DOUBTING disciple, read these lines and take courage. Trust God, and take him with you into every-day life. “For whether is easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise and walk?” This question of Jesus was put to those who thought him guilty of blasphemy when he proffered forgiveness of sins, with its attendant blessings, to a man sick of the palsy. As they doubted his divine ability, Jesus gave a token of it by saying to the palsied one: “Arise, take up thy bed and go into thine own house.” Those who had questioned his power to forgive sins could no longer question his power to give strength to a helpless body, for the man “arose and departed to his house;” and many who saw it “glorified God, which had given such power unto men.” At that time, men seemed more ready to admit that Jesus Christ could heal the sick than that he could forgive sins. To-day the case seems reversed. Many who concede that he is a Saviour are unwilling to concede that he can heal disease or give temporal blessings according to the needs of his children. Some, even, who can trust their souls in his hands, and who expect Heaven as a gift from him, would not think of asking him to straighten out their crooked tempers, to restore the vigor of their paralyzed wills, to loosen the hold of their grosser appetites and desires; far less to aid them in choosing a wife or husband, in selecting a school for their children, in buying a suit of clothes, in driving a captious horse, in trimming a bonnet, or in breaking up a new farm. The question of Jesus ought to come home pungently to such disciples as these: “Whether is easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise and walk?” If he is able and willing to be our Saviour, is there any lack of ours that Jesus is unable or unwilling to supply? If he is to take us into Heaven by-and-by, cannot he take care of us on earth meantime? If he can “forgive us our debts,” cannot he “give us this day our daily bread”? There are unbelieving scribes—not disciples—who are deferential, if not patronizing, toward Jesus Christ as a recognized Saviour of men, who count it hardly less than “blasphemy” to suppose that God has given to him, or through him to his disciples, any of those powers which are supposed to be given over irrevocably to “Nature.” There is said, by these scribes, to be no harm in trusting Jesus Christ as a Saviour; but he must not be asked to heal the sick, to send rain when it is needed, to give unusual efficacy to any human agency or mechanical appliances when God’s children are in a strait and only he can help them. To these scribes, also, the question of Jesus has its old pertinency: “Whether is easier to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise and walk?” If the forces of “Nature” stand in the way of Christ’s help of his trusting ones, why are not the powers of evil too much for him? If he cannot heal a sick body now, how can he be trusted to give eternal life to an otherwise lost soul? Deny his power as a Saviour or admit it as a helper. He may not cure every palsied one. As to that, his disciples can trust him. “Not my will, but thine be done” is ever the prayer of faith; but it is just as easy for him to say to any stricken one, “Arise and walk,” as to say to another, “Thy sins be forgiven thee.” Jesus can be trusted for now as well as for hereafter. “No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”—Sel.