2. Now the exercise of faith must always precede healing. A certain moral temper there must be in the recipient, a certain spiritual outlook, a movement of trust, a personal desire of living interest that will go out from the soul towards the presence of Him who draws it into His mastery. These there must be if any virtue is to go out from Him. He moves along in silence, but His silence has power in it that can be felt, and it acts as a spiritual test of those on whom it falls. If they are in a moral condition to be helped, they become aware of the succour that is at hand. They feel about for what it means, they detect His personal supremacy. They have an impulse that goes out to Him ; they put up a cry ; they thrust out a hand to touch, if it may be, the hem of His garment. That act of theirs releases His force. Instantaneously and inevitably His life has passed into theirs. They are invaded by His strength ; they are permeated by His vitality ; they are quickened by His energy ; they find themselves, by sheer and natural necessity, rising, walking, seeing, hearing. They could not do anything else. Surprise vanishes and wonder is slain. It is as simple as any other natural effect. They perfectly understand Him as He tells them that they had but to be in that condition and the thing is bound to happen — " Thy faith hath made thee whole."
Oft had the Master to pass inactive and helpless as poor
1 H. Burton, The Gospel of Si. Luke, 267. ST. MATT.*— 14
2io THE LEPER
maimed men sat in moody silence by the roadside, and never asked who He was, and never hoped for a hand to save. He saw many a leper go by engulfed in his own shame, never lifting his eyes to beg of Him a boon. He had to watch the stupid indiffer- ence of those whom misery had dulled and hardened into despair, and still He might not speak. He might not shake them out of their torpor ; His mouth was closed ; His hope must hold itself back. Why will not they understand ? Why cannot they cry out ? Just one whisper, " Jesus of Nazareth, have mercy upon us," and in a moment He would be free. He would be there at their side ; His hand would have leaped out ; His touch would have been upon them. The words would have rushed out willingly from his tongue, " I will ; go in peace, for thy faith hath made thee whole."
TJ Just as the amazing resources of electricity lie all about us, quivering and inactive until we call out their capacities, so the vast pardon of God waits, and through its obedience to natural law must wait until the Master's touch has on it a human pressure. The leper must discover it, must draw upon it, must open himself to it, and then the power long repressed leaps out in an instant, rushes forward in free haste, in liberated gladness. It pours itself out upon him, it bathes him round, it seizes upon him, it possesses him. Not a moment is lost. Before his own appeal has died off his lips, " Lord, if thou wilt," the answer is upon him — it has already done its full work — " I will ; be thou clean." x
Tj "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean" is a prayer lovely in the simplicity of its human pleading — an appeal to the power which lay in the man to whom he spoke : His power was the man's claim ; the relation between them was of the strongest — that between plenty and need, between strength and weakness, between health and disease — poor bonds comparatively between man and man, for man's plenty, strength, and health can only supplement, not satisfy, the need ; support the weakness, not change it into strength ; mitigate the disease of His fellow, not slay it with invading life ; but in regard to God, all whose power is creative, any necessity of His creatures is a perfect bond between them and Him ; His magnificence must flow into the channels of the indigence He has created.2
3. Why does the leper question the Saviour's will ? It does not appear as if our Lord had as yet healed any leper; this man
1 Canon Scott Holland.
1 George MacDonald, The Miracles of Our Lord, 86.
ST. MATTHEW vm. 2, 3 211
is at any rate the first leper mentioned as coming to Him for healing. Then the poor man no doubt regarded his leprosy as a just judgment for the sins of which his conscience was afraid, and went about so humbled and ashamed that he hardly dared pray for deliverance. Besides, he might think (for so the Jews commonly thought) that there was no healing of leprosy except by miracle, by the immediate act of God Almighty Himself ; and this again would make his request seem bolder. And so the wonder is, not that he questioned Jesus' will, but that he believed in His power. By believing in His power he threw himself upon the innermost tenderness of Christ's nature ; and the whole being of our Lord answered to the call. There was no question of power to be solved or proved ; the method of the appeal left no room for argument; the leper's words, as they passed into the depths of Christ's loving nature, which alone was invoked, cut a passage for themselves, through which the healing waters could flow. The response was instant — " if thou wilt " — " I will."