And Jesus went with him (Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue); and much people followed him and thronged him. And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment: for she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. But the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.
—Mark 5:24-34
Our blessed Lord was truly called the Light of the world. It is the property of light to make manifest; and this was emphatically the case with Him, for wherever He journeyed He brought to light what would otherwise have been hidden. The hidden desires, wants, diseases, the hidden unbelief, and enmity of the heart; all seemed to be drawn out by the very presence of the Saviour. His walks in and out among the sons and daughters of sin and sorrow, ignorance and woe, seemed to draw to the surface all that I had lain concealed. His presence did not create them, but it brought them to light. Sin and misery, want and woe, hatred and fear, disease and death, all came forth from their secret hiding places under the influence of this Light of heaven, and either revived beneath His healing rays, or withered under His holy influence. Mercy distilled from His lips like the dews of heaven, refreshing and healing the needy and desolate ones that thronged His path and that clung to the life-giving words that fell from His lips with the mellowed softness of heaven’s own music; while the hidden enmity of the heart leaping forth with unrestrained violence heard in them its death knell, and shrank back, appalled by the holy brightness of the Son of God, to its envenomed prison house.
And as it is by contrast that everything is seen in its truest colors, so it is when these are brought into association with the Lord of glory, that the pictures of grace from the sacred gallery of Gospel portraiture shine with effulgent rays, and charm our hearts with their heavenly beauty. They meet our needs. They restore our spirits. They increase our faith. They seem as if they had been drawn purposely for us, and as if the inspired pencil that delineated them had none other than ourselves in view. We fix them in the secret chambers of our souls and feel we have the costliest treasure in heaven or earth. We feel we can only yield them at one price; the price of the soul itself. They are linked together, and linked by God Himself; and what “God hath joined together let no man put asunder.”
We stand before one of these portraitures of grace, suspended from the walls of the Gospel gallery. It is one with a dark background of misery and disease, throwing out in bold relief the Divine pencilings of mercy, grace, and love. The Saviour was journeying at the summons of mercy. A needy, helpless creature lay at the point of death. The bleeding heart of the father interceded for his loved one, and the Saviour bent His steps towards the sorrow stricken, home. Multitudes thronged His path and pressed upon Him. Suddenly His steps were arrested by a poor, wasted, bowed-down wreck of humanity. She had borne the burden of suffering and disease for twelve years and groaned beneath its weight. She had tried every resource within her reach and tried in vain. She had spent her all on the world’s physicians, and they had left her worse than they found her. There she lay; in the Saviour’s path, a poor shattered wreck of humanity, with the lifeblood flowing from her body, with no hand to staunch the wound; a standing testimony, to this hour, of the impotence of the world to meet man’s deepest needs.
From the crowd of curious or thoughtless beings that throng the Saviour’s path, the Holy Spirit selects this one and brings her conspicuously before our view. What a picture does the scene, on its very first appearance, present to our notice! How true, to this very hour, its lessons! Crowds throng and press the Saviour in various ways, but one here and there among the throng, helpless and needy, in whose inward hearts the name of Jesus has sounded like music, touch Him; because they feel there is in Him the only balm that can heal the spiritual diseases of their souls. They feel their inward disease. They feel that He alone can heal them, and they cast themselves at His feet. Content they would be, like this helpless woman, to be hidden, if only they might touch the Saviour’s hem. While others throng the Saviour in Churches and chapels, in ordinances and ceremonies, in rites and rituals, in prayers and fastings, they feel that these pressings on Him are not in themselves sufficient. They have no virtue in them for their deadly diseases. While they go with the throng, they feel they need something of which these are all but the outward shadows; the channels it may be, but not the living stream. They feel that the holiest and the best alone are poverty itself. It is Jesus they want. Jesus Himself; Jesus only. And if they touch not Him, they turn away, like Mary from the sepulcher, with a bleeding heart and a tearful eye, and find no resting place till Jesus reveals Himself to their souls. These earthly channels are all dry without Him, and that which conveys Him in the most direct manner to the soul is the most Divine and most worthy of preference. The instrument derives from Him its sole value. At best it is but an earthen vessel, even though it is stamped with heaven’s own beauty. When Jesus fills it, then is the vessel glorious. When anything else is there, either wholly or in part, the vessel has only one merit; that of being broken to pieces. The silver has become dross, the fine gold has become dim.
