The miracles of Jesus - Classical Christian Literature by Athleo.net

THE WITHERED HAND 237
for these works of mercy. He healed diseases
because, as the Conqueror of sin, He wanted to
show that He traced disease to its ultimate cause.
He rescued a man, though perhaps only momentarily,
from the evils which harassed him, because He
wished to show that He was the Redeemer of his
whole nature, and that the body itself would ultimately
be raised incorruptible, when all would hear
the voice of the Son of God. Besides this He was
the representative of God, and did what He does
who constantly heals disease and feeds the hungry.
George Macdonald was right when he said :
" This,
I think, is the true nature of miracles, they are the
epitome of God's processes, beheld in connection with
their Source." Regarded in that light, miracles are
in the highest degree instructive and inspiring. We
are all apt to forget God in the processes through
which He works, and such forgetfulness could not
be better checked than by the miracles of Christ.
He did directly what God generally does indirectly.
For example, we eat our daily bread, and know the
processes through which the corn has passed since
the harvest, and perhaps fail to think of God in
connection with them, although it was He who gave
the seed its life, and strength to the husbandman,
and fertility to the ground. But if we saw all these
processes concentrated into one act, as they were
when Christ fed five thousand men with a few loaves,
we should recognise the divine power ever after in
the ordinary processes of nature. Thus was it with
a miracle like this. If a physician had effected a
cure it would have been because God had endued
him with power of diagnosis, and had given to the