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  NOTES ON THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD
  by Richard Trench
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Richard Trench's scholarly examination of Christ's miracles, analyzing the
biblical terms 'wonders,' 'signs,' 'powers,' and 'works' to reveal different
aspects of the miraculous.

  Chapters: 41

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    1. 01-Preliminary Essay
    2. 02-Chapter 1. On The Names Of The Miracles
    3. 03-Chapter 2. The Miracles and Nature
    4. 04-Chapter 3.The Authority of Miracles
    5. 05-Chapter 4 The Evangelical, Compared with other Cycles of Miracles
    6. 06-Chapter 5 The Assaults on the Miracles
    7. 07-Chapter 6.The Apologetic Worth of the Miracles
    8. 08-The Miracles
    9. 09-1. The Water Turned Into Wine
   10. 10-2. The Healing of the Nobleman's Son
   11. 11-3. The First Miraculous Draught of Fishes
   12. 12-4. The Stilling of the Tempest
   13. 13-5. The Demoniacs in the Country of the Gadarenes
   14. 14-6. The Raising of Jairus' Daughter
   15. 15-7. The Healing of a Woman with an Issue of Blood
   16. 16-8. The Opening of the Eyes of Two Blind in the House
   17. 17-9. The Healing of the Paralytic
   18. 18-10. The Cleansing of the Leper
   19. 19-11. The Healing of the Centurion's Servant
   20. 20-12. The Demoniac in the Synagogue of Capernaum
   21. 21-13. The Healing of Simon's Wife's Mother
   22. 22-14. The Raising of the Widow's Son
   23. 23-15. The Healing of the Impotent Man at Bethesda
   24. 24-16. The Miraculous Feeding of Five Thousand
   25. 25-17. The Walking on the Sea
   26. 26-18. The Opening of the Eyes of One Born Blind
   27. 27-19. The Restoring of the Man with a Withered Hand
   28. 28-20. The Woman with a Spirit of Infirmity
   29. 29-21. The Healing of the Man with a Dropsy
   30. 30-22. The Cleansing of the Ten Lepers
   31. 31-23. The Healing of the Daughter of the Syrophenigian Woman
   32. 32-24. The Healing of One Deaf and Dumb
   33. 33-25. The Miraculous Feeding of Four Thousand
   34. 34-26. The Opening the Eyes of One Blind at Bethsaida
   35. 35-27. The Healing of the Lunatic Child
   36. 36-28. The Stater in the Fish's Mouth
   37. 37-29. The Raising of Lazarus
   38. 38-30. The Opening of the Eyes of Two Blind Men Near Jericho
   39. 39-31. The Cursing of the Barren Fig-Tree
   40. 40-32. The Healing of Malchus' Ear
   41. 41-33. The Second Miraculous Draught of Fishes

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  CHAPTER 1: 01-PRELIMINARY ESSAY
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Preliminary Essay


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  CHAPTER 2: 02-CHAPTER 1. ON THE NAMES OF THE MIRACLES
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Chapter 1. On The Names Of The Miracles

Every discussion about a thing will best proceed from an investigation of the
name or names which it bears; for the name seizes and presents the most
distinctive features of the thing, embodying them for us in a word. In the name
we have the true declaration of the’ innermost nature of the thing; we have a
witness to that which the universal sense of men, finding its utterance in
language, has ever felt thus to lie at its heart; and if we would learn to know
the thing, we must start with seeking accurately to know the name which it
bears. In the discussion upon which now we are entering, there is not one name
only, but many, to consider; for it is a consequence of that which just has been
said, that where we have to do with aught which in many ways is significant, the
names also will inevitably be many, since no one will exhaust all its meaning.
Each of these will embody a portion of its essential qualities, will present it
upon a single side; and not from the contemplation exclusively of any one, but
only of all of these together, will any adequate conception of that which we
desire to understand be obtained. Thus what we commonly call miracles, are in
the sacred Scriptures termed sometimes “wonders,” sometimes “signs,” sometimes
“powers,” sometimes simply “works.” These titles they continually bear, in
addition to some others, which are of rarer occurrence and will easily range
themselves under one or other of these;—on each of which I would fain say a few
words, before attempting to make any further advance in the subject.

1. To begin then with the name “wonder,” [1] in which the effect of
astonishment, which the work produces upon the beholders, is transferred to the
work itself, an effect often graphically portrayed by the Evangelists when
relating our Lord’s miracles (Mark 2:12; Mark 4:41; Mark 6:51; Mark 7:37. cf.
Acts 3:10-11), it will at once be felt that this does but touch the outside of
the matter. The ethical meaning of the miracle would be wholly lost, were blank
astonishment or mere wonder all which it aroused; since the same effect might be
produced by a thousand meaner causes. Indeed it is not a little remarkable,
rather is it profoundly characteristic of the miracles of the N. T., as Origen
noted long ago,[2] that this name “wonders” is never applied to them but in
connexion with some other name. They are continually “signs and wonders” (Acts
14:3; Rom 15:19; Mat 24:24; Heb 2:4); or “signs” alone (John 2:11; Acts 8:6; Rev
13:13); or “powers” alone (Mark 6:14; Acts 19:11); but never “wonders” alone.
[3] Not that the miracle, considered simply as a wonder, as an astonishing event
which the beholders can reduce to no law with which they are acquainted, is even
as such without its meaning and its purpose; that purpose being forcibly to
startle men from the dull dream of a sense-bound existence; and, however it may
not be itself an appeal to the spiritual in man, yet to act as a summons to him
that he now open his eyes to the spiritual appeal which is about to be addrest
to him (Acts 14:8-18).

2. But the miracle, besides being a “wonder,” is also a “sign,”[4] a token and
indication of the near presence and working of God. In this word the ethical end
and purpose of the miracle comes out the most prominently, as in “wonder” the
least. They are signs and pledges of something more than and beyond themselves
(Isa 7:11; Isa 38:7 [5]; valuable, not so much for what they are, as for what
they indicate of the grace and power of the doer, or of the connexion in which
he stands with a higher world. Oftentimes they are thus seals of power set to
the person who accomplishes them (“the Lord confirming the word by signs
following,” Mark 16:20; Acts 14:3; Heb 2:4); legitimating acts, by which he
claims to be attended to as a messenger from God. [6] We find the word
continually used in senses such as these. Thus, “What sign showest thou” (John
2:18)? was the question which the Jews asked, when they wanted the Lord to
justify the things which He was doing, by showing that He had especial authority
to do them. Again they say, “We would see a sign from Thee” (Mat 12:38); “Show
us a sign from heaven” (Mat 16:1). St. Paul speaks of himself as having “the
signs of an apostle” (2Co 12:12), in other words, the tokens which should mark
him out as such. Thus, too, in the O.T., when God sends Moses to deliver Israel
He furnishes him with two “signs.” He warns him that Pharaoh will require him to
legitimate his mission, to produce his credentials that he is indeed God’s
ambassador, and equips him with the powers which shall justify him as such,
which, in other words, shall be his “signs” (Exo 7:9-10). He “gave a sign” to
the prophet, whom He sent to protest against the will-worship of Jeroboam (1Ki
13:3). [7] At the same time it may be convenient here to observe that the “sign”
is not of necessity a miracle, although only as such it has a place in our
discussion. Many a common matter may be a “sign” or seal set to the truth of
some word, the announcement of which goes along with it; so that when that
“sign” comes true, it may be accepted as a pledge that the greater matter, which
was, as it were, bound up with it, shall also come true in its time. Thus the
Angels give to the shepherds for “a sign” their finding of the Child wrapt in
swaddling clothes in a manger (Luk 2:12. cf. Exo 3:12).[8] Samuel gives to Saul
three “signs” that God has indeed appointed him king over Israel, and only the
last of these is linked with aught supernatural (1Sa 10:1-9). The prophet gave
Eli the death of his two sons as a “sign” that his threatening word should come
true (1Sa 2:34. cf. Jer. 44:29, 38). God gave to Gideon a “sign” in the camp of
the Midianites of the victory which he should win (Jdg 7:9-15), though it does
not happen that the word occurs in that narration.[9] (cf. 2Ki 7:2; 2Ki
7:17-20). Or it is possible for a man, under a strong conviction that the hand
of God is leading him, to set such or such a contingent event as a “sign” to
himself, the falling out of which in this way or in that he will accept as an
intimation from God of what He would have him to do. Examples of this also are
not uncommon in Scripture (Gen 24:14-21; Jdg 6:36-40; 1Sa 14:8-13). Very
curious, and standing by themselves, are the signs which shall only come to
pass, after that of which they were the signs has actually befallen; but which
shall still serve to confirm it, as having been wrought directly of God. We have
examples of this, Exo 3:12; 2Ki 19:29.

3. Frequently also the miracles are styled “powers” or “mighty works” that is,
of God.[10] As in the term “wonder” or “miracle,” the effect is transferred and
gives a name to the cause, so here the cause gives its name to the effect.[11]
The “power” dwells originally in the divine Messenger (Acts 6:8; Acts 10:38; Rom
15:19); is one with which he is himself equipped of God. Christ is thus in the
highest sense that which Simon blasphemously suffered himself to be named, “The
great Power of God” (Acts 8:10). But then, by an easy transition, the word comes
to signify the exertions and separate puttings forth of this power. These are
“powers” in the plural, although the same word is now translated in our Version,
“wonderful works” (Mat 7:22), and now, “mighty works” (Mat 11:20; Mark 6:14; Luk
10:13), and still more frequently, “miracles” (Acts 2:22; Acts 19:11; 1Co 12:10;
1Co 12:28; Gal 3:5); in this last case giving sometimes such tautologies as
this, “miracles and wonders” (Acts 2:22; Heb 2:4); and always causing to be lost
something of the express force of the word,—namely, that it points to new powers
which have entered, and are working in, this world of ours.

These three terms, of which we have hitherto sought to unfold the meaning, occur
thrice in connexion with one another (Acts 2:22; 2Co 12:12; 2Th 2:9), although
each time in a different order. They are all, as has already been noted in the
case of two of them, rather descriptive of different sides of the same works,
than themselves different classes of works.[12] An example of one of our Lord’s
miracles may show how it may at once be all these. Thus the healing of the
paralytic (Mark 2:1-12) was a wonder, for they who beheld it “were all amazed;”
it was a power, for the man at Christ’s word “arose, took up his bed, and went
out before them all;” it was a sign, for it gave token that One greater than men
deemed was among them; it stood in connexion with a higher fact of which it was
the sign and seal (cf. 1Ki 13:3; 2Ki 1:10), being wrought that they might “know
that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins.”[13]

4. A further term by which St. John very frequently names the miracles is
eminently significant. They are continually with him simply “works”[14] (John
5:36; John 7:21; John 10:25; John 10:32; John 10:38; John 14:11-12; John 15:24.
cf. Mat 11:2); as though the wonderful were only the natural form of working for
Him who is dwelt in by all the fulness of God; He must, out of the necessity of
his higher being, bring forth these works greater than man’s. They are the
periphery of that circle whereof He is the centre. The great miracle is the
Incarnation; all else, so to speak, follows naturally and of course. It is no
wonder that He whose name is “Wonderful” (Isa 9:6) does works of wonder; the
only wonder would be if He did them not.[15] The sun in the heavens is itself a
wonder; but it is not a wonder that, being what it is, it rays forth its
effluences of light and heat. These miracles are the fruit after its kind which
the divine tree brings forth; and may, with a deep truth, be styled the “works”
[16] of Christ, with no further addition or explanation.

Footnotes

[1] Τέρας. The term θαῦμα, near akin to τέρας, and one of the commonest in the
Greek Fathers to designate the miracles, never occurs in Scripture; θαυμᾴσιον
only once (Mat 21:15); but the θαυμᾴζειν is often brought out as a consequence
(Mat 8:27; Mat 9:8; Mat 9:33; Mat 15:31, &c). Παρᾴδοξον, which in like manner
expresses the unexpectedness of the wonder, and so implies, though it does not
express, the astonishment which it causes,—a word of frequent usage in
ecclesiastical Greek,—is found only Luk 5:26.

[2] In Joh. tom. xiii. § 6.

[3] It is not satisfactory that a word, thus only the subordinate one in the
Greek, should be the chief one in our language to designate these divine
facts,—that the two words almost exclusively in use among us, namely wonders and
miracles, should bring out only the accidental accompaniment, the astonishment
which the work creates, and should go so little into the deeper meaning of the
work itself. The Latin miraculum (not properly a substantive, but the neuter of
miraculus) and the German Wunder lie under exactly the same defect.

[4] Σημεῖον. That defect, unfortunately so frequent in our English Version,
namely, that it does not seek, so far as this is possible, to render one word of
the original always by one and the same word in English, but varies its
renderings capriciously and without necessity, is noticeable here. There is no
reason why σημεῖον should not always have been rendered “sign;” but in the
Gospel of St. John, with whom the word is an especial favourite far oftener than
not, “sign” gives place to the vaguer “miracle,” and this sometimes not without
injury to the force and entire clearness of the words: thus see John 3:2; John
7:31; John 10:41; and especially John 6:26, where the substitution of “miracles”
for “signs” is particularly unfortunate. Our Version makes Christ to say to the
multitude, which, after He had once fed them in the wilderness, gathered round
Him again, “Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles,” &c. It should rather
be, “Ye seek Me, not because ye saw signs’ (σημεῖα without the article), “not
because ye recognized in those works of mine tokens and intimations of a higher
presence, such as led you to conceive great thoughts of Me: they are no such
glimpses of my higher nature which bring you here; but you come that you may
again be filled.” The coming merely because they had seen miracles, in the sense
of works that had made them marvel, and hoped to see such again, would have been
as much condemned by our Lord as the coming only for the satisfying of their
lowest earthly wants (Mat 12:30; Mat 16:1-4).

[5] Basil (in loc): Ἔστι σημεῖον πρᾶγμα φανερὸν, κεκρυμμένου τινὸς καὶ ἀφανοῦς
ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν δήλωσιν ἔχον (Suicer, Thes. s. v.). And Lampe is good here (Comm.
in Joh. vol. i. p. 513): Designat sane σημεῖον naturâ suâ rem non tantum
extraordinariam, sensusque percellentem, sed etiam talem, qua? in rei alterius,
absentis licet et futura? significationem atque adumbrationem adhibetur, unde et
prognostica (Mat 16:3) et typi (Mat 12:39; Luk 11:29), nec non sacramenta, quale
est illud circumcisionis (Rom 4:11), eodem nomine in N. T. exprimi solent.
Aptissime ergo haec vox de miraculis usurpatur, ut indicet, quod non tan turn
admirabili modo fuerint perpetrata, sed etiam sapientissimo consilio Dei ita
directa atque ordinata, ut fuerint simul characteres Messise, ex quibus
cognoscendus erat, sigilla doctrinae quam proferebat, et beneficiorumgratiae per
Messiam jam praestandae, nec non typi viarum Dei, earumque circumstantiarum per
quas talia beneficia erant applicanda.)

[6] The Latin monstrum, whether we derive it with Cicero (DeDivin. 1:42) from
monstro, or with Festus from moneo (monstrum, velut monestrum, quod monet
futurum), though commonly used as answering most nearly to τέρας (Nec dubiis ea
signa dedit Tritonia monstris, AEn. 2:171), is in truth by either etymology more
nearly related to σημεῖον. Thus Augustine, who follows Cicero’s derivation (De
Civ. Dei, 21:8): Monstra sane dicta perhibent a monstrando, quod aliquid
significando demonstrant, et ostenta ab ostendendo, et portenta a portendendo,
id est prseostendendo, et prodigia quod porro dicant, id est futura praedicant.
And In Ev. Joh. tract, xvi.: Prodigium appellatum est quasi porrodicium, quod
porro dicat, porro significet, et aliquid futurum esse portendat. See Pauly’s
Real Encyclopädie, vol. ii. p. 1139.

[7] As is natural, the word sometimes loses its special and higher
signification, and is used simply as = τέρας. Thus St. Luke (xxiii. 8) says of
Herod, that he hoped to have seen some “sign” (σημεῖον) wrought by Christ. The
last thing he would have desired would have been a sign or indication of a
present God; but what he wanted was some glaring feat which should have set him
agape—a τέρας,—or, more properly yet, a Θαῦμα, in the lowest and meanest sense
of the word.

[8] Cf. Virgil, AEN 8:42-45, 81-83.

[9] The words τέρας and σημεῖον stand linked together, not merely in the New T.
(Acts 2:22; Acts 4:30; 2Co 12:12; John 4:48), but frequently in the Old (Exo
7:3; Exo 7:9; Exo 11:9; Deu 4:34; Deu 6:22, and often; Neh 9:10; Isa 8:18; Isa
20:3; Dan 4:2; Dan 6:27; Psa. 87:43; 54:27; 84:9, LXX); and no less in profane
Greek (Polybius, 3:112, 8; AElian, V. H. 12:57; Orph. Argon, xxvii.; Josephus,
Antiqq. 20:8, 6; Plutarch, Sept. Sap. Conv. iii.). The distinction between the
two, as though the τέρας were the more wonderful, the σημεῖον the less so,—as
though it would be a σημεῖον to heal the sick, a τέρας to open the blind eyes,
or to raise the dead (so Ammonius, Cat. in John 4:48 : τέρας ἐστὶ τὸ παρὰ φύσιν,
οἷον τὸ ἀνοῖξαι ὀφθαλμοὺς τυφλῶν καὶ ἐγεῖραι νεκρόν· σημεῖον δὲ τὸ οὐκ ἔξω τῆς
φύσεως, οἷόν ἐστιν ἰάσασθαι ἄῤῥωστον, is quite untenable, however frequent among
some of the Greek Fathers (see Suicer, Thes. s. v. σημεῖον). Neither will
Origen’s distinction stand (in Rom 15:19): Signa appellantur, in quibus cum sit
aliquid mirabile, indicatur quoque aliquid futurum. Prodigia vero in quibus
tantummodo aliquid mirabile ostenditur. Rather the same miracle is upon one side
a τέρας, on another a σημεῖον; and the words most often refer not to different
classes of miracles, but to different qualities in the same miracles; so
Fritzsche: Eandemrem diverse aestimatam exprimunt; and Lampe (Comm. in Joh. vol.
i. p. 513): Eadem miracula dici possunt signa, quatenus aliquid seu occultum seu
futurum docent; et prodigia (re. pa. Ta), quatenus aliquid extraordinarium, quod
stuporem excitat, sistunt. Hinc sequitur signorum notionem latius patere, quam
prodigiorum. Omnia prodigia sunt signa, quia in ilium usum a Deo dispensata, ut
arcanum indicent. Sed omnia signa non anut prodigia, quia ad signandum res
ccelestes aliquando etiam res communes adhibentur. Cf. 2Ch 32:24; 2Ch 32:31;
where at ver. 24 that is called a σημεῖον, which at ver. 31 is a τέρας (LXX).

[10] Δυνάμεις = virtutes.

[11] With this ἐξουσία is related, which yet only once occurs to designate a
miracle. They are termed ἔνδοξα Luk 13:17, as being works in which the δόξα of
God came eminently out (see John 2:11), and which in return caused men to
glorify Him (Mark 2:12). They are μεγαλεῖα = magnalia (Luk 1:49), as outcomings
of the greatness of God’s power

[12] Pelt’s definition (Comm. in Thess, p. 179) is brief and good: Parum
differunt tria ista δυνάμεις, σημεῖα, τέρατα. Δύναμις numero singulari tamen est
vis miraculorum edendorum; σημεῖα quatenus comprobandae inserviunt doctrinae
sive missioni divinae; τέρατα portenta sunt, quae admirationem et stuporem
excitant. Cf. Calvin on 2Co 12:12 : Signa porro vocantur, quod non sunt inania
spectacula, sed quae destinata sunt docendis hominibus. Prodigia, quod suâ,
novitate expergefacere homines debent, et percellere. Potentiae aut virtutes,
quod sunt magis insignia specimina divinae potentiae, quam quae cernimus in
ordinario naturae cursu.

[13] With regard to the verbs connected with these nouns, we may observe in the
three first Evangelists, σημεῖα διδόναι (Mat 12:39; Mat 24:24; Mark 8:12), and
still more frequently δυνάμεις ποιεῖν (Mat 7:22; Mat 13:58; Mark 9:39, &c).
Neither of these phrases occurs in St. John, but σημεῖα ποιεῖν continually (John
2:11; John 3:2; John 4:54; &c), which is altogether wanting in the earlier
Evangelists; occurring, however, in the Acts (Acts 7:36; Acts 15:12) and in
Revelations (Rev 13:13; Rev 19:20). Once St. John has σημεῖα δεικνύειν (John
2:18).

[14] The miracles of the O. T. are called ἔργα, Heb 3:9; Psa 94:9,

[15] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, xvii.): Mirum non esse debet a Deo factum
miraculum....Magis gaudere et admirari debemus quia Dominus noster et Salvator
Jesus Christus homo factus est, quam quod divina inter homines Deus fecit.

[16] I am aware that this interpretation of ἔργα, as used by St. John, has
sometimes been called in question, and that by this word has been understood the
sum total of his acts and his teachings, his words and his works, as they came
under the eyes of men; not indeed excluding the miracles, but including also
very much besides; yet I cannot doubt that our Lord, using this word, means his
miracles, and only them. The one passage brought with any apparent force against
this meaning (John 17:4) does not really belong to the question. For that ἔργον
in the singular may, and here does, signify his whole work and task, is beyond
all doubt; but that in the plural the word means his miracles, the following
passages, John 5:36; John 10:25; John 10:32; John 10:38; John 14:11, to which
others might be added, seem to me decisively to prove.


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  CHAPTER 3: 03-CHAPTER 2. THE MIRACLES AND NATURE
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Chapter 2. The Miracles and Nature

Wherein, it may be asked, does the miracle differ from any event in the ordinary
course of nature? For that too is wonderful; the fact that it is a marvel of
continual recurrence may rob it, subjectively, of our admiration; we may be
content to look at it with a dull incurious eye, and to think we find in its
constant repetition the explanation of its law, even as we often find in this a
reason for excusing ourselves altogether from wonder and reverent admiration;[1]
yet it does not remain the less a marvel still. To this question some have
replied, that since all is thus marvellous, since the grass growing, the seed
springing, the sun rising, are as much the result of powers which we cannot
trace or measure, as the water turned into wine, or the sick healed by a word,
or the blind restored to vision by a touch, there is therefore no such thing as
a miracle, eminently so called. We have no right, they say, in the mighty and
complex miracle of nature which encircles us on every side, to separate off in
an arbitrary manner some certain facts, and to say that this and that are
wonders, and all the rest ordinary processes of nature; but rather we must
confine ourselves to one language or the other, and entitle all miracle, or
nothing. But this, however at first sight it may seem very deep and true, is
indeed most shallow and fallacious. There is quite enough in itself and in its
purposes to distinguish that which we call by this name, from all with which it
is thus attempted to be confounded, and in which to be lost. The distinction
indeed which is sometimes made, that in the miracle God is immediately working,
and in other events is leaving it to the laws which He has established to work,
cannot at all be admitted: for it has its root in a dead mechanical view of the
universe, altogether remote from the truth. The clock-maker makes his clock, and
leaves it; the ship-builder builds and launches his ship, and others navigate
it; the world, however, is no curious piece of mechanism which its Maker
constructs, and then dismisses from his hands, only” from time to time reviewing
and repairing it; but, as our Lord says, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I
work” (John 5:17); He “upholdeth all things by the word of his power”[2] (Heb
1:3). And to speak of “laws of God,” “laws of nature,” may become to us a
language altogether deceptive, and hiding the deeper reality from our eyes. Laws
of God exist only for us. It is a will of God for Himself.[3] That will indeed,
being the will of highest wisdom and love, excludes all wilfulness; it is a will
upon which we can securely count; from the past expressions of it we can presume
its future, and so we rightfully call it a law. But still from moment to moment
it is a will; each law, as we term it, of nature is only that which we have
learned concerning this will in that particular region of its activity. To say
then that there is more of the will of God in a miracle than in any other work
of his, is insufficient. Such an assertion grows out of that lifeless scheme of
the world, whereof we should ever be seeking to rid ourselves, but which such a
theory will only help to confirm and to uphold. For while we deny the
conclusion, that since all is wonder, therefore the miracle commonly so called
is in no other way than the ordinary processes of nature, the manifestation of
the presence and power of God, we must not with this deny the truth which lies
in this statement. All is wonder; to make a man is at least as great a marvel as
to raise a man from the dead. The seed that multiplies in the furrow is as
marvellous as the bread that multiplied in Christ’s hands. The miracle is not a
greater manifestation of God’s power than those ordinary and ever-repeated
processes; but it is a different [4] manifestation. By those other God is
speaking at all times and to all the world; they are a vast unbroken revelation
of Him. “The invisible things of Him are clearly seen, being understood by the
things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead” (Rom 1:20). Yet from
the very circumstance that nature is thus speaking evermore to all, that this
speaking is diffused over all time, addressed unto all men, that its sound is
gone out into all lands, from the very constancy and universality of this
language, it may miss its aim. It cannot be said to stand in nearer relation to
one man than to another, to confirm one man’s word more than that of others, to
address one man’s conscience more than that of every other man. However it may
sometimes have, it must often lack, a peculiar and personal significance. But in
the miracle, wrought in the sight of some certain men, and claiming their
special attention, there is a speaking to them in particular. There is then a
voice in nature which addresses itself directly to them, a singling of them out
from the crowd. It is plain that God has now a peculiar word which they are to
give heed to, a message to which He is bidding them to listen.[5] An
extraordinary divine causality, and not that ordinary which we acknowledge every
where and in everything, belongs, then, to the essence of the miracle; powers of
God other than those which have always been working; such, indeed, as most
seldom or never have been working before. The unresting activity of God, which
at other times hides and conceals itself behind the veil of what we term natural
laws, does in the miracle unveil itself; it steps out from its concealment, and
the hand which works is laid bare. Beside and beyond [6] the ordinary operations
of nature, higher powers (higher, not as coming from a higher source, but as
bearing upon higher ends) intrude and make themselves felt even at the very
springs and sources of her power.

