hold on us because He loves us, and will not be turned from His
compassion by the most loathsome foulness of ours.

II. And now take another point of view from which we may regard this
touch of Christ: namely, as the medium of His miraculous power.

There is nothing to me more remarkable about the miracles of our Lord
than the royal variety of His methods of healing. Sometimes He works
at a distance, sometimes He requires, as it would appear for good
reasons, the proximity of the person to be blessed. Sometimes He works
by a simple word: 'Lazarus, come forth!' 'Peace be still!' 'Come out
of him!' sometimes by a word and a touch, as in the instances before
us; sometimes by a touch without a word; sometimes by a word and a
touch and a vehicle, as in the saliva that was put on the tongue and
in the ears of the deaf, and on the eyes of the blind; sometimes by a
vehicle without a word, without a touch, without His presence, as when
He said, 'Go wash in the pool of Siloam, and he washed and was clean.'
So the divine worker varies infinitely and at pleasure, yet not
arbitrarily but for profound, even if not always discoverable,
reasons, the methods of His miracle-working power, in order that we
may learn by these varieties of ways that He is tied to no way; and
that His hand, strong and almighty, uses methods and tosses aside
methods according to His pleasure, the methods being vitalised when
they are used by His will, and being nothing at all in themselves.

The very variety of His methods, then, teaches us that the true cause
in every case is His own bare will. A simple word is the highest and
most adequate expression of that will. His word is all-powerful: and
that is the very signature of divinity. Of whom has it been true from
of old that 'He spake and it was done, He commanded and it stood