L. 1 Now when he had ended all his sayings in the audience of the people, he entered into Capernaum. 2 And a certain centurion’s servant, who was dear unto him, was sick of the palsy, and 3 ready to die. And when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto him the elders of the Jews, 4 beseeching him that he would come and heal his servant. And when they came to Jesus, they besought him instantly, saying, That he was worthy for whom he should do 5, 6 this. For he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue. Then Jesus went with them. And when he was now not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to him, saying unto him, Lord, trouble not thyself.

M. 5, 6 Then came unto him the centurion, beseeching him and saying, Lord, my servant 7 lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will 8 come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof. Wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come 9 unto thee: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I also am a man set under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say unto this one, Go, and he goeth: and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it. 10 When Jesus heard these things, he marvelled at him, and turned him about, and said unto the people that followed him, Verily, I say unto you, I have not found so great 11 faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. 12 But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into utter darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 13 And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way, and as thou hast believed, so be it L. 10 done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the self-same hour. And they that were sent, returning to the house, found the servant whole that had been sick.

THERE is here no analysis of faith, and no definition of it. It seems to be assumed by Christ and his evangelists that all would understand what faith is. The thing is enacted, not described. Men do in regard to Christ almost everything in the range of possibility: philosophize about him, study about him, reason about him, everything save trusting in him. Trusting, I mean, after the simple method which impelled this centurion to implore his help. Trust is at once the most active and the most quiet of all qualities.

What the centurion had not, we have: the positive assurance and promise of the Redeemer. This has been verified by ages of human experience. Every man who has died in peace, looking unto Jesus, is an irrefutable argument for the wisdom of faith. The simpler our trust in Christ for all things, the surer is our peace. W. A.

1. The inauguration of the great doctrine was immediately followed and ratified by mighty signs. Jesus went, says one of the Fathers, from teaching to miracle. Having taught as one who had authority, he proceeded to confirm that authority by accordant deeds. F.

2. Centurion. All Palestine was under Roman military government; this centurion was probably connected with the garrison at Capernaum. The Roman army was divided into legions, varying in size from three thousand to six thousand men. There were in each legion sixty centuries, each under the command of a centurion. L. A.—He was one among the many who are distinguished from the seed of Abraham, yet described as fearing God, or worshipping God, of whom we read so often in the Acts—the proselytes, whom the providence of God had so wonderfully prepared in all the great cities of the Greek and Roman world as a link of communication between Gentile and Jew, in contact with both—holding to the first by their race, and to the last by their religion; and who must have greatly helped to the ultimate fusion of both into one Christian Church. T.

M. 5. Before the centurion’s friends can deliver this message to the Lord, who was approaching nearer and nearer to the house, the centurion himself hastens from the house to be the bearer of his own petition. The report of Matthew commences where that of Luke ceases. C. B.—It may be considered probable that the first evangelist abridges the tale by the omission of incidents that were familiar to him. But the suggestion must occur to the historical student that possibly two separate traditions, differing from one another in the circumstance of the deputation of the elders, appear in the two narratives. G. P. F.

8,9. The centurion’s humility was not more low than his faith was lofty: that reaches up into heaven; and, in the face of human weakness, deseries Omnipotence: “Only say the word, and my servant shall be whole.” Bp. H.—“I am,” he would say, “one occupying only a subordinate place, set under authority, a subaltern, with commanders over me. Yet those that are under me obey me. I have power to send them hither and thither, and they go at my bidding. How much more thou, who art not set, as I am, in a subordinate place, but who art as a prince over the host of heaven, who wilt have angels and spirits to obey thy word and run swiftly at thy command! His view of Christ’s relation to the spiritual kingdom is as original as it is grand; and it is so truly that of the Roman officer: the Lord appears to him as the true Imperator, the highest over the hierarchy, not of earth, but of heaven. T.—He begins with acknowledging his own subjection, and states his own authority; then leaves it to our Lord to understand that he recognizes in him an authority beyond all, expecting the powers of nature to obey their Master, just as his soldiers or his servants obey him. How grandly he must have believed in him! And it is to be well heeded that the Lord went no farther—turned at once. McD.

10. Marvelled.** He did this but at two things—faith and unbelief. B.—Midway between the Gentile and the Jew stood the woman of Samaria; outside the bounds of Judaism stood this Roman centurion. Was it to prefigure the great future of the gathering in of all people and tongues that so early in his ministry such a manifestation of faith in the Saviour was made? H.

13. Counting himself unworthy that Christ should enter into his doors, he was counted worthy that Christ should enter into his heart—a far better boon: for Christ sat down in the houses of men, as of that proud, self-righteous Pharisee, whose hearts were not for this the less empty of his presence. But this centurion received him in his heart, whom he did not receive in his house. T.—The centurion’s faith came out strongly in every point where that of the nobleman (Section 24) had been deficient. The mind of this semi-heathen—free from the cloud of notions respecting the nature of the Messiah’s kingdom which obscured the Jewish mind—had been enabled to realize a clear conception of his own lowliness and of the loftiness of the One to whom he spoke—a state of heart in all ages essential for true access to him. K.

Section 43.—The Widow’s Son raised to Life. Messengers from John.

