expect to find exemplified, one and all, in the Life of Christ, had that Life come down to us in a complete form. Now, it cannot be questioned that in every age a few individuals have been found, who were endowed with a preternatural therapeutic power, connected generally with a very subtle power of sympathy, but, in some instances, if we may believe what we are told, inherent in a person who had no wish whatever to exercise it.[1] That some such virtue resided in Christ, and accounts for some part of His healing work, need not be questioned. The records may be said to imply it in two passages,[2] that which relates to the act of the woman who touched the hem of His garment in the crowd, and that which speaks of this method of cure as ofttimes repeated. They besought Him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment—and as many as touched were made whole.
It is possible, no doubt, to account for such cures on a purely naturalistic hypothesis, such as that which Keim[3] accepts, viz. that
- ↑ See an article by Dr. A. T. Schofield in the Contemporary Review, March 1909, for examples.
- ↑ Matt. ix. 20 (Mark v. 27); Matt. xiv. 36 (Mark vi. 56); also Luke vi. 19: Power came forth from Him and healed them all. Cp. Acts, xix. 11, 12 and v. 15; the Apostles and, apparently, our Lord sanctioned a sort of sacramental medium of cure to meet the needs of a simple populace.
- ↑ See Bruce, op. cit. p. 275.
