---

The answer of the disciples to the sight of Jesus walking on the sea revealed the fact that they shared the superstitious sentiments of their age. They said, "It is a spirit." "Orientals continue to believe, as of old, in supernatural agencies, not only in the all-pervading and all-controlling providence and personal influence of the Deity, which they have ever pushed to extreme fatalism, but also in the existence and activity, either for good or for evil, of spirits and invisible beings, who people the air." Our Lord desired to guide his disciples to worthier apprehensions of spiritual things, through the proper apprehension of himself as a spiritual Being and a spiritual Messiah. Our Lord had wrought many miracles which displayed his power, and revealed him as

(1) Lord of Nature in all her moods;

(2) of death in all its stages;

(3) of devils in all their forms of mischief;

(4) of souls in all their spiritual needs.

Now, by this walking on the sea, he would reveal to them something of the mystery which belonged to his own Person. And this particular revelation was called for by the fact that the disciples had encouraged the attempt of the people to make their Master a merely earthly king (John 6:15).

I. CHRIST'S BODILY PRESENCE DID BUT ILLUSTRATE HIS SPIRITUAL PRESENCE. It should be clearly seen that our Lord was with his disciples in a double sense. He was with them spiritually, just as he is still with us; but, besides that, he was with them in bodily relations, in ways that could be apprehended by their senses. That bodily presence was given to teach them what the spiritual presence is and involves. The record of that bodily presence is preserved that it might do the same thing for us. Christ, by coming on the sea, taught the disciples two things.

1. That he would be with them when they could not see him.

2. That they must not wonder if he came to them in strange forms and manifestations. He was teaching them how to use their wings in the spiritual atmosphere, as the mother bird teaches her fledgelings.

II. CHRIST'S BODILY PRESENCE WAS PRESENTLY TO PASS INTO A SPIRITUAL PRESENCE. The first suggestion was the loss of bodyweight which enabled Jesus to walk on the water. The second suggestion was the passing of the bodily into the spiritual at the Resurrection. The third was the passing of the spiritual body beyond the apprehension of the senses at the Ascension. The illustrative bodily presence has gone now, and gone forever; the reality of the spiritual presence of Christ is the possession and the glory of his Church today. - R.T.

---

---

KJV: And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.

WEB: When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, "It's a ghost!" and they cried out for fear.