FAITH IN GOD.
BY MRS. EDWARD MIX.
“Believe ye that I am able
to do this?” – St. Matt. ix:28.
These were the
words spoken by our Saviour to the two blind men who followed Him crying for
mercy. It would seem that Jesus gave them no answer at first, but “when He was
come into the house, the blind men came to Him.” They were truly in earnest
about the matter. They might have thought it their last opportunity, and felt
that they could not be denied. They cried saying, “Thou Son of David, have
mercy on us.” Jesus’ heart was touched with compassion, and He asked them,
“Believe ye that I am able to do this?”
Here was a fact
which Jesus wished to have confirmed by their own hearts, and to hear expressed
by their own lips, for we read, “With the heart many believeth unto
righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”-(Rom
x:10.) And by this we are shown plainly that we need to do more than barely
assent to the truth; we must believeth in
the truth.
As soon as the
blind men had shown their faith by replying, “yea, Lord,” Jesus “touched their
e4yes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were
opened.”
And this in the
case of the healing of Jesus’ daughter, or raising her to life again, all that
Jesus required was simple faith in His power. We hear him saying to the
afflicted father, “Be no afraid; only
believe.”-(St. Mark v:36.)
Jairus has come
to Jesus to beg Him to go to his house, and lay hands on his little daughter,
who was laying “at the point of death.” Not withstanding the position in life
which Jairus held as the “ruler of the synagogue,” yet he humbled himself and
fell at the feet of Jesus and besought Him to go and heal his child; and Jesus
had compassion upon him and “went with him.”
But before he
had arrived at the ruler’s house, there came certain ones “which said, thy
daughter is dead; why troublest thou the Master any further?”
O, what a blow to
the poor father’s heart! When he had prevailed upon Jesus to go with him and
heal his daughter, he must have been filled with hope and joy, but now when the
news was told him that his child was dead, the thought must have rushed through
his mind, “I am too late! Too late!”
But Jesus knew
the sorrow of his heart, and so comforted him at once with these words, “Be not
afraid, only believe.”
Had the rule
asked, “What shall I believe?” the answer would doubtless have been like this, “Believe
that I am able to do this. Believe that I am able to restore your daughter to
you again. I am the life-giver. Only believe, and she shall live.”
How well we can
picture by faith the scene which followed, as Jesus entered the hushed room, “took
the damsel by the hand” and said unto her in His voice of power, “Damsel, (I
say unto thee) arise.”
“And
straightaway the damsel arose, and walked.” “And they were astonished with a
great astonishment.”
I thank god that
Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever” (Heb. Xiii:8), and
that the same power the healed the Centurion’s servant, that rebuked the fever
in Peter’s wife’s mother, that cast the devils out of many, that healed the
sick of the palsy, that caused the cripple to leap for joy, that gave hearing
to the deaf and sight to the blind, will produce the same results today in
answer to “the prayer of faith.”
“Yea, Lord,” we
believe that Thou art able!
***
