Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 2.pdf/244

 in this the time of the Lord's second appearing. The miracles wrought by our Lord are all symbolical of those which are spiritual—those greater miracles which the Lord declared his disciples should perform; they are greater, because they are performed internally, affecting the souls of men, in the same way as the natural miracles affected their bodies.

John the Baptist was the forerunner of the Lord—the voice which cried to men in their then wilderness state; he represented the Word of divine truth in its lowest, literal, and ultimate sense. In the same manner, that Word still is the forerunner; it still calls men to repentance; it still exhorts them to believe the gospel, for the kingdom of heaven is near; and it still sends its disciples, for the disciples of John are the learners of truth, who are continually coming to the Supreme Truth for instruction. The disciples of John further represent those who are believers in the literal truths of the Word, but who as yet know nothing of spiritual truth. And as John appeared, when left to himself, in doubt of the reality of the Lord's being the Messiah, so these are in doubt as to the reality of the spiritual truth of the Word, though the dispensation of which it treats is really prophesied of, as the tabernacle of God which is to be with men. But, because, by John's disciples, those are represented who sincerely desire the truth for its own intrinsic worth, therefore all who come to the Lord in this state, are received and instructed. In that same hour he cures many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits, and to many that are blind he gives sight. He opens their interior perception; he imparts the willing obedience; he discovers the detestable nature