean in them to +speak _his_ mind concerning the relation of Jew and Gentile; for +not only do the future of his church and the teaching of his Spirit +contradict it: but if he did mean what he said, then he acted as was +unmeet, for he did cast a child's bread to a dog. No. He spoke as a Jew +felt, that the elect Jews about him might begin to understand that in +him is neither Jew nor Gentile, but all are brethren. + +And he has gained his point. The spirit in the woman has been divinely +goaded into utterance, and out come the glorious words of her love and +faith, casting aside even insult itself as if it had never been--all for +the sake of a daughter. Now, indeed, it is as he would have it. + +"Yes, Lord; yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs." + +Or, as St Matthew gives it: + +"Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their +masters' table." + +A retort quite Greek in its readiness, its symmetry, and its point! But +it was not the intellectual merit of the answer that pleased the Master. +Cleverness is cheap. It is the faith he praises, [Footnote 5: Far +more precious than any show of the intellect, even in regard of the +intellect itself. The quickness of her answer was the scintillation of +her intellect under the glow of her affection. Love is the quickening +nurse of the whole nature. Faith in God will do more for the intellect +at length than all the training of the schools. It will make the +best that can be made of the whole man.] which was precious as +rare--unspeakably precious even when it shall be the commonest thing +in the universe, but precious now as the first fruits of a world +redeemed--precious now as coming from the lips of a Gentile--more +precious as coming from the lips of a human mother pleading for her +daughter. + +"O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt." + +Or, as St Mark gives it, for we cannot afford to lose a varying word, + +"For this saying, go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter." +The loving mother has conquered the tormenting devil. She has called in +the mighty aid of the original love. Through the channel of her love it +flows, new-creating, "and her daughter was made whole from that very +hour." + +Where, O disciples, are your children and your dogs now? Is not the wall +of partition henceforth destroyed? No; you too have to be made whole +of a worse devil, that of personal and national pride, before you +understand. But the day of the Lord is coming for you, notwithstanding +ye are so incapable of knowing the signs and signals of its approach +that, although its banners are spread across the flaming sky, it must +come upon you as a thief in the night. + +For the woman, we may well leave her to the embraces of her daughter. +They are enough for her now. + +But endless more will follow, for God is exhaustless in giving where the +human receiving holds out. God be praised that there are such embraces +in the world! that there are mothers who are the salvation of their +children! + +We now complete a little family group, as it were, with the story of +another foreigner, a Roman officer, who besought the Lord for his +servant. This captain was at Capernaum at the time, where I presume he +had heard of the cure which Jesus had granted to the nobleman for his +son. It seems almost clear from the quality of his faith, however, that +he must have heard much besides of Jesus--enough to give him matter of +pondering for some time, for I do not think such humble confidence +as his could be, like Jonah's gourd, the growth of a night. He was +evidently a man of noble and large nature. Instead of lording it over +the subject Jews of Capernaum, he had built them a synagogue; and his +behaviour to our Lord is marked by that respect which, shown to any +human being, but especially to a person of lower social condition, is +one of the surest marks of a finely wrought moral temperament. Such a +nature may be beautifully developed, by a military training, in which +obedience and command go together; and the excellence of faith and its +instant response in action, would be more readily understood by the +thoughtful officer of a well-disciplined army than by any one to whom +organization was unknown. Hence arose the parallel the centurion draws +between his own and the Master's position, which so pleased the Lord by +its direct simplicity. But humble as the man was, I doubt if anything +less than some spiritual perception of the nobility of the character +of Jesus, some perception of that which was altogether beyond even the +power of healing, could have generated such perfect reverence, such +childlike confidence as his. It is no wonder the Lord was pleased with +it, for that kind of thing must be just what his Father loves. + +According to St Luke, the Roman captain considered himself so unworthy +of notice from the carpenter's son--they of Capernaum, which was "his +own city," knew his reputed parentage well enough--that he got the +elders of the Jews to go and beg for him that he would come and heal his +servant. They bore testimony to his worth, specifying that which would +always be first in the eyes of such as they, that he loved their nation, +and had built them a synagogue. Little they thought how the Lord was +about to honour him above all their nation and all its synagogues. He +went with them at once. + +But before they reached the house, the centurion had a fresh inroad of +that divine disease, humility, [Footnote 6: In him it was almost +morbid, one might be tempted to say, were it not that it was own sister +to such mighty faith.] and had sent other friends to say, "Lord, trouble +not thyself, for I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my +roof. Wherefore, neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee; but +say in a word, and my servant shall be healed. For I also am a man set +under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say unto one, Go, and +he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do +this, and he doeth it." + +This man was a philosopher: he ascended from that to which he was +accustomed to that to which he was not accustomed. Nor did his divine +logic fail him. He begins with acknowledging his own subjection, and +states his own authority; then leaves it to our Lord to understand that +he recognizes in him an authority beyond all, expecting the powers of +nature to obey their Master, just as his soldiers or his servants obey +him. How grandly he must have believed in him! + +But beyond suspicion of flattery, he avoids the face of the man whom in +heart he worships. How unlike those who press into the presence of a +phantom-greatness! "A poor creature like me go and talk to him!" the +Roman captain would exclaim. "No, I will worship from afar off." And it +is to be well heeded that the Lord went no further--turned at once. With +the tax-gatherer Zacchaeus he would go home, if but to deliver him from +the hopelessness of his self-contempt; but what occasion was there here? +It was all right here. The centurion was one who needed but to go on. In +heart and soul he was nearer the Lord now than any of the disciples who +followed him. Surely some one among the elders of the Jews, his friends, +would carry him the report of what the Master said. It would not hurt +him. The praise of the truly great will do no harm, save it fall where +it ought not, on the heart of the little. The praise of God never falls +wrong, therefore never does any one harm. The Lord even implies we ought +to seek it. His praise would but glorify the humility and the faith of +this Roman by making both of them deeper and nobler still. There is +something very grand in the Lord's turning away from the house of the +man who had greater faith than any he had found in Israel; for such were +the words he spoke to those who followed him, of whom in all likelihood +the messenger elders were nearest. Having turned to say them, he turned +not again but went his way. St Luke, whose narrative is in other +respects much fuller than St Matthew's (who says that the centurion +himself came to Jesus, and makes no mention of the elders), does not +represent the Master as uttering a single word of cure, but implies +that he just went away marvelling at him; while "they that were sent, +returning to the house, found the servant whole that had been sick." If +any one ask how Jesus could marvel, I answer, Jesus could do more things +than we can well understand. The fact that he marvelled at the great +faith, shows that he is not surprised at the little, and therefore is +able to make all needful and just, yea, and tender allowance. + +Here I cannot do better for my readers than give them four lines, dear +to me, but probably unknown to most of them, written, I must tell them, +for the sake of their loving catholicity, by an English Jesuit of the +seventeenth century. They touch the very heart of the relation between +Jesus and the centurion:-- + + Thy God was making haste into thy roof; + Thy humble faith and fear keeps Him aloof: + He'll be thy guest; because He may not be, + He'll come--into thy house? No, into thee. + +As I said, we thus complete a kind of family group, for surely the true +servant is one of the family: we have the prayer of a father for a +son, of a mother for a daughter, of a master for a servant. Alas! the +dearness of this latter bond is not now known as once. There never was a +rooted institution in parting with which something good was not lost for +a time, however necessary its destruction might be for the welfare of +the race. There are fewer free servants that love their masters and +mistresses now, I fear, than there were Roman bondsmen and bondswomen +who loved theirs. And, on the other hand, very few masters and +mistresses regard the bond between them and their servants with half the +respect and tenderness with which many among the Romans regarded it. +Slavery is a bad thing and of the devil, yet mutual jealousy and +contempt are worse. But the time will yet come when a servant will serve +for love as more than wages; and when the master of such a servant will +honour him even to the making him sit down to meat, and coming forth and +serving him. + +The next is the case of the palsied man, so graphically given both by +St Mark and St Luke, and with less of circumstance by St Matthew. This +miracle also was done in Capernaum, called his own city. Pharisees +and doctors of the law from every town in the country, hearing of +his arrival, had gathered to him, and were sitting listening to his +teaching. There was no possibility of getting near him, and the sick +man's friends had carried him up to the roof, taken off the tiles, and +let him down into the presence. It should not be their fault if the poor +fellow was not cured. "Jesus seeing their faith--When Jesus saw their +faith--And when he saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, +Son, be of good cheer--Son--Man, thy sins are forgiven thee." The +forgiveness of the man's sins is by all of the narrators connected +with the faith of his friends. This is very remarkable. The only other +instance in which similar words are recorded, is that of the woman who +came to him in Simon's house, concerning whom he showed first, that her +love was a sign that her sins were already forgiven. What greater honour +could he honour their faith withal than grant in their name, unasked, +the one mighty boon? They had brought the man to him; to them he forgave +his sins. He looked into his heart, and probably saw, as in the case of +the man whom he cured by the pool of Bethesda, telling him to go and +sin no more, that his own sins had brought upon him this suffering, +a supposition which aids considerably to the understanding of the +consequent conversation; saw, at all events, that the assurance of +forgiveness was what he most needed, whether because his conscience was +oppressed with a sense of guilt, or that he must be brought to think +more of the sin than of the suffering; for it involved an awful rebuke +to the man, if he required it still--that the Lord should, when he came +for healing, present him with forgiveness. Nor did he follow it at once +with the cure of his body, but delayed that for a little, probably for +the man's sake, as probably for the sake of those present, whom he had +been teaching for some time, and in whose hearts he would now fix the +lesson concerning the divine forgiveness which he had preached to them +in bestowing it upon the sick man. For his words meant nothing, except +they meant that God forgave the man. The scribes were right when they +said that none could forgive sins but God--that is, in the full sense in +which forgiveness is still needed by every human being, should all his +fellows whom he has injured have forgiven him already. + +They said in their hearts, "He is a blasphemer." This was what he had +expected. + +"Why do you think evil in your hearts?" he said, that is, _evil of +me--that I am a blasphemer_. + +He would now show them that he was no blasphemer; that he had the power +to forgive, that it was the will of God that he should preach the +remission of sins. How could he show it them? In one way only: by +dismissing the consequence, the punishment of those sins, sealing thus +in the individual case the general truth. He who could say to a man, +by the eternal law suffering the consequences of sin: "Be whole, +well, strong; suffer no more," must have the right to pronounce his +forgiveness; else there was another than God who had to cure with a word +the man whom his Maker had afflicted. If there were such another, the +kingdom of God must be trembling to its fall, for a stronger had invaded +and reversed its decrees. Power does not give the right to pardon, but +its possession may prove the right. "Whether is easier--to say, Thy +sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Rise up and walk?" If only God can do +either, he who can do the one must be able to do the other. + +"That ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive +sins--Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house." + +Up rose the man, took up that whereon he had lain, and went away, +knowing in himself that his sins _were_ forgiven him, for he was able +to glorify God. It seems to me against our Lord's usual custom with the +scribes and Pharisees to grant them such proof as this. Certainly, to +judge by those recorded, the whole miracle was in aspect and order +somewhat unusual. But I think the men here assembled were either better +than the most of their class, or in a better mood than common, for St +Luke says of them that the power of the Lord was present to heal them. +To such therefore proof might be accorded which was denied to others. +That he might heal these learned doctors around him, he forgave the sins +first and then cured the palsy of the man before him. For their sakes he +performed the miracle thus. Then, _like priests, like people_; for where +their leaders were listening, the people broke open the roof to get the +helpless into his presence. + +"They marvelled and glorified God which had given such power unto +men"--"Saying, We never saw it on this fashion."--"They were filled with +fear, saying, We have seen strange things to-day." + +And yet Capernaum had to be brought down to hell, and no man can tell +the place where it stood. + +Two more cases remain, both related by St Mark alone. + +They brought him a man partially deaf and dumb. He led him aside from +the people: he would be alone with him, that he might come the better +into relation with that individuality which, until molten from within, +is so hard to touch. Possibly had the man come of himself, this might +have been less necessary; but I repeat there must have been in every +case reason for the individual treatment in the character and condition +of the patient. These were patent only to the Healer. In this case the +closeness of the personal contact, as in those cases of the blind, is +likewise remarkable. "He put his fingers into his ears, he spit and +touched his tongue." Always in present disease, bodily contact--in +defects of the senses, sometimes of a closer kind. He would generate +assured faith in himself as the healer. But there is another remarkable +particular here, which, as far as I can remember, would be alone in its +kind but for a fuller development of it at the raising of Lazarus. "And +looking up to heaven, he sighed." + +What did it mean? What first of all _was_ it? + +That look, was it not a look up to his own Father? That sigh, was it not +the unarticulated prayer to the Father of the man who stood beside him? +But did _he_ need to look up as if God was in the sky, seeing that God +was in _him_, in his very deepest, inmost being, in fulness of presence, +and receiving conscious response, such as he could not find anywhere +else--not from the whole gathered universe? Why should he send a sigh, +like a David's dove, to carry the thought of his heart to his Father? +True, if all the words of human language had been blended into one +glorious majesty of speech, and the Lord had sought therein to utter the +love he bore his Father, his voice must needs have sunk into the last +inarticulate resource--the poor sigh, in which evermore speech dies +helplessly triumphant--appealing to the Hearer to supply the lack, +saying _I cannot, but thou knowest_--confessing defeat, but claiming +victory. But the Lord could talk to his Father evermore in the forms of +which words are but the shadows, nay, infinitely more, without forms at +all, in the thoughts which are the souls of the forms. Why then needs he +look up and sigh?