What purpose, then, did the touch of Christ serve? Perhaps we shall be helped in replying, if we think of how much tenderness and pathos the gospel narratives would be deprived, if this small feature were taken from them. The touch of Christ seems still to bring Him into contact with humanity; it teaches us lessons we cannot afford to lose. It falls into harmony with the whole story of His condescending sympathy.
Notice, in Christ's touch of the sick,
I. His fixing and confirming faith in Himself the Healer:
II. His answer to our craving for sympathy:
III. The symbol of His bearing our infirmities, and carrying our sins.
I. In touching the sick, Christ fixes and confirms faith in Himself as the Healer. It is in condescension to a human weakness that He lays his hands on diseased folk; we believe in little that we cannot see. How often have we sympathized with Naanan's complaint,-" Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper." Pain and sickness are so sensible that we look for equally sensible tokens of the energy of the restorer. It is this that makes many sick persons find comfort in the visits of the physician; which makes them crave medicines, many and violent in their operation. They have little faith in the silent, restorative power of nature; they must see the sign and mark the process of their cure. A wise physician will fall in with this weakness of his patients; if he cannot do much, even if he cannot learn much of the course of the malady by calling, he will still call; he