And oh, how different a thing it is to press and throng the Saviour with the crowd and to touch Him! There is just all the difference there; the difference between life and death, between an heir of glory, and one hopelessly lost. The crowd feels no spiritual disease. They bow down under the weight of no spiritual malady. They feel no heart need of Jesus. They know not experimentally of a hidden virtue in His dear name. It awakens no chord in their hearts. To all this they are strangers. True, their religion may teach it; their ministers may preach it; their creeds may profess it; their lips may acknowledge it; the bowed head may reverence it; the freedom from open glaring sin may yield some conformity to its demands. Ah! this is only thronging and pressing the Saviour. In all this, He remains untouched. There is no deep need in the heart. There is no virtue communicated from Him. They know not Jesus, with all their outward conformity; for He is known only by the needy soul. The soul’s deep poverty touches the deep springs of His heart and draws forth the healing virtue from within.
Well: she had an incurable disease; a true type of sin, and she felt it. So far, all was right. To feel that we are diseased is the first step towards the Divine remedy. There can be no remedy without it. But how many feel their sinful state who have not found the remedy, nor sought it! Conscience may make a man feel that he is a sinner, but the Holy Spirit can alone reveal the remedy and lead the soul to obtain it. This throws no shade over the blessed truth that the Holy Spirit is the convincer of sin, for when He convinces He reveals the remedy and leads the soul to it. The light of natural conscience, even in its darkest state, makes all men feel they are sinners. Let us not suppose for a moment that this is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Divine mark which distinguishes the work of the natural conscience from that of the Holy Spirit is that He leads the soul He convinces to Jesus. Some there are who tell us that this work of the natural conscience is, in all cases, the work of God’s Holy Spirit! So that the poor cannibal who devours his fellow man, and offers another to appease the wrath of an imaginary deity, is under the influence of the Holy Spirit, though he may never have heard of Christ or His Gospel! Alas for such teachers! How come then He does one part of His work, and leaves the other undone? If the conviction of sin in the breast of the poor savage be the work of the Holy Spirit, how is it that He begins His work and leaves it unfinished; leaving the poor soul to die in its sin? How is it that He convinces of sin, and yet, having so convinced it, mocks it by revealing no remedy? Is not such a view most dishonoring to Him? Is it not blasphemous? Does it not place Him before us in a repulsive light? Far be it from me to say that such a light in the case I have alluded to is nothing. It is a natural light, and by it, where the Gospel has never been heard, the soul will probably be judged. But it is not the work of the Holy Ghost, He operates through the medium of the written word. Does He convince? It is through some stray beam of light that has found its way from that word to the soul, like the trickling rivulet among the distant hills from the river or the ocean. Does He rebuke? It is by some truth from its treasury taking hold of the conscience. Does He comfort? It is by some promise from its storehouse. Does He quicken? It is by some precept or warning from its manifold and inexhaustible resources. The Spirit speaks and operates through the word. God has His witness in the breast of every man living, leaving him without excuse. (Rom 1) Let us not confound it, however, with the work of the Holy Spirit, whose distinctive operation is through the word of God. This is the only check we have against error. Were it not for this, there would be nothing to distinguish the wildest excesses of the brain from the genuine work of God. He convinces the soul of sin by bringing it under the light of the holy law of God. He makes sin to be exceeding sinful. He enlightens the understanding. He corrects the judgment. He instructs the mind. He educates the heart. The word is the medium; and where He begins His work, He never leaves it till it is finished, and the believer is presented faultless before tne throne.
For many a long year, the burden had pressed upon this woman. She had sought long and earnestly for some skillful hand to heal the wound. She had consulted the world’s physicians on every side but in vain. Her burden only increased. Her disease spread. Poverty stared her in the face. They had taken from her all she possessed, and what had they done for her? Only increased her suffering. Poor world! thou hast no remedy for the diseases of the soul. Thou hast no medicine for a bleeding heart. He who repairs to thee in his hour of need finds a broken cistern. Thou canst empty but never fill. Thou canst promise but never perform. Thou canst bruise but never heal. Thou canst take away all the poor soul has, but leave it worse and not better. The flower may be plucked by thy ruthless hand, but the stalk left to wither on the ground. So she found it to be, and so have all who have sought it as she did.
Ah, how much we learn from this case, of our utter inability to find the Divine remedy, even when brought to a knowledge of our true state before God. Like her, the soul convinced of sin, if left to itself, will repair to the world’s physicians instead of Jesus. It is like a little child and needs to be led every step of the way. There is within it a tendency to diverge, of which it cannot divest itself. Like the child, it will leave the path and turn aside to pluck the flowers, however poisonous they may be. Strange that it should at every step seek what must be its ruin! But it does. It is its nature. And if God the Spirit carry not on the work He has begun, if He lead not the poor foolish child every step of the way, not one would be found before the throne to praise the Lord for the riches of His grace. Heaven would be a desert but for sovereign grace. Heaven would be untenanted by a single redeemed one, but for the continued leading, restoring, and upholding of God’s Holy Spirit, O believer, do you not feel it is so? Is this the doctrine merely of a certain class? Is it not rather a truth deeply endorsed by your own daily, hourly experience? Surely the answer to every cavil lies in your own individual history. Could you trust yourself for the next hour without Him? Let reason and argument aim their polished shafts at this glorious doctrine, yet there is a testimony to its truth which nothing can gainsay; your own individual experience.
