66

on earth, and turn water into wine, or raise the dead to life, in my presence, and if he were to say, "I do so because you ought to learn that it is lawful to worship the Virgin Mary," or, "that the doctrine of transubstantiation is true," or, have another book to add to the Bible," I would reject the miracle and the miracle-worker together. The apostle says, "If we or an angel from heaven preach unto you any other gospel than that ye have received, let him be anathema." Keep close to the Bible then, as God's complete testimony. All the miracles that angels from beneath can work, or pretended apostles can show, will not make me believe that they have any thing additional to this book, or accept any thing contrary · to this book, as if God had changed his mind, and were about to give us a new or contradictory revelation. Our safety is within the boards of the Bible; we have a complete and sufficient Bible. The Bible has not grown old, as they say in Germany humanity has not outgrown the Bible. Certainly in this old country of ours we believe that England's Bible is England's pole-star; and that therefore we have peace, loyalty, and love in other countries they believe that they have outgrown the Bible; but they show that

they have outgrown common sense at the same time, for every man's hand seems to be against his neighbour, and his neighbour's hand against him.

There is a distinction of great importance that I ought not to overlook here, the distinction between a discovery and a revelation. A discovery is what man can make, and man can enlarge and improve; a revelation is what God alone can give, and man cannot add to nor may take from. When Columbus arrived at America, he made a discovery, and subsequent visits have enlarged, perfected, and extended that discovery; but when God completed the Bible, he made a revelation; and no flight of ours can reach the height from which it came, and therefore no genius of ours can add to the perfection by which it is now stamped and transparently characterized.

All true, heavenly miracles have this one grand feature: they have a redemptive character; they go to counteract and reverse the effects of the fall. If we try every miracle performed by our Lord by this test, we shall find it stand. When, for instance, Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, and cured the leprous, he reinstated the subjects of these diseases in the place in which

E

they were meant to be when God created them, and pronounced them" very good." Again, when he fed the thousands with a few loaves and fishes,

he gave an instalment of the reversal of the curse of barrenness, which fell upon the whole earth when man was sent forth from Eden to water it with his tears, and fertilize it with the sweat of his brow. And when he walked upon the yielding waves, and beckoned to the obedient winds, and the former slumbered at his feet like gentle babes, and the latter came to him like his own hired servants, he then showed that he was creation's Lord, about to retune creation's tangled strings, and bring it back again, like an Eolian harp, to its ancient order and perfection, when God's Spirit shall sweep over it, and bring out glorious and inexhaustible melody. You find in all Christ's works and miracles, the stamp of the Redeemer, the evidence of redemptive power,—a proof that a new, a Divine, a beneficent Being is touching Nature, and bringing her back to what she was. So with many things that we see existing now. When you see a physician, you recognise in that physician's presence a testimony that sin has diseased humanity, and in him the standing exponent of

man's convulsive effort to bring things back to what they were. And the day will come, I believe, when all this restoration will be realized, when Christ shall speak that glorious word which shall make the desert rejoice and the wilderness blossom as the rose; when there shall be no more sickness, nor sorrow, nor trial, but the former things shall have passed away, and all old things shall have become new.

With these prefatory remarks, I enter upon the miracle which I have read - namely, the healing of the nobleman's son. This nobleman, it seems, was the prime minister, or head steward, or satrap, under Herod, a person therefore of great rank and dignity; but, though high in rank, he shared in the common humanity of us all. It is a great mistake to suppose that a nobleman differs from a commoner in any thing save in extrinsic and relative position. This nobleman felt the love to his child that the poorest person in Herod's realm felt; and at this moment our beloved queen does not love her prince or her princess better than that poor ragged mother in Drury Lane loves the little babe that she clasps in her bosom, and can scarcely shield from the summer's heat or protect

from the winter's winds. Underneath all the pomp and splendour and noise of state there is heard the great under-tone of our common humanity; amid all the distinctions and the differences, which are beautiful, and graceful, and strengthening to the social fabric, there yet run, cohering together, the roots of our common nature, the traces of our common ruin, and, blessed be God, sparkling amid these the hopes of our final restoration.

Greatness of rank does not exempt people from sickness and death. Great men and noblemen are sometimes tempted to believe so. One thinks a battalion of bayonets around him can give him safety; another thinks that the splendour of equipage, a readiness of ministry and wealth and innumerable resources, can keep out sickness. It is a great mistake; experience shows it to be so; there are sick-beds in palaces, and there are aching temples upon beds of down; many a time when a poor man goes to his work with a merry heart, and with few thorns and cares to pierce it, the head that has a coronet or a crown on it aches all the day long, and has little rest by night. The rich, instead of being the least exempt, are the most