He had heard of the miracle of Cana; he had heard of many things done since: he believed that the man could cure his son, and he had cured him. "Yes," the son might say, "but I must know more of him; for, if what I hear now be true, I must cast all at his feet. He cannot be a healer only; he must be the very Lord of Life--it may be of the Universe." His simple human presence had in it something against the supposition--contained in it what must have _appeared_ reason for doubting this conclusion from his deeds, especially to one who had not seen his divine countenance. But to one at length enlightened of the great Spirit, his humanity would contain the highest ground for believing in his divinity, for what it meant would come out ever and ever loftier and grander. The Lord who had made the Universe--how _should_ he show it but as the Healer did? He could not make the universe over again in the eyes of every man. If he did, the heart of the man could not hold the sight. He must reveal himself as the curing God--the God who set things which had gone wrong, right again: _that could_ be done in the eyes of each individual man. This man may be he--the Messiah--Immanuel, God with-us. We can imagine such the further thoughts of the son--possibly of the father first--only he had been so full of the answer to his prayer, of the cure of his son, that he could not all at once follow things towards their grand conclusions. In this case, as in the two which follow, the Lord heals from a distance. I have not much to remark upon this. There were reasons for it; one perhaps the necessity of an immediate answer to the prayer; another probably lay in its fitness to the faith of the supplicants. For to heal thus, although less of a sign or a wonder to the unbelieving, had in it an element of finer power upon the faith of such as came not for the sign or the wonder, but for the cure of the beloved; for he who loves can believe what he who loves not cannot believe; and he who loves most can believe most. In this respect, these cures were like the healing granted to prayer in all ages--not that God is afar off, for he is closer to every man than his own conscious being is to his unconscious being--but that we receive the aid from the Unseen. Though there be no distance with God, it looks like it to men; and when Jesus cured thus, he cured with the same appearances which attended God's ordinary healing. The next case I take up is similar. It belongs to another of my classes, but as a case of possession there is little distinctive about it, while as the record of the devotion of a mother to her daughter--a devotion quickening in her faith so rare and lovely as to delight the very heart of Jesus with its humble intensity--it is one of the most beautiful of all the stories of healing.