And mark who it was that had not only taken her all but left her worse. It was the world’s physicians; the world’s professed healers. So is it to the present hour. Does the soul feel its diseases? What have the world’s physicians to offer? Its religion; its penances and prayers, its fasting and ceremonies, its toils and labors, its miserable hope after death. Oh, how these things rob the soul, leaving it in deeper wretchedness than before! Thus it labors and toils, not twelve years, but a whole lifetime, with a disease, ever-deepening. No light of truth shines within, telling of sin put away and peace through the blood of Jesus. No present salvation, lighting up the soul with joy, quickening its steps in devotedness to the Lord, and making that service a delight instead of a task. All is wretchedness within, darkness and uncertainty, fear and dread, bondage and restraint, dreariness and death.
Oh, miserable physicians for the soul! Yet such are the best. Such are all the world has, or ever had, till we go to Jesus and listen to the sweet sounds of redeeming love from His lips. The undying memorial over the skeletal remains of a Bishop, found scratched by his own hand in the dungeons of Rome, is the only true superscription over the brightest and best the world can hold out: “No rest here but in Christ.” No rest but in Christ; and he who would repair elsewhere may behold in this shattered wreck of humanity his own certain history to the end.
But mark how the soul clings to anything in itself. So long as she had means to pay these physicians, so long would she continue to try them, and so long would God let her go on. So long as the sinner is conscious he has within himself anything to merit salvation, so long will he trade upon that, and so long will God let him go on. No salvation but by grace. Nothing in the sinner to earn it, nothing from which he can lay claim to it. All this must go. He must become bankrupt, with nothing in the purse. Diseased and helpless, ruined and undone, such are they whom Jesus came to seek and save. When the sinner is brought to this, as she was, with no purse to fly to, no help at hand, then does the Spirit reveal Jesus to the soul. Oh, how precious then is His dear name! How sweet the notes of mercy! How divine the blood that heals the soul! How valuable the word of truth! What a reality in all, and how suited to our case!
Reader, have you been brought to this? Have you been brought, poor and wretched, helpless and undone, to the feet of Jesus? If you are ever to be saved you must come to this. Be not deceived; all religion without this is counterfeit. It may have upon it the very stamp of heaven itself; without this, it is a mockery. It is blinding your eyes, while it is leading you onward to certain destruction. Again I say, be not deceived. Without this, not a glimmer of Divine life has ever yet dawned on your soul. You are dead while you live.
Christian reader, have you been brought to this? Yes, you have if you are a Christian. Then keep in this place. Ah, it is often much easier for the Spirit to bring us there than to keep us there. The heart is so deceitful. As a doctrine, how we prize this! We feel that in the matter of salvation, this must ever be our place. But to keep here; to be at all times self emptied; to carry it with us into all our ways, how rare, how difficult! How often complacency steals into the heart under the conscious possession of spiritual mercies or spiritual gifts! How often the Spirit’s work within us is tarnished by conscious spiritual superiority, painfully visible perhaps to all but ourselves! Oh, how self-complacency, conscious superiority, a lofty air or elevated bearing in spiritual things, betrays the soul’s leanness, its practical alienation from God, its evidence of low communion, and that a process of declension is going on within! Oh, the deceitfulness of the heart! The Christian’s danger is not so much in not acknowledging that he is helpless and ruined in the matter of his soul’s salvation, but in feeling this continually, and in all things. He needs to have the prayer daily on his lips, “Lord, keep me from my own evil heart. Keep me, lest I, not thou, be all. Keep me, lest in my services for thee, self may poison everything.” Self will be uppermost. It is its nature, and most when engaged in the things of God. Then the holy garment blinds us to a sense of the deadly gangrene within. We suspect it least where we should suspect it most. Thus it is fostered, and God is not glorified.
