Christian fiction; Neighborhoods -- Scotland -- Fiction
"What you say about a law of nature and a law of the Spirit makes me
think again how that walking on the water has always been a puzzle to
me."
"It could hardly be other, seeing that we cannot possibly understand
it," I answered.
"But I find it so hard to believe. Can't you say something, papa, to
help me to believe it?"
"I think if you admit what goes before, you will find there is nothing
against reason in the story."
"Tell me, please, what you mean."
"If all things were made by Jesus, the Word of God, would it be
reasonable that the water that he had created should be able to drown
him?"
"It might drown his body."
"It would if he had not the power over it still, to prevent it from
laying hold of him. But just think for a moment. God is a Spirit.
Spirit is greater than matter. Spirit makes matter. Think what it was
for a human body to have such a divine creative power dwelling in it as
that which dwelt in the human form of Jesus! What power, and influence,
and utter rule that spirit must have over the body in which it dwells!
We cannot imagine how much; but if we have so much power over our
bodies, how much more must the pure, divine Jesus, have had over his! I
suspect this miracle was wrought, not through anything done to the
water, but through the power of the spirit over the body of Jesus,
which was all obedient thereto. I am not explaining the miracle, for
that I cannot do. One day I think it will be plain common sense to us.
But now I am only showing you what seems to me to bring us a step
nearer to the essential region of the miracle, and so far make it
easier to believe. If we look at the history of our Lord, we shall find
that, true real human body as his was, it was yet used by his spirit
after a fashion in which we cannot yet use our bodies. And this is only
reasonable. Let me give you an instance. You remember how, on the Mount
of Transfiguration, that body shone so that the light of it illuminated
all his garments. You do not surely suppose that this shine was
external--physical light, as we say, _merely?_ No doubt it was physical
light, for how else would their eyes have seen it? But where did it
come from? What was its source? I think it was a natural outburst of
glory from the mind of Jesus, filled with the perfect life of communion
with his Father--the light of his divine blessedness taking form in
physical radiance that permeated and glorified all that surrounded him.
As the body is the expression of the soul, as the face of Jesus himself
was the expression of the being, the thought, the love of Jesus in like
manner this radiance was the natural expression of his gladness, even
in the face of that of which they had been talking--Moses, Elias, and
he--namely, the decease that he should accomplish at Jerusalem. Again,
after his resurrection, he convinced the hands, as well as eyes, of
doubting Thomas, that he was indeed there in the body; and yet that
body could appear and disappear as the Lord willed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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