So note next the gentle remonstrance.  There is something very majestic in the tranquillity of our Lord’s awaking, and, if we follow Matthew’s order, in His addressing Himself first to the disciples’ weakness, and letting the storm rage on.  It can do no harm, and for the present may blow as it listeth, while He gives the trembling disciples a lesson.  Observe how lovingly our Lord meets an imperfect faith.  He has no rebuke for their rude awaking of Him.  He does not find fault with them for being ‘fearful,’ but for being ‘so fearful’ as to let fear cover faith, just as the waves were doing the boat.  He pityingly recognises the struggle in their souls, and their possession of some spark of faith which He would fain blow into a flame.  He shows them and us the reason for overwhelming fear as being a deficiency in faith.  And He casts all into the form of a question, thus softening rebuke, and calming their terrors by the appeal to their common sense.  Fear is irrational if we can exercise faith.  It is mere bravado to say ‘I will not be afraid,’ for this awful universe is full of occasions for just terror; but it is the voice of sober reason which says ‘I will trust, and not be afraid.’  Christ answers His own question in the act of putting it,—­ye are of little faith, that is why ye are so fearful.

Note, next, the word that calms the storm.  Christ yields to the cry of an imperfect faith, and so strengthens it.  If He did not, what would become of any of us?  He does not quench the dimly burning wick, but tends it and feeds it with oil—­by His inward gifts and by His answers to prayer—­till it burns up clear and smokeless, a faith without fear.  Even smoke needs but a higher temperature to flame; and fear which is mingled with faith needs but a little more heat to be converted into radiance of trust.  That is precisely what Christ does by this miracle.  His royal word is all-powerful.  We see Him rising in the stern of the fishing-boat, and sending His voice into the howling darkness, and wind and waves cower at His feet like dogs that know their master.  As in the healing of the centurion’s servant, we have the token of divinity in that His bare word is able to produce effects in the natural realm.  As He lay asleep He showed the weakness of manhood; but He woke to manifest the power of indwelling divinity.  So it is always in His life, where, side by side with the signs of humiliation and participation in man’s weakness, we ever have tokens of His divinity breaking through the veil.  All this power is put forth at the cry of timid men.  The storm was meant to move to terror; terror was meant to evoke the miracle—­the result was complete and immediate.  No after-swell disturbed the placid waters when the wind dropped.  There had been ‘a great tempest,’ and now there was ’a great calm,’ as the fishermen floated peacefully to their landing-place beneath the shadow of the hills.  The wilder the tempest, the profounder the subsequent repose.