As Many as Touched

“AS many as touched Him were made whole.” (Mark 6:56.) But they did touch, and it was as many as touched, that received the healing blessing. Some looked on, some heard, some reasoned, but those who touched were healed.
There is a lesson herein for the seeking soul, which teaches him to get close to Christ. Personal contact with Him is the necessity. It suffices not for the sick man to look at the healing medicine, he must take it, if he would be benefited thereby. You must come to Christ, not come but a little way towards Him, if you would be healed. The sinner must needs meet the Saviour, his soul must come into contact with Him, and when this is the case, lo, the sinner is “made whole.”
There was no virtue in the touch of these sick persons! Think we, that the finger of a paralyzed man had power in it? Or, that in the hand of the leper there was cleansing? Nor is there in us any virtue, or any good thing; the virtue dwells in Jesus, and through the touch, the blessing was received. The touch was the evidence of faith, faith led to the touch. It was also the sign that the sick needed the healing of the Good Physician. On the one hand, in Jesus there is stored the fullness of grace, and pardon, and cleansing; on the other, in us is the absolute need, and faith puts the empty sinner into communication with the abounding’s that there are in Christ.
Many a soul carries its burden to this hour, because there has not been the coming close to Jesus in simple faith. Some are content to hear of His gracious works, others satisfy themselves by looking at Him, as it were from afar off, but the healed people, the saved people, have been content with nothing short of getting close to Christ, each one for himself and herself.
“As many as touched Him were made whole!” We do not wonder at this; there is no room for surprise, the only surprise is that so few go to Him. Does it astonish us that we read of a dying thief being saved, or of a blasphemous man, a persecutor and injurious being made a follower of the meek and lowly Lord? Or that we hear, in our own day, of the vilest and worst being “made whole,” and living no more the life of sin, but living instead the life of faith? Do we lift up our eyes with amazement and say, “How can these things be?” By no means, for Jesus is so wonderful, and His salvation is so complete, and the cleansing efficacy of His once shed blood is so perfect, that we know He can and does heal as many as come to Him.
“Whithersoever He entered, into villages, or cities, or country, they laid the sick in the streets, and besought Him that they might touch, if it were but the border of His garment.” What a sight of power and of pity, of grace and misery! The Son of God, who had come from heaven, surrounded with every type of human woe, and as He walks on, His heart moved in tenderness towards all, hundreds of weak hands stretch out, as it were to touch the very skirts of His garment? And if our eyes could but see, we should behold in this our gospel day the selfsame Jesus, the Son of God, moving amongst the longing and perishing children of men, and we should see weak and helpless hands outstretched to touch Him, and “As many as touched Him were made whole.”
Before the night closes in, and the Lord has passed by to return in mercy no more, oh! stretch out the hand of faith and touch Him.
God’s Wonderful Ways With Man.
IN our last number we cast a rapid glance at the first four ages into which this world’s history may be divided. We will now look at the last three.
THE SON OF GOD ON THE EARTH IN HUMILIATION.
Some four thousand years having elapsed since God had declared to the Serpent that the Seed of the woman should appear, and the time having arrived for the fulfillment of the promise to His people, “God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law.” (Gal. 4:4.) The eternal Son of God became the Son of Man―Jesus was born! His advent, though heralded in the sky with glory, was on earth in weakness. He was a stranger in the world from His birth―unrecognized by its imperial might, unwelcomed by the nation of Jehovah. “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came— unto His own, and His own received Him not.” (John 1:10, 11.)
But the fact of the Son of God being upon the earth, the divine messenger and spokesman, the express image of God’s essential being, evidenced an altered character of God’s ways with men. “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ,” (John 1:17.) “This do, and thou shalt live” (Luke 10:28), was the voice of the law; “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16), is that of the gospel. God had commanded man to obey His Law, and He had smitten the disobedient, but in the result, man had become more and more rebellious. Now, through the words and ways of, His Son, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” (2 Cor. 5:19.)
There was even more than this display of divine grace in the Lord’s ministry on earth. He declared God as the Father; as such God had never before been revealed to men. As the Creator, the Almighty, and as Jehovah, God had made Himself known, but not until His Son came to this earth did He reveal Himself as the Father.
We know, alas! too well, the bitter sequel to this display of divine love— man, true to himself and to his enmity against God, pursued the course of his antagonism to the end. Thus, after years of kindness, after miracles and mercies, both Jews and Gentiles combined to cast Jesus out from the earth, and the loud cries of the heavenly host, who at His advent had filled the sky with gladness, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14), were answered by shouts of men on the earth, “Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him.” (John 19:15.) Thus closed the age of the witness of perfect love upon this earth.
The age of human innocence had ended in alliance with Satan; the age of the law had ended in rebellion against Jehovah; and now the age of the witness of God’s friendship and love to man, in the very person of His Son, closed in the unutterable darkness of man crucifying Jesus.
THE HOLY GHOST ON THE EARTH.
If a new age―a new way of God’s dealing with man―should open, of what character could it be? All hope of human reform, or of fallen man rising up, contrary to his nature, to good, was buried in the grave of the Son of God’s love; all hope of the world being moved towards Him was dead; but on God’s side there could be mercy and grace, and He is love, hence He could not bury His love to man even in the grave of His Son.
From the cross and from the empty grave of Jesus do the most wonderful of God’s ways of grace with man arise. With the resurrection of the Lord, and His ascension to heaven, a new way of God in dealing with man opens. The Holy Ghost has been sent to the earth to testify of the rejected Son of God, and to unite all who believe on His Name to Him.
For the world, as a system, there is no hope of recovery, no prospect of peace or safety: the cross of Christ calls for its judgment. “From henceforth,” Jesus said, “the world seeth Me no more” (John 14:19), and when He comes again to the earth, it will be in judgment, and then all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. (Rev. 1:7.) Come again He will, even as He said to the high priest, “I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 26:64); but there will be no millennium, no glory of Jehovah filling the earth, until judgment has been executed upon it. How near that day of His coming is, no man knows, but none who believe God’s Word can doubt that, “yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry.” (Heb. 10:37.)
THE SON OF GOD ON THE EARTH IN GLORY.
The last age of the world’s history will be introduced by the advent of Christ to the earth for judgment. He will come forth out of heaven, the King of kings (Rev. 19), in His glory, and having overthrown the powers of human evil, and having cast out Satan from the earth, He will reign here for one thousand years. After that period the roll of time will be laid aside, the great day of judgment will arise, and then in eternity alone will be man’s portion.
While in future numbers we propose to enlarge upon these seven periods, let time and eternity now have their true place in our souls. Will our reader look once more upon the little diagram that heads this paper, and allow it to suggest a lesson? Our lives are but a roll of time! Our years are already numbered upon the roll; we live so long, but no longer than God pleases. Before our time began was eternity, after it the judgment seat and eternity. How will it be with us when the roll of our lifetime is completed?