Yet when we say that it is of the very essence of the miracle that it should be
thus “a new thing” it is not with this denied that the natural itself may become
miraculous to us by the way in which it is timed, by the ends which it is made
to serve. It is indeed true that aught which is perfectly explicable from the
course of nature and history, is assuredly no miracle in the most proper sense
of the word. Yet still the finger of God may be so plainly discernible in it,
there may be in it so remarkable a convergence of many unconnected causes to a
single end, it may so meet a crisis in the lives of men, or in the onward march
of the kingdom of God, may stand in such noticeable relation with God’s great
work of redemption, that even while it is plainly deducible from natural causes,
while there were such, perfectly adequate to produce the effects, we yet may be
entirely justified in terming it a miracle, a providential, although not an
absolute, miracle. Absolute it cannot be called, since there were known causes
perfectly capable of bringing it about, and, these existing, it would be
superstition to betake ourselves to others, or to seek to disconnect it from
these. Yet the natural may in a manner lift itself up into the miraculous, by
the moment at which it falls out, by the purposes which it is made to fulfil. It
is a subjective wonder, a wonder for us, though not an objective, not a wonder
in itself.

Thus many of the plagues of Egypt were the natural plagues of the land,[7]
—these, it is true, raised and quickened into far direr than their usual
activity. In itself it was nothing miraculous that grievous swarms of flies
should infest the houses of the Egyptians, or that flights of locusts should
spoil their fields, or that a murrain should destroy their cattle. None of these
visitations were or are unknown in that land; but the intensity of all these
plagues, the manner in which they followed in dread succession on one another,
their connexion with the word of Moses which went before, with Pharaoh’s trial
which was proceeding, with Israel’s deliverance which they helped onward, the
order of their coming and going, all these do entirely justify us in calling
them “the signs and wonders of Egypt,” even as such is the scriptural language
about them (Psa 78:43; Acts 7:36). It is no absolute miracle to find a coin in a
fish’s mouth (Mat 17:27), or that a lion should meet a man and slay him (1Ki
13:24), or that a thunderstorm should happen at an unusual period of the year
(1Sa 12:16-19); and yet these circumstances may be so timed for strengthening
faith, for punishing disobedience, for awakening repentance, they may serve such
high purposes in God’s moral government, that we at once range them in the
catalogue of miracles, without seeking to make an anxious discrimination between
the miracle absolute and providential.[8] Especially have they a right to their
place among these, when (as in each of the instances alluded to above) the final
event is a sealing of a foregoing word from the Lord; for so, as prophecy, as
miracles of his foreknowledge, they claim that place, even if not as miracles of
his power. Of course concerning these more than any other it will be true that
they exist only for the religious mind, for the man who believes that God rules,
and not merely in power, but in wisdom, in righteousness, and in love; for him
they will be eminently signs, signs of a present working God. In the case of the
more absolute miracle it will be sometimes possible to extort from the ungodly,
as of old from the magicians of Egypt, the unwilling confession, “This is the
finger of God” (Exo 8:19); but in the case of these this will be well nigh
impossible; since there is always the natural solution in which they may take
refuge, beyond which they will refuse, and beyond which it will be impossible to
compel them, to proceed. But while the miracle is not thus nature, so neither is
it against nature. That language, however commonly in use, is yet wholly
unsatisfactory, which speaks of these wonderful works of God as violations of a
natural law. Beyond nature, beyond and above the nature which we know, they are,
but not contrary to it. Nor let it be said that this distinction is an idle one;
so far from being idle, Spinoza’s whole assault upon the miracles (not his real
objections, for they lie much deeper, but his assault[9]) turns, as we shall
see, upon the advantage which he has known how to take of this faulty statement
of the truth; and, when that has been rightly stated, becomes at once beside the
mark. The miracle is not thus unnatural, nor can it be; since the unnatural, the
contrary to order, is of itself the ungodly, and can in no way therefore be
affirmed of a divine work, such as that with which we have to do. The very idea
of the world, as more than one name which it bears testifies, is that of an
order; that which comes in then to enable it to realize this idea which it has
lost, will scarcely itself be a disorder. So far from this, the true miracle is
a higher and a purer nature, coming down out of the world of untroubled
harmonies into this world of ours, which so many discords have jarred and
disturbed, and bringing this back again, though it be but for one mysterious
prophetic moment, into harmony with that higher.[10] The healing of the sick can
in no way be termed against nature, seeing that the sickness which was healed
was against the true nature of man, that it is sickness which is abnormal, and
not health. The healing is the restoration of the primitive order. We should
term the miracle not the infraction of a law, but behold in it the lower law
neutralized, and for the time put out of working by a higher; and of this
abundant analogous examples are evermore going forward before our eyes.
Continually we behold in the world around us lower laws held in restraint by
higher, mechanic by dynamic, chemical by vital, physical by moral; yet we say
not, when the lower thus gives place in favour of the higher, that there was any
violation of law, or that anything contrary to nature came to pass;[11] rather
we acknowledge the law of a greater freedom swallowing up the law of a
lesser.[12] Thus, when I lift my arm, the law of gravitation is not, as far as
my arm is concerned, denied or annihilated; it exists as much as ever, but is
held in suspense by the higher law of my will. The chemical laws which would
bring about decay in animal substances still subsist, even when they are checked
and hindered by the salt which keeps those substances from corruption. The law
of sin in a regenerate man is held in continual check by the law of the spirit
of life; yet is it in his members still, not indeed working, for a mightier law
has stepped in and now holds it in abeyance, but still there, and ready to work,
did that higher law cease from its more effectual operation. What in each of
these cases is wrought may be against one particular law, that law being
contemplated in its isolation, and rent away from the complex of laws, whereof
it forms only a part. But no law does stand thus alone, and it is not against,
but rather in entire harmony with, the system of laws; for the law of those laws
is, that where powers come into conflict, the weaker shall give place to the
stronger, the lower to the higher. In the miracle, this world of ours is drawn
into and within a higher order of things; laws are then at work in the world,
which are not the laws of its fallen condition, for they are laws of mightier
range and higher perfection; and as such they claim to make themselves felt, and
to have the preeminence and predominance which are rightly their own.[13] A
familiar illustration borrowed from our own church-system of feasts and fasts
may make this clearer. It is the rule here, that if the festival of the Nativity
fall on a day which was designated in the ordinary calendar for a fast, the
former shall displace the latter, and the day shall be observed as a festival.
Shall we therefore say that the Church has awkwardly contrived two systems which
here may, and sometimes do, come into collision with one another? and not rather
admire her more complex law, and note how in the very concurrence of the two,
with the displacement of the poorer by the richer, she brings out her sense that
holy joy is a loftier thing even than holy sorrow, and shall at last swallow it
up altogether?[14]

It is with these wonders which have been, exactly as it will be with those
wonders which we look for in regard of our own mortal bodies, and this physical
universe. We do not speak of these changes which are in store for this and
those, as violations of law. “We should not speak of the resurrection of the
body as something contrary to nature; as unnatural; yet no power now working
upon our bodies could bring it about; it must be wrought by some power not yet
displayed, which God has kept in reserve. So, too, the great change which is in
store for the outward world, and out of which it shall issue as a new heaven and
a new earth, far exceeds any energies now working in the world, to bring it to
pass (however there may be predispositions for it now, starting points from
which it will proceed); yet it so belongs to the true idea of the world, now so
imperfectly realized, that when it does take place, it will be felt to be the
truest nature, which only then at length shall have come perfectly to the birth.
The miracles, then, not being against nature, however they may be beside and
beyond it, are in no respect slights cast upon its ordinary and everyday
workings; but rather, when contemplated aright, are an honouring of these, in
the witness which they render to the source from which these also originally
proceed. For Christ, healing a sick man with his word, is in fact claiming in
this to be the lord and author of all the healing powers which have ever exerted
their beneficent influence on the bodies of men, and saying, “I will prove this
fact, which you are ever losing sight of, that in Me the frontal power which
goes forth in a thousand gradual cures resides, by this time only speaking a
word, and bringing back a man unto perfect health;”— not thus cutting off those
other and more gradual healings from his person, but truly linking them to
it.[15] So again when He multiplies the bread, when He changes the water into
wine, what does He but say, “It is I and no other who, by the sunshine and the
shower, by the seed-time and the harvest, give ’food for the use of man; and you
shall learn this, which you are always in danger of unthankfully forgetting, by
witnessing for once or for twice, or, if not actually witnessing, yet having it
rehearsed in your ears for ever, how the essences of things are mine, how the
bread grows in my hands, how the water, not drawn up into the vine, nor slowly
transmuted into the juices of the grape, nor from thence exprest in the vat, but
simply at my bidding, changes into wine. The children of this world ’sacrifice
unto their net, and burn incense to their drag,’ but it is I who, giving you in
a moment the draught of fishes which you had yourselves long laboured for in
vain, will remind you who guides them through the ocean paths, and suffers you
either to toil long and to take nothing, or crowns your labours with a rich and
unexpected harvest of the sea.”— Even the single miracle which wears an aspect
of severity, that of the withered fig-tree, speaks the same language, for in
that the same gracious Lord is declaring, “These scourges of mine, wherewith I
punish your sins, and summon you to repentance, continually miss their purpose
altogether, or need to be repeated again and again; and this mainly because you
see in them only the evil accidents of a blind nature; but I will show you that
it is I and no other who smite the earth with a curse, who both can and do send
these strokes for the punishing of the sins of men.” And we can quite perceive
how all this should have been necessary.[16] For if in one sense the orderly
workings of nature reveal the glory of God (Psa 19:1-6), in another they, hide
that glory from our eyes; if they ought to make us continually to remember Him,
yet there is danger that they lead us to forget Him, until this world around us
shall prove—not a translucent medium, through which we behold Him, but a thick
impenetrable veil, concealing Him wholly from our sight. Were there no other
purpose in the miracles than this, namely to testify the liberty of God, and to
affirm the will of God, which, however it habitually shows itself in nature, is
yet more than and above nature, were it only to break a link in that chain of
cause and effect, which else we should come to regard as itself God, as the iron
chain of an inexorable necessity, binding heaven no less than earth, they would
serve a great purpose, they would not have been wrought in vain. But there are
other purposes than these, and purposes yet more nearly bearing on the salvation
of men, to which they serve, and to the consideration of these we have now
arrived.[17]

Footnotes

[1] See Augustine, Be Gen. ad Lit. 12:18; Be Civ. Dei, 21:8, 3; and Gregory the
Great (Horn. xxvi. in Evang.): Quotidiana Dei miracula ex assiduitate viluerunt.
Cf. Cicero, Be Nat. Deor. 2:38.

[2] Augustine: Sunt qui arbitrantur tantummodo mundum ipsum factum a Deo; cetera
jam fieri ab ipso mundo, sicut ille ordinavit et jussit, Deum autem ipsum nihil
operari. Contra quos profertur ilia sententia Domini, Pater meus usque adhuc
operatur, et ego operor..... Neque enim, sicut a structurâ aedium, cum
fabricaverit quis, abscedit; atque illo cessante et absente stat opus ejus; ita
mundus vel ictu oculi stare potent, si ei Deus regimen suum subtraxerit. So
Melancthon (In loc. de Creatione): Infirmitas humana etiamsi cogitat Deum esse
conditorem, tamen postea imaginatur, ut faber discedit a navi exstructâ et
relinquit earn nautis; ita Deum discedere a suo opere, et relinqui creaturas
tantum propriae gubernationi; haec imaginatio magnam caliginem offundit animis
et parit dubitationes.

[3] Augustine (De Civ. Dei, 21:8): Dei voluntas natura rerum est.

[4] Augustine (Serm. ccxlii. 1): In homine carnali tota regula intel-ligendi est
consuetudo cernendi. Quod solent videre credunt: quod non solent, non
credunt.... Majora quidem miracula sunt, tot quotidie homines nasci qui non
erant, quam paucos resurrexisse qui erant; et tamen ista miracula non
consideratione comprehensa sunt, sed assiduitate viluerunt. Cf. Gregory the
Great, Moral, vi. 15.

[5] All this is brought out in a very instructive discussion on the miracle,
which finds place in Augustine’s great dogmatic work, De Trinit. iii. 5, and
extends to the chapters upon either side, being the largest statement of his
views upon the subject which anywhere finds place in his works: Quis attrahit
humorem per radicem vitis ad botrum et vinum facit, nisi Deus, qui et homine
plantante et rigante incrementum dat? Sed cum ad nutum Domini aqua in vinum
inusitatâ, celeritate conversa est, etiam stultis fatentibus, vis divina
declarata est. Quis arbusta fronde et flore vestit solemniter, nisi Deus? Verum
cum floruit virga sacerdotis Aaron, collocuta est quodam modo cum dubitante
humanitate divinitas.... Cum fiunt ilia continuato quasi quodam fluvio labentium
manantiumque rerum, et ex occulto in promptum, atque ex prompto in occultum,
usitato itinere transeuntium, naturalia dicuntur: cum vero admonendis hominibus
inusitatâ mutabilitate ingeruntur, magnalia nominantur.

[6] Not, as we shall see the greatest theologians have always earnestly
contended, contra naturam, but prater naturam and supra naturam.

[7] See Hengstenberg, Die Bücher Moses und Agypten, pp. 93-129.

[8] The attempt to exhaust the history of our Lord’s life of miracles By the.
supposition of wonderful fortuitous coincidences is singularly self-defeating.
These might do for once or twice; but that such happy chances should on every
occasion recur, what is this for one who knows even but a little of the theory
of probabilities? not the delivering the history of its marvellous element, but
the exchanging one set of marvels for another. If it be said that this was not
mere hazard, what manner of person then must we conclude Him to be, whom nature
was always thus at such pains to serve and to seal?

[9] Tract. Theol. Pol. vi. De Miraculis.

[10] Augustine (Con. Faust, lvi. 3): Contra naturam non incongrue dicimus
aliquid Deum facere, quod facit contra id quod novirnus in natura. Hanc enim
etiam appellamus naturam, cognitum nobis cursum solitumque naturae, contra quern
cum Deus aliquid facit, magnalia vel mirabilia nominantur. Contra illam vero
summam naturae legem a notitiâ remotam sive impiorum sive adhue infirmorum, tam
Deus nullo modo facit quam contra seipsum non facit. Cf. Tract. Theol. Pol. vi.
De Miraculis. xxix. 2; and De Civ. Dei, xxi. 8. The speculations of the great
thinkers of the thirteenth century, on the subject of miracles, and especially
on this part of the subject, are well brought together by Neander (Kirch. Gesch.
vol. v. pp. 910-925).

[11] See a very interesting discussion upon this subject in Augustine, De Gen.
ad Lit. vi. 14-18.

[12] When Spinoza affirmed that nothing can happen in nature which opposes its
universal laws, he acutely saw that even then he had not excluded the miracle,
and therefore, to clench the exclusion, added—aut quod ex iisdem [legibus] non
sequitur. But all which experience can teach us is, that these powers which are
working in our world will not reach to these effects. Whence dare we to
conclude, that because none which we know will bring them about, so none exist
which will do so? They exceed the laws of our nature, but it does not therefore
follow that they exceed the laws of all nature.. If the animals were capable of
a reflective act, man would appear a miracle to them, as the Angels do to us,
and as the animals would themselves appear to a lower circle of organic life.
The comet is a miracle as regards our solar system; that is, it does not own the
laws of our system, neither do those laws explain it. Yet is there a higher and
wider law of the heavens, whether fully discovered or not, in which its motions
are included as surely as those of the planets which stand in immediate relation
to our sun.

[13] “In remarkable words the author of The Wisdom of Solomon (xix. 6) describes
how at the passage of the Red. Sea all nature was in its kind moulded and
fashioned anew (ἡ κτίσις πάλιν ἄνωθεν διετυποῦτο), that it might serve God’s
purposes for the deliverance of his people, and punishment of his enemies (cf.
xi, 16, 17); and Sedulius (Carm. Pasch, i. $5): Subditur omnis Imperiis natura
tuis; rituque soluto Transit in adversas jussu dominante figuras.

[14] Thus Aquinas, whose greatness and depth upon the subject of miracles I well
remember once hearing Coleridge exalt, and painfully contrast with the modern
theology on the same subject (Sum. Theol. pars i. qu. 105, art. 6): A quâlibet
causa derivator aliquis ordo in suos effectus, cum quaelibet causa habeat
rationem principii. Et ideo secundum multiplicationem causarum multiplicantur et
ordines, quorum unus continetur sub altero, sicut et causa continetur sub causa.
Unde causa superior non continetur sub ordine causae inferioris, sed e converse
Cujus exemplum apparet in rebus humanis. Nam ex patrefamiliâs dependet ordo
domûs, qui continetur sub ordine civitatis, qui procedit a civitatis rectore:
cum et hie contineatur sub ordine regis, a quo totum regnum ordinatur. Si ergo
ordo rerum consideretur prout dependet a primâ causa, sic contra rerum ordinem
Deus facere non potest. Si enim sic faceret, faceret contra suam praescientiam
aut voluntatem aut bonitatem. Si vero consideretur rerum ordo, prout dependet a
quâlibet secundarum causarum, sic Deus potest facere prater ordinem rerum; quia
ordini secundarum causarum ipse non est subjectus; sed talis ordo ei subjicitur,
quasi ab eo procedens, non per necessitatem naturae, sed per arbitrium
voluntatis; potuisset enim et alium ordinem rerum instituere.

[15] Bernard Connor’s Evangelium Medici, seu Medicina Mystica, London, 1697,
awakened some attention at the time of its publication, and drew down many
suspicions of infidelity on its author (see the Biographie Universelle under his
name). I have not mastered the book, as it seemed hardly worth while; but on a
slight acquaintance, my impression is that these charges against the author are
without any ground. The book bears on this present part of our subject.

[16] Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. Exodus 4): [Deus] reservans opportune inusitata
prodigia, quae infirmitas hominis novitati intenta meminerit, cum sint ejus
miracula quotidiana majora. Tot per universam terrain arbores creat, et nemo
miratur; arefecit verbo unam, et stupefacta sunt corda mortalium.... Hoc enim
miraculum maxime adtentis cordibus inhaerebit, quod assiduitas non vilefecerit.

[17] J. Müller (Be Mirac. J. G. Nat. et Necess. par. i. p. 43): Etiamsi nullus
alius miraculorum esset usus, nisi ut absolutam illam divinae voluntatis
libertatem demonstrent, humanamque arrogantiam, imraodicae legis naturalis
admirationi junctam, compescant, miracula haud temere essent edita.


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  CHAPTER 4: 04-CHAPTER 3.THE AUTHORITY OF MIRACLES
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Chapter 3.The Authority of Miracles Is the miracle to command absolutely, and
without further question, the obedience of those in whose sight it is done, or
to whom it comes as an adequately attested fact, so that the doer and the
doctrine, without further debate, shall be accepted as from God? It cannot be
so, for side by side with the miracles which serve for the furthering of the
kingdom of God, runs another line of wonders, counterworks of his who is ever
the ape of the Most High; who has still his caricatures of the holiest; and who
knows that in no way can he so realize his character of Satan, or “the
Hinderer,” as by offering that which shall either be accepted instead of the
true, or, being discovered to be false, shall bring the true into like discredit
with itself. For that it is meant in Scripture to attribute real wonders to him
there seems to me no manner of doubt. They are “lying wonders” (2Th 2:9), not
because in themselves mere illusions and jugglery, but because they are wrought
to support the kingdom of lies.[1]

Thus I cannot doubt that, according to the intention of Scripture, we are meant
to understand of the Egyptian magicians, that they stood in relation to a
spiritual kingdom as truly as did Moses and Aaron. Indeed, only so does the
conflict between those and these come out in its true significance. It loses the
chiefest part of this significance if we think of their wonders as mere
conjurors’ tricks, dexterous sleights of hand, with which they imposed upon
Pharaoh and his servants; making believe, and no more, that their rods also
changed into serpents (Exo 7:11-12), that they also changed water into blood
(Exo 7:22). Rather was this a conflict not merely between the might of Egypt’s
king and the power of God; but the gods of Egypt, the spiritual powers of
wickedness which underlay, and were the informing soul of, that dark and evil
kingdom, were in conflict with the God cf Israel. In this conflict, it is true,
their nothingness very soon was apparent; their resources came very soon to an
end; but yet most truly the two unseen kingdoms of light and darkness did then
in presence of Pharaoh do open battle, each seeking to win the king for itself,
and to draw him into its own element.[2] Else, unless it had been such a
conflict as this, what meaning would such passages have as that in Moses’ Song,
“Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods” (Exo 15:11)? or that earlier,
“Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment; I am the Lord” (Exo
12:12. cf. Numb. 33:4). As it was then, so probably was it again at the
Incarnation, for Satan’s open encounter of our Lord in the wilderness was but
one form of his manifold opposition; and we seem to have a hint of a resistance
similar to that of the Egyptian magicians in the withstanding of Paul which is
attributed to Elymas (Acts 13:8. cf. 2Ti 3:8).[3] But whether at that time it
was so, or not, so will it be certainly at the end of the world (Mat 24:24; 2Th
2:9; Rev 13:13). Thus it seems that at each great crisis and epoch of the
kingdom, the struggle between the light and the darkness, which has ever been
going forward, comes out into visible manifestation.

Yet, while the works of Antichrist and his organs are not mere tricks and
juggleries, neither are they miracles in the very highest sense of the word;
they only in part partake of the essential elements of the miracle. This they
have, indeed, in common with it, that they are real works of a power which is
suffered to extend thus far, and not merely dexterous feats of legerdemain; but
this, also, which is most different, that they are abrupt, isolated, parts of no
organic whole; not the highest harmonies, but the deepest discords, of the
universe;[4] not the omnipotence of God wielding his own world to ends of grace
and wisdom and love, but evil permitted to intrude into the hidden springs of
things just so far as may suffice for its own deeper confusion in the end, and,
in the mean while, for the needful trial and perfecting of God’s saints and
servants.[5] This fact, however, that the kingdom of lies has its wonders no
less than the kingdom of truth, would be alone sufficient to convince us that
miracles cannot be appealed to absolutely and simply, in proof of the doctrine
which the worker of them proclaims; and God’s word expressly declares the same
(Deu 13:1-5). A miracle does not prove the truth of a doctrine, or the divine
mission of him that brings it to pass. That which alone it claims for him at the
first is a right to be listened to: it puts him in the alternative of being from
heaven or from hell. The doctrine must first commend itself to the conscience as
being good, and only then can the miracle seal it as divine. But the first
appeal is from the doctrine to the conscience, to the moral nature in man. For
all revelation presupposes in man a power of recognizing the truth when it is
shown him,—that it will find an answer in him,—that he will trace in it the
lineaments of a friend, though of a friend from whom he has been long estranged,
and whom he has well nigh forgotten. It is the finding of a treasure, but of a
treasure which he himself and no other had lost. The denial of this, that there
is in man any organ by which truth may be recognized, opens the door to the most
boundless scepticism, is indeed the denial of all that is godlike in man. But
“he that is of God, heareth God’s word,” and knows it for that which it
proclaims itself to be.

