Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/239

Letter 19] longing to help, and in many cases feeling that it was God's will that He should help. To suppose that He cured all who were brought to Him is absurd, and is contrary (as we have seen above) to the evidence of the earliest Evangelist. He had the power of distinguishing between faith and not faith; had He an equal power of discerning physiological possibilities from impossibilities? Did a kind of instinct tell Him that the restoration of a lost limb was not like the cure of a paralytic, not one of the works "prepared for Him by His Father?" I do not suppose that such physiological distinctions were intellectually known by Christ in His human nature, any more than the modern discoveries of geology, astronomy, or history. But experience and some kind of intuition may have enabled Him to distinguish those cases which He could heal from those (a far more numerous class) which He could not. In performing these "mighty works" of healing, Jesus appears on many occasions to have studiously avoided that very publicity which—on the theory of their being intended as demonstrations—ought to have been a condition of their performance. He takes the patient apart, or expressly warns him to be silent about his cure—acts quite inconsistent with the demonstration-hypothesis. Probably He felt that these works, although they came to Him fresh from His Father's hands, were not without a danger. Men crowded round Him, not to hear the truth but to see "the miracles." Instead of recognizing that He did only such works as "the Father had prepared for Him to do," they thought that He could do "anything He pleased." I think we ought to feel that the very notion of such a power as this was absolutely revolting to Jesus: "To stop the sun, to call down fire or bread from heaven, to stay the course of rivers, and cast down the walls of cities—doubtless Joshua and Elijah had done these works; but they were not the works that the Father had prepared