When she “had spent all that she had,” she heard of Jesus. The creature must be brought to the end of everything, ere the Holy Spirit can make known Christ. Jesus must be a full Saviour, an exclusive Saviour, or none at all. So long as there is any resource to which it can look for the healing of its diseases, no matter what it may be, Christ cannot meet it in the fullness of the riches of His grace. This is a hard lesson: it is the last the flesh will learn. And yet it must be learned, ere God can act, or redeeming mercy be experienced and prized. God will not yield in His requirements. This is absolutely indispensable. Till you have ‘spent all that you have,’ till you have been brought to the end of everything, to the end of all hope of anything in yourself, or in the world for which you are living, or in your outward religion, your lifeless creed, your formal profession, till you have been brought, reader, to the end of everything, poor, helpless, undone, with every prop removed, you will never hear the voice of the Spirit making known Jesus to you. You will never know the sweetness of His name, the healing virtue of His precious blood. This is the only state in which He can be prized, the only state in which He can be experienced as the Saviour of sinners, and He will never enter the heart on any other terms. He will not enter as a half Saviour, or to be esteemed, venerated, respected. No; He came into the world for no such purpose. Shame on such dishonor to His blessed mission! He came to die “for the ungodly,” to seek and to save the lost; and wherever He meets a heart that has not been brought to know that it is such, to cover itself with dust and ashes, under a sense of this, He passes it by.
Reader, you are just fit for the Saviour if you have been brought to this. Do I hear you saying, “I feel I am a sinner. I see so many inconsistencies in my life that I am ashamed of myself. Though I know I ought to be what God says, yet I find I cannot; my sins get the better of me. My conscience is troubled. I know I shall have to meet God, and yet the thought is dreadful. I am wretched.” This is the Spirit of God bringing you to feel that you are ungodly. He is making your conscience feel it. Then it is, when you are brought to this, the voice of the Lord speaks, and says, “You are ungodly, but in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” How “in due time?” Just in due time for us, when we had lost, ruined, sinned away our blessings. When you, reader, are brought to the sense of this, then is your “due time.” Then does the Spirit make known that you, ungodly as you feel yourself to be, are the one Christ shed His blood for? He bore the curse of your ungodliness. He took all your sins on Himself, bore them away, left none for God to look upon, not one. They are all gone forever from His view. The wages of sin, of your sin, is eternal death; and these wages you must have paid, had Jesus not paid them for you. But He has. The debt of death on account of your sins has been paid by Him. He died, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God. The debt has been fully paid, and now you are the Lord’s freeman. Oh, what joy, what comfort to the conscience bowed down under a sense of its ungodliness! Reader, believe this, precious truth, and let the song of praise burst forth from your lips: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”
Let conscience condemn, let Satan accuse, let the law thunder. Be it so. Another has answered all their claims, every one. Look at Jesus. He is your substitute. He has finished the work. God sees you now in Jesus and is well pleased with you for His sake. Poor, bankrupt sinner, that hast spent all that thou hast, that hast toiled, and labored, and struggled, and art nothing better, but worse; listen to the Spirit of God pointing thee to Jesus: “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” “He was bruised for our iniquities, he was wounded for our transgressions, and by his stripes we are healed.” “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all;” of thee, sinner. It was all laid on Jesus. By His stripes, thou art healed. Oh! believe and be happy; believe and rejoice; believe and let songs of praises be on thy lips; believe, and:
Tell to sinners all around What a, dear Saviour thou hast found.
But there is a lesson here for the Christian too, a needed one. When she “had spent all she had,” she heard of Jesus. Christian, God must bring you to this all through your history. What are you looking to for help in your trials, for sympathy in your distresses, for healing in your sorrows? To the world? To Christian friends? To some resources of your own? Oh vain, vain every one. They are all the world’s physicians at best. God must bring you to spend all that you have. He must, He will, be all. When you have tried everything, and everyone, and are brought to the end of the creature in every form, nothing better, but worse; when you have been brought to lie helpless at the feet of Jesus, then will you have spent all that you had. Then will you see “the Lord’s hand is not shortened.” Then will the voice of Jesus be heard. In His time, and in His way, will come the healing touch that shall be more to you than the world, or friends, or anything. You ought to have trusted in none of these at first; you ought to have gone straight to Jesus at once, and closed your eyes to all else. But you did not. You had friends, you had means, you had resources, and you went to them. So the Lord allowed you to go on till you spent all you had; and then, when you had come to the end of everything, He had mercy on you. Yes, dear Christian reader, remember this lesson. Bear it in mind all through your history. You must come to the end of everything here but Jesus. Only then will you know what a Saviour He is. Only then will you know His unutterable preciousness. Only then you will know what thought cannot conceive nor tongue express. We must be shut up alone with Jesus, to know all that is in Him. We never half know Him till then. When the landscape is clouded, when the sky is dark, when the stream is dry, when the pitcher is broken, and when every bud, blossom, flower, and leaf are seared and frost bitten, then is Christ precious! We have come to the end of the creature, and the Spirit presses Jesus upon us. We feel our need. We lie at His feet. We are the poor bankrupts; He the God of all grace. “When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them.” Then we know Jesus as He seeks to be known, supplying the greatest wants, meeting the worst cases, filling the emptiest souls. Then He is indeed a Saviour, not in name, but in power. We taste and see that the Lord is gracious.
