SERMON XIX.

SIGNS AND WONDERS.

JOHN IV. 48-50.

Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe. The nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down ere my child die. Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth.

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 Cæsar 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.

But because, also, Christ was Lord of heaven and earth; therefore-if I may make so bold as to guess at the reason for anything which He did-He seems to have interfered as little as possible with those regular rules and customs of this world about us, which we now call the Laws of Nature. He did not offer-as the magicians of His time did offer-and as too many have pretended since to do to change the courses of the elements, to bring down tempests or thunderbolts, to shew prodigies in the heaven above, and in the earth

beneath. Why should He? Heaven and earth, moon and stars, fire and tempest, and all the physical forces in the universe, were fulfilling His will already; doing their work right well according to the law which He had given them from the beginning. He had no need to disturb them, no need to disturb the growth of a single flower at His feet.

Rather He loved to tell men to look at them, and see how they went well, because His Father in heaven cared for them. To tell people to look, not at prodigies, comets, earthquakes, and the seeming exceptions of God's rule but at the common, regular, simple, peaceful work of God, which is going on around us all day long in every blade of grass, and flower, and singing bird, and sunbeam, and shower. To consider the lilies of the field how they grow: which toil not, neither do they spin and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.-And the birds of the air: They sow not, neither reap, nor gather into barns; and yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. How much more will He feed you, who can sow, reap, and gather into barns ?-O ye of little faith, who fancy always that besides sowing and reaping honestly, you must covet, and cheat, and lie, and break God's laws instead of obeying them; or else, forsooth, you cannot earn your living? To see that the signs of God's Kingdom are not astonishing convulsions, terrible catastrophes and disorders: but order, and peace, and usefulness, in creatures which are happy, because they live according to the law which God has given them,

and

and do their duty-that duty, of which the great poet of the English Church has sung

Stern Lawgiver! Thou yet dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace:
Nor know we anything so fair

As is the smile upon thy face.
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,

And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.

But men would not believe that in our Lord's time; neither would they believe it after His time. Will they believe it even now? They craved after signs and wonders; they saw God's hand, not in the common sights of this beautiful world; not in seed-time and harvest, summer and winter; not in the blossoming of flowers, and the song of birds: but only in strange portents, absurd and lying miracles, which they pretended had happened, because they fancied that they ought to have happened: and so built up a whole literature of unreason, which remains to this day, a doleful monument of human folly and superstition.

But is not this too true of some at least of us in this very day? Must not people now see signs and wonders before they believe in God?

Do they not consider whatever is strange and inexplicable, as coming immediately from God? While whatever they are accustomed to, or fancy that they can explain, they consider comes in what they call the course