have detained him. He may have had business for
Herod in Cana or on the road as well as for himself; the beast he rode
may have gone lame where he could not procure another; at any rate, it
is quite uncalled for to ascribe his delay to the confidence he had in
Christ's word, an instance of the truth, "He that believeth shall not
make haste." The more certainly he believed Christ's word the more
anxious would he be to see his son. His servants knew how anxious he
would be to hear, for they went to meet him; and were no doubt
astonished to find that the sudden recovery of the boy was due to Him
whom their master had visited. The cure had travelled much faster than
he who had received the assurance of it.

The process by which they verified the miracle and connected the cure
with the word of Jesus was simple, but perfectly satisfactory. They
compared notes regarding the time, and found that the utterance of Jesus
was simultaneous with the recovery of the boy. The servants who saw the
boy recover did not ascribe his recovery to any miraculous agency; they
would no doubt suppose that it was one of those unaccountable cases
which occasionally occur, and which most of us have witnessed. Nature
has secrets which the most skilful of her interpreters cannot disclose;
and even so marvellous a thing as an instantaneous cure of a hopeless
case may be due to some hidden law of nature. But no sooner did their
master assure them that the hour in which the boy began to amend was the
very hour in which Jesus said he would get better, than they all saw to
what agency the cure was due.

Here lies the special significance of this miracle; it brings into
prominence this distinctive peculiarity of a miracle, that it consists
of a marvel which is coincident with an express announcement of it, and
is therefore referrible to a personal agent.[13] It is the two things
taken together that prove that there is a superhuman agency. The marvel
alone, a sudden return of sight to the blind, or of vigour to the
paralysed, does not prove that there is anything supernatural in the
case; but if this marvel follows upon the word of one who commands it,
and does so in all cases in which such a command is given, it becomes
obvious that this is not the working of a hidden law of nature, nor a
mere coincidence, but the intervention of a supernatural agency. That
which convinced the nobleman's household that a miracle had been wrought
was not the recovery of th