These words of our Lord are found in the Gospel for this day.  They are a rebuke, though a gentle one.  He reproved the nobleman, seemingly, for his want of faith:  but He worked the miracle, and saved the life of the child.

We do not know enough of the circumstances of this case, to know exactly why our Lord reproved the nobleman; and what want of faith He saw in him.  Some think that the man’s fault was his mean notion of our Lord’s power; his wish that He should come down the hills to Capernaum, and see the boy Himself, in order to cure him; whereas he ought to have known that our Lord could cure him—­as He did—­at a distance, and by a mere wish, which was no less than a command to nature, and to that universe which He had made.

I cannot tell how this may be:  but of one thing I think we may be sure—­That this saying of our Lord’s is very deep, and very wide; and applies to many people, in many times—­perhaps to us in these modern times.

We must recollect one thing—­That our Lord did not put forward the mere power of His miracles as the chief sign of His being the Son of God.  Not so:  He declared His almighty power most chiefly by shewing mercy and pity.  Twice He refused to give the Scribes and Pharisees a sign from heaven.  “An evil and adulterous generation,” He said, “seeketh after a sign:  but there shall be no sign given them, but the sign of the prophet Jonas.”  And what was that,—­but a warning to repent, and mend their ways, ere it was too late?

Now the slightest use of our common sense must tell us, that our Lord could have given a sign of His almighty power if He had chosen; and such a sign as no man, even the dullest, could have mistaken.  What prodigy could He not have performed, before Scribes and Pharisees, Herod, and Pontius Pilate?  “Thinkest thou,” He said Himself, “that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will send Me presently more than twelve legions of angels?” Yet how did our Lord use that miraculous and almighty power of His?  Sparingly, and secretly.  Sparingly; for He used it almost entirely in curing the diseases of poor people; and secretly; for He used it almost entirely in remote places.  Jerusalem itself, recollect, was at best a remote city compared with any of the great cities of the Roman empire.  And even there He refused to cast Himself down from a pinnacle of the temple, for a sign and wonder to the Jews.  If He, the Lord of the world, had meant to convert the world by prodigious miracles, He would surely have gone to Rome itself, the very heart and centre of the civilized world, and have shewn such signs and wonders therein, as would have made the Caesar himself come down from his throne, and worship Him, the Lord of all.

But no.  Our Lord wished for the obedience, not of men’s lips, but of their hearts.  It was their hearts which He wished to win, that they might love Him—­and be loyal to Him—­for the sake of His goodness; and not fear and tremble before Him for the sake of His power.  And therefore He kept, so to speak, His power in the background, and put His goodness foremost; only shewing His power in miracles of healing and mercy; that so poor neglected, oppressed, hardworked souls might understand that whoever did not care for them, Christ their Lord did; and that their disease and misery were not His will; nor the will of His Father and their Father in heaven.