--That the man, whose faith was in the merest nascent +condition, might believe that whatever cure came to him from the hand of +the healer, came from the hand of God. Jesus did not care to be believed +in as the doer of the deed, save the deed itself were recognized as +given him of the Father. If they saw him only, and not the Father +through him, there was little gained indeed. The upward look and the +sigh were surely the outward expression of the infrangible link which +bound both the Lord and the man to the Father of all. He would lift the +man's heart up to the source of every gift. No cure would be worthy gift +without that: it might be an injury. + +The last case is that of the blind man of Bethsaida, whom likewise he +led apart, out of the town, and whose dull organs he likewise touched +with his spittle. Then comes a difference. The deaf man was at once +cured; when he had laid his hands on the blind man, his vision was but +half-restored. "He asked him if he saw ought? And he looked up and said, +I see the men: for like trees [Footnote 7: Could it be translated, +"_As well as_ (that is besides) trees, I see walkers about"?] I see them +walking about." He could tell they were men and not trees, only by their +motion. The Master laid his hands once more upon his eyes, and when he +looked up again, he saw every man clearly. + +In thus graduating the process, our Lord, I think, drew forth, +encouraged, enticed into strength the feeble faith of the man. He +brooded over him with his holy presence of love. He gave the faith time +to grow. He cared more for his faith than his sight. He let him, as it +were, watch him, feel him doing it, that he might know and believe. +There is in this a peculiar resemblance to the ordinary modes God takes +in healing men. + +These last miracles are especially full of symbolism and analogy. But in +considering any of the miracles, I do not care to dwell upon this aspect +of them, for in this they are only like all the rest of the doings of +God. Nature is brimful of symbolic and analogical parallels to the +goings and comings, the growth and the changes of the highest nature in +man. It could not be otherwise. For not only did they issue from the +same thought, but the one is made for the other. Nature as an outer +garment for man, or a living house, rather, for man to live in. So +likewise must all the works of him who did the works of the Father bear +the same mark of the original of all. + +The one practical lesson contained in this group is nearer the human +fact and the human need than any symbolic meaning, grand as it must be, +which they may likewise contain; nearer also to the constitution of +things, inasmuch as what a man must _do_ is more to the man and to his +Maker than what he can only _think_; inasmuch, also, as the commonest +things are the best, and any man can do right, although he may be unable +to tell the difference between a symbol and a sign:--it is that if ever +there was a Man such as we read about here, then he who prays for his +friends shall be heard of God. I do not say he shall have whatever he +asks for. God forbid. But he shall be heard. And the man who does not +see the good of that, knows nothing of the good of prayer; can, I fear, +as yet, only pray for himself, when most he fancies he is praying for +his friend. Often, indeed, when men suppose they are concerned for the +well-beloved, they are only concerned about what they shall do without +them. Let them pray for themselves instead, for that will be the truer +prayer. I repeat, all prayer is assuredly heard:--what evil matter is +it that it should be answered only in the right time and right way? The +prayer argues a need--that need will be supplied. One day is with the +Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. All who +have prayed shall one day justify God and say--Thy answer is beyond my +prayer, as thy thoughts and thy ways are beyond my thoughts and my ways. + + + + +VII. THE CASTING OUT OF DEVILS. + + +Before attempting to say the little I can concerning this group of +miracles, I would protect myself against possible misapprehension. +The question concerning the nature of what is called _possession_ +has nothing whatever to do with that concerning the existence or +nonexistence of a personal and conscious power of evil, the one great +adversary of the kingdom of heaven, commonly called Satan, or the devil. +I say they are two distinct questions, and have so little in common that +the one may be argued without even an allusion to the other. + +Many think that in the cases recorded we have but the symptoms of +well-known diseases, which, from their exceptionally painful character, +involving loss of reason, involuntary or convulsive motions, and +other abnormal phenomena, the imaginative and unscientific Easterns +attributed, as the easiest mode of accounting for them, to a foreign +power taking possession of the body and mind of the man. They say there +is no occasion whatever to resort to an explanation involving an agency +of which we know nothing from any experience of our own; that, as our +Lord did not come to rectify men's psychological or physiological +theories, he adopted the mode of speech common amongst them, but cast +out the evil spirits simply by healing the diseases attributed to their +influences. + +There seems to me nothing unchristian in this interpretation. All +diseases that trouble humanity may well be regarded as inroads of the +evil powers upon the palaces and temples of God, where only the +Holy Spirit has a right to dwell; and to cast out such, is a marvel +altogether as great as to expel the intruding forces to which the +Jews attributed some of them. Certainly also our Lord must have used +multitudes of human expressions which did not more than adumbrate his +own knowledge. And yet I cannot admit that the solution meets all the +appearances of the difficulty. I say _appearances_, because I could not +be dogmatic here if I would. I know too little, understand too little, +to dare give such an opinion as possesses even the authority of personal +conviction. All I have to say on the subject must therefore come to +little. Perhaps if the marvellous, as such, were to me more difficult +of belief, anything I might have to say on the side of it would have +greater weight. But to me the marvellous is not therefore incredible, +always provided that in itself the marvellous thing appears worthy. +I have no difficulty in receiving the old Jewish belief concerning +possession; and I think it better explains the phenomena recorded than +the growing modern opinion; while the action of matter upon mind may +well be regarded as involving greater mystery than the action of one +spiritual nature upon another. That a man should rave in madness because +some little cell or two in the grey matter of his brain is out of order, +is surely no more within the compass of man's understanding than the +supposition that an evil spirit, getting close to the fountain of a +man's physical life, should disturb all the goings on of that life, even +to the production of the most appalling moral phenomena. In either case +it is not the man himself who originates the resulting actions, but an +external power operating on the man. + +"But we do not even know that there are such spirits, and we do know +that a diseased brain is sufficient to account for the worst of the +phenomena recorded." I will not insist on the fact that we do _not_ know +that the diseased brain is enough to account for the phenomena, that we +only know it as in many cases a concomitant of such phenomena; I will +grant so much, and yet insist that, as the explanation does not fit the +statements of the record, and as we know so little of what is, any hint +of unknown possibilities falling from unknown regions, should, even as a +stranger, receive the welcome of contemplation and conjecture, so long +as in itself it involves no moral contradiction. The man who will not +speculate at all, can make no progress. The thinking about the possible +is as genuine, as lawful, and perhaps as edifying an exercise of the +mind as the severest induction. Better lies still beyond. Experiment +itself must follow in the track of sober conjecture; for if we know +already, where is the good of experiment? + +There seems to me nothing unreasonable in the supposition of the +existence of spirits who, having once had bodies such as ours, and +having abused the privileges of embodiment, are condemned for a season +to roam about bodiless, ever mourning the loss of their capacity for +the only pleasures they care for, and craving after them in their +imaginations. Such, either in selfish hate of those who have what +they have lost, or from eagerness to come as near the possession of a +corporeal form as they may, might well seek to _enter into_ a man. The +supposition at least is perfectly consistent with the facts recorded. +Possibly also it may be consistent with the phenomena of some of the +forms of the madness of our own day, although all its forms are alike +regarded as resulting from physical causes alone. + +The first act of dispossession recorded is that told by St Mark and St +Luke, as taking place at Capernaum, amongst his earliest miracles, and +preceding the cure of Simon's mother-in-law. He was in the synagogue on +the Sabbath day, teaching the congregation, when a man present, who had +an unclean spirit, cried out. If I accept the narrative, I find this cry +far more intelligible on the old than on the new theory. The speaker, +no doubt using the organs of the man, brain and all, for utterance, +recognizes a presence--to him the cause of terror--which he addresses as +the Holy One of God. This holy one he would propitiate by entreaty and +the flattering acknowledgment of his divine mission, with the hope +of being left unmolested in the usurpation and cruelty by which he +ministered to his own shadowy self-indulgences. Could anything be more +consistently diabolic? + +What other word could Jesus address to such than, "Hold thy peace, and +come out of him"? A being in such a condition could not be permitted to +hold converse with the Saviour; for he recognized no salvation but what +lay in the continuance of his own pleasures at the expense of another. +The form of the rebuke plainly assumes that it was not the man but some +one in the man who had spoken; and the narrative goes on to say that +when the devil had thrown him down and torn him and cried with a loud +voice--his rage and disappointment, I presume, finding its last futile +utterance in the torture of his captive--he came out of him and left him +unhurt. Thereupon the people questioned amongst themselves saying, "What +thing is this? It is a teaching new, and with authority: he commandeth +even the unclean spirits, and they obey him;" [Footnote 8: St Mark, i. 27. +Authorized Version revised by Dean Alford.] thus connecting at once his +power over the unclean spirits with the doctrine he taught, just as our +Lord in an after-instance associates power over demons with spiritual +condition. It was the truth in him that made him strong against the +powers of untruth. + +Many such cures were performed, but the individual instances recorded +are few. The next is that of the man--dumb, according to St Luke, both +blind and dumb, according to St Matthew--who spake and saw as soon +as the devil was cast out of him. With unerring instinct the people +concluded that he who did such deeds must be the Son of David; the +devils themselves, according to St Mark, were wont to acknowledge him +the Son of God; the Scribes and Pharisees, the would-be guides of +the people, alone refused the witness, and in the very imbecility of +unbelief, eager after any theory that might seem to cover the facts +without acknowledging a divine mission in one who would not admit +_their_ authority, attributed to Beelzebub himself the deliverance of +distressed mortals from the powers of evil. + +Regarding the kingdom of God as a thing of externals, they were +fortified against recognizing in Jesus himself or in his doctrine any +sign that he was the enemy of Satan, and might even persuade themselves +that such a cure was only one of Satan's tricks for the advancement of +his kingdom with the many by a partial emancipation of the individual. +But our Lord attributes this false conclusion to its true cause--to +no incapacity or mistake of judgement; to no over-refining about the +possible chicaneries of Beelzebub; but to a preference for any evil +which would support them in their authority with the people--in itself +an evil. Careless altogether about truth itself, they would not give +a moment's quarter to any individual utterance of it which tended to +destroy their honourable position in the nation. Each man to himself was +his own god. The Spirit of God they shut out. To them forgiveness was +not offered. They must pay the uttermost farthing--whatever that may +mean--and frightful as the doom must be. That he spoke thus against them +was but a further carrying out of his mission, a further inroad upon the +kingdom of that Beelzebub. And yet they were the accredited authorities +in the church of that day; and he who does not realize this, does not +understand the battle our Lord had to fight for the emancipation of the +people. It was for the sake of the people that he called the Pharisees +_hypocrites_, and not for their own sakes, for how should he argue with +men who taught religion for their own aggrandizement? + +It is to be noted that our Lord recognizes the power of others besides +himself to cast out devils. "By whom do your children cast them out?" +_Did you ever say of them it was by Beelzebub? Why say it of me_? What +he claims he freely allows. The Saviour had no tinge of that jealousy +of rival teaching--as if truth could be two, and could avoid being +one--which makes so many of his followers grasp at any waif of false +argument. He knew that all good is of God, and not of the devil. All +were _with_ him who destroyed the power of the devil. + +They who were cured, and they in whom self-worship was not blinding the +judgment, had no doubt that he was fighting Satan on his usurped ground. +Torture was what might be expected of Satan; healing what might be +expected of God. The reality of the healing, the loss of the man, +morally as well as physically, to the kingdom of evil, was witnessed in +all the signs that followed. Our Lord rests his argument on the fact +that Satan had lost these men. + +We hear next, from St Luke, of certain women who followed him, having +been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, amongst whom is mentioned +"Mary, called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils." No wonder a +woman thus delivered should devote her restored self to the service of +him who had recreated her. We hear nothing of the circumstances of the +cure, only the result in her constant ministration. Hers is a curious +instance of the worthlessness of what some think it a mark of +high-mindedness to regard alone--the opinion, namely, of posterity. +Without a fragment of evidence, this woman has been all but universally +regarded as impure. But what a trifle to her! Down in this squabbling +nursery of the race, the name of Mary Magdalene may be degraded even to +a subject for pictorial sentimentalities; but the woman herself is with +that Jesus who set her free. To the end of time they may call her what +they please: to her it is worth but a smile of holy amusement. And just +as worthy is the applause of posterity associated with a name. To God +alone we live or die. Let us fall, as, thank him, we must, into his +hands. Let him judge us. Posterity may be wiser than we; but posterity +is not our judge. + +We come now to a narrative containing more of the marvellous than all +the rest. The miracle was wrought on the south-eastern side of the +lake--St Matthew says, upon two demoniacs; St Mark and St Luke make +mention only of one. The accounts given by the latter Evangelists are +much more circumstantial than that by the former. It was a case of +peculiarly frightful character. The man, possessed of many demons, was +ferocious, and of marvellous strength, breaking chains and fetters, and +untameable. It is impossible to analyse the phenomena, saying which +were the actions of the man, and which those of the possessing demons. +Externally all were the man's, done by the man finally, some part, I +presume, from his own poor withered will, far the greater from the +urging of the demons. Even in the case of a man driven by appetite or +passion, it is impossible to say how much is to be attributed to the man +himself, and how much to that lower nature in him which he ought to keep +in subjection, but which, having been allowed to get the upper hand, has +become a possessing demon. He met the Lord worshipping, and, as in a +former instance, praying for such clemency as devils can value. Was it +the devils, then, that urged the man into the presence of the Lord? +Was it not rather the other spirit, the spirit of life, which not the +presence of a legion of the wicked ones could drive from him? Was it not +the spirit of the Father in him which brought him, ignorant, fearing, +yet vaguely hoping perhaps, to the feet of the Son? He knew not why he +came; but he came--drawn or driven; he could not keep away. When he +came, however, the words at least of his prayer were moulded by the +devils--"I adjure thee by God that thou torment me not." Think of the +man, tortured by such awful presences, praying to the healer not to +torment him! The prayer was compelled into this shape by the indwelling +demons. They would have him pray for indulgence for them. But the Lord +heard the deeper prayer, that is, the need and misery of the man, the +horror that made him cry and cut himself with stones--and commanded the +unclean spirit to come out of him. Thereupon, St Mark says, "he besought +him much that he would not send them out of the country." Probably the +country was one the condition of whose inhabitants afforded the demons +unusual opportunities for their coveted pseudo-embodiment. St Luke says, +"They besought him that he would not command them to go out into the +deep"--to such beings awful, chiefly because there they must be alone, +afar from matter and all its forms. In such loneliness the good man +would be filled with the eternal presence of the living God; but they +would be aware only of their greedy, hungry selves--desires without +objects. No. Here were swine. "Send us into the swine, that we may enter +into them." Deprived of the abode they preferred, debarred from men, +swine would serve their turn. But even the swine--animals created to +look unclean, for a type to humanity of the very form and fashion of its +greed--could not endure their presence. The man had cut himself with +stones in his misery; the swine in theirs rushed into the waters of the +lake and were drowned. The evil spirits, I presume, having no further +leave, had to go to their deep after all. + +The destruction of the swine must not be regarded as miraculous. But +there must have been a special reason in the character and condition +of the people of Gadara for his allowing this destruction of their +property. I suppose that although it worked vexation and dismay at +first, it prepared the way for some after-reception of the gospel. Now, +seeing him who had been a raving maniac, sitting at the feet of Jesus, +clothed and in his right mind, and hearing what had come to the swine, +they were filled with fear, and prayed the healer to depart from them. + +But who can imagine the delight of the man when that wild troop of +maddening and defiling demons, which had possessed him with all +uncleanness, vanished! Scarce had he time to know that he was naked, +before the hands of loving human beings, in whom the good Spirit ruled, +were taking off their own garments, and putting them upon him. He was +a man once more, and amongst men with human faces, human hearts, human +ways. He was with his own; and that supreme form and face of the man who +had set him free was binding them all into one holy family. Now he could +pray of himself the true prayer of a soul