That sympathetic life-bringing touch is put forth once for all in His
Incarnation and Death. 'He taketh hold of the seed of Abraham,' says
the Epistle to the Hebrews, looking at our Lord's work under this same
metaphor, and explaining that His laying hold of men was His being
'made in all points like unto His brethren.' Just as he took hold of
the fevered woman and lifted her from her bed; or, as He thrust His
fingers into the deaf ears of that poor man stopped by some
impediment, so, in analogous fashion, He becomes one of those whom He
would save and help. In His assumption of humanity and in His bowing
of His head to death, we behold Him laying hold of our weakness and
entering into the fellowship of our pains and of the fruit of sin.

Just as He touches the leper and in unpolluted, or the fever patient
and receives no contagion, or the dead and draws no chill of mortality
into His warm hand, so He becomes like His brethren in all things, yet
without sin. Being found in 'the likeness of sinful flesh,' He knows
no sin, but wears His manhood unpolluted and dwells among men
'blameless and harmless, the Son of God, without rebuke.' Like a
sunbeam passing through foul water untarnished and unstained; or like
some sweet spring rising in the midst of the salt sea, which yet
retains its freshness and pours it over the surrounding bitterness, so
Christ takes upon Himself our nature and lays hold of our stained
hands with the hand that continues pure while it grasps us, and will
make us purer if we grasp it.

Brethren, let your touch answer to His; and as He lays hold of us, in
His incarnation and His death, let the hand of our faith clasp His
outstretched hand, and though our hold be as faltering and feeble as
that of the trembling, wasted fingers which one timid woman once laid
on His garment's hem, the blessing which we need will flow into our