It may be objected, indeed, If this be so, if there be this inward witness of
the truth, what need then of the miracle? to what end does it serve, when the
truth has accredited itself already? It has, indeed, accredited itself as good,
as from God in the sense that all which is good and true is from Him, as
whatever was precious in the teaching even of heathen sage or poet was from
Him;—but not as yet as a new word directly from Him, a new speaking on his part
to man. The miracles are to be the credentials for the bearer of that good word,
signs that he has a special mission for the realization of the purposes of God
in regard of humanity.[6] When the truth has found a receptive heart, has awoke
deep echoes in the innermost soul of man, he who brings it may thus show that he
stands yet nearer to God than others, that he is to be heard not merely as one
that is true, but as himself the Truth (see Mat 11:4-5; John 5:36); or at least,
as a messenger standing in direct connexion with Him who is the Truth (1Ki
13:3); claiming unreserved submission, and the reception, upon his authority, of
other statements which transcend the mind of man,—mysteries, which though, of
course, not against that measure and standard of truth which God has given unto
every man, yet which cannot be weighed or measured by it. To demand such a sign
from one who comes professing to be the utterer of a new revelation, the bringer
of a direct message from God, to demand this, even when the word already
commends itself as good, is no mark of unbelief, but on the contrary is a duty
upon his part to whom the message is brought. Else might he lightly be persuaded
to receive that as from God, which, indeed, was only the word of man. Credulity
is as real, if not so great, a sin as unbelief. Thus it was no impiety on the
part of Pharaoh to say to Moses and Aaron, “Show a miracle for you” (Exo
7:9-10); on the contrary, it was altogether right for him to require this. They
came averring they had a message for him from God: it was his duty to put them
to the proof. His sin began, when he refused to believe their credentials. On
the other hand, it was a mark of unbelief in Ahaz (Isa 7:10-13), however he
might disguise it, that he would not ask a sign from God in confirmation of the
prophet’s word. Had that word been more precious to him, he would not have been
satisfied till the seal was set to it; and that he did not care for the seal was
a sure evidence that he did not truly care for the promise with which that was
to be sealed. But the purpose of the miracle being, as we have seen, to confirm
that which is good, so, upon the other hand, where the mind and conscience
witness against the doctrine, not all the miracles in the world have a right to
demand submission to the word which they seal.[7].[9] But if these things are
so, there might seem a twofold danger to which the simple and unlearned
Christian would be exposed—the danger, first, of not receiving that which indeed
comes from God, or secondly, of receiving that which comes from an evil source.
But indeed these dangers do not beset the unlearned and the simple more than
they beset and are part of the trial and temptation of every man; the safeguard
from either of these fatal errors lying altogether in men’s moral and spiritual,
and not at all in their intellectual, condition. They only find the witness
which the truth bears to itself to be no witness, they only believe the lying
wonders, in whom the moral sense is already perverted; they have not before
received the love of the truth, that they might be saved from believing a lie.
Thus, then, their believing this lie and rejecting that truth is, in fact, but
the final judgment upon them that have had pleasure in unrighteousness. “With
this view exactly agree the memorable words of St. Paul (2Th 2:9-12), wherein he
declares that it is the anterior state of every man which shall decide whether
he shall receive the lying wonders of Antichrist or reject them (cf. John 5:43).
For while these come “with all deceivableness of unrighteousness” to them whose
previous condition has fitted them to embrace them, who have been ripening
themselves for this extreme judgment, there is ever something in these wonders,
something false, or immoral, or ostentatious, or something merely idle, which
detects and lays them bare to a simple faith, and for that at once broadly
differences them from those which belong to the kingdom of the truth.[10]

These differences have been often brought out. Such miracles are immoral;[11] or
if not so, yet futile, without consequences, leading to and ending in nothing.
For as the miracle, standing as it does in connexion with highest moral ends,
must not be itself an immoral act, so may it not be in itself an act merely
futile, issuing in vanity and nothingness. This is the argument which Origen
continually uses, when he is plied with the alleged miracles of heathen saints
and sages. He counts, and rightly, that he has sufficiently convinced them of
falsehood, when he has asked, and obtained no answer to, this question, “What
came of these? In what did they issue? Where is the society which has been
founded by their help? What is there in the world’s history which they have
helped forward, to show that they lay deep in the mind and counsel of God? The
miracles of Moses issued in a Jewish polity; those of the Lord in a Christian
Church; whole nations were knit together through their help.[12] What have your
boasted Apollonius or Esculapius to show as the fruit of theirs? What traces
have they left behind them?”[13] And not merely, he goes on to say, were
Christ’s miracles effectual, but effectual for good,—and such good was their
distinct purpose and aim; for this is the characteristic distinction between the
dealer in false shows of power and the true worker of divine works, that the
latter has ever the reformation of men in his eye, and seeks always to forward
this; while the first, whose own work is built upon fraud and lies, can have no
such purpose of destroying that very kingdom out of which he himself
springs.[14]

These, too, are marks of the true miracles, and marks very nearly connected with
the foregoing, that they are never mere freaks and plays of power, done as in
wantonness, and for their own sakes, with no need compelling, for show and
ostentation. With good right in that remarkable religious romance of earliest
Christian times, The Recognitions of Clement,[15] and in the cognate Clementine
Homilies,[16] Peter is made to draw a contrast between the wonderful works of
Christ and those alleged by the followers of Simon Magus to have been wrought by
their master. Speaking of the last, he asks what profit, what significance was
there in his dogs of brass or stone that barked, his talking statues, his
flights through the air, his transformations of himself now into a serpent, now
into a goat, his putting on of two faces, his rolling himself unhurt upon
burning coals, and the like?—which even if he had done, the works possessed no
meaning; they stood in relation to nothing; they were not, what each true
miracle is always more or less, redemptive acts; in other words, works not
merely of power but of grace, each one an index and a prophecy of the inner work
of man’s deliverance, which it accompanies and helps forward.[17] But, as we
should justly expect, it was preeminently thus with the miracles of Christ. Each
of these is in small, and upon one side or another, a partial and transient
realization of the great work, which He came that in the end He might accomplish
perfectly and for ever. They are all pledges, in that they are themselves
first-fruits, of his power; in each of them the word of salvation is
incorporated in an act of salvation. Only when regarded in this light do they
appear not merely as illustrious examples of his might, but also as glorious
manifestations of his holy love.

It is worth while to follow this a little in detail. What evils are they, which
hinder man from reaching the true end and aim of his creation, and from which he
needs a redemption? It may briefly be answered that they are sin in its moral
and in its physical manifestations. If we regard its moral manifestations, the
darkness of the understanding, the wild discords of the spiritual life, none
were such fearful examples of its tyranny as the demoniacs; they were special
objects, therefore, of the miraculous power of the Lord. Then if. we ask
ourselves what are the physical manifestations of sin; they are sicknesses of
all kinds, fevers, palsies, leprosies, blindness, each of these death beginning,
a partial death—and finally, the death absolute of the body. This region
therefore is fitly another, as it is the widest region, of his redemptive grace.
In the conquering and removing of these evils, He eminently bodied forth the
idea of Himself as the Redeemer of men. But besides these, sin has its
manifestations more purely physical; it reveals itself and its consequences in
the tumults and strife of the elements among themselves, as in the rebellion of
nature against man; for the destinies of the natural world were linked to the
destinies of man; and when he fell, he drew after him his whole inheritance,
which became subject to the same vanity as himself. Therefore do we behold the
Lord, Him in whom the lost prerogatives of the race were recovered, walking on
the stormy-waves, or quelling the menace of the sea with his word; incorporating
in these acts the deliverance of man from the rebellious powers of nature, which
had risen up against him, and instead of being his willing servants, were
oftentimes now his tyrants and his destroyers. These also were redemptive acts.
Even the two or three of his works which seem not to range themselves so readily
under any of these heads, yet are not indeed exceptions. For instance, the
multiplying of the bread easily shows itself as such. The original curse of sin
was the curse of barrenness,—the earth yielding hard-won and scanty returns to
the sweat and labour of man; but here this curse is removed, and in its stead
the primeval abundance for a moment reappears. All scantness and scarceness,
such as this lack of bread in the wilderness, such as that failing of the wine
at the marriage-feast, belonged not to man as his portion at the first; for all
the earth was appointed to serve him, and to pour the fulness of its treasure
into his lap. That he ever should hunger or thirst, that he should ever have
lack of anything, was a consequence of Adam’s sin,—fitly, therefore, removed by
Him, the second Adam, who came to give him back all which had been forfeited by
the first. The miracle, then, being this ethical act, and only to be, received
when it is so, and when it seals doctrines of holiness, the forgetting or
failing to bring forward that the divine miracle must, of necessity, move in
this sphere of redemption only, that the doctrine also is to try the miracle, as
well as the miracle to seal the doctrine, is a most dangerous omission on the
part of many who, in modern times, have written “Evidences of Christianity,” and
have found in the miracles wrought by its Founder, and in those mainly as acts
of power, well nigh the exclusive argument for its reception as a divine
revelation. On the place which these works should take in the array of proofs
for the things which we believe, there will be occasion, by and by, to speak.
For the present it may be sufficient to observe, that if men are taught that
they should believe in Christ upon no other grounds than because He attested his
claims by works of wonder, and that simply on this score they shall do so, how
shall they consistently refuse belief to any other, who shall come attesting his
claims by the same? We have here a paving of the way of Antichrist, for as we
know that he will have his signs. and wonders (2Th 2:9), so, if this argument is
good, he will have right on the score of these to claim the faith and allegiance
of men. But no; the miracle must witness for itself, and the doctrine must
witness for itself, and then, and then only, the first is capable of witnessing
for the second;[18] and those books of Christian evidences are utterly maimed
and imperfect, fraught with the most perilous consequences, which reverence in
the miracle little else but its power, and see in that alone what gives either
to it its attesting worth, or to the doctrine its authority as adequately
attested truth.

Footnotes

[1] Gerhard (Loc. Theoll. loc. xxiii. 11, 274): Antichristi miracula dicuntur
mendacia..... non tarn ratione forma, quasi omnia futura sint falsa et
adparentia duntaxat, quam ratione finis, quia scilicet ad confirmationem
mendacii erunt directa. Chrysostom, who at first explains the passage in the
other way, that they are “lying” quoad formam. (οὐδὲν ἀληθές, ἀλλὰ πρὸς ἀπάτην
τὰ πάντα), yet afterwards suggests the correcter explanation, ἢ διεψευσμένοις, ἢ
εἰς ψεῦδος ἄγουσι. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xx. 19) does not absolutely determine
for either. Solet ambigi, he says, utrum propterea dicta sint signa et prodigia
mendacii, quoniam mortales sensus per phantasmata decepturus sit [Antichristus];
ut quod non faciat, facere videatur; an quia ilia ipsa, etiamsi erunt vera
prodigia, ad mendacium pertrahent credituros non ea potuisse, nisi divinitus
fieri, virtutem diaboli nescientes. According to Aquinas they will only be
relative wonders (Summ. Theol. p. 1a, qu. 114, art. 4): Daemones possunt facere
miracula, quae scilicet homines mirantur, in quantum eorum facultatem et
cognitionem excedunt. Nam et unus homo in quantum facit aliquid quod est supra
facultatem et cognitionem alterius, ducit alium in admirationem sui operis, et
quodam modo miraculum videatur operari.

[2] The principal argument against this, is the fact that extraordinary feats of
exactly like kinds are done by the modern Egyptian charmers; some, which are
perfectly inexplicable, are recounted in the great French work upon Egypt, and
attested by keen and sharp-sighted observers. But taking into consideration all
which we know about these magicians, that they apparently have always
constituted an hereditary guild, that the charmer throws himself into an
ecstatic state, the question remains, how far there may not be here a wreck and
surviving fragment of a mightier system, how far the charmers do not even now,
consciously or unconsciously, bring themselves into relation with those evil
powers, which more or less remotely do at the last underlie every form of
heathen superstition. On this subject Hengstenberg (Die Bücher Mose’s und
Agypten, pp. 97-103) has much of interesting matter.

[3] Gregory the Great (Moral, xxxiv. 3) has an interesting passage on the
miracles of Antichrist. According to him, one of the great trials of the elect
will be, the far more glorious miracles which he shall show, than any which in
those last days the Church shall be allowed to accomplish. From the Church signs
and wonders will be well nigh or altogether withdrawn, while the greatest and
most startling of these will be at his beck.

[4] They have the veritas formae;, but not the veritas finis.

[5] See Augustine, Be Trim. iii. 7-9.

[6] Gregory the Great (Hom. iv. in Evang): Unde et adjuncta sunt
praedicationibus sanctis miraeula; ut fidem verbis daret virtus ostensa, et nova
facererit, qui nova praedicarent.

[7] As Gregory the Great says well, The Church does not so much deny, as despise
the miracles of heretics (Moral, xx. 7): Sancta Ecclesia, etiam si qua fiunt
haereticorum miracula, despicit; quia haec sanctitatis specimen non esse
cognoscit. On the contrary, the great act of faith is to believe, against, and
in despite of, them all, in what God has revealed to, and implanted in, the
soul, of the holy and the true; not to believe another Gospel, though an Angel
from heaven, or one transformed into such, should bring it (Deu 13:3; Gal 1:8
[8]); and instead of compelling assent, miracles are then rather warnings to us
that we keep aloof, for they tell us that not merely lies are here, for to that
the conscience bore witness already, but that he who utters them is more than a
common deceiver, is eminently “a liar and an Antichrist,” a false
prophet,—standing in more immediate connexion than other deceived and evil men
to the kingdom of darkness, so that Satan has given him his power (Rev 13:2), is
using him to be an especial organ of his, and to do a signal work for him

[9] Thus Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. II. xxxi. 3) calls such deceitful workers
“precursors of the great Dragon,” and speaks exactly this warning, saying, Quos
similiter atque ilium devitare oportet, et quanto majore phantasmate operari
dicuntur, tanto magis observare eos, quasi ma-jorum nequitiae spiritum
perceperint. And Tertullian, refuting Gnostics, who argued that there was no
need that Christ should have been prophesied of beforehand, since He could at
once prove his mission by his miracles [per documenta virtutum], replies (Adv.
Marc. iii. 3): At ego negabo solam hanc illi speciem ad testimonium competisse,
quam et Ipse postmodum exauctoravit. Siquidem edicens multos venturos, et signa
facturos, et virtutes magnas edituros, aversionem [eversionem?] etiam electorum;
nec ideo tamen admittendos, temerariam signorum et virtutum fidem ostendit, ut
etiam apud pseudocliristos facillimarum.

[10] “You complain,” says Dr. Arnold, in a letter to Dr. Hawkins (Life, vol. ii.
p. 220), “of those persons who judge of a revelation not by its evidence, but by
its substance. It has always seemed to me that its substance is a most essential
part of its evidence; and that miracles wrought in favour of what was foolish or
wicked, would only prove Manicheism. We are so perfectly ignorant of the unseen
world, that the character of any supernatural power can only be judged by the
moral character of the statements which it sanctions. Thus only can we tell
whether it be a revelation from God or from the Devil.”

[11] Thus Arnobius (Adv. Gen. 1:43) of the heathen wonder-workers: Quis enim hos
nesciat aut imminentia studere praenoscere, quae necessario (velint nolint) suis
ordinationibus veniunt? aut mortiferam immittere quibus libuerit tabem, aut
familiarium dirumpere caritates: aut sine clavibus reserare, quae clausa sunt;
aut ora silentio vincire, aut in curriculis equos debilitare, incitare, tardare;
aut uxoribus et liberis alienis (sive illi mares sint, sive foeminei generis)
inconcessi amoris flammas et furiales immittere cupiditates?. Cf. Irenaeus, Adv.
Hm. ii. xxxi. 2, 3.

[12] Con. Gels. ii. 51: Ἐθνῶν ὅλων συστάντων μετὰ τὰ σημεῖα αὐτῶν.

[13] Con. Gels. i. 67: Δεικνύτωσαν ἡμῖν Ἕλληνες τῶν κατειλεγμένων τινὸς
βιωφελὲς, λαμπρὸν, καὶ παρατεῖναν ἐπὶ τὰς ὕστερον γενεὰς, καὶ τηλικοῦτον ἔργον,
ὡς ἐμποιεῖν πιθανότητα τῷ περὶ αὐτῶν μύθῳ, λέγοντι ἀπὸ θείας αὐτοὺς γεγονέναι
σποράς .

[14] Con. Cels. i. 68; cf. Eusebius. Dem. Evang. iii. 6.

[15] 3:6 (Cotelerii Patt. Apost. vol. i. p. 529).

[16] Horn. ii. 32-44 (Cotelerii Patt. Apost. vol. i. p. 629).

[17] iii. 60 (Cotelerii Patt. Apost. vol. i. p. 529): Nam die, quaeso, quae
utilitas est ostendere statuas ambulantes? latrare aereos aut lapideos canes?
salire montes? volare per aërem? et alia his similia, quae dicitis fecisse
Simonem? Quae autem a Bono sunt, ad hominum salutem deferuntur; ut sunt ilia
quae fecit Dominus nosier, qui fecit caecos videre, fecit surdos audire; debiles
et claudps erexit, languores et daemones effugavit.....Ista ergo signa quae ad
salutem hominum prosunt, et aliquid boni hominibus confevunt, Malignus facere
non potest.Cf. Irenaeus, Con. Haer. II. xxxii. 3.

[18] Gerhard (Loc. Theoll. loc. xxiii. 11): Miracula sunt doctrinae tesserae ac
sigilla; quemadmodum igitur sigillum a literis avulsum nihil probat, ita quoque
miracula sine doctrinâ, nihil valent.


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  CHAPTER 5: 05-CHAPTER 4 THE EVANGELICAL, COMPARED WITH OTHER CYCLES OF MIRACLES
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Chapter 4 The Evangelical, Compared with other Cycles of Miracles 1. The
Miracles of the Of the Old Testament The miracles of our Lord and those of the
O. T. afford many interesting points of comparison; and this comparison is
equally instructive, whether we trace the points of likeness, or of unlikeness,
which exist between them. Thus, to note first a remarkable difference, we find
oftentimes the holy men of the old covenant bringing, if one may venture so to
speak, hardly, and with difficulty, the wonder-work to pass; it is not born
without pangs; there is sometimes a momentary pause, a seeming uncertainty about
the issue; while the miracles of Christ are always accomplished with the highest
ease; He speaks, and it is done. Thus Moses must plead and struggle with, God,
“Heal her now, O God, I beseech Thee,” ere the plague of leprosy is removed from
his sister, and not even so can he instantly win the boon (Num 12:13-15); but,
Christ heals a leper by his touch (Mat 8:3), or ten with even less than this,
merely by the power of his will and, at a distance[1] (Luk 17:14). Elijah must
pray long, and his servant go up. seven times, before tokens, of the rain appear
(1Ki 18:42-44); he stretches himself thrice on the child and cries unto the
Lord, and painfully wins back its life (1Ki 17:21-22); and Elisha, with yet more
of effort and only after partial failure (2Ki 4:31-35), restores the child of
the Shunammite to life. Christ, on the other hand, shows Himself the Lord of
the, living and the dead, raising the dead with as much ease as He performed the
commonest transactions of life.—In the miracles wrought by men, glorious acts of
faith as they are, for they are ever wrought in reliance on the strength and
faithfulness of God, who will follow up and seal his servant’s word, it is yet
possible for human impatience and human unbelief to break out. Thus Moses, God’s
organ for the work of power, speaks hastily and acts unbelievingly (Num 20:11).
It is needless to say of the Son, that his confidence ever remains the same,
that his Father hears Him always; no admixture of even the slightest human
infirmity mars the completeness of his work. Where the miracles are similar in
kind, his are larger and freer and more glorious. Elisha feeds a hundred men
with twenty loaves (2Ki 4:42-44), but He five thousand with five.[2 Others have
continually their instrument of power to which the wonder-working power is
linked. Thus Moses has his rod, his staff of wonder, to divide the Red Sea, and
to accomplish his other mighty acts, without which he is nothing (Exo 7:19; Exo
8:5; Exo 8:16; Exo 9:23; Exo 10:13; Exo 14:16, &c.); his tree to heal the bitter
waters (Exo 15:25); Elijah divides the river with his mantle (2Ki 2:8); Elisha
heals the spring with a cruse of salt (2Ki 2:20). But Christ accomplishes his
miracles simply by the agency of his word, or by a touch (Mat 20:34); or if He
takes anything as a channel of his healing power, it is from Himself He takes it
(Mark 7:33; Mark 8:23[3] or should He, as once He does, use any foreign medium
in part (John 9:6), yet by other miracles of like kind, in which He has recourse
to no such extraneous helps, He declares plainly that this was of free choice,
and not of any necessity. And, which is but another side of the same truth,
while the miracles of Moses, or of the Apostles, are ever done in the name of,
and with the attribution of the glory to, another, “Stand still and see the
salvation of the Lord, which He will show you” (Exo 14:13), “In the name of
Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6), “Eneas, Jesus Christ
maketh thee whole” (Acts 9:34. cf. Mark 16:17; Luk 10:17; John 14:10); his are
ever wrought in his own name and by a power immanent and inherent in Himself: “I
will, be thou clean” (Mat 8:3); “Thou deaf and dumb spirit, I charge thee come
out of him” (Mark 9:25); “Young man, I say unto thee, Arise” (Luk 7:14[4] Where
He prays, being about to perform one of his mighty works, his disciples, shall
learn even from his prayer itself that herein He is not asking for a power not
indwelling in Him, but indeed only testifying thus to the unbroken oneness of
his life with his Father’s (John 11:41-42[5]); just as on another occasion He
will not suffer his disciples to suppose that it is for any but for their sakes
that the testimony from heaven is borne unto Him (John 12:30). Thus needful was
it for them, thus, needful for all, that they should have great and exclusive
thoughts of Him, and should not class Him with any other, even the greatest and
holiest of the children of men.

These likenesses and unlikenesses are equally such as beforehand we should have
naturally expected. We should have expected the mighty works of either covenant
to be like, since the old and new form parts of one organic whole; and it is
ever God’s law that the lower should contain the germs and prophetic intimations
of the higher. We should expect them to be unlike, since the very idea of God’s
kingdom is that of progress, of a gradually fuller communication and larger
revelation of Himself to men, so that He who in times past spake unto the
fathers by the prophets, did at length speak unto us by his Son; and it was only
meet that this Son should be clothed with mightier powers than theirs, and
powers which He held not from another, but such rather as were evidently his own
in fee.[6] And this, too, explains a difference in the character of the miracles
of the two covenants, and how it comes to pass that those of the old wear
oftentimes a far severer aspect than the new. They are miracles, indeed, of
God’s grace, but yet also miracles of the Law, of that Law which worketh wrath,
which will teach, at all costs, the lesson of the awful holiness of God, his
hatred of the sinner’s sin,—a lesson which men had all need thoroughly to learn,
lest they should mistake and abuse the new lesson which a Saviour taught, of
God’s love at the same time toward the sinner himself. Miracles of the Law, they
preserve a character that accords with the Law; being oftentimes fearful
outbreaks of God’s anger against the ’unrighteousness of men; such for instance
are the signs and wonders in Egypt, many of those in the desert (Num 16:31; Lev
10:2), and some which the later prophets wrought (2Ki 1:10-12; 2Ki 2:23-25);
leprosies are inflicted (Num 12:10; 2Ch 26:19), not removed; a sound hand is
withered and dried up (1Ki 13:4), not a withered hand restored. Not but that
these works also are for the most part what our Lord’s are altogether and with
no single exception, namely, works of evident grace and mercy. I affirm this of
all our Lord’s miracles; for that single one, which seems an exception, the
cursing of the barren fig-tree, has no right really to be considered such.
Indeed it is difficult to see how our blessed Lord could more strikingly have
shown his purpose of preserving throughout for his miracles their character of
beneficence, or have witnessed for Himself that He was come not to destroy men’s
lives but to save them, than in this circumstance,—that when He needed in this
very love to declare, not in word only but in act, what would be the
consequences of an obstinate unfruitfulness and resistance to his grace, and
thus to make manifest the severer side of his ministry, He should have chosen
for the showing out of this, not one among all the sinners who were about Him,
but should rather have displayed his power upon a tree, which, itself incapable
of feeling, might yet effectually serve as a sign and warning to men. He will
not allow even a single exception to the rule of grace and love.[7] When He
blesses, it is men; but when He smites, it is an unfeeling tree.[8] More upon
this matter must be deferred till the time comes for treating that miracle in
its order.

