Mark 6:56

HEALED BY A TOUCH

‘As many as touched Him were made whole.’

Mark 6:56

I. The healed.—Those here noticed were evidently affected with a variety of diseases of body and mind. But whatever was the variety and inveteracy of their diseases, we are assured that they were made whole. As the material frame of those who were brought to touch even the hem of the Redeemer’s garment was restored to a state of the most perfect soundness, so the moral nature of those who experience spiritual renovation is healed and fitted for immortal life.

II. The source of healing.—The cure, whether it was the restoration of sight, or of hearing, or active power, or the casting out of devils, was effected simply by the silent but resistless virtue which passed from the Redeemer when His person or even the hem of His garment was touched. In this we have a most expressive and beautiful emblem or representation of the great fountain of moral healing essential for the diseased and sin-stricken nature of man. Spiritual soundness and strength, moral freedom and blessedness, are to be derived simply and exclusively from Him Who is become the great Physician of souls, the sole Fountain of internal purity and health.

III. The medium through which the healing influence was transmitted.—The cures which were effected on the sons and daughters of affliction gathered around the Redeemer were secured in the employment of such means as He sanctioned and approved. It was not the idle gaze of apathy and vulgar astonishment, but the struggle to come near Him—it was the touch of His person, or the hem of His robe, prompted and sustained by the conviction that He was mighty to save, that met with the benediction, ‘Go in peace, thy faith hath made thee whole.’

Illustration

‘ “It was after a walk through the village of Ehden, beneath the mountain of the cedars,” wrote Dean Stanley, describing his visit to the East in company with King Edward VII when Prince of Wales, “that we found the stairs and corridors of the castle of the Maronite chief, Sheyk Joseph, lined with a crowd of eager applicants—‘sick people taken with divers diseases,’ who hearing that there was a medical man in the party, had thronged round him, ‘beseeching him that he would heal them.’ I mention this incident because it illustrates so forcibly these scenes in the Gospel history, from which I have almost of necessity borrowed the language best fitted to express the eagerness, the hope, the anxiety of the multitude who had been attracted by the fame of his beneficent influence. It was an affecting scene; our kind doctor was distressed to find how many cases there were which, with proper medical appliances, might have been cured, and, on retiring to the ship, by the Prince of Wales’ desire, a store of medicines was sent back, with Arabic labels directing how and for what purpose they should be used.” ’