ach
us that; for it must tell us that in the work of the Divine Artist, as in
the work of the human, imperfection, impotence, disorder of any kind,
must be contrary to the mind and will of the Creator. The highest
reason, I say, teaches us this. And Scripture teaches it like wise. For
if we believe our Lord to have been as He was--the express image of the
Almighty Father; if we believe that He came--as He did come--to reveal to
men His Father's will, His Father's mind, His Father's character: then we
must believe that He acted according to that will and according to that
character, when He made the healing of disease, and the curing of
imperfections of this very kind, an important and an integral part of His
work on earth.

"And they brought unto Jesus one that was deaf, and had an impediment in
his speech, and besought Him to put His hand upon him. And Jesus took
him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers into his ears; and He
spit, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, He sighed, and
said unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears
were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain
. . . And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all
things well: He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak."

Consider this story awhile. He healed the man miraculously, by means at
which we cannot guess, which we cannot even conceive. But the healing
signified at least two things--that the man could be healed, and that the
man ought to be healed; that his bodily defect--the retribution of no sin
of his own--was contrary to the will of that Father in Heaven, who
willeth not that one little one should perish.

But Jesus sighed likewise. There was in Him a sorrow, a compassion, most
human and most divine.

It may have been--may He forgive me if I dare rashly to impute motives or
thoughts to Him--that there was something too of a divine weariness--I
dare not say impatience, seeing how patient He was then and how patient
He has been since for more than 1800 years--of the folly and ignorance of
man, who brings on himself and on his descendants these and a hundred
other preventible miseries, simply because he will not study and obey the
physical laws of the universe; simply because he will not see that those
laws which concern the welfare of his body, are as surely the will of God
as those which concern the welfare of his soul; and that ther