It is also noticeable that the region in which the miracles of the O. T. chiefly
move, is that of external nature; they are the cleaving of the sea (Exo 14:21),
or of a river (Jos 3:14; 2Ki 2:8; 2Ki 2:14), yawnings of the earth (Num 16:31),
fire falling down from heaven (1Ki 18:38; 2Ki 1:10; 2Ki 1:12), furnaces which
have lost their power to consume (Daniel 3), wild-beasts which have laid aside
their inborn fierceness in whole (Dan 6:18; Dan 6:22), or in part (1Ki 13:24;
1Ki 13:28), and the like. Not of course that they are exclusively these; but
this nature is the haunt and main region of the miracle in the O. T., as in the
New it is mainly the sphere of man’s life in which it is at home. And
consistently with this, the earlier miracles, done as the greater number of them
were, in the presence of the giant powers of heathendom, have oftentimes a
colossal character: those powers of the world are strong, but the God of Israel
will show Himself to be stronger yet. Thus it is with the miracles of Egypt, the
miracles of Babylon: they are miracles eminently of strength;[9] for under the
influence of the great nature-worships of those lands, all religion had assumed
a colossal grandeur. Compared with pur Lord’s works wrought in the days of his
flesh, those were the whirlwind and the fire, and his as the. still small voice
which followed. In that old time God was teaching his people, He was teaching
also the nations with whom his people were brought wonderfully into contact,
that He who had entered into covenant with one among all the nations, was not
one God among many, the God of the hills, or the God of the plains (1Ki 20:23),
but that the God of Israel was the Lord of the whole earth. But Israel at the
time of the Incarnation had thoroughly learned that lesson, much else as it had
still to learn: and the whole civilized world had practically outgrown
polytheism, however as the popular superstition it may have lingered still. And
thus the works of our Lord, though they bear not on their front the imposing
character which did those of old, yet contain higher and deeper truths. They are
eminently miracles of the Incarnation, of the Son of God who had taken our
flesh, and who, taking, would heal it. They have predominantly a relation to
man’s body and his spirit. Miracles of nature assume now altogether a
subordinate place: they still survive, even as we could have ill afforded wholly
to have lost them; for this region of nature must still be claimed as part of
Christ’s dominion, though not its chiefest or its noblest province. But man, and
not nature, is now the main subject of these mighty powers; and thus it comes to
pass that, with less of outward pomp, less to startle and amaze, the new have a
yet deeper inward significance than the old.[10] 2. The Miracles of the
Apocryphal Gospels The apocryphal gospels, abject productions as, whether
contemplated in a literary or moral point of view, they must be allowed to be,
are yet instructive in this respect, that they show us what manner of gospels
were the result, when men drew from their own fancy, and devised Christs of
their own, instead of resting upon the basis of historic truth, and delivering
to the world faithful records of Him who indeed had lived and died among them.
Here, as ever, the glory of the true comes out into strongest light by its
comparison with the falsa But in nothing, perhaps, are these apocryphal gospels
more worthy of note, than in the difference between the main features of their
miracles and those of the canonical Gospels. Thus in the canonical, the miracle
is indeed essential, yet, at the same time, ever subordinated to the doctrine
which it confirms,—a link in the great chain of God’s manifestation of Himself
to men; its ethical significance never falls into the background, but the
wonder-work of grace and power has, in every case where this can find room,
nearer or remoter reference to the moral condition of the person or persons in
whose behalf it is wrought. The miracles ever lead us off from themselves to
their Author; they appear as emanations from the glory of the Son of God; but it
is in Him we rest, and not in them; they are but the halo round Him, and have
their worth from Him, not contrariwise, He from them. They are held, too,
together by his strong and central personality, which does not leave them a
conglomerate of marvellous anecdotes accidentally heaped together, but parts of
a great organic whole, of which every part is in vital coherence with all other.
But it is altogether otherwise in these apocryphal narratives. To say that the
miracles occupy in them the foremost place would very inadequately express the
facts of the case. They are everything. Some of these so-called histories are
nothing else but a string. of these; which yet (and this too is singularly
characteristic) stand wholly disconnected from the ministry of Christ. Not one
of them belongs to the period after his Baptism, but they are all miracles of
the Infancy,—in other words, of that time whereof the canonical history relates
no miracle, and not merely does not relate any, but is remarkably at pains to
tell us that during it no miracle was wrought, the miracle in Cana of Galilee
being his first (John 2:21).

It follows of necessity that they are never seals of a word and doctrine which
has gone before; they are never “signs,” but at the best wonders and portents.
Any high purpose and aim is clearly altogether absent from them. It is never
felt that the writer is writing out of any higher motive than to excite and feed
a childish love of the marvellous, never that he could say, “These are written
that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that
believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:31). Indeed, so far from
having a religious, they are often wanting in a moral element. The Lord Jesus
appears in them as a wayward, capricious, passionate child; to be feared indeed,
seeing that He is furnished with such formidable powers of avenging every wrong
or accidental injury which He meets; and so bearing Himself, that the request
which the parents of some other children are represented as making, that He may
be kept within the house, for He brings harm and mischief wherever He comes, is
perfectly justified by the facts.

It may be well to cite a few examples in proof, however harshly some of them may
jar on the Christian ear. Thus some children refuse to play with Him, hiding
themselves from Him; He pursues and turns them into kids.[11] Another child by
accident runs against Him and throws Him down; whereupon He, being
exasperated,[12] exclaims, “As thou hast made me to fall, so shalt thou fall and
not rise;” at the same hour the child fell down and expired.[13] He has a
dispute with the master who is teaching Him letters, concerning the order in
which He shall go through the Hebrew alphabet, and his master strikes Him;
whereupon Jesus curses him, and straightway his arm is withered, and he falls on
his face and dies.[14] This goes on, till at length Joseph says to Mary,
“Henceforward let us keep Him within doors, for whosoever sets himself against
Him, perishes.” His passionate readiness to “avenge Himself shows itself at the
very earliest age. At five years old He has made a pool of water, and is
moulding sparrows from the clay. Another child, the son of a scribe, displeased
that He should do this on the Sabbath, opens the sluices of his pool and lets
out the water. On this Jesus is indignant, gives him many injurious names, and
causes him to wither and wholly dry up with his curse.[15]

Such is the image which the authors of these books give us of the holy child
Jesus;—and no wonder; for man is not only unable to realize the perfect, he is
unable to conceive it. The idea is as much a gift, as the power to realize that
idea. Even the miracles which are not of this revolting character are childish
tricks, like the tricks of a conjuror, never solemn acts of power and love.
Jesus enters the shop of a dyer, who has received various cloths from various
persons to be dyed of divers colours. In the absence of the master, He throws
them all into the dying vat together, and when the dyer returns and
remonstrates, draws them out of the vat, each dyed according to the colour which
was enjoined.[16] He and some other children make birds and animals of clay;
while each is boasting the superiority of his work, Jesus says, “I will cause
those which I have made to go;”— which they do, the animals leaping and the
birds flying, and at his bidding returning, and eating and drinking from his
hand.[17] While yet an infant at his mother’s breast, He bids a palm-tree to
stoop that she may pluck the fruits; it obeys, and only returns to its position
at his command.[18] Another time his mother sends Him to the well for water; the
pitcher breaks, and He brings the water in his cloak.[19] And as the miracles
which He does, so those that are done in regard of Him, are idle or monstrous;
the ox and ass worshipping Him, a new-born infant in the crib, may serve for an
example.[20] In all these, as will be observed, the idea of redemptive acts
altogether falls out of sight; they are none of them the outward clothing of the
inward facts of man’s redemption. Of course it is not meant to be affirmed that
miracles of healing and of grace are altogether wanting in these books;[21] that
would evidently have been incompatible with any idea of a Redeemer; but only
that they do not present to us any clear and consistent image of a Saviour full
of grace and power, but an image rather, continually distorted and defaced by
lines of passion and caprice, of peevishness and anger. The most striking,
perhaps, of the miracles related in regard of the child Jesus, is that of the
falling down of the idols of Egypt at his presence in the land; for it has in it
something of a deeper significance, as a symbol and prophecy of the overthrow of
the idol worship of the world by Him who was now coming into the world.[22] The
lions and the leopards gathering harmlessly round Him as He passed through the
desert on the way to Egypt, is again not alien to the true spirit of the Gospel,
and has its analogy in the words of St. Mark, that He “was with the wild-beasts”
(i. 13); words which certainly are not introduced merely to enhance the
savageness of the wilderness where He spent those forty days of temptation, but
are meant as a hint to us that in Him, the new head of the race, the second
Adam, the Paradisaical state was once more given back (Gen 1:28). But with a
very few such partial exceptions as these, the apocryphal gospels are a Darren
and dreary waste, of wonders without object or aim; and only instructive as
making us strongly to feel, more strongly than but for these examples we might
have felt, how needful are other factors besides power for the producing of a
true miracle; that wisdom and love must be there also; that where men conceive
of power as its chiefest element, they give us only a hateful mockery of the
divine. Had a Christ such as these gospels portray actually lived upon the
earth, he had been no more than a potent and wayward magician, from whom all men
would have shrunk with a natural instinct of distrust and fear.

3. The Later, or Ecclesiastical, Miracles

It would plainly lead much too far from the subject in hand to enter into any
detailed examination of the authority upon which the later, or, as they may be
conveniently termed, the ecclesiastical, miracles come to us. Yet a few words
must of necessity find place concerning the permanent miraculous gifts which
have been claimed for the Church as her rightful heritage, equally by some who
have gloried in their presumed presence, and by others who have lamented their
absence—by those alike who have seen in their presence the evidences of her
sanctity, or in their absence, of her degeneracy and fall. It is not my belief
that she has this gift of working miracles, nor yet that she was intended to
have, and only through her own unfaithfulness has lost, it; nor that her Lord
has abridged her of aught that, would have made her strong and glorious in not
endowing her with powers such as these, With reasons enough for humbling
herself, yet I do not believe that among those reasons is to be accounted her
inability to perform these works that should transcend nature. So many in our
own day have arrived at. a directly opposite conclusion, that it will be needful
shortly to justify the opinion here exprest. And first, as a strong presumption
against the intended continuance of these powers in the Church, may be taken the
analogies derived from the earlier history of God’s dealings with his people. We
do not find the miracles sown broadcast over the whole O. T. history, but they
all cluster round a very few eminent persons, and have reference to certain
great epochs and crises of the kingdom of God. Abraham, the father of the
faithful,—David, the theocratic king,—Daniel, the “man greatly beloved,” are
alike entirely without them; that is, they do no miracles; such may be
accomplished in behalf of them, but they themselves accomplish none. In fact
there are but two great outbursts of these; the first, at the establishing of
the kingdom under Moses and Joshua, on which occasion it is at once evident that
they could not have been wanting; the second in the time of Elijah and Elisha;
and then also there was utmost need, when it was a question whether the court
religion which the apostate kings of Israel had set up, should not quite
overbear the true worship of Jehovah, when the Levitical priesthood was
abolished, and the faithful were hut a scattered few among the ten tribes. Then,
in that decisive epoch of the kingdom’s history, the two great prophets, they
too in a subordinate sense the beginners of a new period, arose, equipped with
powers which should witness that He whose servants they were, was the God of
Israel, however Israel might refuse to acknowledge Him. There is in all this an
entire absence of prodigality in the use of miracles; they are ultimate
resources, reserved for the great needs of God’s kingdom, not its daily
incidents; they are not cheap off-hand expedients, which may always be appealed
to, but come only into play when nothing else would have supplied their room.
How unlike this moderation to the wasteful expenditure of miracles in the
legends of the middle ages! There no perplexity can occur so trifling that a
miracle will not be brought in to solve it; there is almost no saint, certainly
no distinguished one, without his nimbus of miracles around his head; they are
adorned with these in rivalry with one another, in rivalry with Christ Himself;
no acknowledgment like this, “John did no miracle” (John 10:41), in any of the
records of their lives finding place.

We must add to this the declarations of Scripture, which I have already entered
on at large, concerning the object of miracles, that they are for the confirming
the word by signs following, for authenticating a message as being from
heaven—that signs are for the unbelieving (1Co 14:22). What do they then in a
Christendom? It may indeed be answered, that in it are unbelievers still; yet
not in the sense in which St. Paul uses the word, for he would designate not the
positively unbelieving, not those that in heart and will are estranged from the
truth, but the negatively, and that, because the truth has never yet
sufficiently accredited itself to them; the ἄπιστοι, not the ἀπειθεῖς. Signs are
not for these last, the positively unbelieving, since, as we have seen, they
will exercise no power over those who harden themselves against the truth;—such
will resist or evade them as surely as they will resist or evade every other
witness of God’s presence -in the world;—but for the unbelieving who are such by
no fault of their own, for them to whom the truth is now coming for the first
time. And if not even for. them now,—as they exist, for instance, in a heathen
land,—we may sufficiently account for this by the fact, that the Church of
Christ, with its immense and evident superiorities of all kinds over everything
with which it is brought in contact, and some portions of which superiority
every man must recognize, is itself now the great witness and proof of the.
truth which it delivers. That truth, therefore, has no longer need to vindicate
itself by an appeal to something else; but the position which it has won in the
very forefront of the world is itself its vindication now, and suffices to give
it a first claim on every man’s attention. And then further, all that we might
ourselves beforehand presume from the analogy of external things leads us to
the. same conclusions. We find all beginning to be wonderful;—to be under laws
different from, and higher than, those, which regulate ulterior progress. Thus
the powers evermore at work for the upholding the natural world, would have been
manifestly insufficient, for its first creation; there were other which must
have presided at its birth, but which now, having done their work, have fallen
back, and left it. to its ordinary development. The multitudinous races of
animals which people the earth, and of plants which clothe it, needed infinitely
more for their first production than suffices for their present upholding. It is
only according to the analogies of that which thus everywhere surrounds, us, to
presume that it was even. so with the beginnings of the spiritual creation—the
Christian Church. It is unquestionably so in the beginning of that new creation
in any single heart. Then, in the regeneration, the strongest tendencies of the
old nature are overborne; the impossible has become possible, in some measure
easy; by a mighty wonder-stroke of grace, the polarity in the. man is shifted;
the flesh, that was the positive pole, has become the negative, and the spirit,
which was before the negative, is henceforth the positive. Shall we count it
strange, then, that the coming in of a new order, not into a single heart, but
into the entire world—a new order bursting forcibly through the bonds and
hindrances of the old, should have been wonderful? It had been inexplicable if
it had been otherwise. The son of Joseph might have lived and died, and done no
miracles: but the Virgin-born, the Son of the Most Highest, Himself the middle
point of all wonder,—for Him to have done none, herein, indeed, had been the
most marvellous thing of all. But this new order, having not only declared but
constituted itself, having asserted that it is not of any inevitable necessity
bound by the heavy laws of the old, henceforth submits itself in outward things,
and for the present time, to those laws. All its true glory, which is its inward
glory, it retains; but these powers, which are not the gift—for Christ Himself
is the gift—but the signs of the gift, it foregoes. “Miracles,” says Fuller,
“are the swaddling clothes of the infant Churches;” and, we may add, not the
garments of the full grown. They were as the proclamation that the king was
mounting his throne; who, however, is not proclaimed every day, but only at his
accession; when he sits acknowledged on his throne, the proclamation ceases.
They were as the bright clouds which gather round, and announce the sun at his
first appearing: his mid-day splendour, though as full, and indeed fuller, of
light and heat, knows not those bright heralds and harbingers of his rising. Or
they may be likened to the temporary framework on which the arch is, rounded,
which framework is taken down so soon as that is completed. That the Church has
had these wonders,—that its first birth was, like that of its wondrous Founder,
wonderful,—of this it preserves a record and attestation in its Scriptures of
truth. The miracles recorded there live for the Church; they are as much present
witnesses for Christ to us now as to them who actually saw them with their eyes.
For they were done once, that they might be believed always; that we, having in
the Gospels the lively representation of our Lord portrayed for us, might as
surely believe that He was the ruler of nature, the healer of the body, the Lord
of life and of death, as though we had actually ourselves seen Him allay a
storm, or heal a leper, or raise one dead.

Moreover, a very large proportion of the later miracles presented to our belief
bear inward marks of spuriousness. The miracles of Scripture,—and among these,
not so much the miracles of the Old Covenant as the miracles of Christ and his
Apostles, being the miracles of that highest and latest dispensation under which
we live,—we have a right to consider as normal, in their chief features at
least, for all future miracles, if such were to continue in the Church. The
details, the local colouring, might be different, and there would be no need to
be perplexed at such a difference appearing; yet the later must not, in their
inner spirit, be totally unlike the earlier, or they will carry the sentence of
condemnation on their front. They must not, for instance, lead us back under the
bondage of the senses, while those other were ever framed to release from that
bondage. They must not be aimless and objectless, fantastic freaks of power,
while those had every one of them a meaning and distinct ethical aim,—were
bridges by which Christ found access from men’s bodies to their
souls,—manifestations of his glory, that men might be drawn to the glory itself.
They must not be ludicrous and grotesque, saintly jests, while those were
evermore reverend and solemn and awful. And lastly, they must not be seals and
witnesses to aught which the conscience, enlightened by the Word and Spirit of
God,—whereunto is the ultimate appeal, and which stands above the miracle, and
not beneath it,—protests against as untrue (the innumerable Romish miracles
which attest transubstantiation), or as error largely mingling with the truth
(the miracles which go to uphold the whole Romish system), those other having
set their seal only to the absolutely true. Miracles with these marks upon them,
we are bound, by all which we hold most sacred, by all which the Word of God has
taught us, to reject and to refuse. It is for the reader, tolerably acquainted
with the Church-history of the Middle Ages, to judge how many of its miracles
will, if these tests be acknowledged and applied, at once fall away, and,
failing to fulfil these primary conditions, will have no right even to be
considered any more.[23]

Very interesting is it to observe how the men who in some sort fell in with the
prevailing tendencies of their age (for, indeed, who escapes them?), yet did
ever, in their higher moods, with truest Christian insight, witness against
those very tendencies by which they, with the rest of their contemporaries, were
more or less borne away. Thus was it with regard to the over-valuing of
miracles, the counting them the only evidences of an exalted sanctity. Against
this what a continual testimony in all ages of the Church was borne; not,
indeed, sufficient to arrest the progress of an error, into which the
sense-bound generations of men only too naturally fall, yet showing that the
Church herself was ever conscious that the holy life was in the sight of God of
higher price than the wonderful works—that love is the greatest miracle of
all—that to overcome the world, this is the greatest manifestation of the power
of Christ in his servants.[24] Upon this subject one passage from Chrysostom, in
place of the many that might be quoted, and even that greatly abridged, must
suffice.[25] He is rebuking the faithful, that now, when their numbers were so
large, they did so little to leaven the world, and this, when the Apostles, who
were but twelve, effected so much; and he puts aside the excuse, “But they had
miracles at command,” not with the answer, “So have we;” but in this language:
“How long shall we use their miracles as a pretext for our sloth? ’And what was
it then,’ you say, ’which made the Apostles so great?’ I answer, This, that they
contemned money; that they trampled on vain-glory; that they renounced the
world. If they had not done thus, but had been slaves of their passions, though
they had raised a thousand dead, they would not merely have profited nothing,
but would have been counted as impostors. What miracle did John, who reformed so
many cities, of whom yet it is expressly said, that he did no sign? And thou, if
thou hadst thy choice, to raise the dead in the name of Christ, or thyself to
die for his name, which wouldst thou choose? Would it not be plainly the latter?
And yet that were a miracle, and this is but a work. And if one gave thee the
choice of turning all grass into gold, or being able to despise all gold as
grass, wouldst thou not choose the last? And rightly; for by this last wouldst
thou most effectually draw men to the truth. This is not my doctrine, but the
blessed Paul’s: for when he had said, ’Covet earnestly the best gifts.’ and then
added, ’yet show I unto you a more excellent way,’ he did not adduce miracles,
but love, as the root of all good things.”[26]

Few points present greater difficulties than, the attempt to fix accurately the
moment when these miraculous powers were withdrawn from the Church, and it
entered into its permanent state, with only its present miracles of grace and
the record of its past miracles of power; instead of having actually going i
forward in the midst of it those miracles of power as well, with which it first
asserted itself in the world. This is difficult, because it is difficult to say
at what precise moment the Church was no longer in the act of becoming, but
contemplated in the mind of God as now actually being; when to the wisdom of God
it appeared that He had adequately confirmed the word with signs following, and
that this framework might be withdrawn from the completed arch, these props and
strengthenings of the infant plant might safely be removed from the hardier
tree.[27] That their retrocession was gradual, that this mighty tide of power
should have ebbed only by degrees,[28] this was what was to be looked for in
that spiritual world which, like God’s natural world, is free from all harsh and
abrupt transitions, in which each line melts imperceptibly into the next. We can
conceive the order of retrocession to have been in this way; that divine power
which dwelt in all its fulness and intensity in Christ, was first divided among
his Apostles, who, therefore, individually brought forth fewer and smaller works
than their Lord. It was again from them further subdivided among the
ever-multiplying numbers of the Church, who, consequently, possessed not these
gifts in the same intensity and plenitude as did the twelve. Yet must it always
be remembered that these receding gifts were ever helping to form that which
should be their own substitute; that if they were waning, that which was to
supply their room was ever waxing,—that they only waned as that other waxed; the
flower dropped off only as the fruit was being formed. If those wonders of a
first creation have left us, yet this was not so, till they could bequeath in
their stead the standing wonder of a Church,[29] itself a wonder, and embracing
manifold wonders in its bosom.[30] For are not the laws of the spiritual worlds
as they are ever working in the midst of us, a continual wonder? What is the new
birth in Baptism, and the communion of Christ’s body and blood in the Holy
Eucharist, and the life of God in the soul, and a kingdom of heaven in the
world, what are these but every one of them wonders?[31] wonders in this like
the wonders of ordinary nature, as distinguished from those which accompany a
new incoming of power, that they are under a law which we can anticipate; that
they conform to an absolute order, and one the course of which we can
understand;—but not therefore the less divine.”[32] How meanly do we esteem of a
Church, of its marvellous gifts, of the powers of the coming world which are
working within it, of its “Word, of its Sacraments, when it seems to us a small
thing that in it men are new born, raised from the death of sin to the life of
righteousness, the eyes of their understanding enlightened, and their ears
opened, unless we can tell of more visible and sensuous wonders as well. It is
as though the heavens should not declare, to us the glory of God, nor the
firmament show us his handiwork, except at some single moment such as that when
the sun was standing still upon Gibeon, and the moon in Ajalon.

While then it does not greatly concern us to know when this power was withdrawn,
what does vitally concern us is, that we suffer not these carnal desires after
miracles, as though they were necessarily saints who had them, and they but
imperfect Christians who were without them, as though the Church were incomplete
and spiritually impoverished which could not show them, to rise up in our
hearts; being, as they are, ever ready to rise up in the natural heart of man,
to which power is so much dearer than holiness. There is no surer proof than the
utterance of feelings such as these, that the true glory of the Church is hidden
from our eyes—no sadder sign that some of its outward trappings and ornaments
have caught our fancy; and not the fact that it is all-glorious within, taken
possession of our hearts and minds. It is, indeed, an ominous token as regards
our own spiritual estate, for it argues the little which we ourselves have known
of the miracles of grace, when they seem to us poor and pale, and only the
miracles of power have any attraction in our eyes.

Footnotes [1] Cyril of Alexandria. (Cramer’s Cat., in Luc. v. 12) has observed
and drawn out the contrast.

[2] Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 35): Aliter Dominus per semet ipsum operatur,
sive per Filium; aliter per prophetas famulos suos; maxime documenta virtutis et
potestatis; quae ut clariora et validiora, qua propria, distare a vicariis fas
est.

[3] In the East the Mahometans had probably a sense of the fitness of this,
namely, that Christ should find all in Himself, when they made his healing
virtue to have resided in his breath (Tholuck, Bliithensamml. aus d. Morgenl.
Myst. p. 62), to which also they were led as being the purest and least material
effluence of the body (cf. John 20:22), So Abgarus, in the apocryphal letter
which bears his name, magnifies Christ’s healings, in that they were done ἄνευ
φαρμάκων καὶ βοτανῶν. Arnobius too (Adv. Gent. i. 43, 44, 48, 52) lays great
stress upon the point, that all which He did was done sine ullis adminiculis,
reruin; he. is comparing, it is true, our Lord’s miracles with the lying wonders
of the γόητες, not with the only relatively inferior of the O.T.) [4] See on all
this subject Pearson, On the Creed, Art. 2; and Gerhard’s Loc. Theoll. loc. iv.
5, 59.).

[5] Cf. Ambrose, Be Fide, iii. 4.

[6] Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iii. passim) brings this out in a very interesting
manner; and Eusebius (Dem. Evang. iii. 2) traces in the same way the
parallelisms between the life of Moses and of Christ. They supposed that in so
doing they were, if anything, confirming the truth of either, though now the
assailants of Revelation will have it that these coincidences are only
calculated to cast suspicion upon both.

[7] Compare Lord Bacon’s excellent remarks, in his Meditationes Sacrae, where on
the words, Bene omnia fecit (Mark 7:37), in which he sees rightly an allusion to
Gen 1:31, he says: Verus plausus: Deus cum universa crearet, vidit quod singula
et omnia erant bona himis. Deus Verbum in miraculis quae edidit (omne autem
miraculum est nova creatio, et non ex lege primae creationis) nil facere voluit,
quod non gratiam et beneficentiam omnino spiraret. Moses edidit miracula, et
profligavit AEgyptios pestibus multis: Elias edidit, et occlusit coelum ne
plueret super terram; et rursus eduxit de coelo ignem Dei super duces et
cohortes: Elizaeus edidit, et evocavit ursas e deserto, quae laniarent
impuberes; Petrus Ananiam sacrilegum hypocritam morte, Paulus Elymam magum
caecitate, percussit: sed nihil hujusmodi fecit Jesus. Descendit super eum
Spiritus in formâ columbae; de quo dixit, Nescitis cujus Spiritus sitis.
Spiritus Jesu, spiritus columbinus: fuerunt illi servi Dei tanquam boves Dei
triturantes granum, et conculcantes paleam; sed Jesus agnus Dei sine irâ et
judiciis. Omnia ejus miracula circa corpus humanum, et doctrina ejus circa
animam humanam. Indiget corpus hominis alimento, defensione ab externis, et curâ
Ille multitudinem piscium in retibus congregavit, ut uberiorem victum honrinibus
praeberet: ille alimenturn aquae in dignius alimentum vini ad exhilarandum cor
hominis convertit; ille ficum quod officio suo ad quod destinatum fuit, ad cibum
hominis videlicet, non fungeretur, arefieri jussit: ille penuriam panum et
piscium ad alendum exercitum populi dilatavit: ille ventos, quod navigantibus
minarentur, corripuit......Nullum miraculum judicii, omnia beneficentiae, et
circa corpus humanum.

