The Signs wrought by Christ harmonise with His teaching in another way: they never have the air of ostentatiously overriding and superseding Nature. His power, in its tranquil might, proceeded calmly along the homely track of every-day life; just as if it had always been present ruling quietly in its own domain, and might at any time have interposed without effort, if the Spiritual Order had needed it. A man is healed and an evil spirit is quelled by a word, and a multitude in the desert is supplied with food they do not know [pg 089] how,—all proceeds in a calm continuous way. Fresh energy is given to natural powers, and effects are produced of vast magnitude and with astonishing rapidity; but these powers seem to work through the organs and along the channels which nature provides: to our Lord there is one primary source of all life and movement and light and force, and that is God, from Whom all His power comes. He does not call certain visible manifestations nature, and refer others to God, as though nature and God were different powers. The Signs, accordingly, are worked in such a way that it is hard to mark the particular point where what is called the supernatural comes into play—to say, in fact, when nature ends and God begins. The cures, so far as we can trace them, are effected by the renewal of vitality in a disordered organ; this vitality would seem to proceed from Christ; just as the power which set life going on earth proceeded from God.
“For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.”[33]
Here, of course, we pass beyond the realm of the forces we can measure, but this imparted force only restores the organs needed for the cure; the optic nerve is reinvigorated or the absorbent vessels are stimulated to abnormal action, and the eye becomes again efficient. The man is not enabled to see without an eye, as was claimed to be done by [pg 090] some workers of miracles in the middle ages; and there is no miracle in the Gospels like that mentioned in Paley's Evidences, where a man who had only one leg becomes possessed of two. Christ restores organs and withered limbs. He does not dispense with the proper organ or create new ones.
St Mark gives us full particulars of two cures, of which we can in some degree trace the process.
“And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.”[34]
From this it appears that the eye was gradually restored, and our Lord's question shews that He did not expect an instantaneous cure. He speaks as a surgeon might who had performed an operation. He does not take it for granted that the man must have received his sight. He applies His hands, a second time and then the ill-defined dark objects which the man spoke of, become distinct.
The other case is that of one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech.
“And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and [pg 091] saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.”[35]
The restoration of the disabled organs is clearly indicated here. I have referred to these two cases a few pages back. We now come to—