It was but natural - and yet it was the turning-point in this whole history, alike as regarded the healing of the lunatick, the better leading of his father, the teaching of the disciples, and that of the multitude and the Scribes. There is all the calm majesty of Divine self-consciousness, yet without trace of self-assertion, when Jesus, utterly ignoring the if Thou canst,' turns to the man and tells him that, while with the Divine Helper there is the possibility of all help, it is conditioned by a possibility in ourselves, by man's receptiveness, by his faith. Not, if the Christ can do anything or even everything, but, If thou canst believe, [3736] all things are possible to him that believeth.' [3737] The question is not, it can never be, as the man had put it; it must not even be answered, but ignored. It must ever be, not what He can, but what we can. When the infinite fulness is poured forth, as it ever is in Christ, it is not the oil that is stayed, but the vessels which fail. He giveth richly, inexhaustibly, but not mechanically; there is only one condition, the moral one of the presence of absolute faith - our receptiveness. And so these words have to all time remained the teaching to every individual striver in the battle of the higher life, and to the Church as a whole - the in hoc signo vinces' [3738] over the Cross, the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
It was a lesson, of which the reality was attested by the hold which it took on the man's whole nature. While by one great outgoing of his soul he overleapt all, to lay hold on the one fact set before him, he felt all the more the dark chasm of unbelief behind him, but he also clung to that Christ, Whose teaching of faith had shown him, together with the possibility, the source of faith. Thus through the felt unbelief of faith he attained true faith by laying hold on the Divine Saviour, when he cried out and said: [3739] Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.' [3740] These words have remained historic, marking all true faith, which, even as faith, is conscious of, nay implies, unbelief, but brings it to Christ for help. The most bold leap of faith and the timid resting at His Feet, the first beginning and the last ending of faith, have alike this as their watchword.
Such cry could not be, and never is, unheard. It was real demoniac influence which, continuing with this man from childhood onwards, had well-nigh crushed all moral individuality in him. In his many lucid intervals these many years, since he had grown from a child into a youth, he had never sought to shake off the yoke and regain his moral individuality, nor would he even now have come, if his father had not brought him. If any, this narrative shows the view which the Gospels and Jesus took of what are described as the demonised.' It was a reality, and not accommodation to Jewish views, when, as He saw the multitude running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to him: Dumb and deaf spirit, I command thee, come out of him, and no more come into him.'
Another and a more violent paroxysm, so that the bystanders almost thought him dead. But the unclean spirit had come out of him. And with strong gentle Hand the Saviour lifted him, and with loving gesture delivered him to his father.
All things had been possible to faith; not to that external belief of the disciples, which failed to reach that kind,' [3741] and ever fails to reach such kind, but to true spiritual faith in Him. And so it is to each of us individually, and to the Church, to all time. That kind' - whether it be of sin, of lust, of the world, or of science falsely so called, of temptation, or of materialism - cometh not out by any of our ready-made formulas or dead dogmas. Not so are the flesh and the Devil vanquished; not so is the world overcome. It cometh out by nothing but by prayer: Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.' Then, although our faith were only what in popular language was described as the smallest' - like a grain of mustard-seed' - and the result to be achieved the greatest, most difficult, seemingly transcending human ability to compass it - what in popular language was designated as removing mountains' [3742] - nothing shall be impossible' unto us. And these eighteen centuries of suffering in Christ, and deliverance through Christ, and work for Christ, have proved it. For all things are ours, if Christ is ours. __________________________________________________________________