aring;
and we should feel it to be an impertinence to ask them for credentials.
If they offer to prove their identity and trustworthiness we waive such
proof aside, and assure them that they need no certificate. This had
been our Lord's experience in Samaria. There no news of His miracles had
come from Jerusalem. He came among the Samaritans from nobody knew
where. He came without introduction and without certificate, yet they
had discernment to see that they had never met His like before. Every
word He spoke seemed to identify Him as the Saviour of the world. They
forgot to ask for miracles. They felt in themselves His supernatural
power, lifting them into God's presence, and filling them with light.

The Galilaean faith was of another kind. It was based on His miracles; a
kind of faith He deplored, although He did not quite repudiate it. To be
accepted not on His own account, not because of the truth He spoke, not
because His greatness was perceived and His friendship valued, but
because of the wonders He performed--this could not be a pleasant
experience. We do not greatly value the visits of a person who cannot
get on without our advice or assistance; we value the friendship of him
who seeks our company for the pleasure he finds in it. And although we
must all be ceaselessly and infinitely dependent on the good offices of
Christ, our faith should be something more than a counting upon His
ability and willingness to discharge these good offices. A faith which
is merely selfish, which recognises that Christ can save from disaster
in this life or in the life to come, and which cleaves to Him solely on
that account, is scarcely the faith that Christ approves. There is a
faith which responds to the glory of Christ's personality, which rests
on what He is, which builds itself on the truth He utters, and
recognises that all spiritual life centres in Him; it is this faith He
approves. They who find in Him the link they have sought with the
spiritual world, the pledge they have needed to certify them of an
eternal righteousness, they to whom the supernatural is revealed more
patently in Himself than in His miracles, are those whom the Lord
delights in.

But the lower kind of faith may be a step to the higher. The agony of
the father can make nothing of general principles, but can only
reiterate the one petition, "Come down ere my child die." And Jesus,
with His perfect knowledge of human nature, sees that it is vain trying