which knew what it wanted, and +could say what it meant. He sat down like a child at the feet of the man +who had cured him; and when, yielding at once to the desire of those who +would be rid of his presence, Jesus went down to the boat, he followed, +praying that he might be with him; for what could he desire but to +be near that power which had restored him his divine self, and the +consciousness thereof--his own true existence, that of which God was +thinking when he made him? + +But he would be still nearer the Lord in doing his work than in +following him about. It is remarkable that while more than once our Lord +charged the healed to be silent, he leaves this man as his apostle--his +witness with those who had banished him from their coasts. Something +may be attributed to the different natures of the individuals; some in +preaching him would also preach themselves, and so hurt both. But this +man was not of such. To be with the Lord was all his prayer. Therefore +he was fit to be without him, and to aid his work apart. But I think it +more likely that the reason lay in the condition of the people. Judæa +was in a state of excitement about him--that excitement had unhealthy +elements, and must not be fanned. In some places the Lord would not +speak at all. Through some he would pass unknown. But here all was +different. He had destroyed their swine; they had prayed him to depart; +if he took from them this one sign of his real presence, that is, of the +love which heals, not the power which destroys, it would be to abandon +them. + +But it is very noteworthy that he sent the man to his own house, to his +own friends. They must be the most open to such a message as his, and +from such lips--the lips of their own flesh and blood. He had been +raving in tombs and deserts, tormented with a legion of devils; now he +was one of themselves again, with love in his eyes, adoration in the +very tones of his voice, and help in his hands--reason once more supreme +on the throne of his humanity. He obeyed, and published in Gadara, and +the rest of the cities of Decapolis, the great things, as Jesus himself +called them, which God had done for him. For it was God who had done +them. He was doing the works of his Father. + +One more instance remains, having likewise peculiar points of +difficulty, and therefore of interest. + +When Jesus was on the mount of transfiguration, a dumb, epileptic, +and lunatic boy was brought by his father to those disciples who were +awaiting his return. + +But they could do nothing. To their disappointment, and probably to +their chagrin, they found themselves powerless over the evil spirit. +When Jesus appeared, the father begged of him the aid which his +disciples could not give: "Master, I beseech thee, look upon my son, for +he is mine only child." + +Whoever has held in his arms his child in delirium, calling to his +father for aid as if he were distant far, and beating the air in wild +and aimless defence, will be able to enter a little into the trouble of +this man's soul. To have the child, and yet see him tormented in some +region inaccessible; to hold him to the heart and yet be unable to reach +the thick-coming fancies which distract him; to find himself with a +great abyss between him and his child, across which the cry of the +child comes, but back across which no answering voice can reach the +consciousness of the sufferer--is terror and misery indeed. But imagine +in the case before us the intervals as well--the stupidity, the vacant +gaze, the hanging lip, the pale flaccid countenance and bloodshot eyes, +idiocy alternated with madness--no voice of human speech, only the +animal babble of the uneducated dumb--the misery of his falling down +anywhere, now in the fire, now in the water, and the divine shines out +as nowhere else--for the father loves his only child even to agony. + +What was there in such a child to love? _Everything_: the human was +there, else whence the torture of that which was not human? whence +the pathos of those eyes, hardly up to the dog's in intelligence, yet +omnipotent over the father's heart? God was there. The misery was that +the devil was there too. Thence came the crying and tears. "Rescue the +divine; send the devil to the deep," was the unformed prayer in the +father's soul. + +Before replying to his prayer, Jesus uttered words that could not have +been addressed to the father, inasmuch as he was neither faithless nor +perverse. Which then of those present did he address thus? To which of +them did he say, "How long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer +you?" I have thought it was the bystanders: but why they? They had not +surely reached the point of such rebuke. I have thought it was the +disciples, because perhaps it was their pride that rendered them unable +to cast out the demon, seeing they tried it without faith enough in +God. But the form of address does not seem to belong to them: the word +generation could not well apply to those whom he had chosen out of that +generation. I have thought, and gladly would I continue to think, if +I could honestly, that the words were intended for the devils who +tormented his countrymen and friends; and but for St Mark's story, I +might have held to it. He, however, gives us one point which neither St +Matthew nor St Luke mention--that "when he came to his disciples he saw +a great multitude about them, and the scribes questioning with them." He +says the multitude were greatly amazed when they saw him--why, I do not +know, except it be that he came just at the point where his presence was +needful to give the one answer to the scribes pressing hard upon his +disciples because they could not cast out this devil. These scribes, +these men of accredited education, who, from their position as students +of the law and the interpretations thereof, arrogated to themselves a +mastery over the faith of the people, but were themselves so careless +about the truth as to be utterly opaque to its illuminating power--these +scribes, I say, I do think it was whom our Lord addressed as "faithless +and perverse generation." The immediately following request to the +father of the boy, "Bring him unto me," was the one answer to their +arguments. + +A fresh paroxysm was the first result. But repressing all haste, the +Lord will care for the father as much as for the child. He will help his +growing faith. + +"How long is it ago since thus hath come unto him?" + +"From a child. And oft-times it hath cast him into the fire, and +into the waters, to destroy him; but if thou canst do anything, have +compassion on us, and help us." [Footnote 9: Again the _us_--so full of +pathos.] "_If thou canst_?" [Footnote 10: The oldest manuscripts. (_Dean +Alford_). "If thou canst have faith--All things," &c. ("New Translation +of the Gospel of St Mark." _Rev. F.H. Godwin_).] All things are possible +to him that believeth." + +"Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." + +Whether the words of Jesus, "him that believeth," meant himself as +believing in the Father, and therefore gifted with all power, or the man +as believing in him, and therefore capable of being the recipient of +the effects of that power, I am not sure. I incline to the former. The +result is the same, for the man resolves the question practically and +personally: what was needful in him should be in him. "I believe; help +thou mine unbelief." + +In the honesty of his heart, lest he should be saying more than was +true--for how could he be certain that Jesus would cure his son? or how +could he measure and estimate his own faith?--he appeals to the Lord of +Truth for all that he ought to be, and think, and believe. "Help thou +mine unbelief." It is the very triumph of faith. The unbelief itself +cast like any other care upon him who careth for us, is the highest +exercise of belief. It is the greatest effort lying in the power of the +man. No man can help doubt. The true man alone, that is, the faithful +man, can appeal to the Truth to enable him to believe what is true, and +refuse what is false. How this applies especially to our own time and +the need of the living generations, is easy to see. Of all prayers it is +the one for us. + +Possibly our Lord might have held a little farther talk with him, but +the people came crowding about. "He rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto +him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and +enter no more into him. And the spirit cried and rent him sore, and came +out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead. +But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose." + +"Why could not we cast him out?" asked his disciples as soon as they +were alone. + +"This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting." + +What does this answer imply? The prayer and fasting must clearly be +on the part of those who would heal. They cannot be required of one +possessed with a demon. If he could fast and pray, the demon would be +gone already. + +It implies that a great purity of soul is needful in him who would +master the powers of evil. I take prayer and fasting to indicate +a condition of mind elevated above the cares of the world and the +pleasures of the senses, in close communion with the God of life; +therefore by its very purity an awe and terror to the unclean spirits, a +fit cloud whence the thunder of the word might issue against them. The +expulsion would appear to be the result of moral, and hence natural, +superiority--a command resting upon oneness with the ultimate will of +the Supreme, in like manner as an evil man is sometimes cowed in the +presence of a good man. The disciples had not attained this lofty +condition of faith. + +From this I lean to think that the words of our Lord--"All things +are possible to him that believeth"--apply to our Lord himself. The +disciples could not help the child: "If thou canst do anything," said +the father. "All things are possible to him that believeth," says our +Lord. _He_ can help him. That it was the lack of faith in the disciples +which rendered the thing impossible for them, St Matthew informs us +explicitly, for he gives the reply of our Lord more fully than the rest: +"Because of your unbelief," he said, and followed with the assertion +that faith could remove mountains. + +But the words--_"This kind"_--suggest that the case had its +peculiarities. It would appear--although I am not certain of this +interpretation--that some kinds of spirits required for their expulsion, +or at least some cases of possession required for their cure, more than +others of the presence of God in the healer. I do not care to dwell upon +this farther than to say that there are points in the narrative which +seem to indicate that it was an unusually bad case. The Lord asked how +long he had been ill, and was told, from childhood. The demon--to use +the language of our ignorance--had had time and opportunity, in his +undeveloped condition, to lay thorough hold upon him; and when he did +yield to the superior command of the Lord, he left him as dead--so close +had been the possession, that for a time the natural powers could not +operate when deprived of the presence of a force which had so long +usurped, maltreated, and exhausted, while falsely sustaining them. The +disciples, although they had already the power to cast out demons, could +not cast this one out, and were surprised to find it so. There appears +to me no absurdity, if we admit the demons at all, in admitting also +that some had greater force than others, be it regarded as courage or +obstinacy, or merely as grasp upon the captive mortal. + +In all these stories there is much of comfort both to the friends of +those who are insane, and to those who are themselves aware of their own +partial or occasional insanity. For such sorrow as that of Charles and +Mary Lamb, walking together towards the asylum, when the hour had come +for her to repair thither, is there not some assuagement here? It may be +answered--We have no ground to hope for such cure now. I think we +have; but if our faith will not reach so far, we may at least, like +Athanasius, recognize the friendship of Death, for death is the divine +cure of many ills. + +But we all need like healing. No man who does not yet love the truth +with his whole being, who does not love God with all his heart and soul +and strength and mind, and his neighbour as himself, is in his sound +mind, or can act as a rational being, save more or less approximately. +This is as true as it would be of us if possessed by other spirits +than our own. Every word of unkindness, God help us! every unfair hard +judgment, every trembling regard of the outward and fearless disregard +of the inward life, is a siding with the spirit of evil against the +spirit of good, with our lower and accidental selves, against our higher +and essential--our true selves. These the spirit of good would set free +from all possession but his own, for that is their original life. Out +of us, too, the evil spirits can go by that prayer alone in which a man +draws nigh to the Holy. Nor can we have any power over the evil spirit +in others except in proportion as by such prayer we cast the evil spirit +out of ourselves. + + + + +VIII. THE RAISING OF THE DEAD. + + +I linger on the threshold. How shall I enter the temple of this wonder? +Through all ages men of all degrees and forms of religion have hoped at +least for a continuance of life beyond its seeming extinction. Without +such a hope, how could they have endured the existence they had? True, +there are in our day men who profess unbelief in that future, and yet +lead an enjoyable life, nor even say to themselves, "Let us eat and +drink, for to-morrow we die;" but say instead, with nobleness, "Let us +do what good we may, for there are men to come after us." Of all things +let him who would be a Christian be fair to every man and every class of +men. Before, however, I could be satisfied that I understood the mental +condition of such, I should require a deeper insight than I possess in +respect of other men. These, however numerous they seem in our day, +would appear to be exceptions to the race. No doubt there have always +been those who from absorption in the present and its pleasures, have +not cared about the future, have not troubled themselves with the +thought of it. Some of them would rather not think of it, because if +there be such a future, they cannot be easy concerning their part in it; +while others are simply occupied with the poor present--a present grand +indeed if it be the part of an endless whole, but poor indeed if it +stand alone. But here are thoughtful men, who say, "There is no +more. Let us make the best of this." Nor is their notion of _best_ +contemptible, although in the eyes of some of us, to whom the only worth +of being lies in the hope of becoming that which, at the rate of present +progress, must take ages to be realized, it is poor. I will venture one +or two words on the matter. + +Their ideal does not approach the ideal of Christianity for _this_ life +even. + +Before I can tell whether their words are a true representation of +themselves, in relation to this future, I must know both their conscious +and unconscious being. No wonder I should be loath to judge them. + +No poet of high rank, as far as I know, ever disbelieved in the future. +He might fear that there was none; but that very fear is faith. The +greatest poet of the present day believes with ardour. That it is not +proven to the intellect, I heartily admit. But if it were true, it were +such as the intellect could not grasp, for the understanding must be the +offspring of the life--in itself essential. How should the intellect +understand its own origin and nature? It is too poor to grasp this +question; for the continuity of existence depends on the nature of +existence, not upon external relations. If after death we should be +conscious that we yet live, we shall even then, I think, be no more +able to prove a further continuance of life, than we can now prove our +present being. It may be easier to believe--that will be all. But we +constantly act upon grounds which we cannot prove, and if we cannot feel +so sure of life beyond the grave as of common every-day things, at least +the want of proof ought neither to destroy our hope concerning it, nor +prevent the action demanded by its bare possibility. + +But last, I do say this, that those men, who, disbelieving in a future +state, do yet live up to the conscience within them, however much lower +the requirements of that conscience may be than those of a conscience +which believes itself enlightened from "the Lord, who is that spirit," +shall enter the other life in an immeasurably more enviable relation +thereto than those who say _Lord, Lord_, and do not the things he says +to them. + +It may seem strange that our Lord says so little about the life to +come--as we call it--though in truth it is one life with the present--as +the leaf and the blossom are one life. Even in argument with the +Sadducees he supports his side upon words accepted by them, and upon the +nature of God, but says nothing of the question from a human point of +regard. He seems always to have taken it for granted, ever turning the +minds of his scholars towards that which was deeper and lay at its +root--the life itself--the oneness with God and his will, upon which the +continuance of our conscious being follows of a necessity, and without +which if the latter were possible, it would be for human beings an utter +evil. + +When he speaks of the world beyond, it is as _his Father's house_. He +says there are many mansions there. He attempts in no way to explain. +Man's own imagination enlightened of the spirit of truth, and working +with his experience and affections, was a far safer guide than his +intellect with the best schooling which even our Lord could have given +it. The memory of the poorest home of a fisherman on the shore of +the Galilean lake, where he as a child had spent his years of divine +carelessness in his father's house, would, at the words of our Lord _my +Father's house_, convey to Peter or James or John more truth concerning +the many mansions than a revelation to their intellect, had it been +possible, as clear as the Apocalypse itself is obscure. + +When he said "I have overcome the _world_" he had overcome the cause of +all doubt, the belief in the outside appearances and not in the living +truth: he left it to his followers to say, from their own experience +knowing the thing, not merely from the belief of his resurrection, "He +has conquered death and the grave. O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, +where is thy victory?" It is the inward life of truth that conquers +the outward death of appearance; and nothing else, no revelation from +without, could conquer it. + +These miracles of our Lord are the nearest we come