“And they brought unto Jesus one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech, and besought Him to put His hand upon him.  And Jesus took him aside from the multitude, and put His fingers into his ears; and He spit, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.  And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain . . .  And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well:  He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.”

Consider this story awhile.  He healed the man miraculously, by means at which we cannot guess, which we cannot even conceive.  But the healing signified at least two things—­that the man could be healed, and that the man ought to be healed; that his bodily defect—­the retribution of no sin of his own—­was contrary to the will of that Father in Heaven, who willeth not that one little one should perish.

But Jesus sighed likewise.  There was in Him a sorrow, a compassion, most human and most divine.

It may have been—­may He forgive me if I dare rashly to impute motives or thoughts to Him—­that there was something too of a divine weariness—­I dare not say impatience, seeing how patient He was then and how patient He has been since for more than 1800 years—­of the folly and ignorance of man, who brings on himself and on his descendants these and a hundred other preventible miseries, simply because he will not study and obey the physical laws of the universe; simply because he will not see that those laws which concern the welfare of his body, are as surely the will of God as those which concern the welfare of his soul; and that therefore it is not merely his interest but his solemn duty to study and to obey them, lest he bear the punishment of his own neglect and disobedience.

It is not for man even to guess what thoughts may have passed through the mind of Christ when He sighed over the very defect which He was healing.  But it is surely not irreverent in us to say that our Lord had cause enough to sigh, if He foresaw the follies of mankind during an age which was too soon to come.—­How men, instead of taking the spirit of His miracles and acting on it, would counterfeit the mere outward signs of them, to feed the vanity or the superstition of a few devotees.  How, instead of looking on His miracles as rebukes to their own ignorance and imbecility; instead of perceiving that their bodily afflictions were contrary to the will of God, and therefore curable; instead of setting themselves to work manfully, in the light of God, and by the help of God, to discover and correct the errors which produced them, mankind would idle away precious centuries in barbaric wonder at seeming prodigies and seeming miracles, and would neglect utterly the study of those far more wondrous laws of nature which Christ had proved to be under His government and His guidance, and had