hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” Do not be in a hurry, my friends, and suppose that our Lord meant merely: “Tell John what wonderful miracles I am working.” If He had meant that why would He have put in as the last proof that He was the Christ, that He was preaching the gospel to the poor? What wonderful miracle was there in _that_? No: it was as if He had said: “Go and tell John that I am the Christ, because I am the great physician, the healer and deliverer of body and soul: one who will and can cure the loathsome diseases, the uselessness, the misery, the ignorance of the poorest and meanest.” He has proved Himself the Christ by showing not only His boundless power, but His boundless love and mercy; and _that_, not only to men’s souls, but to their bodies also. To prove Himself the Christ by wonderful and astonishing miracles was exactly what He would not do. He refused, when the Scribes and Pharisees came and asked of Him a sign from heaven to prove that He was Christ—wanting Him, I suppose, to bring some apparition, or fiery comet, or great voice out of the sky, to astonish them with His power; He told them peremptorily that He would give them no such thing: and yet He said that His mighty works did prove Him to be Christ; He pronounced woe against Chorazin and Bethsaida for not believing Him on account of His mighty works: He told the Scribes and Pharisees that they ought to believe on Him merely for His works’ sake. And why would they not believe on Him? Just because they could not see that God’s power was shown more in healing and delivering sufferers, than in astonishing and destroying. They could not see that God’s perfect likeness shone out in Christ—that He was the express image of the Father, just because He went about doing good, and healing all manner of sicknesses and all manner of infirmities among the people. But so it is, my friends! Jesus is the Saviour, the deliverer, the great physician, the healer of soul and body. Not a pang is felt or a tear shed on earth, but He sorrows over it. Not a human being on earth dies young, but He, as I believe, sorrows over it. What it is which prevents Him healing every sickness, soothing every sorrow, wiping away every tear _now_, we cannot tell. But this we can tell, that it is His will that none should perish. This we _can_ tell; that He is willing as ever to heal the sick, to cleanse the leper, to cast out devils, to teach the ignorant, to bind up the broken-hearted. This we _can_ tell; that He will go on doing so more and more, year by year, and age by age. This we _can_ tell, from Scripture, that Christ is stronger than the devil. This we can tell; that Christ, and all good men, the spirits of just men made perfect, the wise and the great in God’s sight, who have left us their books, their sayings, their writings, as precious health-giving heirlooms—have been