Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

⁴ These things you disregarded, nor looked upon them as a man, but as an irrational animal. The Prophet cried out to you, and cried in vain. “Be not like to horse and mule, which have no understanding.” These things I say you saw, and disregard. God's daily miracles were disesteemed, not for their easiness, but their constant repetition. For what is more difficult to understand than a man's birth, that one who was in existence should by dying depart into darkness, and that one who was not, by being born should come forth to light? What so marvellous, what so difficult to comprehend?

But with God easy to be done. Marvel at these things, awake; at His unusual works, you can wonder, are they greater than those which you are accustomed to see? Men wondered that our Lord God Jesus Christ filled so many thousands with five loaves; and they do not wonder that through a few grains the whole earth is filled with crops. When the water was made wine, men saw it, and were amazed; what else takes place with the rain along the root of the vine? He did the one, He does the other; the one that you may be fed, the other that you may wonder.

But both are wonderful, for both are the works of God. Man sees unusual things, and wonders; whence is the man himself who wonders? Where was he? Whence came he forth? Whence the fashion of his body? Whence the distinction of his limbs? Whence that beautiful form? From what beginnings? What contemptible beginnings? And he wonders at other things, when he the wonderer is himself a great wonder. Whence then are these things which you see but from Him whom you see not? But as I had begun to say, because these things were disesteemed by you, He came Himself to do unusual things, that in these usual ones too you might acknowledge your Creator. He came to Whom it is said, “Renew signs.” To Whom it is said, “Show forth Your marvellous mercies.” For dispensing them He ever was; He dispensed them, and no one marvelled.

Therefore came He a Little one to the little, He came a Physician to the sick, who was able to come when He would, to return when He would, to do whatsoever He would, to judge as He would. And this, His will, is very righteousness; yea what He wills, I say, is very righteousness. For that is not unrighteous which He wills, nor can that be right which He wills not. He came to raise the dead, men marvelling that He restored a man to the light who was in light already, He who day by day brings forth to the light those who were not.