Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/74

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
66
CHRIST: LIFE AND MINISTRY.

The miracles of Christ were studiously performed in the most unostentatious way. He seemed anxious to veil His majesty under the love with which they were wrought.


A large portion of Christ's miracles of love were wrought at the urgent request of parents for their suffering children. Is that ear gone deaf to-day? Will He not do for our children's souls what He did for the bodies of the ruler's daughter, and the dead youth at Nain?


Our Lord's miracles were all essential parts of His one consistent life. They were wrought as evidences not only of His power, but of His mercy. They were throughout moral in their character, and spiritual in the ends contemplated by them. They were in fact embodiments of His whole character, exemplars of His whole teaching, emblems of His whole mission.


All Christ's public acts were consecrated by prayer,—His baptism, His transfiguration, His miracles, His agony, His death. He breathed away His spirit in prayer. "His last breath," says Philip Henry, "was praying breath."


Remember that vision on the Mount of Transfiguration; and let it be ours, even in the glare of earthly joys and brightnesses, to lift up our eyes, like those wondering three, and see no man any more, save Jesus only.


Christ illustrates the purport of life as He descends from His transfiguration to toil, and goes forward to exchange that robe of heavenly brightness for the crown of thorns.