[8] It is from this point of view that we should explain our Saviour’s rebuke to
the sons of Zebedee, when they wanted to call down fire from heaven on a village
of the Samaritans, “as Elias did” (Luk 9:54); to repeat, that is, an O. T.
miracle. Christ’s answer, “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of,” is not,
as it is often explained, “Ye are mistaking a spirit of bitter zeal for a spirit
of love to Me; “—but the rebuke is gentler, “Ye are mistaking and confounding
the different standing-points of the old and new covenant, taking your stand
upon the old, that of an avenging righteousness, when you should rejoice to take
it upon the new, that of a forgiving love.”

[9] We find the false Christs, who were so plentiful about the time of our
Lord’s coming, professing and promising to do exactly the same works as those
wrought of yore,—to repeat even on a larger scale these O. -T. miracles. Thus
“that Egyptian” whom the Roman tribune supposed that he saw in Paul (Acts
21:38), and of whom Josephus gives us a fuller account (Antt. xx. 8, 6), led a
tumultuous crowd to the Mount of Olives, promising to show them from thence how,
as a second and a greater Joshua, he would cause the walls, not of Jericho, but
of Jerusalem, to fall to the ground at his bidding (see Vitringa’s interesting
Essay, De Signis a Messid edendis, in his Obss. Sac. vol. i. p. 482.

[10] Julian the Apostate had indeed so little an eye for the glory of such works
as these, that in one place he says (Cyril, Adv. Jul. vi.), Jesus did nothing
wonderful, “unless any should esteem that to have healed some lame and blind,
and exorcised some demoniacs in villages like Bethsaida and Bethany, were very
wonderful works.”

[11] Evang. Infant. 40, in Thilo’s Cod. Apocr. p. 115; to whose admirable
edition of the apocryphal gospels the references in this section are made
throughout.

[12] Πικρανθείς

[13] Evang. Infant. 47, p. 123; cf. Evang. Thorn. 4, p. 284.

[14] Evang. Infant. 49, p. 125. In the Evang. Thorn. 14, p. 307, he only-falls
into a swoon, and something afterwards pleasing Jesus (15), he raises him up
again.

[15] Evang. Thorn. 3, p. 282. This appears with variations in the Evang. Infant.
46, p. 122.

[16] Evang. Infant. 37, p. 111.

[17] Evang. Infant. 36 [18] Evang. Infant. 37, p. 395 [19] Evang. Infant. 37, p.
121.

[20] Evang. Infant. 37, p. 382.

[21] For instance, Simon the Canaanite (Evang. Infant. 37, p. 117) is healed,
while yet a child, of the bite of a serpent. Yet even in miracles such as this
there is always something that will not let us forget that we are moving in
another world from that in which the sacred Evangelists place us.

[22] Evang. Infant. 10-12, pp. 75-77; cf. l. Sam. 5:3, 4.

[23] The results are singularly curious, which sometimes are come to through the
following up to their first sources the biographies of eminent Romish saints.
Tholuck has done this in regard of Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier; and to
him (Verm. Schrift. pp. 50-57) I am mainly indebted for the materials of the
following note. There are few, perhaps, who have been surrounded with such a
halo of wonders as the two great pillars of the order of the Jesuits, Loyola and
Xavier. Upwards of two hundred miracles of Loyola were laid before the Pope,
when his canonization was in question,—miracles beside which, those of our Lord
shrink into insignificance. If Christ by his word and look rebuked and expelled
demons, Ignatius did the same by a letter. If Christ walked once upon the sea,
Ignatius many times in the air. If Christ, by his shining countenance and
glistening garments, once amazed his disciples, Ignatius did it frequently, and,
entering into dark chambers, could, by his presence, light them up as with
candles. If the sacred history tells of three persons whom Christ raised from
the dead, the number which Xavier raised exceeds all count. In like manner the
miracles of his great namesake of Assisi rivalled, when they did not leave
behind, those of Christ. The author of the Liber Conformitatum, writing of him
less than a century after his death, brings out these conformities of the Master
and the servant: Hie sicut Jesus aquam in vinum convertit, panes multiplicavit,
et de naviculâ in medio fluctuum maris miraculose immotâ, per se a terrâ
abductâ, docuit turbas audientes in littore. Huic omnis creatura quasi ad nutum
videbatur parere, ac si in ipso esset status innocentise restitutus. Et ut
caetera taceam: caecos illuminavit; surdos, claudos, paralyticos, omnium
infirmitatum generibus laborantes curavit, leprosos mundavit; daemones
effugavit; captivos eripuit; naufragis succurrit, et quam plures mortuos
suscitavit (Gieseler, Lehrbuch der Kirchengesehichte, vol. ii. part II. p. 355).
But to return to Ignatius, and the historic evidence of his miracles.
Ribadeneira, from early youth his scholar and companion, published, fifteen
years after his death, that is in 1572, a life of his departed master and
friend; which book appeared again in 1587, augmented with many additional
circumstances communicated by persons who had lived in familiar intercourse with
Ignatius while living, and who had most intimate opportunities of being
acquainted with all the facts of his life (gravissimi viri et Ignatio valde
familiares). Now it is sufficiently remarkable that neither in the first, nor
yet in the second so greatly enlarged and corrected edition, does the slightest
trace of a miracle appear. On the contrary, the biographer enters into a
lengthened discussion of the reasons why it did not please God that any signal
miracles should be wrought by this eminent servant of his:—Sed dicat aliquis, si
haec vera sunt, ut profecto sunt, quid causae est, quam ob rem illius sanctitas
minus est testata miraculis, et, ut multorum Sanctorum vita, signis declarata,
virtutumque operationibus insignita? Cui ego; Quis cognovit sensum Domini, aut
quis conciliarius ejus fuit? Ille enim est qui facit mirabilia magna solus,
propterea illius tantummodo infinitâ virtute fieri possunt, quaecumque aut
naturae vim aut modum excedunt. Et ut solus ille haec potest efficere, ita ille
solus novit, quo loco, quo tempore miracula et quorum precibus facienda sint.
Sed tamen neque. omnes sancti viri miraculis excelluerunt; neque qui illorum aut
magnitudine praestiterunt, aut copiâ, idcirco reliquos sanctitate superarunt.
Non enim sanctitas cujusque signis, sed caritate aestimanda est. Two years
before the appearance of the second edition of this work, that is, in 1585,
Maffei, styled the Jesuit Livy, published at Rome his work, De Vita et Moribus
S. Ignatii Loyola Libri tres; and neither in this is aught related of the great
founder of the Order, which deserves the name of a miracle, however there may be
here some” nearer approach to such than in the earlier biography—remarkable
intimations, as of the death or recovery of friends, glimpses of their beatified
state, ecstatic visions in which Christ appeared to him; and even of these, the
list is introduced in a half-apologetic tone, which shows that he has by no
means thoroughly convinced himself of the historic accuracy of those things
which he is about to relate: Non pauca de eodem admirabilia praedicantur, quorum
aliqua nobis hoc loco exponere visum est. But with miracles infinitely more
astounding and more numerous the Romish church has surrounded his great scholar,
Francis Xavier. Miracles were as his daily food; to raise the dead was as common
as to heal the sick. Even the very boys who served him as catechists received
and exercised a similar power of working wonders. Now there are, I believe, no
historic documents whatever, laying claim to an ordinary measure of credibility,
which profess to vouch for these. And in addition to this, we have a series of
letters written by this great apostle to the heathen, out of the midst of his
work in the far East (S. Francisci Xaverii Epistolarum Libri tres; Pragae,
1750); letters which prove him indeed to have been one of the discreetest, as he
was one of the most fervent, preachers of Christ that ever lived, and which are
full of admirable hints for the missionary; but of miracles wrought by himself,
of miracles which the missionary may expect in aid of his work, there occurs not
a single word.

[24] See for instance, Augustine’s admirable treatment of the subject, Enarr. in
Ps. cxxx., beginning with the words: Ergo sunt homines, quos delectat miraculum
facere, et ab eis qui profecerunt in Ecclesia miraculum exigunt, et ipsi qui
quasi profecisse sibi videntur, talia volunt facere, et putant se ad Deum non
pertinere, si non fecerint.

[25] Horn. xlvi. in Matth.

[26] Neander (Kirch. Gesch. vol. iv. pp. 255-257) quotes many like utterances
coming from the chief teachers of the Church; even in the midst of the darkness
of the ninth century.. Thus Odo of Clugny relates of a pious layman, whom some
grudged should be set so high, seeing that he wrought no miracles, how that once
detecting a thief in the act of robbing him, he not merely dismissed him, but
gave him all that which he would wrongfully have taken away, and adds, Certe
mihi videtur, quod id magis admiratione dignum sit, quam si furem rigere in saxi
duritiem fecisset. Aud Neander (vol. v. pp. 477, 606) gives ample testimonies to
the same effect from writers of lives of saints, and from others, in the
eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. One of these confesses indeed that
it is a long line of miracles which is chiefly looked for from them (quod maxime
nunc exigitur ab iis qui sanctorum vitas describere volunt). There is a
beautiful passage on the superior worth of charity in St. Bernard, Serm.. xlvi..
8, in Cant.... .. ....

[27] This image is Chrysostom’s, who draws it out at length (Horn. xlii. in
Inscript. Act. Apostt.): “As therefore a husbandman, having lately committed a
young tree to the bosom of the earth, counts it worthy, being yet tender, of
much attention, on every side fencing it round, protecting it with stones and
thorns, so that neither it may be torn up by the winds, nor harmed by the
cattle, nor injured by any other injury; but when he sees that it is fast rooted
and has sprung up on high, he takes away the defences, since now the tree can
defend itself from any such wrong; thus has it been in the matter of our faith.
When it was newly planted, while it was yet tender, great attention was bestowed
on it on every side. But after it was fixed and rooted and sprung up on high,
after it had filled all the world, Christ both took away the defences, and for
the time to come removed the other strengthenings. Wherefore at the beginning He
gave gifts even to the unworthy, for the early time had need of these helps to
faith. But now He gives them not even to the worthy, for the strength of faith
no longer needs this assistance.” Gregory the Great (Horn. xxix. in Evany.) has
very nearly the same image: Haec [signa] necessaria in exordio. Ecclesiae
fuerunt. Ut enim fides cresceret, miraculis fuerat nutrienda: quia et nos cum
arbusta plantamus, tamdiu eis aquam infundimus, quousque ea in terra jam
convaluisse videamus; et si semel radicem fixerint, in rigando cessamus.

[28] Thus Origen (Con. Gels. ii. 46) calls the surviving gifts in the Church
vestiges ἴχνη of former powers; and again, 2:8, he speaks of them as ἴχνη καὶ
τινά γε μείζονα. There is a curious passage in Abelard (Sermo de Joan. Bapt. p.
967), directed against the claimants to the power of working miracles in his
day. Though he does not mention St. Bernard, it is difficult to think that he
has not him in his eye.

[29] Augustine (De Civ. Dei, ’xxii, 8): Quisquis adhuc prodigia, uti credat,
inquirit, magnum est ipse prodigium, qui mundo credente, non credat.

[30] Coleridge, in his Literary Remains, vol. iv. p. 260, on this matter
expresses himself thus: “The result of my own meditations is, that the evidence
of the Gospel, taken as a total, is as great for the Christians of the
nineteenth century as for those of the apostolic age. I should not be startled
if I were told it were greater. But it does not follow that this equally holds
good of each component part. An evidence of the most cogent clearness, unknown
to the primitive Christians, may compensate for the evanescence of some evidence
which they enjoyed. Evidences comparatively dim have waxed into noonday
splendour, and the comparative wane of others once effulgent is more than
indemnified by the synopsis τοῦ παντός which we enjoy, and by the standing
miracle of a Christendom commensurate and almost synonymous with the civilised
world.”

[31] The wonder of the existence and subsistence of a Church in the world is
itself so great, that Augustine says strikingly and with a deep truth, that to
believe, or not to believe, the miracles is only choosing an alternative of
wonders. If you do not believe the miracles, you must at least believe this
miracle, that the world was converted without miracles (si miraculis non
creditis, saltern huic miraculo credendum est, munduni sine miraculis fuisse
conversum). Cf. De Civ. Dei, xxii. 8, 1. And on the relation of the helps to
faith, the witnesses of God’s presence in the midst of his Church, which
severally we have, and which the early Christians had, he says (Serm. ccxliv.
8): Apostoli Christum praesentem videbant: sed toto orbe terrarum diffusam
Ecclesiam nonvidebant: videbant caput, et de corpore credebant. Habemus vices
nostras: habemus gratiam dispensations et distributions nostrae: ad credendum
certissimis documentis tempora nobis in una fide sunt distributa. Illi videbant
caput, et credebant de corpore: nos videmus corpus, et credamus de capite. Let
me here observe that Augustine’s own judgment in respect of the continuance of
miracles in the Church appears to have varied at different times of his life. In
an early work of his, De Verd Meligione, xxv. 47, he certainly denies their
continuance: Cum enim Ecclesia Catholica per toturn orbem diffusa atque fundata
sit, nec miracula ilia in nostrum tempus dura re permissa sunt, ne animus semper
visibilia quaereret. In his Retractations, however (i. 13, 25), he expressly
withdraws this statement, or limits it to such miracles as those which at the
first accompanied the baptism of the faithful; and De Civ. Dei, xxii. 8, he
enumerates at great length miracles, chiefly or exclusively miracles of healing,
which he believed to have been wrought in his own time, and coming more or less
within his own knowledge.

[32] Gregory the Great (Hom. xxix. in Evang.): Sancta quippe Ecclesia quotidie
spiritaliter facit quod tune per Apostolos corporaliter faciebat. Nam sacerdotes
ejus cum per exorcismi gratiam manum credentibus imponunt, et habitare malignos
spiritus in eorum mente contradicunt, quid aliud faciunt, nisi daemonia
ejiciunt? Et fideles quique qui jam vitae veteris secularia verba derelinquunt,
sancta autem mysteria insonant, Conditoris sui laudes et potentiam, quantum
prevalent, narrant, quid aliud faciunt, nisi novis linguis loquuntur? Qui dum
bonis suis exhortationibus malitiam de alienis cordibus auferunt, serpentes
tollunt. Et dum pestiferas suasiones audiunt, sed tamen ad operationem pravam
minime pertrahuntur, mortiferum quidem est quod bibunt, sed non eis nocebit. Qui
quoties proximos suos in opere bono infirmari conspiciunt, dum eis tota virtute
concurrunt, et exemplo suae operationis illorum vitam roborant qui in propria
actione titubant, quid aliud faciunt, nisi super aegros manus imponunt, ut bene
habeant? Quae nimirum miracula tanto majora sunt, quanto spiritalia, tanto
majora sunt, quanto per haec non corpora sed animae suscitantur.... Corporalia
ilia miracula ostendunt aliquando sanctitatem, non autem faciunt: haec vero
spiritalia, quae aguntur in mente, virtutem vitae non ostendunt, sed faciunt.
Ilia habere et mali possunt; istis autem perfrui nisi boni non possunt....
Nolite ergo, fratres carissimi, amare signa quae possunt cum reprobis haberi
communia, sed haec quae modo diximus, caritatis atque pietatis miracula amate;
quae tanto securiora sunt, quanto et occulta; et de quibus apud Dominum eo major
fit retributio, quo apud homines minor est gloria. See too on these greater
wonders of the Church, Augustine, Serm. lxxxviii. 3; and Origen (Con. Cels. ii.
48) finds in them, in these wonders of grace which are ever going forward, the
fulfilment of the promise that those who believed should do greater things than
Christ Himself (John 14:12). Bernard too, In Ascen. Bom. Serm. i., has some
beautiful remarks on the better miracles, which are now evermore finding place
in Christ’s Church.


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  CHAPTER 6: 06-CHAPTER 5 THE ASSAULTS ON THE MIRACLES
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Chapter 5 The Assaults on the Miracles

1. The Jewish A rigid monotheistic religion like the Jewish left hut one way of
escape from the authority of miracles, which once were acknowledged to be indeed
miracles, and not mere collusions and sleights of hand. There remained nothing
to say, but that which we find in the N. T, the adversaries of the Lord
continually did say, namely, that these works were works of hell: “This fellow
doth not cast out devils but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils”[1] (Mat
12:24. cf. Mark 3:22-27; Luk 11:15-22). We have our Lord’s own answer to the
deep malignity of this assertion; his appeal, namely, to the whole tenor of his
doctrine and his miracles—whether they were not altogether for the overturning
of the kingdom of evil,—whether such a lending of power to Him on the part of
Satan would not be wholly inconceivable, since it were merely and altogether
suicidal. For though it would be quite intelligible that Satan should bait his
hook with some good, should array himself as an angel of light, and do for a
while deeds that might appear as deeds of light, that so he might the better
carry through some mighty delusion—

“Win men with honest trifles, to betray them In deepest consequence,” just as
Darius was willing that a small detachment of his army should perish, that so
the mighty deceit which Zopyrus was practising against Babylon might
succeed,[2].—yet the furthering upon his part of a lasting, unvarying,
unrelaxing assault on his own kingdom is quite unintelligible. That kingdom,
thus in arms against itself, could not stand, but must have an, end. He who
came, as all his words and his deeds testified, to “destroy the works of the
devil,” could not have come armed with his power, and helped onward by his aid.
It is not of a pact with the Evil One which this tells, but of One mightier than
that Evil, who has entered with power into his stronghold, and who, having bound
him, is now spoiling his goods. Our Lord does in fact repel the accusation, and
derive authority to his miracles, not from the power which they display, however
that may be the first thing that brings them into consideration, but from the
ethical ends which they serve. He appeals to every man’s conscience, whether the
doctrine to which they bear witness, and which bears witness to them, be not
from above, and not from beneath: and if so, then the power with which He
accomplished them could not have been lent Him from beneath, since the kingdom
of lies would never so contradict itself, as seriously to help forward the
establishment of; the kingdom of truth.[3]

There is, indeed, at first sight a difficulty in the argument which our Saviour
draws from the oneness of the kingdom of Satan—namely, that it seems the very
idea of this kingdom, that it should be an anarchy, blind rage and hate not
merely against God, but each part of it warring against every other part. And
this is most deeply true”, that hell is as much in arms against itself as
against heaven; neither does our Lord deny that in respect of itself that
kingdom is infinite contradiction and division: only He asserts that in relation
to the kingdom of heaven it is at one: there is one life in it and one soul in
opposition to that. Just as a nation or kingdom may embrace within itself
infinite parties, divisions, discords, jealousies, and heart-burnings; yet, if
it is to subsist as a nation at all, it must not, as regards other nations, have
lost its sense of unity; when it does so, of necessity it falls to pieces and
perishes. To the Pharisees He says: “This kingdom of evil subsists; by your own
confession it does so; it cannot therefore have denied the one condition of its
existence, which is, that it should not lend its powers to the overthrowing of
itself, that it should not side with its own foes; my words and works declare
that I am its foe, it cannot therefore be siding with Me.” This accusation
brought against the miracles of Christ, that they were done by the power of an
evil magic, the heathen also sometimes used; but evidently having borrowed this
weapon from the armoury of the Jewish adversaries of the faith.[4] And in their
mouths, who had no such earnest idea of the kingdom of God upon one side and the
kingdom of evil on the other, and of the fixed limits which divide the two, who
had peopled the intermediate space with middle powers, some good, some evil,
some mingled of both, the accusation was not at all so deeply malignant as in
the mouth of a Jew. It was little more than a stone which they found
conveniently at hand to fling, and with them is continually passing over into
the charge that those works were wrought by trick—that they were conjuror’s
arts; the line between the two charges is continually disappearing. The heathen,
however, had a method more truly their own of evading the force of the Christian
miracles, which is now to consider.

2. The Heathen. (Celsus, Hierocles, Porphyry.) A religion like the Jewish,
which, besides God and the Angels who were in direct and immediate subordination
to Him, left no spirits conceivable but those in rebellion against Him, the
absolutely and entirely evil, this, as has been observed, allowed no choice,
when once the miracle was adjudged not to be from God, but to attribute it to
Satan. There was nothing between; it was from heaven, or, if not from heaven,
from hell. But it was otherwise in the heathen world, and with the “gods many”
of polytheism. So long as these lived in the minds of men, the argument from the
miracles was easily evaded. For what did they prove at the uttermost with regard
to their author? What but this, that a god, it might be one of the higher, or it
might be one of the middle powers, the δαίμονες, the intermediate deities, was
with him? What was there, men replied, in this circumstance, which justified the
demand of an absolute obedience upon their parts? Wherefore should they yield
exclusive allegiance to Him that wrought these works? The gods had spoken often
by others also, had equipped them with powers equal to or greater than those
claimed by his disciples for Jesus; yet no man therefore demanded for them that
they should be recognized as absolute lords of the destinies of men. Esculapius
performed wonderful cures; Apollonius went about the world healing the sick,
expelling demons, raising the dead; Aristeas disappeared from the earth in as
marvellous a way as the Author of the Christian faith: yet no man built upon
these wonders a superstructure such as that which the Christians built upon the
wonders of Christ.[5]

Thus Celsus, as we learn from more than one passage in Origen’s reply, brings
forward now the mythic personages of antiquity, now the magicians, of a later
date; though apparently with no very distinct purpose in his mind, but only with
the feeling that somehow or other he can play them off against the divine Author
of our religion, and undermine his claims to the allegiance of men. For it
certainly remains a question how much credence he gave himself to the miracles
which he adduced; Origen[6] charges him with not believing them; whether,
sharing the almost universal scepticism of the educated classes; of his day, he
did not rather mean that all should fall, than that all should stand, together.
Hierocles again, governor of Bithynia, who is accused of having been a chief
instigator of the cruelties under Diocletian,—and who, if the charge be just,
wielded arms of unrighteousness on both hands against the Christian faith, the
persecutor’s sword and the libeller’s pen,—followed in the same line. His book
we know from the extracts in the answer of Eusebius, and the course of his
principal arguments. From this answer it appears that, having recounted various
miracles wrought, as he affirms, by Apollonius, he preceeds thus: “Yet do we not
account him who has done such things for a god, only for a man beloved of the
gods:. while the Christians, on the contrary, on account of a few insignificant
wonder-works, proclaim their Jesus for a God.”[7] He presently, it is true,
shifts his arguments, and no longer allows the miracles, denying only the
conclusions drawn from them; but rather denies that they have any credible
attestation: in his blind hate setting them in this respect beneath the miracles
of Apollonius, which this “lover of truth,” for under the name of “Philalethes”
he writes, declares to be far more worthily attested. This Apollonius (of Tyana
in Cappadocia), whose historical existence there seems no reason to call in
question, was probably born about the time of the birth of Christ, and lived as
far as into the reign of Nerva, a.d. 97. Save two or three isolated notices of
an earlier date, the only record which we have of him is a Life, written by
Philostratus, a rhetorician of the second century, and professing to be founded
on contemporary documents, yet everywhere betraying its unhistoric character. It
is in fact a philosophic romance, in which the revival and re-action of paganism
in the second century is portrayed. Yet I do not believe that Life to have been
written with any purpose directly hostile to the new faith, but only to prove
that they of the old religion had their mighty wonderworker as well. It was
composed indeed, as seems to me perfectly clear, with an eye to the life of our
Lord; the parallels are too remarkable to have been the effect of chance;[8] in
a certain sense also in emulation and rivalry; yet not in hostile opposition,
not as implying this was the Saviour of men, and not that; nor yet, as some of
Lucian’s works, in a mocking irony of the things which are written concerning
the Lord.[9] This later use which has often been made of the book, must not be
confounded with its original purpose, which was different. The first, I believe,
who so used it, was Charles Blount,[10] one of the earlier English Deists. And
passing over some other insignificant endeavours to make the book tell against
revealed religion, endeavours in which the feeble hand, however inspired by
hate, yet wanted strength and skill to launch the dart, we come to Wieland’s
Agathodcemon, in which neither malice nor dexterity was wanting, and which,
professing to explain upon natural grounds the miracles of Apollonius, yet
unquestionably points throughout at one greater than the wonderworker of Tyana,
with a hardly suppressed de te fabula narratur running through the whole.[11]
The arguments drawn from these parallels, so far as they were adduced in good
faith and in earnest, have, of course, perished with the perishing of polytheism
from the minds of men. Other miracles can no longer be played off against
Christ’s miracles; the choice which remains now is between these and none.

