of the whole man, and to the sick He restores ‘perfect soundness,’[36] nor does He refuse to be called the Saviour of the body.[37] [33] See _British Medical Journal_, June 18, 1910.[**unmatched footnote] [34] Philippians, iv. 11. [35] There is an adumbration of this in the four sublime truths of Buddhism, which lead a man by the sacrifice of the lower self and the helping of others to the final extinction of pain. Bishop Westcott’s _Gospel of Life_, pp. 162, 163. Hardwick, _Christ and other Masters_, p. 168. [36] Acts iii. 16: St. Peter and the lame man. [37] Eph. v. 23. (v) It is a significant fact that in the Gospels the word for ‘save’ (σῴζειν) is applied to bodily as well as spiritual salvation; it denotes ‘to restore to health or sanity.’[38] A protest may here be entered against the very prevalent opinion that God sent sickness upon man, by an Almighty fiat, in order to discipline him into patience and other Christian virtues. Such a view, crudely stated, has led to much perplexity and distress of faith, and it is not warranted by the teaching of the New Testament. God can bring good out of evil, even in its worst forms. But that is not to say that God by a deliberate act designs and causes evil. More than once in the New Testament sickness is attributed to Satanic agency, in the case of ‘the woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years,’[39] and in that of St. Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh.’[40] Disease is a disturbance of the balance of human powers, mental and bodily, a derangement of faculties and functions. Consider the bearing of this upon life. Modern science teaches us the doctrine of the persistence of matter; in Sir Oliver Lodge’s words, ‘a really existing thing never perishes, but only changes its form’--in the case of our complex human constitution, that change of form is what we call death. It is vital force which maintains that inner harmony which we call health: it is disease, an accident, which impairs it. This derangement and discord is but one instance of that general disturbance of the world’s harmony which sin has introduced. Sometimes, as in the case of the impotent man of St. John v., disease is the direct consequence of sinful conduct. It is the work of the Son of Man to restore harmony and repair the breaches in Nature’s order. And this His healing power on its spiritual, which is its essential, side effects. Incidentally, miracles are ‘signs,’ evidences of the Christian Revelation, but their primary character is that of ‘mighty works’ (δυνάμεις), particular manifestations of that Power (δύναμις) which resides in the Person of the Lord. As such they impressed King Herod, though he attributed their authorship to the Baptist risen from the dead.[41] [38] E.g. Mark v. 23, 28; vi. 56; James v. 15. [39] Luke xiii. 16. [40] 2 Cor. xii. 7. [41] Mark vi. 14.