Mk.21 And they went into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath-day he entered 22 into the synagogue, and taught. And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes; and his word was with power.L. 33 And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and 34 cried out with a loud voice, saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One 35 of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and thrown him in the midst, and cried with a Mk.27 loud voice, he came out of him, and hurt him not. And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing, what a word is this? What new doctrine is this? for with authority and power he commandeth even the 28 unclean spirits, and they do obey him, and come out. And immediately his fame spread abroad throughout all the region, into every place of the country round about Galilee.29 And forthwith when they were come out of the synagogue, they entered into the 30 house of Simon Peter and Andrew, with James and John. And Simon’s wife’s mother lay sick of a great fever: and anon they tell him of her, and besought him for her. 31 And he came, and stood over her, and rebuked the fever; and took her by the hand, and lifted her up. And immediately the fever left her; and she arose, and ministered unto them.32 And at even, when the sun did set, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and they brought unto him many that were possessed with 33, 34 devils. And all the city was gathered together at the door. And, cast out with his word, devils also came out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God. And he rebuking them suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him, that he was Christ. And he laid his hands on every one of them that were sick of M. 17 divers diseases, and healed them: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.

Nor this day only but every day of his earthly life was a coming under, upon his part, of the evils which he removed from others. For that which is the law of all true helping, namely, that the burden which you would lift you must yourself stoop to and come under, the grief which you would console you must yourself feel with—a law which we witness to as often as we use the words “sympathy” and “compassion”—was, of course, eminently true in him upon whom the help of all was laid. Not in this single aspect of his life, namely, that he was a healer of sicknesses, were these words of the prophet fulfilled, but rather in the life itself, which brought him in contact with these sicknesses and these discords of man’s inner being, every one of which as a real consequence of sin, and as being at every moment contemplated by him as such, did press with a living pang into the holy soul of the Lord. Not so much the healing of these sicknesses was Christ’s bearing of them; but his burden was that there were these sicknesses to heal. He “bore” them inasmuch as he bore the mortal suffering life, in which alone he could bring them to an end, and at length swallow up death in victory. T.

Mk. 22. As one that had authority. Christ spoke as one who claimed to be, who was himself, a sufficient authority for all he uttered; by no means bound to appeal to law or testimony, although he often did so to silence gainsayers or to convince doubters. He spoke as one who was himself a law-giver, superior to Moses, entirely competent by his own authority to abrogate any old law, and to establish any new one. Others said—others say, Believe this, for it is written there. But he always says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you.” Believe this, because I say it. K.—Not as the scribes. As the successors of Ezra (7 : 6), the scribes were the conservators and guardians of the sacred text and canon, which implies a critical acquaintance with them, such as qualified the scribes above all others to be expounders of the Scripture. Christ taught not as a mere expounder, but with the original authority belonging to the author of the law expounded. Even those who were most accustomed and most submissive to the teachings of the scribes, must have felt, when Jesus spoke, that he was speaking with authority, declaring his own will and expounding his own law, not that of another. J. A. A. (Read Section 180.)

Jesus at once assumed a superiority not merely over these teachers of the law, this acknowledged religious aristocracy, whose reputation, interests, and pride were pledged to the maintenance of the existing system—but he set himself above those inspired teachers of whom the rabbis were but interpreters. He superseded at once by his simple word all that these rabbis had painfully learned and regularly taught as the eternal irrepealable word of God, perfect, complete, enduring no addition. H. M.—The synagogue sermons of the rabbis, as we see in the book of Jubilees, were a tiresome iteration of the minutest rabbinical rules, with a serious importance which regarded them as the basis of all moral order. The kind and quality of wood for the altar; the infinite details of the law of tithes; the moral deadliness of the use of blood; or the indispensableness of circumcision on the eighth day, were urged with passionate zeal as momentous and fundamental truths. The morality and religion of the age had sunk thus low; and hence the fervid words of Jesus, stirring the depths of the heart, created profound excitement in Capernaum. Men were amazed at the phenomenon of novelty, in a religious sphere so unchangeably conservative as that of the synagogue. “New teaching,” said one to the other, “and with authority—not like other rabbis.” But if they were astonished at his teaching, they were still more so at the power which he revealed in connection with it. G.

L. 33-35. The N. T., and especially the Evangelists, repeatedly mention individuals whom they describe as possessed by devils. The possession was often accompanied by physical disease—blindness, dumbness, epilepsy. The Evangelists unquestionably believed and intended to be understood as asserting that the persons described as possessed with evil or unclean spirits were really under the control of disembodied spirits, agents of Satan. They are frequently distinguished from those afflicted with mere physical disorders; the demons are distinguished from the persons whom they control, and are represented as recognizing in Jesus the Son of God, a title not given to him even by his disciples until toward the close of his ministry. No honest interpreter can doubt that the Evangelists shared the common opinion of their day, and intended to be understood as asserting that these individuals were under the control of evil spirits, and that Christ literally emancipated them from this diabolical servitude, and cast the evil spirits out. L. A.—The two Greek words daimon and daimonion—whence our word “demon”—are synonymous; and are the words almost always employed to represent the agents—real or imaginary—in the afflictions we are considering. These words, in the gospels, are uniformly translated “devil” in our version. Wrongly, however; for the representation of the Bible is that there is but one devil—for which the Greek had a different word, diabolos—while demons are represented as being innumerable. By the word “demon” was meant an immaterial, intelligent being. S. Hopkins.—The demoniac stood in a totally different position from the abandoned wicked man, who morally is given over to the devil. This latter would be a subject for punishment; but the demoniac for deepest compassion. There appeared to have been in him a double will and a double consciousness—sometimes the cruel spirit thinking and speaking in him, sometimes his poor crushed self crying out to the Saviour of men for mercy. A.

