That was not Christ's conception of the Healer's art and duty. The true Healer was he who dreaded no infection, who went fearlessly among the diseased, and sought to make them whole ; who gave eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, feet to the lame,
1 James Hutchison Stirling : His Lift and Work, 57.
ST. MATTHEW ix. 12 225
vigour to the decrepit, life to the dying. The Healer's duty lay, not with the few strong and hale, but with the great multitude lying sick unto death, no man caring for their souls.
In this proverb, therefore, Jesus virtually announced Himself as the true Healer, the Good Physician, as caring for the weak more than for the strong, for the sick more than for the whole. And, if in that announcement there was rebuke for the Eabbis and doctors of the law as untrue to their vocation, unfaithful to their professed art of healing, there was plainly comfort and hope for the weak and sick who reclined at Matthew's table.
Tj Natural Eeligion is based upon the sense of sin ; it recog- nizes the disease, but it cannot find, it does not look out for the remedy. That remedy, both for guilt and for moral impo- tence, is found in the central doctrine of Kevelation, the Mediation of Christ. Thus it is that Christianity has been able from the first to occupy the world and gain a hold on every class of human society to which its preachers reached ; this is why the Eoman power and the multitude of religions which it embraced could not stand against it; this is the secret of its sustained energy, and its never-flagging martyrdoms; this is how at present it is so mysteriously potent, in spite of the new and fearful adversaries which beset its path. It has with it that gift of staunching and healing the one deep wound of human nature, which avails more for its success than a full encyclopedia of scientific knowledge and a whole library of controversy, and therefore it must last while human nature lasts.1
I.
Christ the Healer of the Body.
" They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick." This saying serves two purposes — an immediate apologetic purpose, and a permanent didactic one. Viewing it first in the former aspect, we remark that the point of the saying lies not in what is stated, but in what is implied — in the sugges- tion that Christ was a Physician. That understood, all becomes plain. For no one is surprised that a physician visits the sick rather than the healthy, and visits most frequently those that are most grievously afflicted with disease. Nor does any one dream
1 J. H. Newman, The Grammar of Assent, 480. ST. MATT. — 15
226 THE PHYSICIAN
of making it an occasion of reproach to a physician that he shrinks not from visiting those whose maladies are of a loathsome or dangerous nature, offensive to his senses, involving peril to his life. That he so acts is regarded simply as the display of a praise- worthy enthusiasm in his profession, the want of which would be reckoned a true ground of reproach. Eegard Christ as a physician, and He at once gets the benefit of these universally prevalent sentiments as to what is becoming in one who practises the healing art.
1. Jesus Christ is the Good Physician as well as the Good Shepherd. His public ministry proves that He recognized two deadly enemies of mankind. The arch-enemy is sin — the dread evil that afflicts man's soul, against which He directed the whole forces of the spiritual world. But there was another enemy against whom also He waged a hearty and persistent warfare — disease, which afflicts man's body. He thus proved His love for man's nature as a whole, and laid down the redemption of the race on that double basis, without recognizing which the world can never be fully saved. For man's life is a unity with two essential sides ; he is a compound of matter and spirit, clay and divinity, perishable body and immortal soul. Salvation means restored health ; and the old proverb, Mens sana in corpore sano, is thus the condition of that perfect well-being which it is the will of God that we should all normally enjoy. In our actual experi- ence we seldom attain to this happy condition ; but that we were meant for it, and that we should strive hard for it, is shown beautifully and convincingly in the attitude which Jesus took towards sin and disease throughout His public ministry. He treated them as enemies, and He recognized their close connexion ; He did what He could in forgiving men's sins to heal their sick- nesses ; and in healing their sicknesses He never failed to emphasize the darker evil of which disease is fundamentally one of the most persistent symbols. " But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house."
Tj Memory and imagination linger lovingly over the external ministry of healing which filled the land with the name of Jesus. He was not the only healer : in these words there is an evident