3. The Pantheistic. (Spinoza.)

These two classes of assailants of the Scripture miracles, the Jewish and the
heathen, allowed the miracles themselves to stand unquestioned as facts, but
either challenged their source, or denied the consequences drawn from them by
the Church. Not so the pantheistic deniers of the miracles, who assailed them
not as being of the devil, not as insufficient proofs of Christ’s absolute
claims of lordship; but cut at their very root, denying that any miracle was
possible, since it was contrary to the idea of God. For these opponents of the
truth Spinoza may be said, in modern times, to bear the word; the view is so
connected with his name, that it will be well to hear the objection as he has
uttered” it. That objection is indeed only the necessary consequence of his
philosophical system. Now the first temptation on making acquaintance with that
system is to contemplate it as a mere and sheer atheism; and such has ever been
the ordinary charge against it; nor, in studying his works is it always easy to
persuade oneself that it is anything else, or that the various passages in which
Spinoza himself assumes it as something different, are more than inconsequent
statements, with which he seeks to blind the eyes of others, and to avert the
odium of this charge of atheism from himself. And yet atheism it is not, nor is
it even a material, however it may be a formal, pantheism. All justice, requires
it to be acknowledged that he does not bring down and resolve God into nature,
but rather takes up and loses nature in God. It is only man whom he submits to a
blind fate, and for whom he changes, as indeed for man he does, all ethics into
physics. But the idea of freedom, as regards God, is saved; since, however, he
affirms Him immanent in nature and not transcending it, this is only because He
has Himself chosen these laws of nature as the one unchangeable manner, of his
working, and constituted them in his wisdom so elastic that they shall prove,
under every circumstance and in every need, the adequate organs and servants of
his will. He is not bound to nature otherwise than by that, his own will; the
laws which limit Him are of his own imposing; the necessity which binds Him to
them is not the necessity of any absolute fate, but of the highest fitness.
Still, however, Spinoza does affirm such a necessity, and thus excludes the
possibility of any revelation, whereof the very essence is that it is a new
beginning, a new unfolding by God of Himself to man, and especially excludes the
miracle, which is itself at once the accompaniment, and itself a constituent
part, of a revelation.

It would not be profitable to say more than a few words here on the especial
charges which he brings against the miracle, as lowering, and unworthy of, the
idea of God. They are but an application to a particular point of the same
charges which he brings against all revelation, namely, that to conceive any
such is to dishonour, and cast a slight upon, God’s great original revelation of
Himself in nature and in man; a charging of that with such imperfection and
incompleteness, as that it needed the author of the world’s laws to interfere in
aid of those laws, lest they should prove utterly inadequate to his
purposes.[12] And thus, as regards the miracle in particular, he finds fault
with it as a bringing in of disorder into that creation, of which the only idea
worthy of God is that of an unchangeable order; it is a making of God to
contradict Himself, for the law which was violated by the miracle is as much
God’s law as the miracle which violated it. The answer to this objection has
been already anticipated; it has been already urged that the miracle is not a
discord in nature, but the coming in of a higher harmony; not disorder, but
instead of the order of earth, the order of heaven; not the violation of law,
but that which continually, even in this natural world, is taking place, the
comprehension of a lower law in a higher; in this case the comprehension of a
lower natural, in a higher spiritual law; with only such modifications of the
lower as are necessarily consequent upon this.

When, further, he charges the miracle with resting on a false assumption of the
position which man occupies in the universe, with flattering the notion that
nature is to serve him, not he to bow to nature, it cannot be denied that it
does rest on this assumption. But this were only a charge which would tell
against it, supposing that true, which so far from being truth, is indeed his
first great falsehood of all, namely, the substitution of a God of nature, in
place of a God of men. If God be indeed only or chiefly the God of nature, and
not in a paramount sense the God of grace, the God of men, if nature be indeed
the highest, and man only created as furniture for this planet, it were indeed
absurd and inconceivable that the higher should serve, or give place to, or fall
into the order of, the lower. But if, rather, man is “the crown of things,” the
end and object of all, if he be indeed the vicegerent of the Highest, the image
of God, this world and all else that belongs to it being but a school for the
training of men,, only having a worth and meaning when so, considered, then that
the lower should serve, and, where need is, give way to the interests of the
highest, were only beforehand to be expected.[13]

Here, as is so often the case, something much behind the miracle, something much
earlier in men’s view of the relations between God and his creatures, has
already determined whether they should accept or reject it, and this, long
before they have arrived at the consideration of this specific matter.

4. The Sceptical. (Hume.)

While Spinoza rested his objection to the miracles on the ground that the
everlasting laws of the universe left no room for such, and while the form
therefore which the question in debate assumed in his hands was this, Are
miracles (objectively) possible? Hume, the legitimate child and pupil of the
empiric philosophy of Locke, started his objection in altogether a different
shape, namely, in this, Are miracles (subjectively) credible? He is, in fact,
the sceptic, which,—taking the word in its more accurate sense, not as a denier
of the truths of Christianity, but a doubter of the possibility of arriving at
any absolute truth,—Spinoza is as far as possible from being. To this question
Hume’s answer is in the negative; or rather, in the true spirit of that
philosophy which leaves everything in uncertainty, ’It is always more probable
that a miracle is false than true; it can therefore in no case prove anything
else, since it is itself incapable of proof; ’—which thus he proceeds to show.
In every case, he observes, of conflicting evidence we weigh the evidence for
and against the alleged facts, and give our faith to that side upon which the
evidence preponderates, with an amount of confidence proportioned, not to the
whole amount of evidence in its favour, but to the balance which remains after
subtracting the evidence against it. Thus, if the evidence on the side of A
might be set as=20, and that on the side of B as =15, then our faith in A would
remain 20—15=5; we giving our faith upon the side on which a balance of
probabilities remains, and only to the extent of that balance. But every
miracle, he goes on to say, is a case of conflicting evidence. In its favour is
the evidence of the attesting witnesses; against it “the testimony of all
experience which has gone before, and which witnesses for an unbroken order of
nature. When we come to balance these against one another, the only case in
which the evidence for the miracle could be admitted as prevailing would be that
in which the falseness or error of the attesting witnesses would be a greater
miracle than the miracle which they affirm. But no such case can occur. The
evidence against a miracle having taken place is as complete as can be
conceived; even were the evidence in its favour as complete, it would only be
proof against proof, and absolute suspension of judgment would be the wise man’s
part. But further, the evidence in favour of the miracle never makes claim to
any such completeness. It is always more likely that the attesting witnesses
were deceived, or were willing to’ deceive, than that the miracle took place.
For, however many they may be, they are always but few compared with the
multitudes who attest a fact which excludes their fact, namely, the
uninterrupted succession, of a natural order in the world; and those few,
moreover, submitted to divers warping influences, from which the others,
nature’s witnesses, are altogether free. Therefore there is no case in which the
evidence for any one miracle is able to outweigh the a priori evidence which is
against all miracles. Such is the conclusion at which he arrives. The argument,
it will be seen, is sceptical throughout. Hume does not, like Spinoza,
absolutely deny the possibility of a miracle; all he denies is that we can ever
be convinced of one. Of two propositions or assertions that may be true which
has the least evidence to support it; but according to the necessary
constitution of our mental being, we must give our adherence to that which
presents itself to us with the largest amount of evidence in its favour.

Here again, as on a former occasion, so long as we abide in the region of
nature, miraculous and improbable, miraculous and incredible, may be admitted as
convertible terms. But once lift up the whole discussion into a higher region,
once acknowledge something higher than nature, a kingdom of God, and men the
intended denizens of it, and the whole argument loses its strength and the force
of its conclusions. Against the argument from experience which tells against the
miracle, is to be set, not, as Hume asserts, the evidence of the witnesses,
which it is quite true can in no case itself be complete and of itself
sufficient, but this, plus the anterior probability that God, calling men to
live above nature and sense, would in this manner reveal Himself as the Lord
paramount of nature, the breaker through and slighter of the apparitions of
sense; plus also the testimony which the particular miracle by its nature, its
fitness, the glory of its circumstances, its intimate coherence as a redemptive
act with the personality of the doer, in Coleridge’s words, “its exact
accordance with the ideal of a true miracle is the reason,” gives to the
conscience that it is a divine work. The moral probabilities Hume has altogether
overlooked and left out of account, and when they are admitted,—dynamic in the
midst of his merely mechanic forces,—they disturb and indeed utterly overbear
and destroy them. His argument is as that fabled giant, unconquerable so long as
it is permitted to rest upon the earth out of which it sprung; but easily
destroyed when once it is lifted into a higher world. It is not, as Hume would
fain have us to believe, solely an intellectual question; but it is in fact the
moral condition of men which will ultimately determine whether they will believe
the Scripture miracles or not; this, and not the exact balance of argument on
the one side or the other, which will compel this scale or that to kick the
beam.

He who already counts it likely that God will interfere for the higher welfare
of men, who believes that there is a nobler world-order than that in which we
live and move, and that it would be the blessing of blessings for that nobler to
intrude into and to make itself felt in the region of this lower, who has found
that here in this world we are bound by heavy laws of nature, of sin, of death,
which no powers that we now possess can break, yet which must be broken if we
are truly to live,—he will not find it hard to believe the great miracle, the
coming of the Son of God in the flesh, and his declaration as the Son of God
with power by the resurrection from the dead; because all the deepest desires
and longings of his heart have yearned after such a deliverer, however little he
may have been able even to dream of so glorious a fulfilment of those longings.
And as he believes that greatest miracle, so will he believe all other miracles,
which, as satellites of a lesser brightness, naturally wait upon that,
clustering round and drawing their lustre from the central brightness of that
greatest. He, upon the other hand, to whom this world is all, who has lost all
sense of a higher world with which it must once have stood connected, who is
disturbed with no longings for anything nobler than it gives, to whom “the
kingdom of God” is an unintelligible phrase, he will resist, by an intellectual
theory if he can, or if not by that, by instinct, the miracle. Everything that
is in him predisposes him to disbelieve it and the doctrines which it seals. To
him who denies thus any final causes, who does not believe that humanity is
being carried forward under a mightier leading than its own to a certain and
that a glorious end, who looks at the history of this world and of man as the
history of a bark tempest-tost, with no haven to which it is bound, to him these
moral probabilities are no probabilities; and this being so, we should learn
betimes how futile it is to argue with men about our faith, who are the deniers
of all upon which any faith can be built.[14] 5. The Miracles only relatively
miraculous, (Schleiermacher.)

Another scheme for getting rid of the miraculous element in the miracle, and one
often united with Spinoza’s a priori argument against it,[15] being brought
forward to explain the phenomenon of an apparent miracle, after that has shown
that a real one was impossible, has been the following. These works, it has been
said, were relative miracles,—miracles, in other words, for those in regard of
whom they were first done,—as when a savage believes that a telescope has the
power of bringing the far instantaneously near,—but no miracles in themselves,
being but in truth the anticipation of discoveries in the kingdom of nature, the
works of one who having penetrated deeper into her mysteries than the men of his
own age, could therefore wield powers which were unknown, and bring about
results which were inexplicable, to them.[16] It must be evident to the least
thoughtful, that, however it may be sought to disguise the fact, the miracle
does thus become no miracle,[17] and the doer of it can no longer be recognized
as one commanding nature in a way specifically different from other men, but
only as one who has a clearer or earlier insight than others into her laws and
the springs of her power. It is strange that any should ever have been satisfied
with this statement, which is indeed only a decently veiled denial of the
miracle altogether.[18] For thus it has no longer an eternal significance; it is
no longer a halo which is to surround the head of its worker for ever; with each
enlargement of men’s knowledge of nature a star in his crown of glory is
extinguished, till at length it fades altogether into the light of common day,
nay, rather declares that it was not any more than a deceitful and meteor fire
at the best. For it implies a serious moral charge against the doer of these
works, if he vents them as wonders, as acts of a higher power than nature’s, or
allows others so to receive them, when indeed he entirely knows that they are
wrought but according to her ordinary laws. It was well enough, according to the
spirit in which he was working, for one of the conquerors of the New World to
make the Indians, whom he wished to terrify, believe that in his displeasure
with them he would at a certain hour darken the moon, when indeed he did but
foreknow an eclipse of her orb:[19] but in the kingdom of truth to use artifices
like these were nothing else but by lies to seek to overturn the kingdom of
lies.

Schleiermacher[20] endeavours so to guard this view as that it shall not appear
an entire denial of the miracles, to dress it. out and prevent its nakedness
from being seen; but he does not, in fact, lift himself above it. Christ, he
says, had not merely this deeper acquaintance with nature than any other that
ever lived, but stands in a more inward connexion with nature. He is able to
evoke, as from her hidden recesses and her most inward sanctuary, powers which
none other could; although still powers which lay in her already. These facts,
which seem exceptional, were deeply laid in the first constitution of the law;
and now, at this turning-point of the world’s history, by the providence of God,
who had arranged all things from the beginning of the world for the glory of his
Son, did at his bidding emerge. Yet single and without analogy as these “wonders
of preformation” (for so one has called them) were, they belonged to the law as
truly as, when the aloe puts forth its flower, or is said to put it forth, once
in its hundred years, it yet does this according to its own innermost nature.
For ninety and nine years it would have seemed to men not to be the nature of
the plant to flower, yet the flowering of the hundredth year is only the coming
out of its truest nature.

We see in this scheme that attempt to reconcile and atone between revelation and
science, which was the main purpose of all Schleiermacher’s writings. Yet is it
impossible to accept the reconciliation which he offers; as it is really made,
however the sacrifice may be concealed, altogether at the expense of the
miracle—which, in fact, is no miracle, if it lay in nature already, if it was
not a new thing, if it was only the evoking of old and latent forces in nature,
not the bringing in of the novel powers of a higher world; if the mysterious
processes and powers by which those works were brought about, had been only
undiscovered, hitherto, and not undiscoverable, by the efforts of human inquiry.

Augustine has been sometimes quoted, but altogether unjustly, as maintaining
this scheme of the relatively miraculous. It is quite true that, when arguing
with the heathen, he does demand why they refuse to give credence to the
Scripture miracles, when they believe so much that can in no way be explained by
any laws which their experience supplied; and adduces some curious but actual,
and some also entirely fabulous, phenomena of the natural world, such as,
fountains cold by night and hot by day,—others which extinguished a lighted
torch, but set on fire an extinguished one,—stones which, once kindled, could
not be quenched,—magnets which attracted iron, and other wonders, to which he
and they gave credence alike.[21] But it is not herein his meaning to draw down
the miracles to a level with natural appearances, hitherto unexplained, but
capable of and waiting their explanation. Rather in these natural appearances he
sees direct interpositions of the Divine Power; he does not reckon that any
added knowledge will bring them under laws of human experience, and therefore he
lifts them up to a level with the miracles. He did not merge the miracles in
nature, but drew up a portion of nature into the region of the miraculous.
However greatly as a natural philosopher he may have been here at fault, yet all
extenuating of the miracle was far from him; indeed lie ever refers it to the
omnipotence of God as to its ultimate ground.[22] When he affirms that much
seems to be against nature, but nothing truly is, this may sound at first like
the same statement of the miraculous being what it is merely in relation to
certain persons and certain stages of our knowledge of this outward world. But
it is only in sound that it is similar. He has quite a different thought of
nature from any that will allow such to be his meaning. Nature is for him but
the outward expression of the will of God; and all which he affirms is, that God
never can be contrary to God; that there can be no collision of his wills; that
whatever comes in is as true an order, the result of as real a law, as that
which gives place to it; which must needs be, since it has come in according to
the will of God, which will is itself the highest order, and law, and
harmony.[23] 6. The Rationalistic. (Paulus.) The rise of rationalism,—which term
I use for convenience sake, and without at all consenting to its fitness, for it
is as absurd a misnomer as when in the last century that was called
free-thinking, which was assuredly to end in the slavery of all thought,—seems
to have been in this manner. It may be looked at as an escape from the
conclusions of mere Deists concerning Christ’s Person and his Word, upon the
part of some, who had indeed abandoned the true faith of the Church concerning
its Head, yet were not prepared to give up the last lingering vestiges of their
respect for Holy Scripture and for Him of whom Scripture testified. They with
whom this system grew up could no longer believe the miracles, they could no
longer believe the great miracle, in which all other are easily included, a Son
of God, in the Church’s sense of the term. They, too, were obliged to fall in
with the first principles of the infidel adversary, that any who professed to
accomplish miracles was either self-deceived or a deceiver, even as those who
recorded such as having happened must be regarded as standing in the same
dilemma. But what if it could be shown that Christ never professed to do any
miracles, nor the sacred historians to record any? if it could be shown that the
sacred narratives, rightly read, gave no countenance to any such assumption, and
that it was only the lovers of, and cravers after, the marvellous, who had found
any miracles there;—the books themselves having been intended to record merely
natural events? Were not this an escape from the whole difficulty? The divine,
it is true, in these narratives would disappear; that, however, they did not
desire to save; that they had already given up: but the human would be
vindicated; the good faith, the honesty, the entire credibility of the Scripture
historians, would remain unimpeached. And in Christ Himself there would be still
that to which they could look up with reverence and love; they could still
believe in Him as the truthful founder of a religion which they shrunk from the
thought of renouncing altogether. No longer being, as the Church declared Him,
the worker of wonders, clothed with power from on high, nor professing to be
that which He was not, as the blasphemers affirmed, He would still abide for
them, the highest pattern of goodness which the world had yet seen, as He went
up and down the world, healing and blessing, though with only the same means at
his command as were possessed by other men. Their attempt was certainly a bold
one. To suffer the sacred text to stand, and yet to find no miracles in it, did
appear a hopeless task. For this, it must be always remembered, altogether
distinguishes this system from later mythic theories, that it does accept the N.
T. as entirely historic; it does appeal to the word of Scripture as the ground
and proof of its assertions; its great assertion being that the Evangelists did
not intend to relate miracles, but ordinary facts of everyday experience, works
done by Jesus, now of friendship and humanity, now of medical skill, now, it
might be, of chance and good fortune, or other actions which from one cause or
other seemed to them of sufficient significance to be worth recording. Thus
Christ, they say, did not heal an impotent man at Bethesda, but only detected an
impostor; He did not change water into wine at Cana, but brought in a new supply
of wine when that of the house was exhausted; He did not multiply the loaves,
but, distributing his own and his disciples’ little store, set an example of
liberality, which was quickly followed by others who had like stores, and in
this way there was sufficient for all; He did not cure blindness otherwise than
any skilful oculist might do it;—which indeed, they observe, is clear; for with
his own lips He declared that He needed light for so delicate an operation—” I
must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day; the night cometh, when
no man can work” (John 9:4); He did not walk on the sea, but on the shore; He
did not tell Peter to find a stater in the fish’s mouth, but to catch as many
fish as would sell for that money; He did not raise Lazarus from the dead, but
guessed from the description of his disease that he was only in a swoon, and
happily found it as He had guessed. This scheme, which many had already tried
here and there, but which first appeared full blown and consistently carried
through in the Commentary of Dr. Paulus, published in 1800, did not long survive
in its first vigour. It perished under blows received from many and opposite
quarters; for, not to speak of a reviving faith in the hearts of many, that God
could do more than man could understand, even the children of this world
directed against it the keenest shafts of their ridicule. Every philologist,
nay, every man who believed that language had any laws, was its natural enemy,
for it stood only by the violation of all these laws. Even the very advance of
unbelief was fatal to it, for in it there was a slight lingering respect to the
Word of God; moved by which respect it sought forcibly to bring that Word into
harmony with its theory, as a better alternative than the renouncing of the
authority of that Word altogether. But when men arose, who did not shrink from
the other alternative, who had no desire to hold by that Word at all, then there
was nothing to hinder them from at once coming back to the common-sense view of
the subject, one which no art could long succeed in concealing, namely that the
Evangelists did at any rate intend to record supernatural events. Those to whom
the Scriptures were no authority were, thus far at least, more likely to
interpret them aright, that they were not under the temptation to twist and
pervert them, so to bring them into apparent accordance with their own systems.
This scheme of interpretation, thus assailed from so many sides, and itself
merely artificial, quickly succumbed. And now, even in the land of its birth, it
has entirely perished; on the one side a deeper faith, on the other a more
rampant unbelief, have encroached on, and wholly swallowed up, the territory
which it occupied for a while. It is indeed so little the form in which an
assault on Revelation will ever again clothe itself, and may be so entirely
regarded as one of the cast-off garments of unbelief, now despised and trodden
under foot even of those who once glorified themselves in it, that I have not
alluded, save very slightly and passingly, to it in the body of my book. Once or
twice I have noticed its curiosities of interpretation, its substitutions, as
they have been happily termed, of philological for historical wonders. The
reader who is curious to see how Dr. Paulus and his compeers arrived at the
desired result of exhausting the narrative of its miraculous element, will find
specimens in the notes upon The feeding, of the five thousand, and The stater in
the fish’s mouth.

7. The Historico-Critical. (Woolston, Strauss.) The last assault upon the
miracles is that which may be not unfitly termed the historico-critical. It
affirms that they are so full of contradictions, psychological and other
improbabilities, discrepancies between the accounts of one Evangelist and
another, that upon close handling they crumble to pieces, and are unable to
maintain their ground as history. Among the English deists of the last century,
Woolston especially addressed himself in this way to the undermining the
historic credit of these narratives. He was brought to this evil work in a
singular way, and abides a mournful example of the extremes to which spite and
mortified vanity may carry a weak man, though, as all testimonies concur in
acknowledging, at one time of estimable conversation, and favourably known for
his temperate life, his charity to the poor, and other evidences of an inward
piety. Born in 1669, and educated at Cambridge, where he became a fellow of
Sidney, he first attracted unfavourable notice by a certain crack-brained
enthusiasm for the allegorical interpretation of Scripture, which he carried to
all lengths. Whether he owed this to the works of Philo and Origen, or whether
he only strengthened and nourished an already existing predilection by the study
of their writings, is not exactly clear; but it had become a sort of “fixed
idea” in his mind. At first, although just offence was taken at more than one
publication of his, in which his allegorical system was carried out at the
expense apparently of the historic truth of the Scripture, yet, as it was not
considered that he meant any mischief, as it was not likely that, he would exert
any very wide influence, he was suffered to follow his own way, unvisited by any
serious censures from the higher authorities of the Church. Meeting, however,
with opposition in many quarters, and unable to carry the clergy with him, he
broke out at last in unmeasured invectives against them, and in a virulent
pamphlet[24] styled them “slaves of the letter,” “Baal-priests,” “blind leaders
of the blind,” and was on account of this pamphlet deprived of his fellowship
(1721). From this time it seemed as if an absolute fury possessed him. Not
merely the Church, but Christianity itself, was the object of his attack.
Whether his allegorical system of interpretation had indeed ended, as it was
very likely to do, in depriving him of all faith in God’s Word, and he retained
his professed veneration for its spiritual meaning only that he might, under
shelter of that, more securely advance to the assault of its historical
foundations, or whether he did still retain this in truth, it was now at any
rate only subordinate and subservient to his purpose of revenge. To these he was
ready to offer up every other consideration. When, then, in that great
controversy which was raging in the early part of the last century, the
defenders of revealed religion entrenched themselves behind the miracles, as
defences from which they could never be driven, as irrefragable proofs of the
divine origin of Christianity, Woolston undertook, by the engines of his
allegorical interpretation, to dislodge them from these also, and with this aim
published his notorious Letters on the Miracles.[25] It is his manner in these
to take certain miracles which Christ did, or which were wrought in relation of
Him, two or three in a letter; he then seeks to show that, understood in their
literal sense, they contain such extravagances, contradictions, and the like,
that none can suppose Christ actually to have done them; while neither could the
Evangelists, as honest men, men who had the credit of their Lord at heart, have
intended to record them as having been actually wrought, or desired us to
receive them otherwise than as allegories, spiritual truths clothed in the garb
of historic events. The enormous difference between himself and those early
Church writers, to whom he appeals, and whose views he professes to be only
reasserting,—a difference of which it is impossible that he could have been
ignorant,—is this: they said, This history, being real, has also a deeper ideal
sense; he upon the contrary, Since it is impossible that this history can be
real, therefore it must have a spiritual significance. They build upon the
establishment of the historic sense, he upon its ruins.[26] When he would fain
utter grosser blasphemies than in his own person he dares, or than would befit
the position which he has assumed from whence to assault Revelation, he
introduces a Jewish Rabbi, and suffers him to speak without restraint, himself
only observing, “This is what an adversary might say; to these accusations we
Christians expose ourselves, so long as we cleave to the historic letter; we
only can evade their force by forsaking that, and holding fast the allegorical
meaning alone.” I shall not (as it is not needful) offend the Christian reader
by the reproduction of any of his coarser ribaldry, which has sufficient
cleverness to have made it mischievous enough; but will endeavour to show by a
single example the manner in which he seeks to make weak points in the Scripture
narratives. He is dealing with the miracle of the man sick of the palsy, who was
let through the broken roof of the house where Jesus was, and thereupon healed
(Mark 2:1-12). But how, he demands, should there have been such a crowd to hear
Jesus preach at Capernaum, where He was so well known, and so little admired?
And then, if there was that crowd, what need of such urgent haste? it was but
waiting an hour or two, and the multitude would have dispersed; “I should have
thought their faith might have worked patience.” Why did not Jesus tell “the
people to make way? would they not have done so readily, since to see a miracle
was the very thing they wanted? How should the pulleys, ropes, and ladder have
been at hand to haul the sick man up? How strange that they should have had
hatchets and other tools ready at hand, to break through the spars and rafters
of the roof; and stranger still, that the good man of the house should have
endured, without a remonstrance, his property to be so injured! How did those
below escape without hurt from the falling tiles and plaster? And if there were
a door in the roof, as some, to mitigate the difficulty, tell us, why did not
Jesus go up to the roof, and there speak the healing word, and so spare all this
trouble and damage and danger? But enough;—it is evident that this style of
objection could be infinitely multiplied in regard of any history. There is
always something else that might have been done besides the thing that was done.
It is after this taking to pieces of the narrative, this triumphant showing, as
he affirms, that it cannot stand in the letter, that he proceeds, as a sort of
salvo, to say it may very well stand in its spirit, as an allegory and symbol of
something else; and that so, and so only, it was intended. This is what he
offers by way of this higher meaning in the present case: By the palsy of this
man is signified “a dissoluteness of morals and unsteadiness of faith and
principles, which is the condition of mankind at present, who want Jesus’ help
for the cure of it.” The four bearers are the four Evangelists, “on whose faith
and doctrine mankind is to be carried unto Christ.” The house to the top of
which he is to be carried is “the intellectual edifice of the world, otherwise
called Wisdom’s house.” But “to the sublime sense of the Scriptures, called the
top of the house, is man to be taken; he is not to abide in the low and literal
sense of them.” Then if he dare to “open the house of wisdom, he will presently
be admitted to the presence and knowledge of Jesus.”[27] Not very different is
Strauss’s own method of proceeding. He wields the same weapons of destructive
criticism, thinking to show how each history will crumble at his touch, will
resolve into a heap of improbabilities, which no one can any longer maintain. It
needs not to say that he is a more accomplished adversary than Woolston, with
far ampler resources at command,—more, if not of his own, yet of other men’s
learning; inheriting as he does all the negative criticism of the last hundred
years, of an epoch, that is, which has been sufficiently fruitful in this kind.
Here indeed is in great part the secret of the vast sensation which his work for
a season caused: all that was scattered up and down in many books he has brought
together and gathered into a single focus; all which other men had spoken
faintly and with reserve, he with a greater boldness has spoken out; he has
dared to give utterance to all which was trembling upon the lips of numbers, but
which, from one cause or another, they had shrunk from openly avowing. Yet as
regards the treatment of the miracles,—for with that only we have now to
do,—there are differences between him and Woolston. He unites in his own person
the philosophical and the critical assailant of these; for he starts from the
philosophic ground of Spinoza, that the miracle is impossible, since the laws of
nature are the only and the necessary laws of God and of his manifestation; and
he then proceeds to the critical examination of the Gospel miracles in detail;
but of course in each case to the trial of that which is already implicitly
tried and condemned. Thus, if he is ever at a loss, if any of them give him
trouble, if they oppose a too stubborn resistance to the powerful solvents which
he applies, threatening to stand in despite of all, he immediately falls back on
his philosophic ground, and exclaims, “But if we admit it was thus, then we
should have here a miracle, and we have started from the first principle, that
such is inconceivable.” This mockery in every case he repeats, trying them one
by one, which have all been condemned by him beforehand in the gross.

