More than once I have characterised certain of “the things which Jesus did”(317) as “acted parables.” The cursing of the fig-tree, which is the type of the class, shews what is meant by the term. The washing of the Apostles’ feet is another of these parables of action. These acted parables are usually furnished by incidents lying a little out of the main drift of the action; as though Christ, struck by some plant or berry in which virtue lay, should have stepped to the way-side to gather it and preserve it for use. The drift of the practical lesson of which we read above, I take to be this. There are men, right in heart towards God, who are beset with infirmities which lead them astray. The more alive their conscience is, the more they are distressed by their lapses into ill. This distress may grow morbid, and lead to ruin and despair. Christ in this symbolic action, anticipatory of His Supreme Work, brings healing for such men’s woes. He does not merely remit the penalty of sin, He actually “puts the sin away.”(318) He is like a physician who can assure the patient that the canker he thought was malignant is only skin-deep, and can be removed at once. The parable speaks of a man who is “bathed,” and whose body is therefore clean, but who by travelling along the dusty road has got his feet sullied on the way; he has only to wash them, to become “clean every whit.” So a man, righteous and godfearing at bottom, may be taken off his guard and carried away by the stream, or he may contract moral and spiritual ill from a physical irritation akin to bodily ailment; these are the evils contracted on “life’s common way.” These kinds of spiritual ill answer to the dust on the feet, they can be wiped off; they have not seriously damaged the soul. This was a cheering lesson, and it was made to bear on the duty of mutual restoration. They were to wash one another’s feet. It is not the way of the world to do this. If, in a body aiming at holiness of life, one of the society should go wrong, it might seem the readiest way of upholding the society’s good name to thrust out the offending member at once; but Christians are not to deal with one another thus. It is just when a man goes wrong that he most wants his brethren’s support. Who else is there to stand by him? So if a disciple does amiss, the rest are told to wash his feet as Christ had washed theirs—not making out that he was clean—fully allowing that he was sullied, but telling him that the soil would wash off; telling him that they had not given him up as being bad to the core, and that they were sure that his Father in Heaven had not cast him off. So doing they might lift him back into self-respect.