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SERMON XIX.

CHRIST THE PHYSICIAN.

MATTHEW Xi. 5, 6.

The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them; and blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.

THESE words are the answer of our Lord to a question proposed to him by the disciples of John. The message was sent by that John of whom it was said, "Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee." He had himself already borne ample testimony to the exalted character of Christ, in that exclamation of joy which he was heard to utter, "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world ;" and therefore it could not be the desire of satisfying his own mind, or strengthening the weight of

evidence he possessed, that led him to send his disciples upon this special mission. The probability of the case is, that he had been arguing the point with some of his followers, as to the reality of the Messiah's appearance, and that finding he could not readily remove the prejudices they had imbibed, from his having neither crown nor sceptre, from his entire rejection of all pomp and grandeur, and, above all, from his eating and drinking with publicans and sinners, he ceased to ply them with arguments drawn either from reason or revelation, and took the surer method of submitting the disputed question to Jesus himself—" Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?" justly considering that a reply from his own lips would set it at rest for ever. Now let us see how the

Messiah dealt with it.

Did he declare to them,

as once he did to the Samaritan woman, "I that speak unto thee, am he?" Did he confess to them, as to Philip, "Have I been so long with you, and hast thou not known me?" No! instead of a naked assertion he appeals to facts, and to such facts as could not fail to carry with them overpowering evidence, excepting where prejudice had distorted the mind, or thick darkness had blinded it. He directs them to the wonderful works that he had wrought, and thus enlists their own senses as judges of the

X

matter.

"The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them; and blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me." Here we have a cloud of witnesses ready to testify that Jesus of Nazareth was the deliverer of them all. There are the unsealed eyes, the strengthened limbs, the unstopped ears, the enlightened poor, the awakened dead. What need he adduce more? or what words could speak so strongly as these, that this train of wonders was achieved by Christ, the Son of the living God?

In endeavouring to arrange the text into particulars, I shall first attempt to show you, that the power of Christ is as capable of living proofs in these days, as when he was made flesh, and dwelt among us: secondly, in what points he still offends mankind; and, thirdly, what is the actual condition of those who do, at all hazards, keep close to their redeeming Lord.

Now to establish the proposition that we have first to consider, little more I conceive is necessary, than to show, that our great Physician is still working his cures as miraculously as ever, making the blind to see, the leper to be cleansed, the dead to come out of their graves. There is no difference as to the power that he

exerts; it is always irresistible, supernatural, and stupendous; the difference lies only in the sort of disease that he takes in hand; they were those of the body; they are now exclusively those of the soul. He did indeed, in the days of his manifestation upon earth, make the lame man to leap as an hart, and the tongues of the dumb to speak; but he was then accomplishing the word of prophecy, and the scoffers of the earth were to be instructed by such signs as these, that he came forth immediately from God. But all necessity for this exercise of his divine authority has ceased for ages, and hence the blind are suffered to walk on still in darkness, and the halt, and the lame, and the withered to carry their sicknesses. But he does not so pass by the soul; he has never given the charge of that important work out of his own hands: it has rebelled, but he has still loved it-it has grown lukewarm, but he has not deserted it-it has been slumbering, but he has not left it to perish-it has been blinded by sin, and he has recovered it. Yes, my brethren, there is an eye in the soul, which, though it be commonly so dim as to discern nothing, let it but feel the unction of God, let it be anointed with an oil of holy ointment, and it will see with a clearer vision than even the angels themselves; I do not say into the very regions of

heaven itself, but into the mystery and omnipotence of grace, and into the excellent perfections of our Immanuel; these are the things that they in vain desire to look into, but which the enlightened Christian can discover by virtue of his covenant union with Christ. And what is this honoured, privileged believer before such an operation is perfected? where is his confidence? he cannot give you a reason of the hope that is in him. Where is his knowledge? If he talks of sin, it is rather of the consequences that are incurred by it, than of the foulness it leaves in the heart. Where is his saving faith? does he speak of Christ? he says nothing of his preciousness as a Saviour, nothing of his own peculiar obligations as a vessel of mercy; but no sooner is the work of God made manifest in him, and he is "convinced of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come," than, like the man born blind, he makes a bold confession, and speaks of his Lord to doubting sinners, as he had himself perhaps been spoken to before: "Why herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes!" Thus the Lord goes forth as a mighty man, bringing out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prisonhouse; you may see him wresting the prey out of the hands of the spoiler, gathering out of the