to news of any kind +concerning--I cannot say _from_--the other world. I except of course our +Lord's own resurrection. Of that I shall yet speak as a miracle, +for miracle it was, as certainly as any of our Lord's, whatever +interpretation be put upon the word. And I say _the nearest to news we +come_, because not one of those raised from the dead gives _us_ at least +an atom of information. Is it possible they may have told their friends +something which has filtered down to us in any shape? + +I turn to the cases on record. They are only three. The day after he +cured the servant of the centurion at Capernaum, Jesus went to Nain, and +as they approached the gate--but I cannot part the story from the lovely +words in which it is told by St Luke: "There was a dead man carried out, +the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and much people of the +city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, +and said unto her, Weep not. And he came and touched the bier; and they +that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, +Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered +him to his mother." + +In each of the cases there is an especial fitness in the miracle. This +youth was the only son of a widow; the daughter of Jairus was his "one +only daughter;" Lazarus was the brother of two orphan sisters. + +I will not attempt by any lingering over the simple details to render +the record more impressive. That lingering ought to be on the part of +the reader of the narrative itself. Friends crowded around a loss--the +centre of the gathering that which _was not_--the sole presence the +hopeless sign of a vanished treasure--an open gulf, as it were, down +which love and tears and sad memories went plunging in a soundless +cataract: the weeping mother--the dead man borne in the midst. They +were going to the house of death, but Life was between them and it--was +walking to meet them, although they knew it not. A face of tender pity +looks down on the mother. She heeds him not. He goes up to the bier, and +lays his hand on it. The bearers recognize authority, and stand. A +word, and the dead sits up. A moment more, and he is in the arms of his +mother. O mother! mother! wast thou more favoured than other mothers? Or +was it that, for the sake of all mothers as well as thyself, thou wast +made the type of the universal mother with the dead son--the raising +of him but a foretaste of the one universal bliss of mothers with dead +sons? That thou wert an exception would have ill met thy need, for thy +motherhood could not be justified in thyself alone. It could not have +its rights save on grounds universal. Thy motherhood was common to all +thy sisters. To have helped thee by exceptional favour would not have +been to acknowledge thy motherhood. That must go mourning still, even +with thy restored son in its bosom, for its claims are universal or they +_are_ not. Thou wast indeed a chosen one, but that thou mightest show to +all the last fate of the mourning mother; for in God's dealings there +are no exceptions. His laws are universal as he is infinite. Jesus +wrought no new thing--only the works of the Father. What matters it that +the dead come not back to us, if we go to them? _What matters it?_ said +I! It is tenfold better. Dear as home is, he who loves it best must know +that what he calls home is not home, is but a shadow of home, is but the +open porch of home, where all the winds of the world rave by turns, and +the glowing fire of the true home casts lovely gleams from within. + +Certainly this mother did not thus lose her son again. Doubtless next +she died first, knowing then at last that she had only to wait. The dead +must have their sorrow too, but when they find it is well with them, +they can sit and wait by the mouth of the coming stream better than +those can wait who see the going stream bear their loves down to the +ocean of the unknown. The dead sit by the river-mouths of Time: the +living mourn upon its higher banks. + +But for the joy of the mother, we cannot conceive it. No mother even who +has lost her son, and hopes one blessed eternal day to find him again, +can conceive her gladness. Had it been all a dream? A dream surely in +this sense, that the final, which alone, in the full sense, is God's +will, must ever cast the look of a dream over all that has gone before. +When we last awake, we shall know that we dreamed. Even every honest +judgment, feeling, hope, desire, will show itself a dream--with this +difference from some dreams, that the waking is the more lovely, that +nothing is lost, but everything gained, in the full blaze of restored +completeness. How triumphant would this mother die, when her turn came! + +And how calmly would the restored son go about the duties of the +world. [Footnote:11 Those who can take the trouble, and are capable of +understanding it, will do well to study Robert Browning's "Epistle of an +Arab Physician."] + +He sat up and began to speak. + +It is vain to look into that which God has hidden; for surely it is by +no chance that we are left thus in the dark. "He began to speak." Why +does not the Evangelist go on to give us some hint of what he said? +Would not the hearts of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, +children, husbands--who shall say where the divine madness of love +will cease?--grandfathers, grandmothers--themselves with flickering +flame--yes, grandchildren, weeping over the loss of the beloved gray +head and tremulously gentle voice--would not all these have blessed God +for St Luke's record of what the son of the widow said? For my part, I +thank God he was silent. + +When I think of the pictures of heaven drawn from the attempt of +prophecy to utter its visions in the poor forms of the glory of earth, I +see it better that we should walk by faith, and not by a fancied sight. +I judge that the region beyond is so different from ours, so comprising +in one surpassing excellence all the goods of ours, that any attempt +of the had-been-dead to describe it, would have resulted in the most +wretched of misconceptions. Such might please the lower conditions of +Christian development--but so much the worse, for they could not fail to +obstruct its further growth. It is well that St Luke is silent; or that +the mother and the friends who stood by the bier, heard the words of the +returning spirit only as the babble of a child from which they could +draw no definite meaning, and to which they could respond only by +caresses. + +The story of the daughter of Jairus is recorded briefly by St Matthew, +more fully by St Luke, most fully by St Mark. One of the rulers of the +synagogue at Capernaum falls at the feet of our Lord, saying his little +daughter is at the point of death. She was about twelve years of age. He +begs the Lord to lay his hands on her that she may live. Our Lord goes +with him, followed by many people. On his way to restore the child he is +arrested by a touch. He makes no haste to outstrip death. We can imagine +the impatience of the father when the Lord stood and asked who touched +him. What did that matter? his daughter was dying; Death would not wait. + +But the woman's heart and soul must not be passed by. The father with +the only daughter must wait yet a little. The will of God cannot be +outstripped. + +"While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue's house +certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master +any further?" "Ah! I thought so! There it is! Death has won the race!" +we may suppose the father to say--bitterly within himself. But Jesus, +while he tried the faith of men, never tried it without feeding its +strength. With the trial he always gives the way of escape. "As soon as +Jesus heard the word that was spoken"--not leaving it to work its agony +of despair first--"he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not +afraid; only believe." They are such simple words--commonplace in the +ears of those who have heard them often and heeded them little! but +containing more for this man's peace than all the consolations of +philosophy, than all the enforcements of morality; yea, even than the +raising of his daughter itself. To arouse the higher, the hopeful, the +trusting nature of a man; to cause him to look up into the unknown +region of mysterious possibilities--the God so poorly known--is to do +infinitely more for a man than to remove the pressure of the direst evil +without it. I will go further: To arouse the hope that there may be a +God with a heart like our own is more for the humanity in us than to +produce the absolute conviction that there is a being who made the +heaven and the earth and the sea and the fountains of waters. Jesus is +the express image of God's substance, and in him we know the heart of +God. To nourish faith in himself was the best thing he could do for the +man. + +We hear of no word from the ruler further. If he answered not our Lord +in words, it is no wonder. The compressed lip and the uplifted eye would +say more than any words to the heart of the Saviour. + +Now it would appear that he stopped the crowd and would let them go no +farther. They could not all see, and he did not wish them to see. It was +not good for men to see too many miracles. They would feast their eyes, +and then cease to wonder or think. The miracle, which would be all, and +quite dissociated from religion, with many of them, would cease to be +wonderful, would become a common thing with most. Yea, some would cease +to believe that it had been. They would say she did sleep after all--she +was not dead. A wonder is a poor thing for faith after all; and the +miracle could be only a wonder in the eyes of those who had not prayed +for it, and could not give thanks for it; who did not feel that in it +they were partakers of the love of God. + +Jesus must have hated anything like display. God's greatest work has +never been done in crowds, but in closets; and when it works out from +thence, it is not upon crowds, but upon individuals. A crowd is not +a divine thing. It is not a body. Its atoms are not members one of +another. A crowd is a chaos over which the Spirit of God has yet to +move, ere each retires to his place to begin his harmonious work, and +unite with all the rest in the organized chorus of the human creation. +The crowd must be dispersed that the church may be formed. + +The relation of the crowd to the miracle is rightly reflected in what +came to the friends of the house. To them, weeping and wailing greatly, +after the Eastern fashion, he said when he entered, "Why make ye this +ado, and weep? The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth." They laughed him +to scorn. He put them all out. + +But what did our Lord mean by those words--"The damsel is not dead, but +sleepeth"? Not certainly that, as we regard the difference between death +and sleep, his words were to be taken literally; not that she was only +in a state of coma or lethargy; not even that it was a case of suspended +animation as in catalepsy; for the whole narrative evidently intends us +to believe that she was dead after the fashion we call death. That this +was not to be dead after the fashion our Lord called death, is a blessed +and lovely fact. + +Neither can it mean, that she was not dead as others, in that he was +going to wake her so soon; for they did not know that, and therefore it +could give no ground for the expostulation, "Why make ye this ado, and +weep?" + +Nor yet could it come only from the fact that to his eyes death and +sleep were so alike, the one needing the power of God for awaking just +as much as the other. True they must be more alike in his eyes than even +in the eyes of the many poets who have written of "Death and his brother +Sleep;" but he sees the differences none the less clearly, and how they +look to us, and his knowledge could be no reason for reproaching our +ignorance. The explanation seems to me large and simple. These people +professed to believe in the resurrection of the dead, and did believe +after some feeble fashion. They were not Sadducees, for they were the +friends of a ruler of the synagogue. Our Lord did not bring the news of +resurrection to the world: that had been believed, in varying degrees, +by all peoples and nations from the first: the resurrection he taught +was a far deeper thing--the resurrection from dead works to serve the +living and true God. But as with the greater number even of Christians, +although it was part of their creed, and had some influence upon their +moral and spiritual condition, their practical faith in the resurrection +of the body was a poor affair. In the moment of loss and grief, they +thought little about it. They lived then in the present almost alone; +they were not saved by hope. The reproach therefore of our Lord was +simply that they did not take from their own creed the consolation they +ought. If the child was to be one day restored to them, then she was not +dead as their tears and lamentations would imply. Any one of themselves +who believed in God and the prophets, might have stood up and +said--"Mourners, why make such ado? The maid is not dead, but sleepeth. +You shall again clasp her to your bosom. Hope, and fear not--only +believe." It was in this sense, I think, that our Lord spoke. + +But it may not at first appear how much grander the miracle itself +appears in the light of this simple interpretation of the Master's +words. The sequel stands in the same relation to the words as +if--turning into the death-chamber, and bringing the maid out by the +hand--he had said to them: "See--I told you she was not dead but +sleeping." The words apply to all death, just as much as to that in +which this girl lay. The Lord brings his assurance, his knowledge of +what we do not know, to feed our feeble faith. It is as if he told us +that our notion of death is all wrong, that there is no such thing as we +think it; that we should be nearer the truth if we denied it altogether, +and gave to what we now call death the name of sleep, for it is but a +passing appearance, and no right cause of such misery as we manifest in +its presence. I think it was from this word of our Lord, and from the +same utterance in the case of Lazarus, that St Paul so often uses the +word sleep for die and for death. Indeed the notion of death, as we feel +it, seems to have vanished entirely from St Paul's mind--he speaks of +things so in a continuity, not even referring to the change--not +even saying before death or after death, as if death made no atom of +difference in the progress of holy events, the divine history of the +individual and of the race together. In a word, when he raised the +dead, the Son did neither more nor less nor other than the work of the +Father--what he is always doing; he only made it manifest a little +sooner to the eyes and hearts of men. + +But they to whom he spoke laughed him to scorn. They knew she was dead, +and their unfaithfulness blinded their hearts to what he meant. They +were unfit to behold the proof of what he had said. Such as they, in +such mood, could gather from it no benefit. A faithful heart alone is +capable of understanding the proof of the truest things. It is faith +towards God which alone can lay hold of any of his facts. There is a +foregoing fitness. Therefore he put them all out. But the father and +mother, whose love and sorrow made them more easily persuaded of mighty +things, more accessible to holy influences, and the three disciples, +whose faith rendered them fit to behold otherwise dangerous wonders, +he took with him into the chamber where the damsel lay--dead toward +men--sleeping toward God. Dead as she was, she only slept. + +"Damsel, I say unto thee, arise." "And her spirit came again," "and +straightway the damsel arose and walked," "and he commanded to give her +meat." For in the joy of her restoration, they might forget that the +more complete the health of a worn and exhausted body, the more needful +was food--food which, in all its commonness, might well support the +miracle; for not only did it follow by the next word to that which had +wrought the miracle, but it worked in perfect harmony with the law which +took shape in this resurrection, and in its relations to the human being +involved no whit less marvel than lay in the miracle itself. The +raising of the dead and the feeding of the living are both and equally +divine--therefore in utter harmony. And we do not any more understand +the power in the body which takes to itself that food, than we +understand the power going out from Jesus to make this girl's body +capable of again employing its ministrations. They are both of one and +must be perfect in harmony, the one as much the outcome of law as the +other. + +He charges the parents to be silent, it may be for his sake, who did not +want to be made a mere wonder of, but more probably for their sakes, +that the holy thing might not evaporate in speech, or be defiled with +foolish talk and the glorification of self-importance in those for whom +a mighty wonder had been done; but that in silence the seed might take +root in their hearts and bring forth living fruit in humility, and +uprightness, and faith. + +And now for the wonderful story of Lazarus. In this miracle one might +think the desire of Jesus for his friend's presence through his own +coming trouble, might have had a share, were it not that we never find +him working a miracle for himself. He knew the perfect will of the +Father, and left all to him. Those who cannot know that will and do not +care for it, have to fall into trouble that they may know God as the +Saviour from their own doings--as the fountain of all their well-being. +This Jesus had not to learn, and therefore could need no miracle wrought +for him. Even his resurrection was all for others. That miracle was +wrought in, not for him. + +He knew Lazarus was dying. He abode where he was and let him die. For a +hard and therefore precious lesson for sisters and friends lay in that +death, and the more the love the more precious the lesson--the same +that lies in every death; and the end the same for all who +love--resurrection. The raising of Lazarus is the type of the raising +of all the dead. Of Lazarus, as of the daughter of Jairus, he said "he +sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep." He slept as every +dead man sleeps. + +Read the story. Try to think not only what the disciples felt, but what +Jesus was thinking; how he, who saw the other side, regarded the death +he was about to destroy. + +"Lord, if thou hadst been here," said Martha, "my brother had not died." + +Did she mean to hint what she had not faith enough to ask? + +"Thy brother shall rise again," said the Lord. + +But her faith was so weak that she took little comfort from the +assurance. Alas! she knew what it meant. She knew all about it. He spoke +of the general far-off resurrection, which