The Spiritual Value of the Near and Visible

If I may but touch His clothes, I shall be whole. — Mark v. 28.

Apart from the general treatment which the incident invites J a practical turn may be given to the thought involved in this particular way of stating the case. The afflicted woman did not invoke the whole jpower of the Godhead; she said that a mere touch was enough. To her simple trust, God was close at hand. She believed that the Divine element penetrated and vitalized the outward and visible covering, so much so that to touch the clothes was to touch God Himself. The idea is that we need far less proof of God’s existence and beneficence than lue often demand. We may go too far. We may attempt too much. We seek to convince or silence the gainsayer by elaborate arguments respecting infinitude, immateriality, almightiness, and the like. Thus theology becomes a great intellectual effort. It strains men’s thinking: it transcends and overwhelms all that is ordinary; it establishes itself in the secrecy of the clouds. There is something better than all this. God is accessible from a much lower point. He is nigh thee 0 man; the shadow of His presence lies around thy whole life! Think not to lay a line upon the courses of His infinitude or to gather into one thunderous note all the voices of His eternity. Do not strain thy poor strength or endanger thy feeble brain by long-continued and ambitious effort to find out God. Be simple in thy methods be trustful in thy spirit. Pluck a spike of grass, a wild flower, a tender leaf of the spring — touch the hem of His garment, and thou shalt find health. There are great globes of fire; there are also little globes of water: begin with the latter, — thou wilt find God even in these frail crystal habitations.

I. Apply this thought to spieitual existences. If I touch but a grain of sand, I find the Mighty One. Who made it? Who can destroy it? Who can send it away to some other world? If I touch only a bud, I touch the King’s garment. Who can make one like it? Who can improve its beauty? Whose hand is cunning enough to add one charm to its shape, or one tint to its colour? We need not dazzle the atheist’s eyes with the light of other worlds; we can show him Gods signature in every limb of his own body, in every hair of his own head.

II. Apply this thought to the scheme of spiritual PROVIDENCE. Limit the view to one life, — touch but the hem of the garment. Review your own life from infancy, through youth, along the tortuous paths of manifold experience, up to the vigour of full manhood. What of extrication from difficulties? What of unexpected turn s and hair-breadth escapes? What of concessions yielded without argument, of helps rendered by unlikely hands? The theory of chance is a theory of difficulty, not to say a theory of absurdity.

III. Apply this thought to the processes op SPIRITUAL education. Some of us can never get beyond the hem of the garment. Meanwhile, it is enough. Others are admitted to high intercourse: they know the secret of the Lord: finding their way far beyond the limitation of the mere letter, they see the spiritual purpose of Divine government, and enjoy the inexpressible communion of the Holy Ghost. It is possible that the former may have as true and as efficient a faith as the latter. May they not have even a stronger faith? Is it a great thing to see God in heavens rich with systems of suns? Shall they be praised for their faith who hear God in the thunder or who say of the lightnings “Lo! this is the eye of the Lord ^*? It is a grander faith surely, which can see <jrod in a speck of dust, and touch Him in the hem of a garment. This was Christs measurement of faith. It was ever the simplicity rather than the so-called sublimity of faith which Christ praised. He ever sought to train mans faith downwards as well as upwards. “Ye believe in God; believe also in me,” — in me, the human, visible, rejected Christ, — believe in the lower as well as the higher manifestations of God. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.^^

ly. Apply this thought to the uses of spiritual ORDINANCES. The hymn, the prayer, the lesson, the mere form itself, may do men good. The commonest “hearer who touches but the hem of the garment may be healed and comforted, as well as the student who €an read deep things, and understand high counsels and purposes.

Application: — The hand must touch Christy — not an apostle, or minister, or an angel, — but God the Son, in whom alone there is redeeming life. He “only hath immortality.’’^ You may have ^’ touched” many without benefit; touch jEKm, and you will live!