Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1911 — Christ’s Most Marvelous Miracle [ARTICLE]

Christ’s Most Marvelous Miracle

mow little faith man has In the unknown! ' As soon as he is brought near the unheard-of and the unfamiliar his hair begins to rise on end. Instead of taking it for granted that God i» In the unknown, and that therefore it is friendly, kind, and helpful, he seee in the unknown a horrible speotre, and screams In terror. If John or Peter had seen a flying-machine darting across from Gadara to Bethsaida, they would have had the same fear. So should we, a few years ago. If they had seen a steamboat plowing Its way from Bethsaida to Capernaum, they would have been equally frightened, as we should have been a few decades ago. Who knows what mysteries that now cause our flesh to creep will by next year become commonplace in our lives? Indeed, was not the air, perhaps, as familiar to Chrlpt as the water? Whe knows? On those nights which He spent by Himself in prayer among the hills may He not often have mounted to the skies, and thus have withdrawn Himself literally from the frets of earth into the serenity of Heaven? Do you think that the possession of such a power would have separated Him from us? No more than walking on the sea. And we may do both some day; both may be among the “greater things” that are reserved for Christ’s disciples. Why limit the subduing of nature to which God commands us? If Peter could walk on the by faith, and. as long as his faith endured, may not we also? Walking With Christ. And truly, though It may not be our duty or our privilege to walk out on this mystery, there la no reason why we should not ask Christ’s permission to walk out toward Him on this or Any other domain of the unknown; and if He says “Come,” let us not deserve the rebuke He gave to Peter, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” To us the tossing waves of all the unknown shall be as a level floor, If Christ bids us come to Him upon the waters. In one way of looking at it, the greatest of Christ’s miracles was not the healing of any disease, however severe, since the sick men had intelligence to which our "Lord could appeal; nor was it evAq the raising of the dead, since there Vere departed spirits that could be summoned to ra inhabit their old-time tenements. The most wonderful of the miracles, as I think, were those that swayed inanimate creation, those that mastered the winds and the waves, when Ha stilled the storm and when He walked on the water. The walking on the water was a greater marvel than even the swaying of thp vast air-currents of the world, ffince it was a commanding of ‘gravity, a force beyond the world, • force that some hold to be the central resultant of all forces, the power that unites all the planets and stars of the universe. Gravity is still, after all these centuries of thought and investigation, the one deepest mystery of nature; yet Christ was as easily master of -it as of the clay on which He walked or the couch on which He lay down. Evil Temptations. It is Interesting to note that all of the three wrong things that Christ was tempted to do ln the wilderness he ‘'did later when they were right, when no tempting of God or yielding to Satan was involved. He did not make bread from stones for Himself, but He made bread from practically nothing for 9,000 persons. He did not do homage to satan to win all the kingdoms of the world, but He won them by way of the cross: “And I, If I be lifted up, will draw all men unto myself.” And He did not defy gravitation for the sake of men’s applause, throwing Himself from the parapet of the Temple, but He defied gravitation none the less, walking alone at night over the abysses of the sea. It ia thus with many of the Devil’s temptations: they are evil only whilq he la associated with them.