Mk. 27. This miracle—the first of the kind—struck the people with amazement; and they rightly recognized miracles as evidence of Christ’s doctrine and mission. K.—34. Suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him. Earth has not recognized her king; but heaven and hell alike bear witness unto him. T.—The fact that these persons, all of them and at first sight, recognized our Saviour in his superhuman character and divine office (and this in advance of the popular voice, and even against it), cannot be accounted for, except on the supposition that these men—these demoniacs—were under some intelligent impulse, foreign to themselves, which controlled their minds and shaped their utterance. S. Hopkins.—Our Lord himself everywhere speaks of demoniacs not as persons merely of disordered intellects, but as subjects and thralls of an alien spiritual might; he addresses the evil spirit as distinct from the man. T.—Our Lord’s promptitude in silencing this testimony would seem to suggest that he saw it was intended for mischief, and could in the end accomplish nothing else. From such a source it was likely to injure the estimation of him in whose behalf it was borne; for the truth itself might come into discredit when the “father of lies” bore witness to it. K. (On demoniacs, read also notes in Sections 59 and 77.)

31. And she arose.** She rises, as if no disease had ever weakened her, with glad and grateful spirit to wait upon Jesus and the rest. And so within that home kindly hands were provided, like those of Martha at Bethany, to minister to the Saviour’s wants during the busiest, most toilsome period of his life, when, in season and out of season, early in the morning and far on often in the night, he came and went, living longer under that roof of Peter’s house at Capernaum than under any other that sheltered him after his public ministry had begun. H.

32. Hushing by his voice the delirium of madness, and touching disease into health again by laying on each unhappy and tortured sufferer his pure and gentle hands, moved, in his love and tenderness, the young prophet of Nazareth, the Christ, the Saviour of the world. F.

34. No doubt was entertained by the devils who came “out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God.” The testimony so given was not welcomed by Christ. It came unsuitably from a quarter whence no witness was wished for, as it came unseasonably, when premature revelations of his true character were not desired. But, though refused thus by our Lord, its first wild, impatient utterances, all that it was permitted to give forth, this voice is most striking to us now as a testimony from the demon-world. Accepting, with whatever mystery the whole subject of demoniae possession is clothed, the simple account of the Evangelists, it does appear most wonderful—the quick intelligence, the wild alarm, the terror-striking faith that then pervaded the demon-world, as if all the spirits of hell who had been suffered to make human bodies their habitation, grew pale at the very presence of Jesus, and could not but cry out in the extremity of their despair.

32-34. All the city had gathered together at the door of Peter’s house. The sun goes down, and Jesus steps out into that bustling, anxious crowd; he lays his hand on every one of the diseased and heals them, and casts out all the spirits with his word. The stars would be shining brightly in the heavens ere the busy blessed work was done, and within a few hours a city which numbered many thousand inhabitants saw disease of every kind banished from its borders. H.—The memorable Sabbath, the events of which are thus circumstantially recorded, may show us how he fulfilled his own great saying concerning doing good on the Sabbath-days: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” S.—What an insight does the account of this day, so marked by deeds of love and mercy, give us into the nature of our Lord’s ministry in Galilee! What holy activities, what ceaseless acts of mercies! Such a picture does it give us of their actual nature and amount, that we may well conceive that the single day, with all its quickly-succeeding events, has been thus minutely portrayed to show us what our Redeemer’s ministerial life really was. E.

M. 17. In all the afflictions which met his eye, “he was afflicted.” And when, from the day of his baptism to the night at Gethsemane, he was going from village to village thronged by moaning sufferers and by parents stricken through their children, he comprehended perfectly, as no man ever did, the suffering of each; adopted and realized in his own self each quivering agony; “took their infirmities, bare their sicknesses.” Even on the way to Calvary, and upon the cross, “bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows” to the last! S. Hopkins.

Section 28.—First Journey through Galilee. Heals a Leper.

M. 18 And the same day when the even was come, when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment to depart; and saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side of the lake. 19 And it came to pass, that as they went in the way, a certain scribe came and said 20 unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath 21 not where to lay his head. And he said unto another of his disciples, Follow me. But 22 he said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me. Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of L. 61 God. And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them 62 farewell, which are at home at my house. And Jesus said unto him, No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. Mk. 36 And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And when he was entered, his disciples followed him. And there were also with him other little ships. And they launched forth. But as they sailed he fell asleep. 37 And behold, there came down a great storm of wind, and there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves; and the waves beat into 38 the ship so that it was now full, and they were in jeopardy. And he was in the hinder part of the ship asleep on a pillow; and his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying, Master, Master, we perish! carest thou not that we perish? Lord, save us; we perish! And he saith unto them, Why are ye so fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds, and the raging of the water, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said unto them, Where is your faith? How is it that ye have no faith? But the men feared exceedingly, and marvelled, and said one to another, What manner of man is this? for he commandeth even the winds and water, and the winds and the sea obey him.