to her was a very little +thing. It was true he should rise again; but what was that to the +present consuming grief? A thousand years might be to God as one day, +but to Martha the one day was a thousand years. It is only to him who +entirely believes in God that the thousand years become one day also. +For he that believes shares in the vision of him in whom he believes. It +is through such faith that Jesus would help her--far beyond the present +awful need. He seeks to raise her confidence in himself by the strongest +assertions of the might that was in him. "I am the resurrection and the +life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live!" +The death of not believing in God--the God revealed in Jesus--is +the only death. The other is nowhere but in the fears and fancies of +unbelief. "And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." +There is for him nothing to be called death; nothing that is what death +looks to us. + +"Believest thou this?" + +Martha was an honest woman. She did not fully understand what he meant. +She could not, therefore, do more than assent to it. But she believed in +him, and that much she could tell him plainly. + +"Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which +should come into the world." + +And that hope with the confession arose in her heart, she gave the +loveliest sign: she went and called her sister. But even in the +profounder Mary faith reached only to the words of her sister: + +"Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." + +When he saw her trouble, and that of the Jews with her, he was troubled +likewise. But why? The purest sympathy with what was about to vanish +would not surely make him groan in his spirit. Why, then, this trouble +in our Lord's heart? We have a right, yea, a duty, to understand it if +we can, for he showed it. + +I think it was caused by an invading sense of the general misery of poor +humanity from the lack of that faith in the Father without which he, the +Son, could do, or endure, nothing. If the Father ceased the Son must +cease. It was the darkness between God and his creatures that gave room +for and was filled with their weeping and wailing over their dead. +To them death must appear an unmitigated and irremediable evil. How +frightful to feel as they felt! to see death as they saw it! Nothing +could help their misery but that faith in the infinite love which he had +come to bring them; but how hard it was to persuade them to receive +it! And how many weeping generations of loving hearts must follow! His +Father was indeed with them all, but how slowly and painfully would each +learn the one precious fact! + +"Where have ye laid him?" he asked. + +"Lord, come and see," they answered, in such mournful accents of human +misery that he wept with them. + +They come to the grave. + +"Take ye away the stone." + +"Lord, by this time he stinketh, for he hath been dead four days," said +she who believed in the Resurrection and the Life! They are the saddest +of sad words. I hardly know how to utter the feeling they raise. In all +the relations of mortality to immortality, of body to soul, there are +painful and even ugly things, things to which, by common consent, we +refer only upon dire necessity, and with a sense of shame. Happy they in +whom the mortal has put on immortality! Decay and its accompaniments, +all that makes the most beloved of the _appearances_ of God's creation a +terror, compelling us to call to the earth for succour, and pray her to +take our dead out of our sight, to receive her own back into her bosom, +and unmake in secret darkness that which was the glory of the light in +our eyes--this was upper-most with Martha, even in the presence of him +to whom Death was but a slave to come and go at his will. Careful of his +feelings, of the shock to his senses, she would oppose his will. For +the dead brother's sake also, that he should not be dishonoured in his +privacy, she would not have had that stone removed. But had it been as +Martha feared, who so tender with feeble flesh as the Son of Man? Who so +unready to impute the shame it could not help? Who less fastidious over +the painful working of the laws of his own world? + + Entire affection hateth nicer hands. + +And at the worst, what was decay to him, who could recall the disuniting +atoms under the restored law of imperial life? + +"Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see +the glory of God?" + +Again I say _the essential_ glory of God who raises all the dead, not +merely _an exceptional_ glory of God in raising this one dead man. + +They should see not corruption but glory. No evil odour of dissolution +should assail them, but glowing life should spring from the place of the +dead; light should be born from the very bosom of the darkness. + +They took away the friendly stone. Then Jesus spoke, not to the dead +man, but to the living Father. The men and women about him must know it +as the Father's work. "And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, +I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me +always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they +may believe that thou hast sent me." So might they believe that the work +was God's, that he was doing the will of God, and that they might trust +in the God whose will was such as this. He claimed the presence of God +in what he did, that by the open claim and the mighty deed following it +they might see that the Father justified what the Son said, and might +receive him and all that he did as the manifestation of the Father. And +now-- + +"Lazarus, come forth." + +Slow toiling, with hand and foot bound in the grave clothes, he that had +been dead struggled forth to the light. What an awful moment! When did +ever corruption and glory meet and embrace as now! Oh! what ready hands, +eager almost to helplessness, were stretched trembling towards the +feeble man returning from his strange journey, to seize and carry +him into the day--their poor day, which they thought _all_ the day, +forgetful of that higher day which for their sakes he had left behind, +content to walk in moonlight a little longer, gladdened by the embraces +of his sisters, and--perhaps--I do not know--comforting their hearts +with news of the heavenly regions! + +Joy of all joys! The dead come back! Is it any wonder that this Mary +should spend three hundred pence on an ointment for the feet of the +Raiser of the Dead? + +I doubt if he told them anything? I do not think he could make even his +own flesh and blood--of woman-kind, quick to understand--know the things +he had seen and heard and felt. All that can be said concerning this, is +thus said by our beloved brother Tennyson in his book _In Memoriam_: + + 'Where wert thou, brother, those four days?' + There lives no record of reply, + Which telling what it is to die, + Had surely added praise to praise. + + Behold a man raised up by Christ! + The rest remaineth unrevealed; + He told it not; or something sealed + The lips of that Evangelist. + +Why are we left in such ignorance? + +Without the raising of the dead, without the rising of the Saviour +himself, Christianity would not have given what it could of _hope_ for +the future. Hope is not faith, but neither is faith sight; and if we +have hope we are not miserable men. But Christianity must not, could not +interfere with the discipline needful for its own fulfilment, could +not depose the schoolmaster that leads unto Christ. One main doubt and +terror which drives men towards the revelation in Jesus, is this strange +thing Death. How shall any man imagine he is complete in himself, and +can do without a Father in heaven, when he knows that he knows neither +the mystery whence he sprung by birth, nor the mystery to which he goes +by death? God has given us room away from himself as Robert Browning +says:-- + + ..."God, whose pleasure brought + + Man into being, stands away, + As it were, an hand-breadth off, to give + Room for the newly-made to live, + And look at Him from a place apart, + And use His gifts of brain and heart"-- + +and this room, in its time-symbol, is bounded by darkness on the one +hand, and darkness on the other. Whence I came and whither I go are +dark: how can I live in peace without the God who ordered it thus? Faith +is my only refuge--an absolute belief in a being so much beyond myself, +that he can do all for this _me_ with utter satisfaction to this _me_, +protecting all its rights, jealously as his own from which they spring, +that he may make me at last one with himself who is my deeper self, +inasmuch as his thought of me is my life. And not to know him, even if I +could go on living and happy without him, is death. + +It may be said, "Why all this? Why not go on like a brave man to meet +your fate, careless of what that fate may be?" + +"But what if this fate _should_ depend on myself? Am I to be careless +then?" I answer. + +"The fate is so uncertain! If it be annihilation, why quail before it? +Cowardice at least is contemptible." + +"Is not indifference more contemptible? That one who has once thought +should not care to go on to think? That this glory should perish--is it +no grief? Is life not a good with all its pain? Ought one to be willing +to part with a good? Ought he not to cleave fast thereto? Have you never +grudged the coming sleep, because you must cease for the time to _be_ +so much as you were before? For my part, I think the man who can go to +sleep without faith in God has yet to learn what being is. He who knows +not God cannot, however, have much to lose in losing being. And yet--and +yet--did he never love man or woman or child? Is he content that there +should be no more of it? Above all, is he content to go on with man and +woman and child now, careless of whether the love is a perishable thing? +If it be, why does he not kill himself, seeing it is all a lie--a false +appearance of a thing too glorious to be fact, but for which our best +nature calls aloud--and cannot have it? If one knew for certain that +there was no life beyond this, then the noble thing would be to make the +best of this, yea even then to try after such things as are written in +the Gospel as we call it--for they _are_ the noblest. That I am sure of, +whatever I may doubt. But not to be sure of annihilation, and yet choose +it to be true, and act as if it were true, seems to me to indicate +a nature at strife with immortality--bound for the dust by its own +choice--of the earth, and returning to the dust." + +The man will say, "That is yielding everything. Let us eat and drink, +for to-morrow we die. I am of the dust, for I believe in nothing +beyond." + +"No," I return. "I recognize another law in myself which seems to me +infinitely higher. And I think that law is in you also, although you are +at strife with it, and will revive in you to your blessed discontent. +By that I will walk, and not by yours--a law which bids me strive after +what I am not but may become--a law in me striving against the law of +sin and down-dragging decay--a law which is one with my will, and, if +true, must of all things make one at last. If I am made to live I ought +not to be willing to cease. This unwillingness to cease--above all, +this unwillingness to cease to love my own, the fore-front to me of my +all men--may be in me the sign, may _well_ be in me the sign that I am +made to live. Above all to pass away without the possibility of making +reparation to those whom I have wronged, with no chance of saying _I am +sorry--what shall I do for you? Grant me some means of delivering myself +from this burden of wrong_--seems to me frightful. No God to help one +to be good now! no God who cares whether one is good or not! if a God, +then one who will not give his creature time enough to grow good, even +if he is growing better, but will blot him out like a rain-drop! Great +God, forbid--if thou art. If thou art not, then this, like all other +prayers, goes echoing through the soulless vaults of a waste universe, +from the thought of which its peoples recoil in horror. Death, then, is +genial, soul-begetting, and love-creating; and Life is nowhere, save in +the imaginations of the children of the grave. Whence, then, oh! whence +came those their imaginations? Death, thou art not my father! Grave, +thou art not my mother! I come of another kind, nor shall ye usurp +dominion over me." + +What better sign of immortality than the raising of the dead could God +give? He cannot, however, be always raising the dead before our eyes; +for then the holiness of death's ends would be a failure. We need death; +only it shall be undone once and again for a time, that we may know it +is not what it seems to us. I have already said that probably we are not +capable of being told in words what the other world is. But even the +very report through the ages that the dead came back, as their friends +had known them, with the old love unlost in the grave, with the same +face to smile and bless, is precious indeed. That they remain the same +in all that made them lovely, is the one priceless fact--if we may but +hope in it as a fact. That we shall behold, and clasp, and love them +again follows of simple necessity. We cannot be sure of the report as if +it were done before our own eyes, yet what a hope it gives even to him +whose honesty and his faith together make him, like Martha, refrain +speech, not daring to say _I believe_ of all that is reported! I think +such a one will one day be able to believe more than he even knows how +to desire. For faith in Jesus will well make up for the lack of the +sight of the miracle. + +Does God, then, make death look what it is not? Why not let it appear +what it is, and prevent us from forming false judgments of it? + +It is our low faithlessness that makes us misjudge it, and nothing but +faith could make us judge it aright. And that, while in faithlessness, +we should thus misjudge it, is well. In what it appears to us, it is a +type of what we are without God. But there is no falsehood in it. The +dust must go back to the dust. He who believes in the body more than in +the soul, cleaves to this aspect of death: he who believes in thought, +in mind, in love, in truth, can see the other side--can rejoice over +the bursting shell which allows the young oak to creep from its +kernel-prison. The lower is true, but the higher overcomes and absorbs +it. "When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part +shall be done away." When the spirit of death is seen, the body of death +vanishes from us. Death is God's angel of birth. We fear him. The dying +stretches out loving hands of hope towards him. I do not believe that +death is to the dying the dreadful thing it looks to the beholders. I +think it is more like what the spirit may then be able to remember +of its own birth as a child into this lower world, this porch of the +heavenly. How will he love his mother then! and all humanity in her, and +God who gave her, and God who gives her back! + +The future lies dark before us, with an infinite hope in the darkness. +To be at peace concerning it on any other ground than the love of +God, would be an absolute loss. Better fear and hope and prayer, than +knowledge and peace without the prayer. + +To sum up: An express revelation in words would probably be little +intelligible. In Christ we have an ever-growing revelation. He is the +resurrection and the life. As we know him we know our future. + +In our ignorance lies a force of need, compelling us towards God. + +In our ignorance likewise lies the room for the development of the +simple will, as well as the necessity for arousing it. Hence this +ignorance is but the shell of faith. + +In this, as in all his miracles, our Lord _shows_ in one instance what +his Father is ever doing without showing it. + +Even the report of this is the best news we can have from the _other_ +world--as we call it. + + + + +IX. THE GOVERNMENT OF NATURE. + + +The miracles I include in this class are the following:-- + +1. The turning of water into wine, already treated of, given by St John. +2. The draught of fishes, given by St Luke. 3. The draught of fishes, +given by St John. 4 The feeding of the four thousand, given by St +Matthew and St Mark. 5. The feeding of the five thousand, recorded by +all the Evangelists. 