I. The Forgiveness of Sins. "But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith He to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house."-MATTHEW ix. 6. THE general groove of Christ's miracles was that He addressed first to the body, and afterwards to the soul. In this, He had regard to the soul first. The reason of the difference we are not told. But in the apparently indiscriminate order of Christ's procedure in this matter, we like to see how the body and the soul are equally dear to God; and that they, therefore are wrong, who hold it a religious thing to think much of the spiritual wants, but irreligious to pay great attention to our bodily infirmities. To Him they are alike. It is a thought very pleasant and very important to the sick, the weary, and the weak, and suitable to this day to "the good physician." There is another consideration which arises out of the order of what we may call the two miracles done on the palsied man, which is also very comforting. He was taught to take the cure of his body as the proof of the reality of the cure of his soul. In other words, a temporal mercy was made the evidence and the sign of a spiritual one. May we not often safely, and truly, and very assuringly, take the same line of thought? Say, you have received B |