to the cures wrought by relics, and at the tombs of
saints. The boasted efficacy of the king’s
touch, upon which Mr. Hume lays some stress, falls
under the same description. Nothing is alleged
concerning it which is not alleged of various nostrums,
namely, out of many thousands who have used them,
certified proofs of a few who have recovered after
them. No solution of this sort is applicable
to the miracles of the Gospel. There is nothing
in the narrative which can induce, or even allow, us
to believe, that Christ attempted cures in many instances,
and succeeded in a few; or that he ever made the attempt
in vain. He did not profess to heal everywhere
all that were sick; on the contrary, he told the Jews,
evidently meaning to represent his own case, that,
“although many widows were in Israel in the
days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years
and six months, when great famine was throughout all
the land, yet unto none of them was Elias sent, save
unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was
a widow:” and that “many lepers were
in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet, and
none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian.”
(Luke iv. 25.) By which examples he gave them to understand,
that it was not the nature of a Divine interposition,
or necessary to its purpose, to be general; still
less to answer every challenge that might be made,
which would teach men to put their faith upon these
experiments. Christ never pronounced the word,
but the effect followed.*
_________
One, and only one, instance may be produced in
which the disciples of Christ do seem to have attempted
a cure, and not to have been able to perform it.
The story is very ingenuously related by three of the
evangelists. (Matt. xvii. 14. Mark ix. 14.
Luke ix. 33.) The patient was afterwards healed by
Christ himself; and the whole transaction seems to
have been intended, as it was well suited, to display
the superiority of Christ above all who performed
miracles in his name, a distinction which, during
his presence in the world, it might be necessary to
inculcate by some such proof as this. _________
It was not a thousand sick that received his benediction,
and a few that were benefited; a single paralytic
is let down in his bed at Jesus’s feet, in the
midst of a surrounding multitude; Jesus bid him walk,
and he did so. (Mark ii. 3.) A man with a withered
hand is in the synagogue; Jesus bid him stretch forth
his hand in the presence of the assembly, and it was
“restored whole like the other.” (Matt.
xii. 10.) There was nothing tentative in these cures;
nothing that can be explained by the power of accident.
We may observe, also, that many of the cures which
Christ wrought, such as that of a person blind from
his birth; also many miracles besides cures, as raising
the dead, walking upon the sea, feeding a great multitude
with a few loaves and fishes, are of a nature which
does not in anywise admit of the supposition of a
fortunate experiment.