There is, too, this further difference, that while Woolston professed to
consider the miracles as the conscious clothing of spiritual truth, allegories
devised artificially, and, so to speak, in cold blood, for the setting forth of
the truths of the kingdom, Strauss gives them a freer birth and a somewhat
nobler origin. They are the halo of glory with which the Infant Church gradually
and without any purposes of deceit clothed its Founder and its Head. His mighty
personality, of which it was livingly conscious, caused it ever to surround Him
with new attributes of glory. All that men had ever craved and longed
for—deliverance from physical evil, dominion over the crushing powers of nature,
victory over death itself,—all that had ever in a lesser measure been attributed
to any,—they lent in larger abundance, in unrestrained fulness, to Him whom they
felt greater than all. The Church in fact made its Christ, and not Christ his
Church.[28] With one only observation I will pass on, not detaining the reader
any longer from more pleasant and more profitable portions of the subject. It is
this,—that here, as so often, we find the longings and cravings of men after a
redemption, in the widest sense of that word, made to throw suspicion upon Him
in whom these longings and cravings are affirmed to have been satisfied. But if
we believe a divine life stirring at the root of our humanity, the depth and
universality of such longings is a proof rather that they were meant some day to
find their satisfaction, and not always to be mere hopes and dreams; and if so,
in whom, but in Him whom we preach and believe—in whom, but in Christ? What
other beside Him could, with the slightest show of reason, be put forward as the
fulfiller of the world’s hopes, the realizer of the world’s dreams? If we do not
believe in this divine life, nor in a divine leading of our race, if we hold a
mere brutal theory about man, it were then better altogether to leave discussing
miracles and Gospels, which indeed have no meaning for, as they can stand in no
relation to, us.

Footnotes

[1] They regarded Him as planum in signis (Tertullian, Adv. Marc. iii. 6; cf.
Apolog. xxi.). This charge is drest out with infinite blasphemous additions in
the later Jewish books (see Eisemnenger, Entdeckt. Judenth. vol. i. p. 148,
seq.).

[2] Herodotus, iii. 155 [3] Eusebius (Dem. Evang. iii. 6) makes much of this
argument,

[4] See a curious passage, Origen, Con. Gels. i. 68. cf. also i. 6; 2:49; viii.
9; Augustine, Be Cons. Evang. i. 9-11; Jerome, Brev. in Psal. lxxxi. in fine;
Arnobius, Adv. Gen. i. 43, who brings in this as one of the calumnies of the
heathen against the Lord: Magus fuit, clandestinis artibus omnia ilia perfecit:
AEgyptiorum ex adytis angelorum potentium nomina et remotas furatus est
disciplinas; cf. also 53. This charge of fetching his magical skill from Egypt,
which Celsus in like manner takes up (Origen, Con. Gels. i. 28, 38; see also
Eusebius, Dem. Evang. iii. 6), betrays at once the Jewish origin of the
accusation. It is evermore repeated in Jewish books. Egypt, say they, was the
natural home of magic, so that if the magic of the world were divided into ten
parts, Egypt would possess nine; and there, even as the Christian histories
confess, Jesus resided two years (Eisenmenger, Entdeckt. Judenth. vol. i. pp.
149, 166).

[5] The existence of false cycles of miracles should no more cast a suspicion
upon all, or cause to doubt those which present themselves with marks of the
true, than the appearance of a parhelion forerunning the sun cause us to deny
that he was travelling up from beneath the horizon, for which rather it is an
evidence. The false money passes, not because there is nothing better, and
therefore all have consented to receive it, but because there is. a good money,
under colour of which the false is accepted. Thus is it with the longing which
has existed “at all times and in all ages after some power which is not
circumscribed by the rules of ordinary visible experience, but which is superior
to these rules and can transgress them.” The mythic narrations in which such
longings find an apparently historic clothing and utterance, so far from being
eyed with, suspicion, should be most welcome to the Christian inquirer. The
enemies of the faith will of course parade these shadows, in the hopes of making
us believe that our substance is a shadow also; but they are worse than simple
who are cozened by so palpable a fraud.

[6] Con. Cels. iii. 22.

[7] In the same way Arnobius (Adv. Gen. i. 48) brings in the heathen adversary
saying it is idle to make these claims (frustra tantum arrogas Christo) on the
score of the miracles, when so many others have done the like..

[8] See, for instance, upon the raising of the widow’s son, the parallel miracle
which I have adduced from the life of Apollonius. The above is Baur’s conclusion
in his instructive little treatise, Apollonius von Tyana und Christus, Tübingen,
1832.

[9] His Philopseudes, for instance, and his Vera Historia. Thus only the latter
half of this judgment of Huet’s (Dem. Evang. prop. ix. 147) seems to me to be
true: Id spectâsse imprimis videtur Philostratus, ut invalescentem jam Christi
fidem ac doctrinam deprimeret, opposito hoc omnis doctrinae, sanctitatis, ac
mirincae virtutis foeneo simulacro. Itaque ad Christi exemplar hanc expressit
effigiem, et pleraque ex Christi Jesu historia Apollonio accommodavit, lie quid
ethnici Christianis invidere possent.

[10] In his now scarce translation, with notes, of The two first hooks of
Philostratus, London, 1680, with this significant motto from Seneca, Cum omnia
in incerto sint, fave tibi, et crede quod mavis.

[11] The work of Philostratus has been used with exactly an opposite aim by
Christian apologists, namely, to bring out, by comparison with the best which
heathenism could offer, the surpassing glory of Christ. Cudworth, in his
Intellectual System, iv. 15, occupies himself at a considerable length with
Apollonius. Here may probably have been the motive to Blount’s book, which
followed only two years after the publication of Cudworth’s great work. Henry
More, too, in his Mystery of Godliness, iv. 9-12, compares at large the miracles
of Christ with those of Apollonius.

[12] Tract. Theol. Pol. vi.: Nam cum virtus et potentia naturae sit ipsa Dei
virtus et potentia, leges autem et regulae naturae ipsa Dei decreta, omnino
credendum est, potentiam naturae infinitam esse, ejusque leges adeo latas, ut ad
omnia quae et ab ipso divino intellectu concipiuntur, se extendant; alias enim
quid aliud statuitur, quam quod Deus naturam adeo impotentem creaverit, ejusque
leges et regulas adeo steriles statuerit, ut saepe de novo ei subvenire cogatur,
si earn conservatam vult, et ut res ex voto succedant, quod sane a ratione
alienissimum esse existimo?

[13] They are the truly wise, lie says (Tract. Theol. Pol. vi.), who aim not at
this, ut natura iis, sed contra ut ipsi naturae pareant, utpote qui certe
sciunt, Deum naturam dirigere prout ejus leges universales, non autem prout
humanae naturae particulares leges exigunt, adeoque Deum non solius humani
generis, sed totius naturas rationem habere.

[14] Augustine (Be Util. Cred. xvi.): Si enim Dei providentia non praesidet
rebus humanis, nihil est de religione satagendum. See some valuable remarks on
Hume and on his position in Mill’s Logic, vol. ii. p. 187, 2d edit.

[15] As by Spinoza himself, Ep. xxiii.: Rogare mihi liceat an nos homunciones
tantam naturae cognitionem habeamus, ut determinare possimus, quousque ejus vis
et potentia se extendit, et quid ejus vim superat?

[16] Thus Hase (Leben Jesu, p. 108): Sie sind zwar nothwendig begriffen im
Naturzusammenhange, daher nach diesem überall zu forschen ist, aber sie
überschritten weit die Kenntniss und Kraft der Zeitgenossen.

[17] Mirabile, but not miraculum. Augustine’s definition in one place (De Util.
Gred. xvi.), Miraculum voco quicquid arduum aut insolitum supra spem vel
facultatem mirantis apparet,. is plainly faulty; it is the definition of the
mirabile, not of the miraculum. Aquinas is more distinct (Summ. Theol. 1, qu.
110, art. 4): Non sufficit ad rationem miraculi, si aliquid fiat praeter ordinem
alicujus naturae particularis, sic enim aliquis miraculum faceret lapidem sursum
projiciendo; ex hoc autem aliquid dicitur miraculum, quod fit praeter ordinem
totius natures creatae, quo sensu solus Deus facit miracula. Nobis enim non
omnis virtus naturae creatae nota; cum ergo fit aliquid praeter ordinem naturae
creatae nobis notae per virtutem creatam nobis ignotam, est quidem miraculum
quoad nos, sed non simpliciter.

[18] J. Müller (Be Mime. J. G. Nat. et Necess. par. ii. p. 1) well characterizes
this scheme: Quid vero? num de miraculorum necessitate ordiamur a notione
miraculi tollendâ? Si enim ex eâ, sententia mirabilia Christi opera e propriis
naturae viribus secundum hujus legem, at absconditam, orta sunt, certum et
constans discrimen haec inter et ilia, quae quotidie in naturâ fieri videmus,
remanet nullum; omnia fluunt et miscentur; quae reruni natura heri gremio suo
operuit, aperit hodie; quae etiam nunc abscondita sunt, posthac patebunt. Si
vero, quod hodie miraculum, eras non erit, et hodie non est, sed esse tantum
videtur.

[19] Plutarch (De Def. Orac. xii.) mentions exactly the” same trick of a
Thessalian sorceress. A late writer upon the rule of the Jesuits in Paraguay
accuses them of using artifices of the like kind for acquiring and maintaining
an influence over their converts.

[20] Der christi Glaube, vol. ii. p. 100; vol. ii. p. 135.

[21] Be Civ. Dei, xxi. 5.

[22] Be Civ. Dei, xxi. 7.

[23] See the quotation from Augustine, p. 16. That he had clearly in his eye the
essential property of a miracle, that it should be the coming in of a new power
of God into nature, and distinguished this broadly from the relatively
miraculous, is plain from innumerable passages such as this (De Civ. Dei, x.
16): Miracula,... non ea dico quae intervallis temporum occultis ipsius mundi
caussis, verumtamen sub divina providentia constitutis et ordinatis monstrosa
contingunt, quales sunt inusitati partus animalium, et coelo ten-ague rerum.
insolita facies.

[24] In his Letter to the Rev. Dr. Bennett upon this question, Whether the
Quakers do not the nearest of any other sect resemble the primitive Christians
in principle and practices. By Aristobulus. London, 1720.

[25] These six Letters, first published as separate pamphlets between 1727-29,
had an immense circulation, and were read with the greatest avidity. Voltaire,
who was in England just at the time of their publication, says that thirty
thousand copies of them were sold, and that large packets of them were forwarded
to the American colonies. In the copy I am using, the different letters range
from the third to the sixth edition, and this almost immediately after their
first publication. Indeed, Swift, in his lines on his own death, written 1731,
speaks of something much more than this, and quite consents with Voltaire’s
account of the immense popularity which they enjoyed. He makes Lintot, the
bookseller, say,—

“Here’s Woolston’s tracts, the twelfth edition, ’Tis read by every politician:
The country members when in town To all their boroughs send them down: You never
met a thing so smart; The courtiers have them all by heart;” &c. Their
circulation was so great, and their mischief so wide, that above sixty answers
were published within a very short period. Gibson, then Bishop of London,
addressed five pastoral letters to his diocese against them; and other chief
divines of England, as Sherlock, Pearce, Smallbrooke, found it needful to answer
them. Of the replies which I have seen, Smallbrooke’s (Bishop of St. David’s)
Vindication of our Saviour’s Miracles, 1729, is the most learned and the best.
But one cannot help being painfully struck upon this and other occasions with
the exceeding poverty and feebleness of the anti-deistical literature of England
in that day of need; the low grounds which it occupies; the little enthusiasm
which the cause awakened in its defenders. With regard to Woolston himself, the
paltry shifts with which he sought to evade the consequences, of his
blasphemy,—and there is an infinite meanness in the way in which he professes,
while blaspheming against the works of Christ, to be only assailing them in the
letter that he may vindicate them in the spirit,—this and other such poor”
evasions failed to protect him from the pains and penalties of the law. He was
fined twenty-five pounds for each of his Letters, sentenced to be imprisoned for
a year, and was not to be released till he could find sureties for his good
behaviour. These he was not able to procure, and he died in prison in 1731.

[26] Their canon was ever this of Gregory the Great (Horn. xl. in Evang.): Tune
namque allegorise fructus suaviter carpitur, cum prius per historiam in
veritatis radice solidatur; and they abound in such earnest warnings as this of
Augustine’s: Ante omnia tamen, fratres, hoc in nomine Dei admonemus,... ut
quando auditis exponi Sacras Scripturas narrantes quae gesta sunt, prius illud
quod lectum est credatis sic gestum quomodo lectum est, ne subtracto fundamento
rei gestae, quasi in aëre quaeretis aedificare. Compare what he says on ’the
history of Jonah, Ep. cii. qu. vi. 33.

[27] Fourth Discourse on the Miracles, pp. 51-67. Strauss’s own judgment of his
predecessor in this line very much agrees with that given above. He says,
“Woolston’s whole presentation of the case veers between these alternatives. If
we are determined to hold fast the miracles as actual history, then they forfeit
all divine character, and sink down into unworthy tricks and common frauds. Do
we refuse, on the other hand, to let go the divine in these narrations, then
must we, with the sacrifice of their historic character, understand them only as
the setting forth, in historic guise, of certain spiritual truths; for which,
indeed, the authority of the chiefest allegorists in the Church, as Origen and
Augustine and others, may be adduced;—yet so, that Woolston imputes falsely to
them the intention of thrusting out, as he would do, the literal interpretation
by the allegorical altogether; when indeed they, a few instances on Origen’s
part being excepted, are inclined to let both explanations stand, the one by the
other. Woolston’s statement of the case may leave a doubt to which of the two
alternatives that he sets over against one another, he with his own judgment
inclines. If one calls to mind, that before he came forward as an opponent of
Christianity as received in his day, he occupied himself with allegorical
interpretations of the Scripture, one might regard this as the opinion which was
most truly his own. But on the other hand, all that he can adduce of
incongruities in the literal sense of the miracle histories is brought forward
with such one-sided zeal, and so colours the whole with its mocking tone, that
one must rather conjecture that the Deist seeks only, by urging the allegorical
sense, to secure his own rear, that so he may the more boldly let himself loose
on the literal meaning” (Leben Jesu, 3d edit, vol. i. p. 14). There is a very
accurate and carefully written account of Woolston, and his life and writings,
in Lechler, Ceschichte des Englischea Drismus, pp. 289-311.

[28] See the very remarkable chapter, anticipating so much of modern speculation
on this subject, in Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xxii. 6.


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  CHAPTER 7: 07-CHAPTER 6.THE APOLOGETIC WORTH OF THE MIRACLES
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Chapter 6.The Apologetic Worth of the Miracles A most interesting question
remains; namely this, What place should they who are occupied with marshalling
and presenting the evidences of Revelation ascribe to the miracles? what is the
service which they may render here? The circumstances have been already noticed
which were sufficient to hinder them from taking a very prominent place in the
early apologies for Christianity.[1] The Christian miracles had not as yet
sufficiently extricated themselves from the multitude of false miracles, nor was
Christ sufficiently discerned and distinguished from the various wonder-workers
of his own and of past ages; and thus, even if men had admitted his miracles to
be true and godlike, they would have been hardly nearer to the acknowledging of
Christianity as the one faith, or to the accepting of Christ as “the way, the
truth, and the life.” A far more important position has been assigned them in
later times, especially during the last two centuries; and the tone and temper
of modern theology abundantly explains the greater prominence, sometimes, I
believe, the undue, because the exclusive, prominence, which in this period they
have assumed. The apologetic literature of this time partook, as was inevitable,
in the general depression of all its theology. There is no one, I think, who
would now be satisfied with the general tone and spirit in which the defences of
the faith, written during the two last centuries, and beginning with the
memorable work of Grotius,[2] are composed. Much as this book and others of the
same character contain of admirable, yet in well nigh all that great truth of
the Italian poet seems to have been forgotten, “They struggle vainly to preserve
a part, Who have not courage to contend for all.”

These apologists would seem very often to have thought that Deism was best to be
resisted by reducing Christianity to a sort of revealed Deism. As men that had
renounced the hope of defending all, their whole endeavour was to save
something; and when their pursuers pressed them hard, they were willing to delay
the pursuit by casting to them as a prey much that ought to have been the
dearest to themselves. They have been well compared to men, who should cry
“Thieves and robbers!” and were yet themselves all the while throwing out of the
windows the most precious things of the house. And thus it sometimes happened
that the good cause suffered quite as much from its defenders as its assailants:
for that enemies should be fierce and bitter, this was only to be looked for;
but that friends, those in whose keeping was the citadel, should be. timid and
half-hearted and ready for a compromise, if not for a surrender, this was indeed
an augury of ill. Now this, which caused so much to be thrown greatly out of
sight, as generally the deeper mysteries of our faith, which brought about a
slight of the inner arguments for the truth of revelation, caused the argument
from the miracles to assume a disproportionate importance. A value too exclusive
was set on them; they were rent away from the truths for which they witnessed,
and which witnessed for them,—only too much like seals torn off from the
document, which at once they rendered valid, and which in return gave
importance. to them.. And thus, in this unnatural isolation, separated from
Christ’s person and doctrine, the whole burden of proof was laid on them. They
were the apology for Christianity, the reason which men were taught they should
give for the faith which was in them.[3]

It is not hard to see the motives which led to this. Men wanted an absolute
demonstration of the Christian faith,—one which, objectively, should be equally
good for every man: they desired to bring the matter to the same sort of proof
as exists for a problem in mathematics or a proposition in logic. And
consistently with this we see the whole argument cast exactly into the same
forms of definitions, postulates, axioms, and propositions.[4] Yet was not the
state of mind which made men desire either to find for themselves, or to furnish
for others, proofs of this nature, altogether a healthy one. It was plain that
their faith had become very much an external historic one, who thus eagerly
looked round for outward evidences, and found a value only in such; instead of
turning in upon themselves as well, for evidence that they had “not followed
cunningly devised fables,” and saying, “We know the things which we believe,—
they are to us truer than aught else can be, for we have the witness of the
Spirit for their truth. We have found these things to be true, for they have
come to us in demonstration of the Spirit and in power.” In place of such an
appeal to those mighty influences which Christ’s words and doctrine exercise on
every heart that receives them, to their transforming, transfiguring power, to
the miracles of grace which are the heritage of every one who has believed to
salvation, in place of urging on the gainsayers in the very language of the
Lord, “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be
of God” (John 7:17), this all as vague and mystical (instead of being seen to
be, as it truly was, the most sure and certain of all) was thrown into the
background. Men were afraid to trust themselves and their cause to evidences
like these, and would know of no other statement of the case than this barren
and hungry one:—Christianity is a divine revelation, and this the miracles which
accompanied its promulgation prove.

What must first be found fault with in this is the wilful abandonment of such
large regions of proof, which the Christian apologist ought triumphantly to have
occupied as his proper domain—the whole region, mainly and chiefly, of the inner
spiritual life; his foregoing of any appeal to the mysterious powers of
regeneration and renewal, which are ever found to follow upon a true affiance on
Him who is the Giver of this faith, and who has pledged Himself to these very
results in those who rightly receive it. To these proofs he might at least have
ventured an appeal, when he was seeking not to convince an unbeliever, but, as
would be often his aim, to carry one that already believed round the whole
circle of the defences of his position, to make him aware of the relative
strength of each, to give him a scientific insight into the grounds on which his
faith rested. Here, at any rate, the appeal to what he had himself known and
tasted of the powers of the world to come, might well have found room. For, to
use the words of Coleridge,[5] “Is not a true,, efficient conviction of a moral
truth, is not the creating of a new heart, which collects the energies of a
man’s whole being in the focus of the conscience, the one essential miracle, the
same and of the same evidence to the ignorant and to the learned, which no
superior skill can counterfeit, human or demoniacal; is it not emphatically that
leading of the Father, without which no man can come to Christ; is it not that
implication of doctrine in the miracle, and of miracle in the doctrine, which is
the bridge of communication between the senses and the soul;—that predisposing
warmth which renders the understanding susceptible of the specific impressions
from the history, and from all other outward seals of testimony ?” And even were
the argument with one who had never submitted himself to these blessed powers,
and to whose experience therefore no like appeal could be made, yet even for him
there is the outward utterance of this inward truth, in that which he could not
deny, save as he denied or was ignorant of everything, which would make him one
to be argued with at all,—the fact, I mean, of a Christendom—the standing
miracle of a Christendom “commensurate and almost synonymous with the civilized
world, “—the mighty changes which this religion of Christ has wrought in the
earth,—the divine fruits which it everywhere has borne,—the new creation which
it has everywhere brought about,—the way in which it has taken its place in the
world, not as a forcible intruder, but finding all that world’s preëstablished
harmonies ready to greet and welcome it, ready to give it play and
room,—philosophy, and art, and science practically confessing that only under it
could they attain their highest perfection, that in something they had all been
dwarfed and stunted and incomplete till it came. Little as it wears of the glory
which it ought, yet it wears enough to proclaim that its origin was more than
mundane; surely from a Christendom, even such as it shows itself now, it is fair
to argue back to a Christ such as the Church receives as the only adequate
cause. It is an oak which from no other acorn could have unfolded itself into so
tall and stately a tree.