6. The walking on the sea, given by St Matthew, St +Mark, and St John. 7. The stilling of the storm, given by St Matthew, St +Mark, and St Luke. 8. The fish bringing the piece of money, told by St +Matthew alone. + +These miracles, in common with those already considered, have for their +end the help or deliverance of man. They differ from those, however, in +operating mediately, through a change upon external things, and not at +once on their human objects. + +But besides the fact that they have to do with what we call nature, they +would form a class on another ground. In those cases of disease, +the miracles are for the setting right of what has gone wrong, the +restoration of the order of things,--namely, of the original condition +of humanity. No doubt it is a law of nature that where there is sin +there should be suffering; but even its cure helps to restore that +righteousness which is highest nature; for the cure of suffering must +not be confounded with the absence of suffering. But the miracles of +which I have now to speak, show themselves as interfering with what we +may call the righteous laws of nature. Water should wet the foot, should +ingulf him who would tread its surface. Bread should come from the +oven last, from the field first. Fishes should be now here now there, +according to laws ill understood of men--nay, possibly according to a +piscine choice quite unknown of men. Wine should take ripening in the +grape and in the bottle. In all these cases it is otherwise. Yet even +in these, I think, the restoration of an original law--the supremacy of +righteous man, is foreshown. While a man cannot order his own house as +he would, something is wrong in him, and therefore in his house. I +think a true man should be able to rule winds and waters and loaves and +fishes, for he comes of the Father who made the house for him. Had Jesus +not been capable of these things, he might have been the best of men, +but either he could not have been a perfect man, or the perfect God, if +such there were, was not in harmony with the perfect man. Man is not +master in his own house because he is not master in himself, because he +is not a law unto himself--is not himself obedient to the law by which +he exists. Harmony, that is law, alone is power. Discord is weakness. +God alone is perfect, living, self-existent law. + +I will try, in a few words, to give the ground on which I find it +possible to accept these miracles. I cannot lay it down as for any +other man. I do not wonder at most of those to whom the miracles are a +stumbling-block. I do a little wonder at those who can believe in Christ +and yet find them a stumbling-block. + +How God creates, no man can tell. But as man is made in God's image, he +may think about God's work, and dim analogies may arise out of the depth +of his nature which have some resemblance to the way in which God works. +I say then, that, as we are the offspring of God--the children of his +will, like as the thoughts move in a man's mind, we live in God's mind. +When God thinks anything, then that thing _is_. His thought of it is its +life. Everything is because God thinks it into being. Can it then be +very hard to believe that he should alter by a thought any form or +appearance of things about us? + +"It is inconsistent to work otherwise than by law." + +True; but we know so little of this law that we cannot say what is +essential in it, and what only the so far irregular consequence of the +unnatural condition of those for whom it was made, but who have not yet +willed God's harmony. We know so little of law that we cannot certainly +say what would be an infringement of this or that law. That which at +first sight appears as such, may be but the operating of a higher law +which rightly dominates the other. It is the law, as we call it, that a +stone should fall to the ground. A man may place his hand beneath the +stone, and then, _if his hand be strong enough_, it is the law that the +stone shall not fall to the ground. The law has been lawfully prevented +from working its full end. In similar ways, God might stop the working +of one law by the intervention of another. Such intervention, if not +understood by us, would be what we call a miracle. Possibly a different +condition of the earth, producible according to law, might cause +everything to fly off from its surface instead of seeking it. The +question is whether or not we can believe that the usual laws might be +set aside by laws including higher principles and wider operations. +All I have to answer is--Give me good reason, and I can. A man may +say--"What seems good reason to you, does not to me." I answer, "We are +both accountable to that being, if such there be, who has lighted in us +the candle of judgment. To him alone we stand or fall. But there must +be a final way of right, towards which every willing heart is led,--and +which no one can find who does not seek it." All I want to show here, +is a conceivable region in which a miracle might take place without +any violence done to the order of things. Our power of belief depends +greatly on our power of imagining a region in which the things might be. +I do not see how some people _could_ believe what to others may offer +small difficulty. Let us beware lest what we call faith be but the mere +assent of a mind which has cared and thought so little about the objects +of its so-called faith, that it has never seen the difficulties +they involve. Some such believers are the worst antagonists of true +faith--the children of the Pharisees of old. + +If any one say we ought to receive nothing of which we have no +experience; I answer, there is in me a necessity, a desire before which +all my experience shrivels into a mockery. Its complement must lie +beyond. We ought, I grant, to accept nothing for which we cannot see +the probability of some sufficient reason, but I thank God that this +sufficient reason is not for me limited to the realm of experience. To +suppose that it was, would change the hope of a life that might be an +ever-burning sacrifice of thanksgiving, into a poor struggle with events +and things and chances--to doom the Psyche to perpetual imprisonment in +the worm. I desire the higher; I care not to live for the lower. The one +would make me despise my fellows and recoil with disgust from a self I +cannot annihilate; the other fills me with humility, hope, and love. +Is the preference for the one over the other foolish then--even to the +meanest judgment? + +A higher condition of harmony with law, may one day enable us to do +things which must now _appear_ an interruption of law. I believe it is +in virtue of the absolute harmony in him, his perfect righteousness, +that God can create at all. If man were in harmony with this, if he too +were righteous, he would inherit of his Father a something in his degree +correspondent to the creative power in Him; and the world he inhabits, +which is but an extension of his body, would, I think, be subject to him +in a way surpassing his wildest dreams of dominion, for it would be the +perfect dominion of holy law--a virtue flowing to and from him through +the channel of a perfect obedience. I suspect that our Lord in all his +dominion over nature, set forth only the complete man--man as God means +him one day to be. Why should he not know where the fishes were? or +even make them come at his will? Why should not that will be potent as +impulse in them? If we admit what I hail as the only fundamental idea +upon which I can speculate harmoniously with facts, and as alone +disclosing regions wherein contradictions are soluble, and doubts +previsions of loftier truth--I mean the doctrine of the Incarnation; or +if even we admit that Jesus was good beyond any other goodness we know, +why should it not seem possible that the whole region of inferior +things might be more subject to him than to us? And if more, why not +altogether? I believe that some of these miracles were the natural +result of a physical nature perfect from the indwelling of a perfect +soul, whose unity with the Life of all things and in all things was +absolute--in a word, whose sonship was perfect. + +If in the human form God thus visited his people, he would naturally +show himself Lord over their circumstances. He will not lord it over +their minds, for such lordship is to him abhorrent: they themselves must +see and rejoice in acknowledging the lordship which makes them free. +There was no grand display, only the simple doing of what at the time +was needful. Some say it is a higher thing to believe of him that he +took things just as they were, and led the revealing life without the +aid of wonders. On any theory this is just what he did as far as his own +life was concerned. But he had no ambition to show himself the best of +men. He comes to reveal the Father. He will work even wonders to that +end, for the sake of those who could not believe as he did and had to be +taught it. No miracle was needful for himself: he saw the root of the +matter--the care of God. But he revealed this root in a few rare and +hastened flowers to the eyes that could not see to the root. There is +perfect submission to lower law for himself, but revelation of the +Father to them by the introduction of higher laws operating in the upper +regions bordering upon ours, not separated from ours by any impassable +gulf--rather connected by gently ascending stairs, many of whose +gradations he could blend in one descent. He revealed the Father as +being _under_ no law, but as law itself, and the cause of the laws we +know--the cause of all harmony because himself _the_ harmony. Men had +to be delivered not only from the fear of suffering and death, but from +the fear, which is a kind of worship, of nature. Nature herself must be +shown subject to the Father and to him whom the Father had sent. Men +must believe in the great works of the Father through the little works +of the Son: all that he showed was little to what God was doing. They +had to be helped to see that it was God who did such things as often as +they were done. He it is who causes the corn to grow for man. He gives +every fish that a man eats. Even if things are terrible yet they are +God's, and the Lord will still the storm for their faith in Him--tame +a storm, as a man might tame a wild beast--for his Father measures the +waters in the hollow of his hand, and men are miserable not to know it. +For himself, I repeat, his faith is enough; he sleeps on his pillow nor +dreams of perishing. + +On the individual miracles of this class, I have not much to say. The +first of them was wrought in the animal kingdom. + +He was teaching on the shore of the lake, and the people crowded him. +That he might speak with more freedom, he stepped into an empty boat, +and having prayed Simon the owner of it, who was washing his nets near +by, to thrust it a little from the shore, sat down, and no longer +incommoded by the eagerness of his audience, taught them from the boat. +When he had ended he told Simon to launch out into the deep, and let +down his nets for a draught. Simon had little hope of success, for there +had been no fish there all night; but he obeyed, and caught such a +multitude of fishes that the net broke. They had to call another boat to +their aid, and both began to sink from the overload of fishes. But the +great marvel of it wrought on the mind of Simon as every wonder tends to +operate on the mind of an honest man: it brought his sinfulness before +him. In self-abasement he fell down at Jesus' knees. Whether he thought +of any individual sins at the moment, we cannot tell; but he was +painfully dissatisfied with himself. He knew he was not what he ought to +be. I am unwilling however to believe that such a man desired, save, it +may be, as a passing involuntary result of distress, to be rid of the +holy presence. I judge rather that his feeling was like that of the +centurion--that he felt himself unworthy to have the Lord in his boat. +He may have feared that the Lord took him for a good man, and his +honesty could not endure such a mistake: + +"Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." + +The Lord accepted the spirit, therefore _not_ the word of his prayer. + +"Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men." + +His sense of sinfulness, so far from driving the Lord from him, should +draw other men to him. As soon as that cry broke from his lips, he had +become fit to be a fisher of men. He had begun to abjure that which +separated man from man. + +After his resurrection, St John tells us the Lord appeared one morning, +on the shore of the lake, to some of his disciples, who had again been +toiling all night in vain. He told them once more how to cast their net, +and they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. + +"It is the Lord," said St John, purer-hearted, perhaps therefore +keener-eyed, than the rest. + +Since the same thing had occurred before, Simon had become the fisher of +men, but had sinned grievously against his Lord. He knew that Lord so +much better now, however, that when he heard it was he, instead of +crying _Depart from me_, he cast himself into the sea to go to him. + +I take next the feeding of the four thousand with the seven loaves and +the few little fishes, and the feeding of the five thousand with the +five loaves and the two fishes. + +Concerning these miracles, I think I have already said almost all I have +to say. If he was the Son of God, the bread might as well grow in his +hands as the corn in the fields. It is, I repeat, only a doing in +condensed form, hence one more easily associated with its real source, +of that which God is for ever doing more widely, more slowly, and with +more detail both of fundamental wonder and of circumstantial loveliness. +Whence more fittingly might food come than from the hands of such an +elder brother? No doubt there will always be men who cannot believe +it:--happy are they who demand a good reason, and yet can believe a +wonder! Associated with words which appeared to me foolish, untrue, or +even poor in their content, I should not believe it. Associated with +such things as he spoke, I can receive it with ease, and I cherish it +with rejoicing. It must be noted in respect of the feeding of the five +thousand, that while the other evangelists merely relate the deed as +done for the necessities of the multitude, St John records also the +use our Lord made of the miracle. It was the outcome of his essential +relation to humanity. Of humanity he was ever the sustaining food. To +humanity he was about to give himself in an act of such utter devotion +as could only be shadowed--now in the spoken, afterwards in the acted +symbol of the eucharist. The miracle was a type of his life as the life +of the world, a sign that from him flows all the weal of his creatures. +The bread we eat is but its outer husk: the true bread is the Lord +himself, to have whom in us is eternal life. "Except ye eat the flesh of +the Son of man and drink his blood ye have no life in you." He knew that +the grand figure would disclose to the meditation of the loving heart +infinitely more of the truth of the matter than any possible amount +of definition and explanation, and yet must ever remain far short of +setting forth the holy fact to the boldest and humblest mind. But lest +they should start upon a wrong track for the interpretation of it, he +says to his disciples afterwards, that this body of his should return to +God; that what he had said concerning the eating of it had a spiritual +sense: "It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth +nothing"--for that. In words he contradicts what he said before, that +they might see the words to have meant infinitely more than as words +they were able to express; that not their bodies on his body, but their +souls must live on his soul, by a union and communion of which the +eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood was, after all, but a +poor and faint figure. In this miracle, for the souls as for the bodies +of men, he did and revealed the work of the Father. He who has once +understood the meaning of Christ's words in connection with this +miracle, can never be content they should be less than true concerning +his Father in heaven. Whoever would have a perfect Father, must believe +that he bestows his very being for the daily food of his creatures. He +who loves the glory of God will be very jealous of any word that would +enhance his greatness by representing him incapable of suffering. Verily +God has taken and will ever take and endure his share, his largest share +of that suffering in and through which the whole creation groans for the +sonship. + +Follows at once the equally wonderful story of his walking on the sea to +the help of his disciples. After the former miracle, the multitude would +have taken him by force to make him their king. Any kind of honour they +would readily give him except that obedience for the truth's sake which +was all he cared for. He left them and went away into a mountain alone +to pray to his Father. Likely he was weary in body, and also worn in +spirit for lack of that finer sympathy which his disciples could not +give him being very earthly yet. He who loves his fellows and labours +among those who can ill understand him will best know what this +weariness of our Lord must have been like. He had to endure the +world-pressure of surrounding humanity in all its ungodlike phases. Hence +even he, the everlasting Son of the Father, found it needful to retire +for silence and room and comfort into solitary places. There his senses +would be free, and his soul could the better commune with the Father. +The mountain-top was his chamber, the solitude around him its closed +door, the evening sky over his head its open window. There he gathered +strength from the will of the Father for what yet remained to be done +for the world's redemption. How little could the men below, who would +have taken him by force and made him a king, understand of such +communion! Yet every one of them must go hungering and thirsting and +grasping in vain, until the door of that communion was opened for him. +They would have made him a king: he would make them poor in spirit, +mighty in aspiration, all kings and priests unto God. + +But amidst his prayer, amidst the eternal calm of his rapturous +communion, he saw his disciples thwarted by a wind stronger than all +their rowing: he descended the hill and walked forth on the water to +their help. + +If ignorant yet devout speculation may be borne with here, I venture +to say that I think the change of some kind that was necessary somehow +before the body of the Son of Man could, like the Spirit of old, move +upon the face of the waters, passed, not upon the water, but, by the +will of the Son of Man himself, upon his own body. I shall have more to +say concerning this in a following chapter--now I merely add that we +know nothing yet, or next to nothing, of the relation between a right +soul and a healthy body. To some no doubt the notion of a healthy body +implies chiefly a perfection of all the animal functions, which is, +on the supposition, a matter of course; but what I should mean by an +absolutely healthy body is, one entirely under the indwelling spirit, +and responsive immediately to all the laws of its supremacy, whatever +those laws may be in the divine ideal of a man. As we are now, we find +the diseased body tyrannizing over the almost helpless mind: the healthy +body would be the absolutely obedient body. + +What power over his own dwelling a Saviour coming fresh from the closest +speech with him who made that body for holy subjection, might have, who +can tell! If I hear of any reasonable wonder resulting therefrom, I +shall not find it hard to believe, and shall be willing to wait until I, +pure, inhabit an obedient house, to understand the plain thing which +is now a mystery. Meantime I can honour the laws I do know, and which +honest men tell me they have discovered, no less than those honest +men who--without my impulse, it may be, to speculate in this +direction--think such as I foolish in employing the constructive faculty +with regard to these things. But where, I pray them, lies any field so +absolutely its region as the unknown which yet the heart yearns to +know? Such cannot be the unknowable. It is endless comfort to think of +something that _might_ be true. And the essence of whatever seems to a +human heart to be true, I expect to find true--in greater forms, and +without the degrading accidents which so often accompany it in the brain +of the purest thinker. Why should I not speculate in the only direction +in which things to me worthy of speculation appear likely to lie? There +is a wide _may be_ around us; and every true speculation widens the +probability of changing the may _be_ into the _is_. The laws that are +known and the laws that shall be known are all lights from the Father +of lights: he who reverently searches for such will not long mistake +a flash in his own brain for the candle of the Lord. But if he should +mistake, he will be little the worse, so long as he is humble, and ready +to acknowledge error; while, if he should be right, he will be none the +worse for having seen the glimmer of the truth from afar--may, indeed, +come to gather a little honour from those who, in the experimental +verification of an idea, do not altogether forget that, without some +foregone speculation, the very idea on which they have initiated their +experiment, and are now expending their most valued labour, would +never have appeared in their firmament to guide them to new facts and +realities. + +Nor would it be impossible to imagine how St Peter might come within the +sphere of the holy influence, so that he, too, for a moment should walk +on the water. Faith will yet prove itself as mighty a power as it +is represented by certain words of the Lord which are at present a +stumbling-block even to devout Christians, who are able to accept them +only by putting explanations upon them which render them unworthy of +his utterance. When I say _a power_, I do not mean in itself, but as +connecting the helpless with the helpful, as uniting the empty need with +the full supply, as being the conduit through which it is right and +possible for the power of the creating God to flow to the created +necessity. + +When the Lord got into the boat, the wind ceased, "and immediately," +says St John, "the ship was at the land whither they went." As to +whether the ceasing of the wind was by the ordinary laws of nature, or +some higher law first setting such in operation, no one who has followed +the spirit of my remarks will wonder that I do not care to inquire: they +are all of one. Nor, in regard to their finding themselves so quickly at +the end of their voyage, will they wonder if I think that we may have +just one instance of space itself being subject to the obedient God, and +that his wearied disciples, having toiled and rowed hard for so long, +might well find themselves at their desired haven as soon as they +received him into their boat. Either God is all in all, or he is +nothing. Either Jesus is the Son of the Father, or he did no miracle. +Either the miracles are fact, or I lose--not my faith in this man--but +certain outward signs of truths which these very signs have aided me to +discover and understand and see in themselves. + +The miracle of the stilling of the storm naturally follows here. + +Why should not he, who taught his disciples that God numbered the very +hairs of their heads, do what his Father is constantly doing--still +storms--bring peace out of uproar? Of course, if the storm was stilled, +it came about by natural causes--that is, by such as could still a +storm. That anything should be done by unnatural causes, that is, causes +not of the nature of the things concerned, is absurd. The sole question +is whether Nature works alone, as some speculators think, or whether +there is a soul in her, namely, an intent;--whether these things are +the result of thought, or whether they spring from a dead heart; +unconscious, yet productive of conscious beings, to think, yea, +speculate eagerly concerning a conscious harmony hinted at in their +broken music and conscious discord; beings who, although thus born +of unthinking matter, invent the notion of an all lovely, perfect, +self-denying being, whose thought gives form to matter, life to nature, +and thought to man--subjecting himself for their sakes to the troubles +their waywardness has brought upon them, that they too may at length +behold a final good--may see the Holy face to face--think his thoughts +and will his wisdom! + +That things should go by a law which does not recognize the loftiest +in him, a man feels to be a mockery of him. There lies little more +satisfaction in such a condition of things than if the whole were the +fortuitous result of ever conflicting, never combining forces. Wherever +individual and various necessity, choice, and prayer, come in, there +must be the present God, able and ready to fit circumstances to the +varying need of the thinking, willing being he has created. Machinery +will not do here--perfect as it may be. That God might make a world to +go on with absolute physical perfection to all eternity, I could easily +believe; but where the gain?--nay, where the fitness, if he would train +thinking beings to his own freedom? For such he must be ever present, +ever have room to order things for their growth and change and +discipline and enlightenment. The present living idea informing the +cosmos, is nobler than all forsaken perfection--nobler, as a living man +is nobler than an automaton. + +If one should say: "The laws of God ought to admit of no change," +I answer: The same working of unalterable laws might under new +circumstances _look_ a breach of those laws. That God will never alter +his laws, I fully admit and uphold, for they are the outcome of his +truth and fact; but that he might not act in ways unrecognizable by us +as consistent with those laws, I have yet to see reason ere I believe. +Why should his perfect will be limited by our understanding of that +will? Should he be paralyzed because we are blind? That he should ever +require us to believe of him what we think wrong, I do not believe; +that he should present to our vision what may be inconsistent with our +half-digested and constantly changing theories, I can well believe. Why +not--if only to keep us from petrifying an imperfect notion, and calling +it an _Idea_? What I would believe is, that a present God manages the +direction of those laws, even as a man, in his inferior way, works out +his own will in the midst and by means of those laws. Shall God create +that which shall fetter and limit and enslave himself? What should +his laws, as known to us, be but the active mode in which he embodies +certain truths--that mode also the outcome of his own nature? If so, +they must be always capable of falling in with any, if not of effecting +every, expression of his will. + +There remains but one miracle of this class to consider--one to some +minds involving greater difficulties than all the rest. They say the +story of the fish with a piece of money in its mouth is more like one of +the tales of eastern fiction than a sober narrative of the quiet-toned +gospel. I acknowledge a likeness: why might there not be some likeness +between what God does and what man invents? But there is one noticeable +difference: there is nothing of colour in the style of the story. No +great roc, no valley of diamonds, no earthly grandeur whatever is hinted +at in the poor bare tale. Peter had to do with fishes every day of his +life: an ordinary fish, taken with the hook, was here the servant of the +Lord--and why should not the poor fish have its share in the service +of the Master? Why should it not show for itself and its kind that they +were utterly his? that along with the waters in which they dwelt, and +the wind which lifteth up the waves thereof, they were his creatures, +and gladly under his dominion? What the scaly minister brought was +no ring, no rich jewel, but a simple piece of money, just enough, I +presume, to meet the demand of those whom, although they had no legal +claim, our Lord would not offend by a refusal; for he never cared to +stand upon his rights, or treat that as a principle which might be +waived without loss of righteousness. I take for granted that there was +no other way at hand for those poor men to supply the sum required of +them. + + + + +X. MIRACLES OF DESTRUCTION. + + +IF we regard the miracles of our Lord as an epitome of the works of his +Father, there must be room for what we call destruction. + +In the grand process of existence, destruction is one of the phases of +creation; for the inferior must ever be giving way for the growth of the +superior: the husk must crumble and decay, that the seed may germinate +and appear. As the whole creation passes on towards the sonship, death +must ever be doing its sacred work about the lower regions, that life +may ever arise triumphant, in its ascent towards the will of the Father. + +I cannot therefore see good reason why the almost solitary act of +destruction recorded in the story should seem unlike the Master. True +this kind is unlike the other class in this, that it has only an all but +solitary instance: he did not come for the manifestation of such power. +But why, when occasion appeared, should it not have its place? Why might +not the Lord, consistently with his help and his healing, do that in one +instance which his Father is doing every day? I refer now, of course, to +the withering of the fig-tree. In the midst of the freshest greenery of +summer, you may see the wan branches of the lightning-struck tree. As +a poet drawing his pen through syllable or word that mars his clear +utterance or musical comment, such is the destruction of the Maker. It +is the indrawn sigh of the creating Breath. + +Our Lord had already spoken the parable of the fig-tree that bore no +fruit. This miracle was but the acted parable. Here he puts into visible +form that which before he had embodied in words. All shapes of argument +must be employed to arouse the slumbering will of men. Even the +obedience that comes of the lowest fear is a first step towards an +infinitely higher condition than that of the most perfect nature created +incapable of sin. + +The right interpretation of the external circumstances, however, is of +course necessary to the truth of the miracle. It seems to me to be the +following. I do not know to whom I am primarily indebted for it. + +The time of the gathering of figs was near, but had not yet arrived: +upon any fruitful tree one might hope to find a few ripe figs, and more +that were eatable. The Lord was hungry as he went to Jerusalem from +Bethany, and saw on the way a tree with all the promise that a perfect +foliage could give. He went up to it, "if haply he might find anything +thereon." The leaves were all; fruit there was none in any stage; the +tree was a pretence; it fulfilled not that for which it was sent. Here +was an opportunity in their very path of enforcing, by a visible sign +proceeding from himself, one of the most important truths he had striven +to teach them. What he had been saying was in him a living truth: he +condemned the tree to become in appearance that which it was in fact--a +useless thing: when they passed the following morning, it had withered +away, was dried up from the roots. He did not urge in words the lesson +of the miracle-parable; he left that to work when the fate of fruitless +Jerusalem should also have become fact. + + For the present the marvel of it possessed them too + much for the reading of its lesson; therefore, perhaps, + our Lord makes little of the marvel and much of the + power of faith; assuring them of answers to their prayers, + but adding, according to St Mark, that forgiveness of + others is the indispensable condition of their own acceptance + --fit lesson surely to hang on that withered tree. + +After all, the thing destroyed was only a tree. In respect of humanity +there is but one distant, and how distant approach to anything similar! +In the pseudo-evangels there are several tales of vengeance--not one in +these books. The fact to which I refer is recorded by St John alone. It +is, that when the "band of men and officers from the chief priests and +Pharisees" came to take him, and "Jesus went forth and said unto them, +Whom seek ye?" and in reply to theirs, had said "I am he, they went +backward and fell to the ground." + +There are one or two facts in connection with the record of this +incident, which although not belonging quite immediately to my present +design, I would yet note, with the questions they suggest. + +The synoptical Gospels record the Judas-kiss: St John does not. + +St John alone records the going backward and falling to the +ground--prefacing the fact with the words, "And Judas also, which +betrayed him, stood with them." + +Had not the presence of Judas, then--perhaps his kiss--something to +do with the discomfiture of these men? If so--and it seems to me +probable--how comes it that St John alone omits the kiss--St John alone +records the recoil? I repeat--if the kiss had to do with the recoil--as +would seem from mystical considerations most probable, from artistic +most suitable--why are they divided? I think just because those who +saw, saw each a part, and record only what they saw or had testimony +concerning. Had St John seen the kiss, he who was so capable of +understanding the mystical fitness of the connection of such a kiss with +such a recoil, could hardly have omitted it, especially seeing he makes +such a point of the presence of Judas. Had he been an inventor--here is +just such a thing as he would have invented; and just here his record is +barer than that of the rest--bare of the one incident which would +have best helped out his own idea of the story. The consideration is +suggestive. + +But why this exercise of at least repellent, which is half-destructive +force, reminding us of Milton's words-- + + Yet half his strength he put not forth, + But checked His thunder in mid volley? + +It may have had to do with the repentance of Judas which followed. +It may have had to do with the future history of the Jewish men who +composed that band. But I suspect the more immediate object of our +Lord was the safety of his disciples. As soon as the men who had gone +backward and fallen to the ground, had risen and again advanced, he +repeated the question--"Whom seek ye?" "Jesus of Nazareth," they +replied. "I am he," said the Lord again, but added, now that they had +felt his power--"If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way." St +John's reference in respect of these words to a former saying of the +Lord, strengthens this conclusion. And there was no attempt even to lay +hands on them. He had astonished and terrified his captors to gain of +them his sole request--that his friends should go unhurt. There was work +for them to do in the world; and he knew besides that they were not +yet capable of enduring for his sake. At all events it was neither +for vengeance nor for self-preservation that this gentlest form of +destruction was manifested. I suspect it was but another shape of the +virtue that went forth to heal. A few men fell to the ground that his +disciples might have time to grow apostles, and redeem the world with +the news of him and his Father. For the sake of humanity the fig-tree +withered; for the resurrection of the world, his captors fell: small +hurt and mighty healing. + +Daring to interpret the work of the Father from the work of the Son, I +would humbly believe that all destruction is for creation--that, even +for this, death alone is absolutely destroyed--that, namely, which +stands in the way of the outgoing of the Father's will, then only +completing its creation when men are made holy. + +God does destroy; but not life. Its outer forms yield that it may grow, +and growing pass into higher embodiments, in which it can grow yet +more. That alone will be destroyed which has the law of death in +itself--namely, sin. Sin is death, and death must be swallowed up of +hell. Life, that is God, is the heart of things, and destruction must be +destroyed. For this victory endless _forms_ of life must yield;--even +the _form_ of the life of the Son of God himself must yield upon the +cross, that the life might arise a life-giving spirit; that his own +words might be fulfilled--"For if I depart not, the Comforter will not +come unto you." All spirit must rise victorious over form; and the form +must die lest it harden to stone around the growing life. No form is +or can be great enough to contain the truth which is its soul; for all +truth is infinite being a thought of God. It is only in virtue of the +flowing away of the form, that is death, and the ever gathering of new +form behind, that is birth or embodiment, that any true revelation is +possible. On what other terms shall the infinite embrace the finite but +the terms of an endless change, an enduring growth, a recognition of +the divine as for ever above and beyond, a forgetting of that which is +behind, a reaching unto that which is before? Therefore destruction +itself is holy. It is as if the Eternal said, "I will show myself; but +think not to hold me in any form in which I come. The form is not I." +The still small voice is ever reminding us that the Lord is neither in +the earthquake nor the wind nor the fire; but in the lowly heart that +finds him everywhere. The material can cope with the eternal only in +virtue of everlasting evanescence. + + + + +XI. THE RESURRECTION. + + +The works of the Lord he himself represents as given him of the Father: +it matters little whether we speak of his resurrection as a miracle +wrought by himself, or wrought in him by the Father. If he was one with +the Father, the question cannot be argued, seeing that Jesus apart from +the Father is not a conceivable idea. It is only natural that he who +had power to call from the grave the body which had lain there for four +days, should have power over the body he had himself laid down, to take +it again with reanimating possession. For distinctly do I hold that he +took again the same body in which he had walked about on the earth, +suffered, and yielded unto death. In the same body--not merely the same +form, in which he had taught them, he appeared again to his disciples, +to give them the final consolations of a visible presence, before +departing for the sake of a yet higher presence in the spirit of truth, +a presence no longer limited by even the highest forms of the truth. + +It is not surprising that the records of such a marvel, grounded upon +the testimony of men and women bewildered first with grief, and next all +but distracted with the sudden inburst of a gladness too great for that +equanimity which is indispensable to perfect observation, should not +altogether correspond in the minutiae of detail. All knew that the Lord +had risen indeed: what matter whether some of them saw one or two angels +in the tomb? The first who came saw one angel outside and another inside +the sepulchre. One at a different time saw two inside. What wonder +then that one of the records should say of them all, that they saw +two angels? I do not care to set myself to the reconciliation of the +differing reports. Their trifling disagreement is to me even valuable +from its truth to our human nature. All I care to do is to suggest to +any one anxious to understand the records the following arrangement of +facts. When Mary Magdalene found the tomb empty, not seeing, or heedless +of the angel, she forsook her companions, and ran to the chief of the +disciples to share the agony of this final loss. Perhaps something might +yet be done to rescue the precious form, and lay it aside with all +futile honours. With Peter and John she returned to the grave, whence, +in the mean time, her former companions, having seen and conversed with +the angel outside and the angel inside, had departed to find their +friends. Peter and John, having, the one entered, the other looked into +the tomb, and seen only the folded garments of desertion, returned home, +but Mary lingered weeping by the place which was not now even the +grave of the beloved, so utterly had not only he but the signs