This is the range through which Jesus' action runs in these fifteen incidents. Is there a growth in the power revealed? Is there an intenser plea to these men as the story goes on? Is there a steady piling up of evidence in the wooing of their hearts? Well, creating is bringing into material being what didn't so exist before. Healing does something more. It creates new tissue, makes new or different adjustments and conditions, _and_ it overcomes the opposite, the broken tissue, the diseased conditions, the weakness, the tendency towards decay and death. Clearly there's a greater task in healing, and a greater power at work, or more power, or power revealed more. Then, too, of course, the human is above the physical. Man is higher than nature. He is the lord of creation. It is immensely more to affect a human will than to affect conditions in nature. The whole thing moves up to a measureless higher level. And clearly enough it is a less difficult task to enlighten and persuade one who seeks the light, and to woo up one who is simply carelessly indifferent, than it is to overcome and restrain a will that is dead-set against you and is bitterly set on an opposite course. Of course, all of this is not commonly so recognized. It seems immensely more to heal the body than to change a man's course of action, or, at least, it appeals immensely more to the imagination. The man who can heal is magnified in our eyes above the other. The miraculous always seems the greater. It is more unusual. Stronger wills are influencing others daily. That's a commonplace. Bodily healing is rare. And all the world is ill. Things are ripe to have such power seize upon the imagination then and always. And then, too, there are interlacings here of things we see and things we don't see. There is the element of the use of the human will in all miraculous action, whether in nature or among men. Behind both nature's forces and human forces are unseen spirit personalities, both evil and good. The real battle of our human life lies there in the spirit realm. Victory there means full victory in the realm of nature and of human lives. There is a devil with hosts of spirit attendants. The wilderness was a spirit-conflict of terrific intensity, ending in Jesus' unqualified victory. Jesus' power was more than simply creative, or healing, or over human wills. It was the power of a pure, strong, surrendered will having the mastery over a giant, unsurrendered, God-defiant will. This underlies all else. But we've run off a bit. Come back to the simple story, and see how the power of Jesus is revealed more and more before their eyes. And in seeing the faithfulness and winsomeness of His power, see His wooing. Intenser Wooing.