Miracles of Our Lord | Page 7

one
day cry out, like the praiseful ruler of the feast to him who gave it not,
"Thou hast kept the good wine until now."

III. THE CURE OF SIMON'S WIFE'S MOTHER.
In respect of the purpose I have in view, it is of little consequence in
what order I take the miracles. I choose for my second chapter the story
of the cure of St Peter's mother-in-law. Bare as the narrative is, the
event it records has elements which might have been moulded with
artistic effect--on the one side the woman tossing in the folds of the
fever, on the other the entering Life. But it is not from this side that I
care to view it.
Neither do I wish to look at it from the point of view of the bystanders,
although it would appear that we had the testimony of three of them in
the three Gospels which contain the story. We might almost determine
the position in the group about the bed occupied by each of the three,
from the differences between their testimonies. One says Jesus stood
over her; another, he touched her hand; the third, he lifted her up: they
agree that the fever left her, and she ministered to them.--In the present
case, as in others behind, I mean to regard the miracle from the point of
view of the person healed.
Pain, sickness, delirium, madness, as great infringements of the laws of
nature as the miracles themselves, are such veritable presences to the
human experience, that what bears no relation to their existence, cannot

be the God of the human race. And the man who cannot find his God in
the fog of suffering, no less than he who forgets his God in the
sunshine of health, has learned little either of St Paul or St John. The
religion whose light renders no dimmest glow across this evil air,
cannot be more than a dim reflex of the true. And who will mourn to
find this out? There are, perhaps, some so anxious about themselves
that, rather than say, "I have it not: it is a better thing than I have ever
possessed," they would say, "I have the precious thing, but in the hour
of trial it is of little avail." Let us rejoice that the glory is great, even if
we dare not say, It is mine. Then shall we try the more earnestly to lay
hold upon it.
So long as men must toss in weary fancies all the dark night, crying,
"Would God it were morning," to find, it may be, when it arrives, but
little comfort in the grey dawn, so long must we regard God as one to
be seen or believed in--cried unto at least--across all the dreary flats of
distress or dark mountains of pain, and therefore those who would help
their fellows must sometimes look for him, as it were, through the eyes
of those who suffer, and try to help them to think, not from ours, but
from their own point of vision. I shall therefore now write almost
entirely for those to whom suffering is familiar, or at least well known.
And first I would remind them that all suffering is against the ideal
order of things. No man can love pain. It is an unlovely, an ugly,
abhorrent thing. The more true and delicate the bodily and mental
constitution, the more must it recoil from pain. No one, I think, could
dislike pain so much as the Saviour must have disliked it. God dislikes
it. He is then on our side in the matter. He knows it is grievous to be
borne, a thing he would cast out of his blessed universe, save for
reasons.
But one will say--How can this help me when the agony racks me, and
the weariness rests on me like a gravestone?--Is it nothing, I answer, to
be reminded that suffering is in its nature transitory--that it is against
the first and final will of God--that it is a means only, not an end? Is it
nothing to be told that it will pass away? Is not that what you would?
God made man for lordly skies, great sunshine, gay colours, free winds,
and delicate odours; and however the fogs may be needful for the soul,
right gladly does he send them away, and cause the dayspring from on
high to revisit his children. While they suffer he is brooding over them

an eternal day, suffering with them but rejoicing in their future. He is
the God of the individual man, or he could be no God of the race.
I believe it is possible--and that some have achieved it--so to believe in
and rest upon the immutable Health--so to regard one's own sickness as