of him +vanished. As she wept, she stooped down into the sepulchre. There sat +the angels in holy contemplation, one at the head, the other at the feet +where the body of Jesus had lain. Peter nor John had beheld them: to the +eyes of Mary as of the other women they were manifest. It is a lovely +story that follows, full of marvel, as how should it not be? + +"Woman, why weepest thou?" said the angels. + +"Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have +laid him," answered Mary, and turning away, tear-blinded, saw the +gardener, as she thought. + +"Woman, why weepest thou?" repeats the gardener. + +"Whom seekest thou?" + +Hopelessness had dulled every sense: not even a start at the sound of +his voice! + +"Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, +and I will take him away." + +"Mary!" + +"Master!" + +"Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my +brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father; +and to my God and your God." + +She had the first sight of him. It would almost seem that, arrested by +her misery, he had delayed his ascent, and shown himself sooner than his +first intent. "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended." She was about +to grasp him with the eager hands of reverent love: why did he refuse +the touch? + +Doubtless the tone of the words deprived them of any sting. Doubtless +the self-respect of the woman was in no way wounded by the master's +recoil. For the rest, we know so little of the new conditions of his +bodily nature, that nothing is ours beyond conjecture. It may be, for +anything I know, that there were even physical reasons why she should +not yet touch him; but my impression is that, after the hard work +accomplished, and the form in which he had wrought and suffered resumed, +he must have the Father's embrace first, as after a long absence any man +would seek first the arms of his dearest friend. It may well be objected +to this notion, that he had never been absent from God--that in his +heart he was at home with him continually. And yet the body with all its +limitations, with all its partition-walls of separation, is God's, +and there must be some way in which even _it_ can come into a willed +relation with him to whom it is nearer even than to ourselves, for it is +the offspring of his will, or as the prophets of old would say--the work +of his hands. That which God has invented and made, which has its very +origin in the depth of his thought, _can_ surely come nigh to God. +Therefore I think that in some way which we cannot understand, Jesus +would now seek the presence of the Father; would, having done the work +which he had given him to do, desire first of all to return in the body +to him who had _sent_ him by giving him a body. Hence although he might +delay his return at the sound of the woman's grief, he would rather +_she_ did not touch him first. If any one thinks this founded on too +human a notion of the Saviour, I would only reply that I suspect a great +part of our irreligion springs from our disbelief in the humanity of +God. There lie endless undiscovered treasures of grace. After he had +once ascended to the Father, he not only appeared to his disciples again +and again, but their hands handled the word of life, and he ate in their +presence. He had been to his Father, and had returned that they might +know him lifted above the grave and all that region in which death has +power; that as the elder brother, free of the oppressions of humanity, +but fulfilled of its tenderness, he might show himself captain of their +salvation. Upon the body he inhabited, death could no longer lay his +hands, and from the vantage-ground he thus held, he could stretch down +the arm of salvation to each and all. + +For in regard of this glorified body of Jesus, we must note that it +appeared and disappeared at the will of its owner; and it would seem +also that other matter yielded and gave it way; yes, even that space +itself was in some degree subjected to it. Upon the first of these, the +record is clear. If any man say he cannot believe it, my only answer is +that I can. If he ask how it _could_ be, the nearest I can approach to +an answer is to indicate the region in which it may be possible: the +border-land where thought and matter meet is the region where all +marvels and miracles are generated. The wisdom of this world can believe +that matter generates mind: what seems to me the wisdom from above can +believe that mind generates matter--that matter is but the manifest +mind. On this supposition matter may well be subject to mind; much more, +if Jesus be the Son of God, his own body must be subject to his will. I +doubt, indeed, if the condition of any man is perfect before the body he +inhabits is altogether obedient to his will--before, through his own +absolute obedience to the Father, the realm of his own rule is put under +him perfectly. + +It may be objected that although this might be credible of the glorified +body of even the human resurrection, it is hard to believe that the body +which suffered and died on the cross could become thus plastic to the +will of the indwelling spirit. But I do not see why that which was born +of the spirit of the Father, should not be so inter-penetrated and +possessed by the spirit of the Son, that, without the loss of one of +its former faculties, it should be endowed with many added gifts of +obedience; amongst the rest such as are indicated in the narrative +before us. + +Why was this miracle needful? + +Perhaps, for one thing, that men should not limit him, or themselves in +him, to the known forms of humanity; and for another, that the best hope +might be given them of a life beyond the grave; that their instinctive +desires in that direction might thus be infinitely developed and +assured. I suspect, however, that it followed just as the natural +consequence of all that preceded. + +If Christ be risen, then is the grave of humanity itself empty. We have +risen with him, and death has henceforth no dominion over us. Of every +dead man and woman it may be said: He--she--is not here, but is risen +and gone before us. Ever since the Lord lay down in the tomb, and behold +it was but a couch whence he arose refreshed, we may say of every +brother: He is not dead but sleepeth. He too is alive and shall arise +from his sleep. + +The way to the tomb may be hard, as it was for him; but we who look on, +see the hardness and not the help; we see the suffering but not the +sustaining: that is known only to the dying and God. They can tell us +little of this, and nothing of the glad safety beyond. + +With any theory of the conditions of our resurrection, I have scarcely +here to do. It is to me a matter of positively no interest whether or +not, in any sense, the matter of our bodies shall be raised from the +earth. It is enough that we shall possess forms capable of revealing +ourselves and of bringing us into contact with God's other works; forms +in which the idea, so blurred and broken in these, shall be carried +out--remaining so like, that friends shall doubt not a moment of the +identity, becoming so unlike, that the tears of recognition shall be all +for the joy of the gain and the gratitude of the loss. Not to believe in +mutual recognition beyond, seems to me a far more reprehensible unbelief +than that in the resurrection itself. I can well understand how a man +should not believe in any life after death. I will confess that although +probabilities are for it, _appearances_ are against it. But that a man, +still more a woman, should believe in the resurrection of the very same +body of Jesus, who took pains that his friends should recognize him +therein; that they should regard his resurrection as their one ground +for the hope of their own uprising, and yet not believe that friend +shall embrace friend in the mansions prepared for them, is to me +astounding. Such a shadowy resumption of life I should count unworthy of +the name of resurrection. Then indeed would the grave be victorious, +not alone over the body, not alone over all which made the life of this +world precious and by which we arose towards the divine--but so far +victorious over the soul that henceforth it should be blind and deaf to +what in virtue of loveliest memories would have added a new song to the +praises of the Father, a new glow to the love that had wanted but that +to make it perfect. In truth I am ashamed of even combating such an +essential falsehood. Were it not that here and there a weak soul is +paralysed by the presence of the monstrous lie, and we dare not allow +sympathy to be swallowed up of even righteous disdain, a contemptuous +denial would be enough. + +What seemed to the disciples the final acme of disappointment and grief, +the vanishing of his body itself, was in reality the first sign of the +dawn of an illimitable joy. He was not there because he had risen. + + + + +XII. THE TRANSFIGURATION. + + +I have judged it fitting to close this series of meditations with some +thoughts on the Transfiguration, believing the story to be as it were a +window through which we gain a momentary glimpse of the region whence +all miracles appear--a glimpse vague and dark for all the transfiguring +light, for God himself is "by abundant clarity invisible." In the story +we find a marvellous change, a lovely miracle, pass upon the form itself +whence the miracles flowed, as if the pent-up grace wrought mightily +upon the earthen vessel which contained it. + +Our Lord would seem to have repeatedly sought some hill at eventide for +the solitude such a place alone could afford him. It must often have +been impossible for him to find any other chamber in which to hold +communion with his Father undisturbed. This, I think, was one of such +occasions. He took with him the favoured three, whom also he took apart +from the rest in the garden of Gethsemane, to retire even from them a +little, that he might be alone with the Father, yet know that his +brothers were near him--the ocean of human need thus drawn upwards +in an apex of perfect prayer towards the throne of the Father. + +I think this, his one only material show, if we except the entry into +Jerusalem upon the ass, took place in the night. Then the son of Joseph +the carpenter was crowned, not his head only with a crown placed thereon +from without, but his whole person with a crown of light born in him and +passing out from him. According to St Luke he went up the mountain to +pray, "but Peter and they that were with him were _heavy with sleep_." +St Luke also says that "on the next day, when they were come down from +the mountain," that miracle was performed which St Matthew and St Mark +represent as done _immediately_ on the descent. From this it appears +more than likely that the night was spent upon the mountain. + +St Luke says that "the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his +raiment was white and glistering." St Matthew says, "His face did shine +as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light." St Mark says, "His +raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow, so as no fuller on +earth can white them." St Luke is alone in telling us that it was while +he prayed that this change passed upon him. He became outwardly glorious +from inward communion with his Father. But we shall not attain to the +might of the meaning, if we do not see what was the more immediate +subject of his prayer. It is, I think, indicated in the fact, also +recorded by St Luke, that the talk of his heavenly visitors was "of his +decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." Associate with this +the fact that his talk with his disciples, as they came down the +mountain, pointed in the same direction, and that all open report of the +vision was to be withheld until he should have risen from the dead, and +it will appear most likely that the master, oppressed with the thought +of that which now drew very nigh, sought the comfort and sympathy of his +Father, praying in the prospect of his decease. Let us observe then how, +in heaving off the weight of this awful shadow by prayer, he did not +grow calm and resigned alone, if he were ever other than such, but his +faith broke forth so triumphant over the fear, that it shone from him +in physical light. Every cloud of sorrow or dread, touched with such a +power of illumination, is itself changed into a glory. The radiance goes +hand in hand with the coming decay and the three days' victory of death. +It is as a foretaste of his resurrection, a putting on of his new +glorified body for a moment while he was yet in the old body and the +awful shadow yet between. It may be to something like this as taking +place in other men that the apostle refers when he says: "We shall not +all sleep, but we shall all be changed." That coming death was to be but +as the overshadowing cloud, from which the glory should break anew and +for ever. The transfiguration then was the divine defiance of the coming +darkness. + +Let us now speculate for a moment upon the relation of the spiritual and +physical manifested in it. He became, I repeat, outwardly glorious from +inward communion with his Father. In like circumstance, the face of +Moses shone marvellously. And what wonder? What should make a man's face +shine, if not the presence of the Holy? if not communion with the Father +of his spirit? In the transfiguration of Jesus we have, I think, just +the perfect outcome of those natural results of which we have the first +signs in Moses--the full daylight, of which his shining face was as +the dawn. Thus, like the other miracles, I regard it as simply a rare +manifestation of the perfect working of nature. Who knows not that in +moments of lofty emotion, in which self is for the time forgotten, the +eyes shine, and the face is so transfigured that we are doubtful whether +it be not in a degree absolutely luminous! I say once more, in the Lord +we find the perfecting of all the dull hunts of precious things which +common humanity affords us. If so, what a glory must await every +lowliest believer, since the communion of our elder brother with his +Father and our Father, a communion for whose perfecting in us he came, +caused not only his face to shine, but the dull garments he wore to +become white as snow through the potency of the permeating light issuing +from his whole person! The outer man shone with the delight of the inner +man--for his Father was with him--so that even his garments shared in +the glory. Such is what the presence of the Father will do for every +man. May I not add that the shining of the garments is a type of the +glorification of everything human when brought into its true relations +by and with the present God? + +Keeping the same point of view, I turn now to the resurrection with +which the whole fact is so closely associated:--I think the virtue of +divine presence which thus broke in light from the body of Jesus, is the +same by which his risen body, half molten in power, was rendered plastic +to the will of the indwelling spirit. What if this light were the +healing agent of the bodies of men, as the deeper other light from which +it sprung is the healing agent of themselves? Are not the most powerful +of the rays of light invisible to our vision? + +Some will object that this is a too material view of life and its facts. +I answer that the question is whether I use the material to interpret +the spiritual, as I think I do, or to account for it, as I know I do +not. In my theory, the spiritual _both_ explains and accounts for the +material. + +If the notions we have of what we may call _material light_ render it +the only fitting image to express the invisible Truth, the being of God, +there must be some closest tie between them--not of connection only, +but of unity. Such a fitness could not exist without such connection; +except, indeed, there were one god of the Natural and another of the +Supernatural, who yet were brothers, and thought in similar modes, and +the one had to supplement the work of the other. The essential truth +of God it must be that creates its own visual image in the sun that +enlightens the world: when man who is the image of God is filled with +the presence of the eternal, he too, in virtue of his divine nature thus +for the moment ripened to glory, radiates light from his very person. +Where, when, or how the inner spiritual light passes into or generates +outward physical light, who can tell? This border-land, this touching +of what we call mind and matter, is the region of miracles--of material +creation, I might have said, which is _the_ great--suspect, the _only_ +miracle. But if matter be the outcome of spirit, and body and soul be +one man, then, if the soul be radiant of truth, what can the body do but +shine? + +I conjecture then, that truth, which is light in the soul, might not +only cast out disease, which is darkness in the body, but change that +body even, without the intervention of death, into the likeness of the +body of Jesus, capable of all that could be demanded of it. Except +by violence I do not think the body of Jesus could have died. No +physiologist can tell why man should die. I think a perfect soul would +be capable of keeping its body alive. An imperfect one cannot fill it +with light in every part--cannot thoroughly inform the brute matter with +life. The transfiguration of Jesus was but the visible outbreak of a +life so strong as to be life-giving, life-restoring. The flesh it could +melt away and evermore renew. Such a body might well walk upon the +stormiest waters. A body thus responsive to and interpenetrative of +light, which is the visible life, could have no sentence of death in it. +It would never have died. + +But I find myself in regions where I dare tread no further for the +darkness of ignorance. I see many glimmers: they are too formless and +uncertain. + +When or how the light died away, we are not told. My own fancy is that +it went on shining but paling all the night upon the lonely mount, to +vanish in the dawn of the new day. When he came down from the mountain +the virtue that dwelt in him went forth no more in light to the eyes, +but in healing to the poor torn frame of the epileptic boy. So he +vanished at last from the eyes of his friends, only to draw nearer--with +a more intense and healing presence--to their hearts and minds. + +Even so come, Lord Jesus. + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Miracles of Our Lord, by George MacDonald + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIRACLES OF OUR LORD *** + +***** This file should be named 9103-8.txt or 9103-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/9/1/0/9103/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Graham Smith and Distributed +Proofreaders. HTML version by Al Haines. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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