And mark how God deals with His people. He often lets things go to the worst with them before He steps in. Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth. He lets us come to the end of everything. Flesh and blood shrink, and we feel that none but He can help us. We are brought to this often, and when brought to it we are often kept in it, waiting on the Lord. Such seasons are trying, but they are the discipline of His hand, to wean us from everything here but Himself. He said to the disciples of old, “These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.” What things had He spoken? Things of sorrow, things of sadness, things to make the flesh creep, along with things cheering and delightful, a mingled cup, “judgment and mercy.” Such is the cup the Lord always presents to His people here. And why? The reason is always the same, “That in me ye might have peace.” Mark it well, reader, “That in me ye might have peace.” This mingled cup is given to wean us from everything to Him. And it is well it is a mixed cup, for no other would ever wean us. Idolatry is so rooted in our nature, that the mixed cup, seen rightly, is unmingled love and mercy. Without it we should soon, like Israel of old, be full, and forget God.
This was the way God dealt with this woman. She was allowed to go on. Things got worse and worse. She knew it not, but love was only emptying the vessel by this painful process to fill it with heavenly virtue. I dare say she often counted her money and watched with tearful eye and trembling heart the purse gradually diminishing. When the last penny was gone, she perhaps thought all was over. And where were her physicians? All had gone. And there she was, weaker than ever. Her malady had increased, and they had been the means of it. Ah! the world can do no more. It may increase the malady, but it can never heal it; and those who seek its healing powers return with a bleeding and desolate heart. We can fancy this woman’s inward agony: “What shall I do? I shall never have this terrible disease healed. The grave is before me. There is no hope.” How many a poor and needy one has felt the same, the tongue failing for thirst, and not a drop of water near to quench it! “Oh,” says one, “I shall never have this load of sin removed! It is a burden too heavy to bear.” “I shall never bear this crushing sorrow,” is the language of another. “My spirit is overwhelmed within me.” “I am poured out like water.” “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!” Ah! Judge not the Lord by feeble sense. But trust Him for His grace. His way is in the sea, and His path in the mighty waters. “The Lord sitteth upon the flood; the Lord remaineth king forever.” He is only preparing you for the revelation of Himself. He is emptying the vessel that He may fill it. Every hair of your head is numbered. Every turn and bend in your checkered history is in His hand and on His heart. Not one unneeded sorrow will He send. Not one rough wave shall break over the frail vessel without His will. The Pilot is at the helm. The mariner may be at his wits’ end, but the tempest-tossed vessel shall outride the storm, and reach the haven where He would have it. Be still, and know that He is God. Look not, like Peter, at the boiling flood at your feet, or the blackness of darkness overhead. Look at Jesus, and all will be well. You shall tread the waves in safety, and rejoice. Brought to the end of the creature, bowed down under a load of disease, with an empty purse, and nothing to look to, at such a juncture, this woman heard of Jesus. Oh, how sweet is the sound of His dear name to such! “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven !” In such a state we are prepared to receive the Saviour as He seeks to be received. In such a state, but in no other, are the sinner and the Saviour fitted for each other.
The silences of God’s word on certain subjects are very striking and as important to us as those that are revealed. One of these most expressive silences forms an important feature in the history of this woman. She had learned much about Jesus. She possessed faith of no common order. The very sound of His name drew her to His feet. The very “touch,” and that of His ” clothes,” she felt assured would be sufficient. She knew there was virtue in Him. She knew that it would do for her what all her physicians had failed to accomplish, make her whole. Where did she learn this? We are not told. There is a veil over it all. Let not someone say, “Oh, she was told it.” Her language and conduct are not those resulting from a report. They are the exponents of a deep conviction, which no report could have produced. Repeated disappointments, such as she had met with, would have cast suspicion on any mere report. The confidence and faith implied in them lead us to seek their explanation in a far different origin. A power had evidently been at work in her heart, of which she in all probability was unconscious, and of which she could offer no explanation.