JESUS lying this moment under the weakness of exhausted strength, rising the next in the might of manifested omnipotence: in close proximity, in quick succession, the humanity and the divinity that were in him exhibited themselves. Though suddenly roused to see himself in a position of great peril, Jesus has no fear. His first thought is not of the danger, his first word is not to the tempest, his first care is not for the safety of the body, it is for the state of the spirit of those who wake him from his slumbers; nor is it until he has rebuked their fears that he removes the cause; but then he does so, and does it effectually, by the word of his power. And so long as the life we are living shall be thought and spoken of as a voyage, so long shall this night-scene on the Lake of Galilee supply the imagery by which many a passage in the history of the Church, and many in the history of the individual believer, shall be illustrated. Sleeping or waking, let Christ be in the vessel and it is safe. The tempest may come, our faith be small, our fear be great, but still if in our fear we have so much faith as to cry to him to save us, still in the hour of our greatest need will he arise to our help, and though he may have to blame us for not cherishing a livelier trust, he will not suffer the winds or the waves to overwhelm us. H.

M. 19. One, himself a rabbi, offered to follow him as his scholar. He returned an answer which should test the applicant’s motives to the utmost. It might have seemed of moment to secure the support of a rabbi, but Jesus had seen the worldly bent of his thoughts, and thus turned him aside, by blasting any hopes of advantage or honor in joining him. G.

20. The Son of man.** J. 12 : 34 shows that the Jews understood it to mean the Messiah, and L. 22 : 69, 70, that they considered the Son of man to mean the same as the Son of God. Burton.—It is the name by which the Lord ordinarily designates himself as the Messiah—the Son of God manifested in the flesh of Adam—the second Adam. And to it belong all those conditions of humiliation, suffering, and exaltation, which it behooved the Son of man to go through. A.

21,22. To bury my father.** Under other circumstances Christ would not have hindered the indulgence of such a filial love; but he made use of this case to show, by a striking example, that those who sought to follow him must deny natural feelings that were otherwise entirely sacred, when the interests of the kingdom of God required it. “Let those who are themselves dead, who know nothing of the higher interests of the kingdom of God, or the divine life, attend to the lifeless clay. But thou, upon whom the divine life, which conquers all death, is opened, thou must devote thyself wholly to propagate it by preaching the gospel.” N.—L. 62. As ploughing requires an eye intent on the furrow to be made, and is marred the instant one turns about, so will they come short of salvation who prosecute the work of God with a distracted attention, a divided heart. B.—This reply of Christ was not meant merely and only to repel; but rather to throw back this candidate for discipleship on deeper heart-searchings. T.—We must bid all things stand aside that would impede us when we are in pursuit of so great a good; the love of which will soon reconcile us to the hardest duties and endear to us the most self-denying courses. It will alter the countenance of suffering and make all the troubles of this life cast a kinder aspect on us. Nay, it will enable us to look death in the face with a cheerful heart; for it will present it to us in another shape, and make the grave, that house of darkness, seem like the Beautiful Gate of the Temple of God. Patrick.

Mk. 37. Came down. The expressions used by the Evangelists all imply the extreme fury of the hurricane. The heated tropical air of the Sea of Galilee, 600 feet beneath the level of the Mediterranean, is suddenly filled by the cold winds sweeping down the snowy ranges of Lebanon and Hermon through the ravines of the Perean hills. F.—This torrent of heavy cold air was pouring over the mountain-crests into the deep caldron of the lake below, a headlong flood of wind, like a waterfall into the hollow. The peculiar effects of squalls among mountains are known to all who have boated much on lakes, but on the Sea of Galilee the wind has a singular force and suddenness; and this is, no doubt, because the sea is so deep below the earth’s surface that the sun rarefies the air in it enormously, and the wind gathers much force as it sweeps through flat deserts, until suddenly it meets this huge gap in the way, and it tumbles down here irresistible. J. M.—The whole lake, as we had it, was lashed into fury; the waves repeatedly rolled up to our tent-door, tumbling over the ropes with such violence as to carry away the tent-pins. And, moreover, those winds are not only violent, but they come down suddenly, and often when the sky is perfectly clear. Some such sudden wind it was, I suppose, that filled the ship with waves “so that it was now full.” Small as the lake is, and placid, in general, as a molten mirror, I have repeatedly seen it quiver, and leap, and boil like a caldron, when driven by fierce winds from the eastern mountains, and the waves ran high—high enough to fill or “cover” the ships, as Matthew has it. In the midst of such a gale “calmly slept the Son of God,” in the hinder part of the ship, until awakened by the terrified disciples. W. M. T.

38. On a pillow.** A part of the boat was used for the boatman’s lying or sitting on, and was provided with a leather cushion. Meyer.—Evidently a regular part of the boat’s equipment, from the use of the definite article, “the pillow.” The stern in ancient ships was much higher than the prow, and this form continued even to the last century in England, while it is still the fashion in Egypt. It was on this account that they could anchor from the stern (as in the case of Paul’s shipwreck), and the high stern made a safe and sloping place, where our Saviour slept in the storm. J. M.

Master, carest thou—Master, we perish—Lord, save. These variations indicate the different characters of the men who were with Christ in the vessel, and make our conception of the scene at once more graphic and complete. Instead of urging them as an argument against the veracity or accuracy of the Evangelists, we ought rather to find new proofs of their honesty, and the transparent fidelity of these reports. And, after all, however various the words the apostles heard, or thought they heard, they all learned the great lesson of the Master’s rebuke. The gist and substance of the rebuke was, that if they had had faith, or faith enough, they would not have feared. The common lesson is, that faith is the conquering opposite of fear. S. Coz.

