III. THE CURE OF SIMON'S WIFE'S MOTHER.


In respect of the purpose I have in view, it is of little consequence in
what order I take the miracles. I choose for my second chapter the story
of the cure of St Peter's mother-in-law. Bare as the narrative is,
the event it records has elements which might have been moulded with
artistic effect--on the one side the woman tossing in the folds of the
fever, on the other the entering Life. But it is not from this side that
I care to view it.

Neither do I wish to look at it from the point of view of the
bystanders, although it would appear that we had the testimony of three
of them in the three Gospels which contain the story. We might almost
determine the position in the group about the bed occupied by each of
the three, from the differences between their testimonies. One says
Jesus stood over her; another, he touched her hand; the third, he lifted
her up: they agree that the fever left her, and she ministered to
them.--In the present case, as in others behind, I mean to regard the
miracle from the point of view of the person healed.

Pain, sickness, delirium, madness, as great infringements of the laws of
nature as the miracles themselves, are such veritable presences to the
human experience, that what bears no relation to their existence, cannot
be the God of the human race. And the man who cannot find his God in the
fog of suffering, no less than he who forgets his God in the sunshine of