the listeners might dislike the interruption to His teaching; but
Jesus read the action of the bearers and the consent of the motionless
figure on the couch as the indication of 'their faith,' and His love
and power responded to its call.

II. Note the unexpected gift with which Christ answers this faith.
Neither the bearers nor the paralytic speak a word throughout the
whole incident. Their act and his condition spoke loudly enough.
Obviously, all five must have had, at all events, so much 'faith' as
went to the conviction that He could and would heal; and this faith is
the occasion of Christ's gift. The bearers had it, as is shown by
their work. It was a visible faith, manifest by conduct. He can see
the hidden heart; but here He looks upon conduct, and thence infers
disposition. Faith, if worth anything, comes to the surface in act.
Was it the faith of the bearers, or of the sick man, which Christ
rewarded? Both. As Abraham's intercession delivered Lot, as Paul in
the shipwreck was the occasion of safety to all the crew, so one man's
faith may bring blessings on another. But if the sick man too had not
had faith, he would not have let himself be brought at all, and would
certainly not have consented to reach Christ's presence by so strange
and, to him, dangerous a way--being painfully hoisted up some narrow
stair, and then perilously let down, at the risk of cords snapping, or
hands letting go, or bed giving way. His faith, apparently, was deeper
than theirs; for Christ's answer, though it went far beyond his or
their expectations, must have been moulded to meet his deepest sense
of need. His heart speaks in the tender greeting 'son,' or, as the
margin has it, 'child'--possibly pointing to the man's youth, but more
probably an appellation revealing the mingled love and dignity of
Jesus, and taking this man into the arms of His sympathy. The palsy
may have been the consequence of 'fast' living; but, whether it were