The Spirit of God had been preparing the vessel for the virtue that was to be poured into it. He opened her ear to the sound of the name of Jesus. There was something in it which she felt met her case. There was something in it which led her to His feet. The same blessed Spirit revealed to her the “virtue” in Him. He revealed to her the truth that the “touch” of trembling faith was enough to draw that virtue from Him. He revealed to her that her need would meet its fullness in Him. The Spirit taught her, the Spirit led her to His feet. No other explanation can be given of her confidence and assurance, her knowledge and faith, in the face of the many disappointments she had met with. No mere report could have produced them. Impossible. Now we see the reason for the vail over this part of her history. The Spirit’s leadings are the same in every case. The first report, the secret conviction, the thought darting through the mind like a flash of lightning, the uplifted eye, the falling tear, all that secret and often long process, involving, perhaps, the history of years of providential dealings, by which the soul emerges from darkness to light, under the gentle, unperceived leadings of the Spirit of God. Who knows it? Where is its record? Only on high. There is a vail over it all here. None sees it. None traces it. Like the volcanic eruption that, unseen to mortal eye, has little by little been gathering its elements for one grand explosion, until it makes itself heard and felt, so with the history of conversion to God. What are called sudden conversions are, most of them, only sudden in the same sense as that eruption. The work had been going on before in secret, under the eye and hand of God. The Spirit of God had been doing His work, and if we had been behind the scene, we might have seen it years ago. But we are not behind the curtain. It is well that we are not. It is all His work, and too sacred for mortal eye. There is a vail over the Spirit’s dealings; as with her, so with all God’s people. We see the effects, the touch, the cure, the blessing. We see one who had been dead in sins, now alive unto God, loving Him, serving Him, rejoicing in Him, and we wonder. The process of that change we see not. Its record is on high. One thing, however, we see, which is important to observe. However varied may be the process by which he leads each, however long or short, He leads everyone to Jesus. It was to Jesus He led her, to Jesus only. For Him He had been training her in secret, for Him only. So is it to the present hour. The Spirit ever leads to Jesus, to Jesus only. This is the genuine mark on His work. “He shall glorify me.” Wherever the soul is not led, as this woman was, to the feet of Jesus, there we may be sure is not the Spirit’s work. Not only so, but the effects of His work are the same in every case as in hers; the conscious disease, the conscious poverty, the entire emptying of self, the falling at the feet of Jesus, and an inward experience of His healing virtue.
Reader, has this been the history of your conversion to God? If not, it is not genuine. These are the footprints of the Spirit of God in every case of real conversion; and if they are not seen in your history, it is because you are yet unconverted.
Well, she came to Jesus. There was much in her thoughts about Him that was wrong and dishonoring. She did not know Him fully, but the Spirit of God was leading her step by step. She felt her disease, she felt her need, she was poor and helpless, and in this state she came. Grace meets us not according to our correct views, or right thoughts of God, but according to our need. Alas ! if it demanded right thoughts and correct views of His character, where should we be, where would this woman have been? If dishonoring thoughts of His love, ignorance of His character, blindness in seeing what He requires, were hindrances to His grace, she must have gone back to her home again, and remained a cripple for life. But, blessed be His holy name! it is not so. Grace is measured by no standard but the poverty and need of the sinner. Ignorance, blindness, and sin are no barriers to His grace. Nay, these are the things that call it forth. It is because we are such that grace meets us, welcomes us, saves us. The enlightening of the understanding as to the Saviour’s true character comes afterwards. We come as beggars to the gate of heaven, as prodigals from the far country, and are embraced, clothed, and fed. So she came. She touched the Saviour’s hem, and “immediately the fountain of her blood was dried up.” What she had sought for twelve long years from the world’s physicians, and sought in vain, she got by a single touch of Jesus. How quickly He can heal the soul! We go to Him in our poverty and sin, in our sorrow and trial, and oh, what a Saviour we find Him! We get by a single touch of Him what the world could never give. How hollow are all the world’s physicians when viewed in His light. How fully every want of the soul is met. What a mighty power there is in a touch, a word, a look from Him! One look brought a backsliding apostle home to the fold. One word dried the tears of a weeping Magdalene, and filled her desolate heart with deep songs of joy. One touch of His clothes dried up the fountain of disease in this helpless cripple, and sent her to her home rejoicing. Precious Jesus! Who is like unto thee? The poor, the penniless, the outcast, the diseased, the needy and helpless sons and daughters of sorrow and woe, ever repaired to thy outstretched arms for mercy, and found it. Under thy sheltering wings they reposed in safety, driven by the blasts and tempests of a heaving world. Thou hast been “the hiding place from the wind, the covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” Blessed Jesus ! who is like unto thee?