O ye of little faith. Faith they had, for they applied to Christ for relief; but little, for they were afraid, though Christ was in the ship. Faith dispels fear, but in proportion to its strength. B.—Jesus awakes, and the only thing that he beholds is the unbelief of his disciples; his ear tells him not of the fury and rack of the elements, but of the guilty fears of his Galilean friends. And his first reproof is for them. He lets the storm rage on unrebuked, until he has rebuked the agitation of their souls. And now they perceive that a most precious opportunity of signalizing their faith in Christ had been given, and given in vain. The elements had been let loose that their faith might gain a victory, and go on to perfection. The progress of ordinary months might have been made in an hour, had they been watchful. When will they understand that this matter of the education of faith is the most important thing going on under the sun? The school of faith is a school in which we are advancing, lesson by lesson, to a condition where the glory of God shall be perpetually revealed to the soul. G. B.

39. Peace, be still!** The quiet, simple recital of the Evangelists more effectually realizes this sublime transaction than any garniture of words could do. Nothing comes near it but that one other instance which the commencement of the sacred volume supplies—“And he said, Light be—and light was.” And he who now rebukes the wind, is he “by whom also God made the worlds”—he, “without whom was nothing made that was made.” K.—When he comes down as the Incarnate One, to be man with us, tired and spent as we by life’s toils, when he lies so humbly down that even the waters of a lake some hundreds of feet below sea level dash over him, and there sleeps, our feeling is in a strange maze of tenderness. Our God is so nigh, our glorious tent-mate in a guise so gentle, that we come to look upon him in his divine sleep, more tenderly than we could even in the waking mercies and charities of his life. The very heaven of sky and stars that cells the august chamber of his sleep, is more sanctified from underneath, than, before, it was from above. The world is another world—we are other ourselves. H. B.

41. We see here one of the moral purposes to which, in the providence of God, who ordered all things for the glory of his Son, this miracle should serve. It should lead his disciples into thoughts ever higher and more awful of that Lord whom they followed, and should more and more bring them to feel that in nearness to him was safety and deliverance from every danger. The danger which exercised, should strengthen their faith—who indeed had need of a mighty faith, since God, in Chrysostom’s words, had chosen them to be the athletes of the universe. T.—The miracles of Jesus, as attestations that the elements of nature were plastic in his hands, are really a new key to the grandest scientific principle in the universe—which is that God lives and moves and acts in all of nature, every instant, and that the whole creation is formed and guided in the interest of the spiritual man, i. e., of the kingdom of heaven on the earth. This world is a place for the training of souls in a Christian immortality. All its laws are yet to serve that end. Its evils, sufferings, disorders; its blights and tempests and agonies, are somehow in it—we know not how, and shall not know at present, because it is the residence of a wrong-choosing, falling, and sinning race. Everything material, visible and tangible, answers to something, expresses something, symbolizes something, in the soul and its spiritual life, as it is hereafter to be developed. Hence Christ must be Lord of life and death, of seas and storms, of diseases and demons, of every mystery and might and secret of created things. “The winds and the sea obey him.” The whole creation, now groaning and travailing in pain together, waits for the redemption, the manifestation of the sons of God. F. D. H.—This sensible miracle was an image of that higher spiritual one which Christ works in all ages, in speaking peace to the soul amid all the tempests of life, and in bringing to obedience all the raging powers that oppose the progress of his kingdom. N.—By this you may know you dwell in Christ, if, when the tempest come, you are ready to run under his wing, and think of no shelter, no protection, but his. Talk what we will of faith, if we do not trust and rely on him, we do not believe in him. Farindon.

To set them thinking of him, to give them truer thoughts of the Rabbi whom they loved but did not understand, to teach them that he was Lord of all, and to win them to a deeper trust in him, this was what the storm came for, and was hushed for. And this is what our disasters and happy fortunes come for, our tempests and our calms, our perils and deliverances. They come to set us thinking of him whom, in the quiet every-day course of our life, we are too apt to forget. They come to teach us that he is always with us, ordering all things according to the good pleasure of his will, and to constrain us to trust in him instead of in ourselves, by making us feel how utterly we are in his hands. Danger is not dangerous, nor death dreadful, if Christ be with us and we have faith in him. S. Cox.

Section 59.—The Demoniac of Gergesa or Gadara.

East Side of the Lake.

Mk. 1 AND they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gada- 2 renes, or Gergesenes, which is over against Galilee. And when he went forth out of the ship to land, there met him, out of the city, two possessed with devils coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce so that no man might pass by that way: [one] a man with an 3 unclean spirit which had devils long time, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and 4 no man could bind him, no, not with chains. Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains; and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fet- 5 ters broken in pieces; neither could any man tame him. And he ware no clothes, neither abode in any house; but driven of the devil into the wilderness, always night and day he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones. 6 But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran; and fell down before him, and worshipped 7 him, and cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time? I 8 beseech thee, I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not. For he had said unto 9 him, Thou unclean spirit, come out of the man! And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion, for we are many: because many 10 devils were entered into him. And they besought him much, that he would not send them away out of the country, that he would not command them to go out into the deep.

