As soon as the tribe found out that we had a doctor in our party, they
began to flock in from all quarters. Dr. B., in the charity of his
nature, had taken a child from a wagon who sat near by, and put some
sort of a wash upon its diseased eyes. That woman went off and started
the whole nation, and it was a sight to see them swarm! The lame, the
halt, the blind, the leprous—all the distempers that are bred of
indolence, dirt, and iniquity—were represented in the congress in ten
minutes, and still they came! Every woman that had a sick baby brought
it along, and every woman that hadn’t, borrowed one. What reverent and
what worshiping looks they bent upon that dread, mysterious power, the
Doctor! They watched him take his phials out; they watched him measure
the particles of white powder; they watched him add drops of one
precious liquid, and drops of another; they lost not the slightest
movement; their eyes were riveted upon him with a fascination that
nothing could distract. I believe they thought he was gifted like a god.
When each individual got his portion of medicine, his eyes were radiant
with joy—notwithstanding by nature they are a thankless and impassive
race—and upon his face was written the unquestioning faith that nothing
on earth could prevent the patient from getting well, now.
Christ knew how to preach to these simple, superstitious,
disease-tortured creatures: He healed the sick. They flocked to our poor
human doctor this morning when the fame of what he had done to the sick
child went abroad in the land, and they worshiped him with their eyes
while they did not know as yet whether there was virtue in his simples
or not. The ancestors of these—people precisely like them in color,
dress, manners, costumes, simplicity—flocked in vast multitudes after
Christ, and when they saw Him make the afflicted whole with a word, it
is no wonder they worshiped Him. No wonder His deeds were the talk of
the nation. No wonder the multitude that followed Him was so great that
at one time—thirty miles from here—they had to let a sick man down
through the roof because no approach could be made to the door; no
wonder His audiences were so great at Galilee that He had to preach from
a ship removed a little distance from the shore; no wonder that even in
the desert places about Bethsaida, five thousand invaded His solitude,
and He had to feed them by a miracle or else see them suffer for their
confiding faith and devotion; no wonder when there was a great commotion
in a city in those days, one neighbor explained it to another in words
to this effect: “They say that Jesus of Nazareth is come!”