116. Prayer Of The Centurion.

Prayer Of The Centurion. The Centurion’s Prayer.—Matthew 8:5-6. The Lord’s Answer.—Matthew 8:7. The Centurion still prays.—Matthew 8:8-9. The Lord’s Answer.—Matthew 8:10-13.

It is with feelings of peculiar interest we review the petition of this Roman soldier, for we regard him as the first Gentile convert to the religion and faith of Jesus. Endowed with authority in the army, the mere expressing of his will producing obedience, he comes to the meek and lowly Savior to ask his blessing. He does not at this time crave it for himself—he comes for another. The boon he seeks is for one lying in sickness in his dwelling. He is deeply sensible of his own unworthiness, and his heart is full of that heaven-born virtue, humility, which ever becometh man in his converse with his Creator. Well might the Savior call his faith the greatest he had seen, even in Israel.

There were many alluring temptations in his position to fill his soul with pride, for his path in life was one of worldly honor and distinction. Safe in the midst of the world’s false lights, this Roman officer is shielded, for he hath the breastplate of righteousness ever raised between his heart and the world. Such faith cannot be shaken. The poor sick servant in his dwelling is to him an object of interest, and in love and faith he brings him to the “Healer.” And have you, reader, no “sick servant,” no “diseased soul,” among those whom your heart loves, for whom you too may seek the “Healer?” Is there not one lying “sick” in your dwelling whose malady you have never once remembered at the mercy seat? Are you a “soldier of the cross,” a follower of the Lamb, and will you put up no plea for the sin-sick around you?

“Man was made to wrestle, not to reign,” to plead for others as well as for himself, to remember the poor and desolate, the untaught and forsaken, the sick and the dying, and the Christian’s prayer takes in the world; it is full of that faith so strikingly manifested by the Centurion in his appeal to the Savior.