vainly believe that they had realized in their experiences what they thought a compliance with their favorite maxim:  “Know thou thyself.”  Whilst Christians believe and feel that self-knowledge, or the knowledge of one’s self, is very important, at the same time they have longing aspirations to know all they can of the Being who created this self, this thinking, reasoning, loving, restless thing within them, called a living soul.  Brutes have no aspirations, no desires of this kind.

Right here we may see what God loves.  It was not man’s animal or bodily life that brought the Lord into our world, for this is not the man.  It is the soul or spirit within the body that is the real man, and all these souls collectively make the world that God so loved that he gave his only begotten Son to save it.  God never loved trifles.  The fact that God loved the world of man is proof that man, as a being capable of glorifying God by reciprocating his love, was worthy of it.  This key opens the way to a glimpse of man’s high destiny, attainable by his taking hold of the Hand reached down in love to lift him up.  God’s Word is the only book that can give man a true knowledge of himself.  It is the only source from which he can learn that he is a sinner by his habitual transgressions of the great, law of love that would bind all the units of God’s intelligent creation into a brotherhood of ineffable and eternal happiness.  It was to redeem man from this deplorable state, and deliver him from the destroying power of sin, that Jesus came into the world.  But when he came he found man so low down in the darkness of ignorance, so stupid and slow to open his eyes, so benumbed by the chilling power of the love of self, so infested and possessed by evil spirits of hell, that but little impression could be made upon him, except such as could be felt and seen by means of his bodily senses.

These statements, which are true, account for the miracles wrought by the Lord.  In working them, however, he had a two-fold purpose.  The first was to arouse the people from their dormant state to one of consciousness that a Being of superior power was among them.  This they were made to feel by his healing touch, his cleansing hand, and his life-restoring virtue.  And what was the effect of all this?  It had very much the same effect in one way that kindness toward children in the way of giving them little presents, and gentleness and tenderness in the way of gratifying their bodily desires and wishes, has upon them.  They love the one who treats them in such ways.  Now, the Lord healed the people.  He healed all that came to him, of whatever bodily ill they were suffering.  He fed them, too, and did it all so lovingly that they believed him to be the best and most powerful Friend they had ever known.  They followed him in throngs.  They felt secure, bodily secure and safe when they were with him.  But we must not forget that they followed him, not on account of the words he had spoken to them, the instructions