11. Now there was there, a good way off from them, nigh unto the mountains, a great 12 herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, 13 suffer us to go away into the herd of swine, that we may enter into them. And forth- with Jesus gave them leave, and said unto them, Go. And the unclean spirits went out of the man, and entered into the swine. And behold, the whole herd of swine ran vio- lently down a steep place into the sea (they were about two thousand), and were choked, and perished in the waters. 14 And when they that fed the swine saw what was done, they fled, and went their ways and told everything in the city and in the country, and what was befallen to the possessed of the devils. And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus, and to see 15 what it was that was done. And they came to Jesus, and found the man out of whom the devils were departed; and saw him that had the legion, sitting at the feet of Jesus, 16 clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid. And they that saw it told them by what means he that was possessed of the devils was healed, and also concerning 17 the swine. Then the whole multitude of the country of the Gadarenes round about besought him to depart from them out of their coasts; for they were taken with a great fear. 18 And when he was come into the ship, the man out of whom the devils were de- 19 parted besought him that he might be with him. Howbeit, Jesus suffered him not, but sent him away, saying, Return to thine own house, and to thy friends, and tell them how great things God hath done for thee, and how the Lord hath had compassion 20 on thee. And he departed, and went his way, and began to publish throughout the whole city, and in Decapolis, how great things Jesus had done for him; and all men did marvel. 21 And he entered into a ship, and when he was passed over again unto the other side, much people gathered unto him, and gladly received him, for they were all waiting for him; and he was nigh unto the sea. And he came into his own city.

THROUGH his life, he not only affirmed but demonstrated his love; a friend to the afflicted and broken- hearted, to the publican, to the sinner; “tasting death for every man,” “the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” Plenitude, perfectness of love! Adapting himself to our capacities, he gave practical illustrations of his power: of his power over nature—stilling the tempest, walking on the sea, blighting the fig-tree; over providence—supplying abundance for thousands from a handful of food, bringing tribute-money from the sea and a wondrous draught to toil-worn fishermen; over men and women—winning them by his love, confounding them by his wisdom, awing and baffling them by his majesty; over diseases—removing them by a word; over death and the grave—raising the dead, laying down his own life and taking it again.

But, when we see Jesus truly, literally, “casting out demons by a word,” effecting deliverance to their captives; when we find these evil spirits not only obedient to his will, but trembling at his presence; when we find their wretched victims made the Lord’s freedmen, following him and ministering to him with grateful devotion; when we find the maniac of yesterday sitting at the feet of Jesus to-day, clothed and in his right mind: the evidence of Christ’s sufficiency is complete! All things in his hand! Lord over nature, providence, death, the grave, the world of spirits! He who can provide for the body and protect it, he who can cause it to sleep in the dust and raise it again, can protect the soul also, even from its most subtle adversaries; can comfort it, train it, perfect it, and save it! This, and the plenitude of his love, are enough! In this faith we can rest; in this, find perfect repose. To this faith he solicits us, encour- ages us, in each recorded act of his supremacy over unclean spirits. The Seed of the woman bruising the serpent’s head! To such a Saviour, and only to such, we can each trustfully and safely appeal, like Stephen, “full of the Holy Ghost,” “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” S. Hopkins.

PECULIAR outbreaks of hostile passion from the kingdom of darkness, against the kingdom of light and peace, attended the appearance of the Lord on the earth; as if the forces that wrought to resist him had been held in reserve for that critical hour, to be then precipitated, in fiercest assault of infernal phalanx, on the field of his divine operations. The very sky of Palestine looks lurid, its sod seems teeming, with malign shapes and glancing figures swift for evil, as we revert to the years when he walked there. R. S. S.—If there was anything that marked the period of the Lord’s coming in the flesh, it was the wreck and confusion of men’s spiritual life which was then, the sense of utter disharmony, the hopelessness, the despair which must have beset every man that thought at all—this, with the tendency to rush with frantic eagerness into sensual enjoyments as the refuge from despairing thoughts. That whole period was the hour and power of darkness—of a darkness which then, immediately before the dawn of a new day, was the thickest. It was exactly the crisis for such soul maladies as these, in which the spiritual and bodily should be thus strangely interlinked, and it is nothing wonderful that they should have abounded at that time. T.

This passage in our Saviour’s life abounds in striking contrasts. Reckless frenzy, abject terror, profound attention, devoted attachment, rapidly succeed each other in him who, brought into closest union with the highest and the lowest of the powers of the spiritual world, presents to us a condensed epitome of the great conflict between good and evil—between Christ and Satan—in the domain of the human spirit. Undoubtedly it stands the most remarkable instance of dispossession in the gospel narrative, revealing to us at once the depth of that degradation to which our poor humanity may sink, and the height of that elevation to which, through the power and infinite compassion of the Saviour, it may be raised. Was it for the purpose of teaching us more manifestly that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil, that in that age of his appearance devils were permitted to exercise such strange dominion over men? Was it to bring into visible and personal collision the heads of the two opposite spiritual communities—the Prince of Light and the prince of darkness—and to make more visible to all men the supremacy of the one over the other? H.

We greatly err if we conceive of the demoniacs as the worst of men, and their possession as the penalty of a wickedness in which they had eminently surpassed their fellows. On the contrary, the most eminent representatives and organs of Satan, false prophets and antichrists, are never spoken of in this language. We all feel that Judas’s possession, when Satan entered into him, was specifically different from that of one of the unhappy persons whom Christ came to deliver. T.

By persons represented as demonized, were meant those who were supposed to be in some way under the control or mastery of evil spirits. The same thing is meant by the phrases, “hath a demon,” “is vexed with a demon,” “hath an unclean spirit.” The writers of our Saviour’s memoirs uniformly represent that this was the case, and that to this demoniacal presence and power were to be attributed the exasperation and continuance—if not the origin—in certain individuals, of bodily and mental maladies. However demonized persons may have been afflicted with bodily diseases or infirmities, the mere presence of these did not constitute them demoniacs; their being demonized was something superadded to their being sick, or in any particular impotent. The bodily affliction and the demoniacal were not the same. Though the former may have been caused by the latter, still they were not the same. In other words, all demoniacs were persons afflicted in some other way or ways than by natural bodily disease or infirmities. Such is the plain import of the language employed.

