efore it is
not merely his interest but his solemn duty to study and to obey them,
lest he bear the punishment of his own neglect and disobedience.

It is not for man even to guess what thoughts may have passed through the
mind of Christ when He sighed over the very defect which He was healing.
But it is surely not irreverent in us to say that our Lord had cause
enough to sigh, if He foresaw the follies of mankind during an age which
was too soon to come.--How men, instead of taking the spirit of His
miracles and acting on it, would counterfeit the mere outward signs of
them, to feed the vanity or the superstition of a few devotees. How,
instead of looking on His miracles as rebukes to their own ignorance and
imbecility; instead of perceiving that their bodily afflictions were
contrary to the will of God, and therefore curable; instead of setting
themselves to work manfully, in the light of God, and by the help of God,
to discover and correct the errors which produced them, mankind would
idle away precious centuries in barbaric wonder at seeming prodigies and
seeming miracles, and would neglect utterly the study of those far more
wondrous laws of nature which Christ had proved to be under His
government and His guidance, and had therefore proved to be working for
the good of those for whom He came to die. Christ had indeed sown good
seed in His field. He had taught men by His miracles, as He had taught
them by His parables, to Whom nature belonged, and Whose laws nature
obeyed. And the cessation of miracles after the time of Christ and His
Apostles had taught, or ought to have taught, mankind a further lesson;
the lesson that henceforth they were to carry on for themselves, by the
faculties which God had given them, that work of healing and deliverance
which He had begun. Miracles, like prophecies, like tongues, like
supernatural knowledge, were to cease and vanish away: but charity,
charity which devotes itself for the welfare of the human race, was to
abide for ever.

Christ, as I said, had sown good seed: but an enemy--we know not whence
or when--certainly within the three first centuries of the Church--came
and sowed tares among that wheat. Then began men to believe that devils,
and not their Father in Heaven, were, to all practical intents, the lords
of nature. Then began they to believe that man's body was the property
of Satan, and his soul only the property of God. Then began they to
fancy that man was