But now that grace has met her, and, irrespective of her wrong thoughts, has healed her disease, the Lord proceeds to correct her, to enlighten her as to His true character. “She came behind in the press.” “She fell down before Him fearing and trembling.” Why was all this? She thought He was about to condemn her. What dishonor to His love! What sad thoughts she had of Him! Her mind was still dark as to His true character. Her heart was not made perfect in the knowledge of His love. “Perfect love casteth out fear.” That love she deeply wronged. And is not this the twilight state of many a soul that has been led like her to the Saviour? They see the aspect of terror round His blessed brow. They look on the Lord’s trying dealings with them as judgments for their sin. They hesitate and tremble as to their individual safety in the finished work of Jesus, as if its application to themselves depended upon their uprightness of conduct, their frames, and feelings, and prayers. What dishonor to Him, to His finished work and gracious dealings!
Besides dishonor done to His love and grace, there was another error in her mind. If she were to receive the virtue from Jesus, it must not be hidden. The light was not to be put under a bushel. The world must see it, in order that Jesus may be glorified. This is the reason we receive grace, that we may let it shine before the world. We have been redeemed “that we should show forth the praises of him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.” It might be all well enough for her to desire to be healed, and go to her home again with thankfulness for the mercy. But there was a touch of selfishness in it. What an opportunity was here for testimony to the grace and virtue in Jesus! A poor diseased woman, who for twelve long years had sought healing from the sources of the world, healed in an instant by a touch of the Saviour’s clothes! Should this be hidden? No: God will be glorified in us. The glory of Jesus shone through this diseased cripple on to the throng. This is the way God is honored. The world is to see the character of Jesus in His members, whose sin-diseased souls He has healed. The treasure is to shine through the earthen vessel, “that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”
Nor this only. There was another lesson she had to learn. We cannot touch the Saviour and He not know it. She very likely thought she could. But no. The touch of trembling faith, the uplifted eye, the falling tear, the unexpressed desire, all are known to Him. His eye is upon each. His heart open to each. In all our afflictions He is afflicted. Precious truth! “We have not an high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” These three truths then she did not seem to understand; the love of Jesus, testimony to His grace, and His knowledge and sympathy. To hold the grace of God in ignorance of these truths should not be the desire of any disciple of Christ, nor will the Lord have it so. She is now to be taught them, and by the Lord Himself.
“And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched me ?” It is important to notice the manner in which the Lord would teach this woman. He says, “Who touched me?” He knew who it was, for He knew all things. His question, however, was designed for the conscience, and for the conscience of the one who had been made partaker of His grace. It went to the conscience of the woman. Not one in the throng knew its meaning, nor the deep transaction that had been passing between God and her soul. We learn from this how God teaches His lessons. It is through the medium of conscience. The truth as it is in Jesus is not for the intellect, not for the understanding, but for the conscience. He spoke to her conscience first, and through it brought home the truths she should have known. Those who have been made partakers of His grace must be exercised in conscience. It is thus all truth should come to us. When the Spirit of God teaches us, it is there He applies it first. Oh, how much religious knowledge there is in the world! How much of the truths of God’s word rest on the surface of man’s being! How little comes home to the conscience! It is this familiarity with truth that is so dangerous and so prevalent. It is one of the Christian’s greatest snares. From this comes that barren familiarity with the things of God that is so deadening to the soul. The heart is a busy mocker of the understanding. It cheats it into the belief that the truths in the understanding are the expression of its own character. It believes itself to be what it knows it ought to be. It is thus we invest ourselves with a fictitious character. There is the ready acquiescence in the truths of the Gospel and all its solemn requirements, and facility of speech in speaking of them, while the conscience is unstirred, and there is no truth brought home with power to the soul. Oh, how much need we have to be on our guard against truth not received through the conscience! How much need to pray that God would make all truth come home there, lest we become like those who have a name to live while they are dead. The deepest snares are those which lie alongside of truth. It is there they are least perceived and least suspected; and it is there the child of God has most occasion to watch and pray lest he enter into temptation. Reader, beware of truth resting in the intellect. Beware of truth that has not its root in the conscience, and its fruit in the daily life. Better never to have known the truth, than to hold it in unrighteousness. Better to have been in ignorance of it, than that it should be inoperative in the soul, encrust the conscience, and deceive us with the notion that because we know it, it is the expression of our own hearts. There is an intellectual manner of acquiring truth, even in the Christian, which is very dangerous. The deep things of God coming from the lips of one who has been thus taught, is like the reflection of the glorious sun from the polished marble. It shines all the brighter often from its inability to penetrate. All is uninfluenced internally. Not a ray is absorbed. Alas! even the deep things of God are reflected from some hearts in a similar manner. Oh, for a conscience ever touched with the Divine power of the truth! Lord, give writer and reader this! Lord of light, and love, and mercy, preserve each one from the hardening influence of the other!