Persons called demonized recognized Jesus as the Messiah of God. We find them all agreed in acknowledging Jesus as the holy anointed of God; we find them agreed in advance of the popular voice; we find them thus agreed, although the popular voice, from which some of them might have received their impressions, was the other way. These men must have made their remarkable confessions by a preternatural influence common to them all; under some intelligent impulse, foreign to themselves, which controlled their minds and shaped their utterance. But two other cases are on record of persons who, at first sight and with no other natural means of information, recognized the Messiah in Jesus; and they were clearly indebted to preternatural aid—Simeon, and Anna the prophetess. Even John the Baptist, his kinsman and forerunner, did not know him to be the Messiah otherwise. By preternatural means, we designate an agency out of the range of the natural senses; an immaterial, or spirit agency. In this case the agency must have been that of evil spirits; for their character is shown by the wretched condition of their victims. Our Saviour taught by his words and by his deeds that evil spirits did torment men by holding their bodies in subjection to infirmity and disease; by holding their minds in subjection to the most cruel of sufferings. He plainly and repeatedly sanctioned the popular belief. Upon the minds of ear-witnesses and eye-witnesses, he left the impression, and meant to leave it, that the doctrine was true. S. Hopkins. (Compare Sections 27 and 77.)

1. The names of Gergesa and Gadara do not occur in the New Testament, but we have “Gergesenes” and “Gadarenes,” which imply that there existed in Christ’s time two cities or countries named respectively Gergesa and Gadara. S. M.—Gadara was a famous fortified city on the east of the Jordan, on the steep edge of the valley of the Jarmuk. It was one of the cities of the Decapolis (League of ten cities), and was about eight miles southeast from Tiberias, across the lake. It was reckoned the capital of Perea, and had coins of its own. The great roads from Tiberias and Scythopolis passed through it to the interior of Perea and to Damascus. G.—The region to the south and to the north of the city would bear in popular language the name of the city itself; and the most natural thing in the world would be for one to speak of the region “over against Galilee,” which might embrace the whole district east of the Lake of Tiberias, as “the country of the Gadarenes.” But there could also be local names which would be just as appropriate as this. Hence, when Matthew, referring to the same event, speaks of Christ’s crossing “to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes,” he is also literally correct. The phrase, “the country of the Gergesenes,” points out, in the unobtrusive minuteness peculiar to inspiration, the particular portion of the “country of the Gadarenes” to which our Saviour went.

Directly opposite Tiberias, there is a large valley through which flows a copious stream of water. After leaving the hills and before reaching the lake, it crosses a plain of considerable breadth, on which, just south of the stream, and stretching from the lake back for some distance toward the hills, are ruins called Kersa, or “Gersa.” S. M.—In this Gersa or Chersa we have a position which fulfils every requirement of the narratives, and with a name so near that in Matthew as to be in itself a strong corroboration of the truth of this identification. It is within a few rods of the shore, and an immense mountain rises directly above it in which are ancient tombs, out of some of which the two men possessed of the devils may have issued to meet Jesus. The lake is so near the base of the mountain that the swine, rushing madly down it, could not stop, but would be hurried on into the water and drowned. W. M. T.

2. Of the current explanations of the seeming difficulty that Matthew names two, and the other Evangelists one demoniac, that of Chrysostom and Augustine seems most satisfactory, that one of the demoniacs took so entirely the prominent part as to cause two of the narrators to omit all mention of his companion. E.

3. Dwelling among the tombs. We arrived before sunset at Um Keis—the ancient Gadara. We were kindly received by the sheik of the natives who inhabit the sepulchres. The tomb we lodged in was capable of containing between twenty and thirty people. It was of an oblong form, and the cattle, etc., occupied one end, while the proprietor and his family lodged in another. The sepulchres, which are all underground, are hewn out of the live rock. The doors, which are very massy, are cut out of immense blocks of stone; some of these are now standing and actually working on their hinges, and used by the natives. Irby.

3-8. Our Lord has just spoken peace to the winds and to the waves. But there is something wilder and more fearful than winds and waves in their fiercest moods—even the spirit of man, when it has broken loose from all restraints. And Christ will do here a yet mightier work than he accomplished there; he will prove himself here also the Prince of Peace; he will speak, and at his potent word this madder strife in the heart of man will allay itself; and here also there shall be a great calm.

6-8. His state is in the truest sense of the word “a possession;” another is ruling in the high places of his soul, and he knows this; and out of his consciousness of it there goes forth a cry for redemption, so soon as a glimpse of hope is afforded, an unlooked-for Redeemer draws near. This sense of misery, this yearning after deliverance, was, in fact, what made these demoniacs objects and subjects for Christ’s healing power. T.—There lay a profound truth at the bottom of the demoniac’s consciousness that his feelings, inclinations, and words did not spring from his rational, God-allied nature (his true I), but from a foreign power belonging to the kingdom of the devil. And this truth offered the necessary point of contact for Christ’s spiritual influence, to aid the soul which longed to be delivered from its distraction and its ignominious bondage. The appearance of Christ affected him profoundly; the warring powers within him partly urged him toward the Saviour, and partly held him back; attracted as he was, he could not bear the presence of Jesus. There is something in him which resists and dreads the divine power. Losing his proper identity in that of the evil spirits that possess him, he personates them, and recognizing, with terror, the Son of God as the future judge, he exclaims, in anguish, “Why hast thou come hither before the final doom, to make us feel thy power, and torment us?” N.—Before the time. Here was such a reference to the final sentence which Christ was to pass on these evil spirits at the end of the world (Jude 6) as could not be dictated by lunacy. D.—Thou Son of the most high God. This is one of the most remarkable points in our Lord’s dealings with the evil spirits, the testimony they bear to him. Hell is before earth in acknowledging her Lord. Fear has a

The Demoniac from the Tombs.

quicker perception than love, or even than the sense of need. “The devils also believe and tremble.” S.

