And you will see, too, why Jesus sighed.  He sighed because he was one with the Father.  He sighed because he had the mind of God.  Because God, the Lord of health and order, hates disease and disorder.  Because God, the Lord of bliss and happiness, hates misery and sorrow.  Because God made the world at first very good; and, behold, by man’s sin, it has become bad.

Why did he sigh?  Surely, also, from pity for the poor man.  His infirmity was no such great one; he had an impediment in his speech, and with it, as many are apt to have, deafness also:  but it was an infirmity.  It was a disease.  It was something out of order, something gone wrong in God’s world; and as such, Christ could not abide it; he grieved over it.  He sighed because there was sickness in a world where there ought to be nothing but health, and sorrow where there ought to be nothing but happiness.  He sighed, because man had brought this sickness and sorrow on himself by sin; for, remember, man alone is subject to disease.  The wild animal in the wood, the bird upon the tree, seldom or never know what sickness is; seldom or never are stunted or deformed.  They live according to their nature, healthy and happy, and die in a good old age.  While man—­Why should I talk of what man is, of how far man is fallen from what God the Father meant him to be, while one hundred thousand corpses of brave men are now fattening the plains of Italy for next year’s crop; while even in our favoured land, we find at every turn prisons and reformatories, lunatic asylums, hospitals for numberless kinds of horrible diseases; sickness, weakness, and death all round us?  Only look up yonder to Windsor Forest, and see the vast building now in progress there before your eyes, for lunatic convicts—­the most miserable, perhaps, and pitiable of human beings,—­and let that building be a sign to you, how far man is fallen, and what cause Jesus had to sigh, and has to sigh still, over the miseries of fallen man.

Yes, my friends, not without reason did the old heathen poet, who had no sure and certain hope of everlasting life, say, that man was the most wretched of all the beasts of the field; not without reason did St. Paul say, that if in this life only we have hope in Christ, then the Christian man, who dare not indulge his passions and appetites, dare not say, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die:  but must curb himself, and give up his own pleasure and his own fancy at every turn, is of all men most miserable.

If Christ’s work is done; if his mercy and help ended when he died upon the cross; if all he did was to heal the sick for three short years in Judea a long while ago:  then what have we to which we can look forward?  What hope have we, not merely for ourselves, who are here now, but for all the millions who have died and suffered already?  Yes:  what reasonable hope for mankind can they have, who do not believe that Christ is Very God of Very God, the perfect likeness of the heavenly Father?