“What remedy?” “Why, God has told Moses to lift up a brazen serpent, and has said that none of those who look upon that serpent shall die.”
I can just imagine the young man. He may be what you call an intellectual young man. He says to the young convert “You do not think I am going to believe anything like that? If the physicians in Israel cannot cure me, how do you think that an old brass serpent on a pole is going to cure me?”
“Why, sir, I was as bad as yourself!”
“You do not say so!”
“Yes, I do.”
“That is the most astonishing thing I ever heard,” says the young man: “I wish you would explain the philosophy of it.”
“I cannot. I only know that I looked at that serpent, and I was cured: that did it. I just looked; that is all. My mother told me the reports that were being heard through the camp; and I just believed what my mother said, and I am perfectly well.”
“Well, I do not believe you were bitten as badly as I have been.”
The young man pulls up his sleeve.
“Look there! That mark shows where I was bitten; and I tell you I was worse than you are.”
“Well, if I understood the philosophy of it I would look and get well.”
“Let your philosophy go: look and live .”