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.