9. They conceived themselves, in fact, as possessed of two natures, viz., their real proper being (the true I), and the evil spirit which subjugated the other; and thus it happened that they spoke in the person of the evil spirit, with which they felt themselves blended into one, even in instincts and propensities utterly repugnant to their true nature. The sense of inward discord and distraction might rise to such a height as to induce the belief that they were possessed by a number of spirits, to whom they were compelled to lend their utterance. The demoniac, still blending his own identity with that of the evil spirits, answers, Legion; it is a whole legion of evil spirits that dwell in him. N.—The presence of Roman armies in Palestine had rendered him familiar with that title of multitude, and as though six thousand evil spirits were in him he answers by the Latin word which had now become so familiar to every Jew. F.

10. Deep. Abyss. Not the Sea of Galilee, nor yet Gehenna, or the Lake of Fire, which is the place of future torment prepared for the devil and his angels. The abyss seems to describe the place of gloom into which the devils were driven after their expulsion from heaven, from which they are allowed to emerge from time to time, as far as their chain—God’s permission—suffers. W.

11,12. Herd of swine. Swine and dogs were the ideal of uncleanness. Swine were eaten and even offered in sacrifice by the Canaanites, and though the Jews did not keep swine, they were largely kept by others for the heathen market. The population of the districts beyond Jordan were largely foreign and heathen, and created a demand for the flesh of swine. The herds, fed on the hills and wastes, seem often to have become half wild. G.—The devils besought. Here comes out the very essence of evil in its truest manifestation, that it defeats itself, being as inevitably scourged in the granting of its requests as in their refusal; that it is stupid, blind, self-contradicting, and suicidal; that it can only destroy, and will rather involve itself in the common ruin than not destroy. T.

13. Perished in the waters. Deprived of the abode they preferred, debarred from men, swine would serve their turn. But even the swine—animals created to look unclean, for a type to humanity of the very form and fashion of its greed—could not endure their presence. The man had cut himself with stones in his misery; the swine in theirs rushed into the waters of the lake and were drowned. McD.—The reality of these diabolical possessions, on the one hand, and the manifestly superior power of Christ to dispossess and control the evil spirits, on the other, were placed above suspicion of fraud; for “it was self-evident that a herd of swine could not be confederates in any fraud.” J. G. B.

In regard, too, of the loss incurred by the owners, there is no more reason why this should have been made an object of cavil than every murrain that causes cattle to die, or inundation that destroys the fruits of the field, or other natural calamity with which God chastens his children, punishes, or seeks to make contrite the hearts of his enemies. T.—The destruction of the swine is not for a moment to be thought of in the matter, as if that were an act repugnant to the merciful character of our Lord’s miracles. It finds its parallel in the cursing of the fig-tree; and we may well think that if God has appointed so many animals to be daily slaughtered for the sustenance of men’s bodies, he may also be pleased to destroy animal life when he sees fit, for the liberation or instruction of their souls. Besides, if the confessedly far greater evil of the possession of men by evil spirits, and all the misery thereupon attendant, was permitted in God’s inscrutable purposes, surely much more this lesser one. Whether there may have been special reasons in this case, such as the contempt of the Mosaic law by the keepers of the swine, we have no means of judging; but it is at least possible. A.

19. Go home to thy friends, and tell them.** The reasons for enjoining silence on the part of those healed among the Jews—namely, the stirring up of the priestly party to take measures for his arrest before his hour had come, or the fomenting of a revolution in his favor by the excitable Jewish people—did not apply in this case of one living in a wholly Gentile region. Therefore our Lord bade him carry the glad tidings to his friends. J. G. B.—And so the demoniac of Gergesa became the first great missionary to the region of Decapolis, bearing in his own person the confirmation of his words. F.

While he calls upon some to leave home and family to follow him, he bids this man to follow first the purely human feelings which had been reinstated in their natural rights within him; to return, sane and calm, to the family which he had abandoned as a maniac; and to glorify God among them, by telling them how Christ had wrought the mighty change, and giving them a living proof of it in his own person. The simple story of the restored man’s experience was adapted to lead them to contemplate Christ, no longer on the side of his power, but of his love and holiness. N.—20. Not in his own house alone, nor among his own friends alone, but throughout the whole Gentile district of Decapolis he published abroad the great things that Jesus had done for him. H.—Under the name of Decapolis—“the ten cities”—Philadelphia, Gadara, Hippos, Damascus, Raphana, Dio, Pella, Gerasa, and Kanatha, were confederated, under direct Roman government, with Scythopolis, on the west side of the Jordan, in a league of peace and war against native robber bands and the Bedouin hordes; and this made them virtually a distinct state. Antipas, apparently, had only so much of the district as did not belong to these cities. G.

Section 60.—Matthew’s Feast. Old and New Garments and Bottles.

Capernaum.