It is through the conscience, then, that God would have us learn anything about Him. This is what is taught in this narrative. But we learn more than this. We are manifestly taught that we can only be instructed about Him by being brought into close personal dealing with Him, by His fullness meeting our deep needs. It was when she had come into His presence, and had for herself experienced His virtue, that the Saviour proceeded to enlighten her as to His true character. Thus is it God ever teaches. When we have come as needy ones into His presence, and have felt His fullness meeting our emptiness, His truth comes home to us with Divine power: thus would He instruct us. Only then will the truth touch the conscience. It is because we do not learn in this way, that conscience remains unexercised. We have not met Jesus, and in His own presence proved His preciousness, and so the truth we have learned is inoperative. Her conscience was exercised in God’s presence. If we learn truth anywhere else, conscience will be the worse for it.
And how entirely the world is ignorant of what passes between the soul and God. The crowd knew nothing of what had been passing between this woman and Christ. Not even the disciples knew of it, so secret, so solemn, so individual a matter was it. “And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?” Only the heart of the one He had made partaker of His grace could understand His words. So is it ever. Into the dealings between the soul and God none can enter. How deep, how sacred, how personal, how shut out from the eyes of all, are these blessed transactions! “The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy.” Yet all are open to Him. He knows exactly where the soul’s deepest need is, and it is at this point the Saviour is touched. “Who touched my clothes?”The medium is immaterial if He is touched. It may be through the clothes, through the mercy seat, through the word, through the ordinances of His house, on a sick bed, in the solitude, or in the throng. What matter where or how, so that we touch Him?Let our daily emptiness, our hourly want, our pressing sorrow, our unsympathized trial, our unshared burden, only cast itself on the Lord’s fullness, and we too, like her, shall experience that virtue to meet it which He only can give, and which the world can never take away.
“But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.” What had she got from Jesus? Just as much as she needed. No more. For this cause He came into our world, to meet man’s need. He is the same to this hour. Christian, what do you get from the Saviour now? Just what you need. There are no dealings now between the Saviour and His people, beyond this. Every approach to Him is founded on this. Every answer to prayer is according to this measure. Every blessing we receive corresponds with the need that it meets. Alas, then, for the soul that has never felt its need of Him! It can receive nothing. There is no point of contact between that soul and Christ. There is no link uniting it to heaven. It is an alien, an outcast, a wandering star, “having no hope,and without God in the world.” Reader, are you such a one? If you have never yet felt in your heart the need of Jesus, you can never receive His virtue to heal your sin diseased soul. You will go on like this woman, not to better, but worse, till body and soul sink beneath your deadly disease, “where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” Remember, reader, I beseech you, this solemn truth, if there be in your heart no felt need of Jesus, there is no point of contact whatever between your soul and God, you are a lost soul.
Christian, seek to feel more deeply your need of that precious Saviour. Let your prayer ever be, “Lord deepen the vessel, that it may receive more of thy fullness.” Nothing brings you so close to Him as these hidden needs. These are the most precious points of contact in your earthly history. These make the Saviour precious. These tell us something of what a Saviour He is. These are the channels through which His virtue flows. It is Him you want, to meet every need, none but Jesus. In the solitude or the throng, in the routine of daily duty or the calmness of the closet, in sickness or in health, in sorrow or in joy, in living or in dying, let your heart be filled with one desire, one thought, one aim, to touch Jesus. This one thought filled this woman’s soul to the exclusion of every other, from the very moment the name of Jesus sounded in her ears. All else seemed as nothing in comparison. Reader, may her history be yours and mine!
Oh, holy Saviour, Friend unseen, Since on thine arm thou bidd'st us lean; Help us throughout life's changing scene By faith to cling to thee! Bless'd with this fellowship Divine, Take what thou wilt, we'll not repine; For, as the branches to the vine, We only cling to thee! Though far from home, fatigued, opprest, Here we have found a place of rest; As exiles still, yet not unblest, Because we cling to thee! What though the world deceitful prove, And earthly friends and hopes remove, With patient, uncomplaining love Still can we cling to thee! Though oft we seem to tread alone Life's dreary waste with thorns o'ergrown, Thy voice of love, in gentlest tone, Whispers, 'Still cling to me!’ Though faith and hope are often tried, We ask not, need not, aught beside, So safe, so calm, so satisfied, The soul that clings to thee! They know thee near, and strong to save, With thee all danger they can brave, Because they cling to thee! Bless'd is our lot, whate'er befall, Who can affright, or who appall? Since as our Strength, our Rook, our All Jesus, we cling to thee!
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