of their life, departed; they knew in themselves that they were healed;
they beheld before them the face and form whence the healing power had
gone forth, and they believed in the man. What they believed _about_
him, farther than that he had healed them and was good, I cannot pretend
to say. Some said he was one thing, some another, but they believed in
the man himself. They felt henceforth the strongest of ties binding his
life to their life. He was now the central thought of their being. Their
minds lay open to all his influences, operating in time and by holy
gradations. The well of life was henceforth to them an unsealed
fountain, and endless currents of essential life began to flow from it
through their existence. High love urging gratitude awoke the conscience
to intenser life; and the healed began to recoil from evil deeds and
vile thoughts as jarring with the new friendship. Mere acquaintance with
a good man is a powerful antidote to evil; but the knowledge of _such_
a man, as those healed by him knew him, was the mightiest of divine
influences.

In these miracles of healing our Lord must have laid one of the largest
of the foundation-stones of his church. The healed knew him henceforth,
not by comprehension, but with their whole being. Their very life
acknowledged him. They returned to their homes to recall and love
afresh. I wonder what their talk about him was like. What an insight
it would give into our common nature, to know how these men and women
thought and spoke concerning him! But the time soon arrived when they
had to be public martyrs--that is, witnesses to what they knew, come of
it what might. After our Lord's departure came the necessity for those
who loved him to gather together, thus bearing their testimony at once.
Next to his immediate disciples, those whom he had cured must have been
the very heart of the young church. Imagine the living strength of such
a heart--personal love to the personal helper the very core of it. The