It is true that in this there is an abandoning of the attempt to put the proof
of Christianity into the same form as that of a proposition in an exact science.
There is no more the claim made of giving it that kind’ of certainty. But this,
which may seem at first sight a loss, is indeed a gain; for the argument for all
which as Christians we believe, is in very truth not logical and single, but
moral and cumulative; and the attempt to substitute a formal proof, where the
deepest necessities of the soul demand a moral, is one of the most grievous
shocks which the moral sense can receive, as it is one, too, of the most
fruitful sources out of which unbelief has sprung. Few who have had books of
evidences constructed on this scheme put into their hands, but must painfully
remember the shock which they suffered from their perusal,—how it took them, it
may be, some time to recover the healthy tone of their minds, and how, only by
falling back upon what they themselves had felt and known of the living power of
Christ’s words and doctrine in their own hearts, could they deliver themselves
from the injurious influences, the seeds of doubt and of misgiving, which these
books had now, for the first time perhaps, sown in their minds. They must
remember how they asked themselves, in deep inner trouble of soul: “Are these
indeed the grounds, and the only grounds, upon which the deep foundations of my
spiritual life repose? is this all that I have to answer? are these, and no
more, the reasons of the faith that is in me?” And then, if at any moment there
arose a suspicion that some link in this chain of outward proof was wanting, or
that any one would not bear all the weight which was laid upon it,—and men will
be continually tempted to try the strength of that to which they have trusted
all,—there was nothing to fall back upon, with which to scatter and put to
flight suspicions such as these. And that such should arise, at least in many
minds, were inevitable; for how many points, as we have seen, are there at which
a suspicion may intrude. Is a miracle possible? Is a miracle provable? Were the
witnesses of these miracles competent? Did they not too lightly admit a
supernatural cause, when there were adequate natural ones which they failed to
note? These works may have been good for the eye-witnesses, but what are they
for me? And these doubts and questionings might be multiplied without number.
Happy is the man, and he only is happy, who, if the outworks of his faith are at
any time thus assailed, can betake himself to an impregnable inner citadel, from
whence in due time to issue forth and repossess even those exterior defences,
who can fall back on those inner grounds of belief, in which there can be no
mistake, the testimony of the Spirit, which is above and better than all.[6] And
as it is thus with him, who entirely desiring to believe, is only unwillingly
disturbed with doubts and suggestions, which he would give worlds to be rid of
for ever, so on the other hand the expectation that by arguments thrown
apparently into strict syllogistic forms there is any compelling to the faith
one who does not wish to believe, is absurd, and an expectation which all
experience contradicts. All that he is, and all that he is determined to be, has
bribed him to an opposite conclusion. Rather than believe that a miracle has
taken place, a miracle from the upper world, and connected with precepts of
holiness, to which precepts he is resolved to yield no obedience, he will take
refuge in any the most monstrous supposition of fraud, or ignorance, or folly,
or collusion. If no such solution presents itself, he will wait for such, rather
than accept the miracle, with the hated adjunct of the truth which it confirms.
In what different ways the same miracle of Christ wrought upon different
spectators! He raised a man from the dead; here was the same outward fact for
all; but how diverse the effects!—some believed, and some went and told the
Pharisees (John 11:45-46). Heavenly voices were heard,—and some said it
thundered, so dull and inarticulate were those sounds to them, while others knew
that they were voices wherein was the witness of the Father to his own Son (John
12:28-30). Are then, it may be asked, the miracles to occupy no place at all in
the array of proofs for the certainty of the things which we have believed? On
the contrary, a most important place. We should greatly miss them, if they did
not appear in sacred history,, if we could not point to them there; for they
belong to the very idea of a Redeemer, which would remain most incomplete
without them. We could not ourselves, without having that idea infinitely
weakened and impoverished, conceive of Him as not doing such works; and those to
whom we presented Him as a Lord and a Saviour might very well answer, “Strange,
that one should come to deliver men from the bondage of nature which was
crushing them, and yet Himself have been subject to its heaviest laws,—Himself
wonderful, and yet his appearance accompanied by no analogous wonders in
nature,—claiming to be the Life, and yet Himself helpless in the encounter with
death; however much He promised in word, never realizing any part of his
promises in deed; giving nothing in hand, no first fruits of power, no pledges
of greater things to come.” They would have a right to ask, “Why did He give no
signs that He came to connect the visible with the invisible world? why did He
nothing to break the yoke of custom and experience, nothing to show men that the
constitution which He pretended to reveal has a true foundation?”[7] And who
would not feel that they had reason in this, that a Saviour who so bore Himself
during his earthly life, and his actual daily encounter with evil, would forfeit
his right to this name? that He must needs show Himself, if He were to meet the
wants of men, mighty not only in word but in work? When we object to the use
often made of these works, it is only because they have been forcibly severed
from the whole complex of Christ’s life and doctrine, and presented to the
contemplation of men apart from these; it is only because, when on his head are
“many crowns” (Rev 19:12), one only has been singled out in proof that He is
King of kings and Lord of lords. The miracles have been spoken of as though they
borrowed nothing from the truths which they confirmed, but those truths
everything from the miracles by which they were confirmed; when, indeed, the
true relation is one of mutual interdependence, the miracles proving the
doctrines, and the doctrines approving the miracles,[8] and both held together
for us in a blessed unity, in the person of Him who spake the words and did the
works, and through the impress of highest holiness and of absolute truth and
goodness, which that person leaves stamped on our souls;—so that it may be more
truly said that we believe the miracles for Christ’s sake, than Christ for the
miracles’ sake.[9] Neither when we thus affirm that the miracles prove the
doctrine, and the doctrine the miracles, are we arguing in a circle: rather we
are receiving the sum total of the impression which this divine revelation is
intended to make on us, instead of taking an impression only partial and
one-sided.

Footnotes

[1] Thus, in the Apologies of Justin Martyr, they are scarcely made use of at
all. It is otherwise indeed with Arnobius, who (Adv. Gen. i. 42) lays much
stress on them. Speaking of the truth of Christianity and of Christ’s mission,
he says, Nulla major est comprobatio quam gestarum ab eo fides rerum, quam
virtutum,—and then appeals through ten eloquent chapters to his miracles.

[2] De Veritate Religionis Christiana.

[3] I include, in the proofs drawn from the miracles, those drawn from the O. T.
prophecies,—for it was only as miracles (miracula praescientise, as the others
are miracula potentiae), that these prophecies were made to do service and
arrayed in the forefront of this battle; as by the learned and acute Huet, in
his Demonstratio Evangelica, in which the fulfilment of prophecy in the person
of Jesus of Nazareth is altogether the point round which the whole argument
turns, as he himself in the Preface, § 2, declares.

[4] For example, by Huet in his work referred to above. He claims for the way of
proof upon which he is entering that it is the safest, and has the precision,
and carries the conviction, of a geometrical proof (Praefatio, §2): Utpote quae
constet hoc genere demonstrationis, quod non minus certum sit quam demonstratio
quaevis geometrica.

[5] The Friend, vol. iii. Essay ii.

[6] See the admirable words of Calvin, Instit. i. 7. §§ 4, 5, on the Holy
Scripture as ultimately αὐτόπιστος.

[7] Maurice, The Kingdom of Christ, vol. ii. p. 204.

[8] See Pascal, Pensees, 27, Sur les Miracles.

[9] Augustine was indeed affirming the same, when, against the Donatists, and
their claims to be workers of wonders, he said (De Unit. Eccles. 19): Quaecunque
talia in Catholicâ [Ecclesiâ] fiunt, ideo sunt approbanda, quia in Catholicâ
fiunt; non ideo manifestatur Catholica, quia haec in eâ fiunt.


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  CHAPTER 8: 08-THE MIRACLES
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The Miracles


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  CHAPTER 9: 09-1. THE WATER TURNED INTO WINE
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1. The Water Turned Into Wine

John 2:1-11

“This beginning of miracles” is as truly an introduction to all other miracles
which Christ did, as the parable of the Sower to all other parables which He
spoke (Mark 4:13). No other miracle has so much in it of prophecy, and thus no
other would have inaugurated so fitly the whole future work of the Son of God.
For that work might be characterized throughout as an ennobling of the common,
and a transmuting of the mean; a turning of the water of earth into the wine of
heaven. But it will be better not to anticipate remarks, which will find their
fitter place when the miracle itself shall have first been considered.

“And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee”. The “third day”
after what? No doubt, the third after that on which Philip and Nathanael, of
whose coming to Christ there is mention immediately before (John 1:43), had
attached themselves to Him. He and his newly-won disciples would have journeyed
without difficulty from the banks of Jordan to Cana[1] in two days, and might so
have been present at the “marriage” or, better, “the marriage festival,” upon
the third day after. “And the mother of Jesus was there.” The silence of
Scripture leaves hardly a doubt that Joseph was dead at the time when the Lord’s
open ministry began. He is last expressly mentioned on occasion of the Lord’s
visit as a child to the Temple (Luk 2:41); which, however, he must for a certain
period have over lived (Luk 2:51). “And both Jesus was called and his
disciples.” These, invited with their Master, and, no doubt, mainly out of
respect to Him, are commonly taken to have been the five whom He had just
gathered, Andrew and Peter, Philip and Nathanael (Bartholomew?), and the fifth,
the Evangelist himself. For St. John is generally considered to have been the
second of the two scholars of the Baptist mentioned John 1:35; John 1:40, of
whom Andrew was the other, both from the particularity with which that calling
is narrated, and from this Evangelist’s way of concealing his own personality
under language such as there is used (cf. 13:23; 18:15; 19:26, 35). Only thus
can we account for the name of the fifth disciple being past over, while all the
others difficulty be twisted to the same, the Kefr having first to be dropped
altogether, and in Kenna, the first radical changed, and the second left out;
while “Kâna el-Jelîl” is word for word the “Cana of Galilee” of Scripture, which
exactly so stands in the Arabic version of the N. T. In addition, he decisively
proves that the mistake is entirely modern, that only since the sixteenth
century Kefr Kenna has thus borne away the honours due rightly to Kana el-Jelil.
Till then, as he shows by numerous references to a line of earlier travellers
and topographers reaching through many centuries, the latter was ever considered
as the scene of this first miracle of our Lord. It may have helped to further
the mistake, and to win for it an easier acceptance, that it was manifestly for
the interest of guides and travellers who would spare themselves fatigue and
distance, to accept the other in its room, it lying directly on one of the
routes between Nazareth and Tiberias, and being far more accessible than the
true. The Cana of the New T. does not occur in the Old, but is mentioned twice
by Josephus, who also takes note of it as in Galilee (Vit. §§ 16, 64; Bell. Jude
1:7; Jude 1:5). This addition to the name of the place, occurring as often as it
is mentioned, is to be regarded here not as a specification on the part of the
Evangelist, but as part of the. name, just as we speak of Stoke by Nayland, or
Burton on Trent, The 0. T. has only Kanah in Asher (Jos 19:28), S. E. of Tyre,
are mentioned. If this assumption is correct, St. John will then have been an
eye-witness of the miracle which he relates.[2]

None need wonder to find the Lord of life at that festival; for He came to
sanctify all life,—to consecrate its times of joy, as its times of sorrow; all
experience telling us, that it is times of gladness, such as this was now, which
especially need such a sanctifying power and presence of the Lord. In times of
sorrow, the sense of God’s nearness comes more naturally out: in these it is in
danger to be forgotten. He was there, and by his presence there struck the
key-note to the whole future tenor of his ministry. He should not be as another
Baptist, a wilderness preacher, withdrawing himself from the common paths of
men; but his should’ be at once a harder and a higher task, to mingle with and
purify the common life of men, to assert and bring out the glory which was
hidden in its every relation.[3] And it is not, perhaps, without its
significance, that this should have been especially a marriage, which He
“adorned and beautified with his presence and first miracle that He wrought. “He
foresaw that some hereafter should arise in his Church who would despise
marriage, or, if not despise, yet fail to give the Christian family all its
dignity and honour.[4] These should not find any countenance from Him.[5]

“And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto Him, They have no
wine. “It may have been that his presence and that of his disciples, a presence
unlooked for, as of those who had just arrived from a journey, increased beyond
expectation the number of the guests; and so the provision made for their
entertainment may have proved insufficient. The Mother of the Lord was perhaps
near akin to the bridegroom or the bride; at all events from one reason or
another did not account it unseemly to mingle with, and in some sort to guide,
the festal arrangements.[6] She was evidently distressed at the embarrassments
of that humble household, and would willingly have removed them. Yet what
exactly she expected from her divine Son, when she thus turned to Him, is hard
to determine. We know that this was his first miracle (ver. 11), so that she
could not, from anterior displays of his power and grace, have now been
emboldened to look for further manifestations of the same. Some indeed, of whom
Maldonatus is one, take not so absolutely the denial of all miracles preceding,
but with this limitation understood:—this was the first of his miracles wherein
He showed forth his glory; other such works He may have performed already in the
smaller circle of his family, and thus have prepared them for more open displays
of his grace and power. But, without evading thus the plain declaration of St.
John, we may well understand how she, who more than any other had kept and
pondered in her heart all the tokens and prophetic intimations of the coming
glory of her Son (Luk 2:19; Luk 2:51), should have believed that in Him powers
were latent, equal to the present need, and which, however He had restrained
them until now, He could and would put forth, whenever the fit time had
arrived.[7] This is much more reasonable than to suppose that she had no
definite purpose in these words; but only turned to Him now, as having ever
found Him a wise counsellor in least things as in greatest.[8] Bengel’s
suggestion is curious, that it was a hint to Him that they should leave, and
thus by their example break up the assembly, before the necessities of their
hosts should appear;[9] and Calvin’s is more curious still.[10] Her interference
seems not at first to promise any good result. “Jesus saith unto her, Woman,
what have I to do with thee?” The expositors of the Church of Rome have been
very anxious to rid this answer of every shadow of rebuke or blame. Entire
essays have been written with this single purpose.. Now it is quite true that in
the address “Woman” there is nothing of severity or harshness, however it may
have some such sound to an English ear. In those last and tenderest words which
the Lord addressed to his mother, He used the same language, “Woman, behold thy
Son” (John 19:26). So far from any harshness, the compellationhas something
solemn in it, and cannot but have such where the dignity of woman is duly felt.
But it is otherwise, with the words following, “What have I to do with
thee?”[11] Comparing them with the same or like expressions elsewhere, their
meaning is clearly this: “Let me alone; what is there common to thee and Me? we
stand in this matter on altogether different grounds. “All expositors of the
early Church[12] have allowed, even by the confession of the Romanists
themselves, that there is more or less of reproof and repulse in this answer;
and they themselves are obliged to admit the appearance of such; only they deny
the reality. He so replied, they say, to, teach us, not her, that higher
respects than those of flesh and blood moved Him to the choosing of the present
moment for the first putting forth of his divine power.[13] Most certainly it
was to teach this; but to teach it first to her who from her wondrous position
as the “blessed among women” was, more than any other, in danger of forgetting
it; and in her to teach it to all. “She had not yet,” says Chrysostom, “that
opinion of Him which she ought, but because she bare Him, counted that, after
the manner of other mothers, she might in all things command Him whom it more
became her to reverence and worship as her Lord.”[14] The true parallel to this
passage, and that throwing most light on it, is Mat 12:46-50.

Any severity which this answer may seem to have in the reading, we cannot doubt
was mitigated by the manner of its speaking; suffering, as it plainly did, a
near compliance with her request to look through its apparent refusal. For when
she “saith unto the servants, Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it” it is evident
she read a Yes, and, as the sequel shows, rightly read it, in his apparent No.
It must be confessed that these words are not without their difficulty,
following close on that announcement, “Mine hour is not yet come.” For that,
most of all when taken in connexion with what just went before, seems to put off
not for the present, only for a few minutes, or for an hour, the manifestation
of his glory as the Messiah, but to postpone it altogether to some remote period
of his ministry. Indeed, his “hour” is generally, most of all in the language of
St. John, the hour of his passion, or of his departure from the world (8:30;
8:20; 12:23, 27; 13:1; 17:1[15]). Here, however, and perhaps on one other
occasion (7:6), it indicates a time close at hand. His hour had not yet come.
Not till the wine was wholly exhausted would it arrive; as yet that was only
failing. Then would be the time to act, when by its entire failure, manifest to
all, the miracle would be above suspicion; else, in Augustine’s words, He might
seem rather to mingle elements than to change them.[16] When all other help
fails, then, and not till then, the “hour” of the great Helper has arrived.
Luther here notes, and presents to us for an example, the faith of Mary, who,
nothing daunted by the semblance of a refusal, reads between the lines of this
refusal another answer to her implied petition; is sure that even the fault
which clave to her prayer shall not hinder it altogether; but that in due time
it shall be granted; is indeed so sure of this that she not obscurely guesses
at, and even indicates the manner of the granting, “Whatsoever He saith unto
you, do it.”

Very beautiful is it here to observe the facility with which our Lord yields
Himself to the supply, not of the absolute wants merely, but of the
superfluities, of others; not indeed so much for the guests’ sake, as for that
of the bridal pair, whose marriage feast, by the unlooked-for shortcoming of the
wine, was in danger of being exposed to mockery and scorn.[17] This He will
avert, who can enter into all needs, the finer no less than the commoner needs
of our life. For all the grace, and beauty, and courtesy of life are taken
account of in Christianity, as well as life’s sterner realities; and the spirit
of Christ, in Himself and in his disciples, allows all, while giving to each its
due place and importance. We may contrast this his readiness to aid others, with
his stern refusal to minister by the same almighty power to his own extremest
needs. He who made wine out of water, might have made bread out of stones;[18]
but spreading a table for others, He is content to hunger and to thirst Himself.
The conditions under which the miracle was accomplished are all, as Chrysostom
[19] long ago observed, such as to exclude any possible suspicion of collusion.
“And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of the
purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. Jesus saith unto
them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.” They
were vessels for water, not for wine; thus none could insinuate that probably
some sediment of wine remained in them, which lending a flavour to water poured
on it, formed thus a thinnest kind of wine; even as the same explanation is
excluded by the praise which the ruler of the feast bestows upon the new supply
(ver. 10). The circumstance of these vessels being at hand is accounted for.
They were there by no premeditated plan, but in accordance with the customs and
traditionary observances of the Jews in the matter of washing (Mat 15:2; Mark
7:2-4; Luk 11:39); for this seems more probable than that this “purifying” has
reference to any distinctly commanded legal observances. The quantity, too,
which these vessels contained, was enormous; not such as might have been brought
in unobserved, but “two or three firkins apiece.” And at the beginning they were
empty; so that the servants who, on that bidding, had filled them with water,
and who knew what liquid they had poured in, became themselves, by this act of
theirs, witnesses to the reality of the miracle. Else it might only have
appeared, as in fact it did only appear to the ruler of the feast, that the wine
came from some unexpected quarter; “he knew not whence it was; but the servants
which drew the water,”[20]—not, that is, the water now made wine, but who had
drawn the simpler element, on which the Lord put forth his transforming
powers,—” knew.”

“And He saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast.
And they bare it.” Like most other acts of creation, or, more strictly, of
becoming, this of the water becoming wine, is concealed from sight. That which
is poured into the jars as water is drawn out as wine; but the actual process of
the change we toil in vain to conceive. And yet in truth it is in no way
stranger, save in the rapidity with which it is effected, than that which is
every day going forward among us, but to which use and custom have so dulled our
eyes, that commonly we do not marvel at it at all; and, because we can call it
by its name, suppose that we have discovered its secret, or rather that there is
no secret in it to discover. He who each year prepares the wine in the grape,
causing it to absorb, and swell with, the moisture of earth and heaven, to
transmute this into nobler juices of its own, concentrated all those slower
processes now into the act of a single moment, and accomplished in an instant
what usually He takes many months to accomplish. This analogy does not indeed
help us to understand what the Lord at this time did, but yet brings before us
that in this He was working in the line of (above, indeed, but not across, or
counter to) his more ordinary workings, which we see daily around us, the
unnoticed miracles of everyday nature. That which this, had peculiarly its own,
and which took it out from the order of nature, was the power and will by which
all the intervening steps of these tardier processes were overleaped, their
methods superseded, and the result attained in an instant.[21] It has been
sometimes debated whether “the governor of the feast” was himself one of the
guests, set either by general consent or by the selection of the host over the
banquet; or, as Chrysostom and others will have it, a chief attendant, charged
with ordering the course of the feast, and overlooking the ministrations of the
inferior servants.[22] The analogy of Greek and Roman usages[23] points him out
as himself a guest, invested with this office for the time; and the passage from
the Apocrypha quoted below,[24] shows that a similar custom was in use among the
Jews. Indeed the freedom of remonstrance which he allows himself with the
bridegroom seems decisive of his position; for such would hardly have found
place but from an equal. It was for him to taste and distribute the wine; to
him, therefore, the Lord commanded that this should be first brought, even in
this little matter allowing and honouring the established order and usage of
society, and giving to every man his due.

“When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew
not whence it was (but the servants which drew the water knew), the governor of
the feast called the bridegroom,”—called, that is, to him,[25] and with
something of a festive exclamation, not unsuitable to the season, exclaimed:
“Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well
drunk, then that which is worse:[26] but thou hast kept the good wine until
now.” Many interpreters have been very anxious to rescue the original word,
which we have given by “well drunk,” from itself implying aught of excess. They
have done this, lest otherwise it might seem as though the guests at this
marriage festival had already overpassed the limits of temperance, and that we
had here one of those unseemly revels (temulenta convivia Cyprian calls them)
which too often disgraced a marriage,[27]—with all the difficulties, of Christ’s
sanctioning with his presence so great an abuse of God’s gifts, and, stranger
still, ministering by his divine power to a yet worse excess. But there is no
need of this anxious dealing with the word.[28] We may be quite sure there was
no such excess here; for to this the Lord would as little have given allowance
by his presence, as He would have helped it forward by a special wonder-work of
his own. The ruler of the feast does but refer to a common practice, that of
producing the best wine first, at the same time noticing the motive, namely,
that men’s palates after a while are blunted, and their power of discerning
between good and bad is diminished; and thus an inferior wine passes with them
then, which would not have “past with them before. There is no special
application to the guests present, but only to the corrupt customs and fashions
too common in the world;—unless, indeed, it be in the minds of some who would
mar, if by. any means they could, the image of a perfect Holiness, which offends
and rebukes them. Of a piece with this is their miserable objection, who find
the miracle incredible, since, granting that the Lord did not actually minister
to an excess already commenced, still by the creation of “so large and perilous
a quantity of wine” (for the quantity was enormous[29]), He would have put
temptation in men’s way. With the same right, every good gift of God which is
open to any possible abuse, every plenteous return of the field, every large
abundance of the vineyard, might be accused of being a temptation; and so in
some sort it is (cf. Luk 12:16), a proving of men’s temperance and moderation in
the midst of abundance.[30] But man is to be perfected, not by exemption from
temptation, but rather by victory in temptation; and the secret of temperance
lies not in the scanty supply, but in the strong self-restraint. That this gift
should be large, was only that which we should look for. He, a King, gave as
became a king. No niggard giver in the ordinary bounties of his kingdom of
nature, neither was He a niggard giver now, when He brought those common gifts
into the kingdom of his grace, and made them directly to serve Him there (cf.
Luk 5:6-7). But this saying of the governor of the feast must not be suffered to
pass by, as describing only a trivial practice and a sordid economy of this
world. He may not have intended, doubtless he did not intend, any more; and yet
his worda excellently set forth to us the difference between the manner and
order of the world’s giving, and of Christ’s; the man giving utterance to a far
larger and deeper thought than he meant. The world does indeed give its best and
choicest at the beginning, its “good wine” first, but has only meaner and poorer
substitutes at the last. “When men have well drunk” when their spiritual palate
is blunted, when they have lost the discernment between moral good and evil,
then it puts upon them that which it would not have dared to offer at the
first,—coarser pleasures, viler enjoyments, the swine’s husks. Those who worship
the world must recognize at last its fittest representation in that great image
which Nebuchadnezzar beheld in his dream (Dan 2:31); the head, indeed, showing
as fine gold, but its material growing ever baser, till it finishes with the
iron and clay at the last.

“To be a prodigal’s favourite, then, worse lot! A miser’s pensioner,” This is
the portion of its votaries. But it is otherwise with the guests of Christ, the
heavenly bridegroom. He ever reserves for them whom He has bidden, “the good
wine” unto the last.[31] In the words of the most eloquent of our divines, “The
world presents us with fair language, promising hopes, convenient fortunes,
pompous honours, and these are the outside of the bowl; but when it is
swallowed, these dissolve in an instant, and there remains bitterness and the
malignity of coloquintida. Every sin smiles in the first address, and carries
light in the face, and honey in the lip; but when we ’have well drunk,’ then
comes ’that which is worse,’ a whip with six strings, fears and terrors of
conscience, and shame and displeasure, and a caitiff disposition, and diffidence
in the day of death. But when after the manner of purifying of the Christians,
we fill our waterpots with water, watering our couch with our tears, and
moistening our cheeks with the perpetual distillations of repentance, then
Christ turns our water into wine, first penitents and then communicants—first
waters of sorrow and then the wine of the chalice;.... for Jesus keeps the best
wine to the last, not only because of the direct reservations of the highest
joys till the nearer approaches of glory, but also because our relishes are
higher after a long fruition than at the first essays, such being the nature of
grace, that it increases in relish as it does in fruition, every part of grace
being new duty and new reward.”[32]

“This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth
his glory.” The Evangelist expressly, and, it would seem, pointedly, excludes
from all historic credit the miracles of the Infancy, which are. found in such
rank abundance in nearly all the apocryphal Gospels; for, of course, he means
not merely that this was the first miracle which Jesus wrought in Cana, but that
this miracle in Cana was the first which He wrought;[33] and the Church has ever
regarded these words as decisive on this point.[34] The statement is important,
and not unconnected with one main purpose of St, John, in his Gospel, namely, to
repel and remove all unreal notions concerning the person of his Lord,—notions
which nothing would have helped more to uphold than those merely phantastic and
capricious miracles,—favourites, therefore, with all manner of docetic
heretics,—which are ascribed to his infancy. Of none less than the Son could’ be
affirmed that He “manifested forth his glory;” for every other would have
manifested forth the glory of God”; He only, being God, could manifest his own;
for “glory” (δόξα) here must have all its emphasis; it is assuredly no
creaturely attribute) but a divine; comprehended and involved in the idea of the
Logos as the absolute Light, As such He rays forth light from Himself, and this
effluence is “his glory!’ (John 1:14; Mat 16:27; Mark 8:38). This his “glory”
during the time that He tabernacled upon earth for the most part was hidden; the
veil of our flesh concealed it from the sight of men: but now, in this work of
his grace and power, it burst through the covering which concealed it, revealing
itself to the spiritual eyes of his disciples; they “beheld his glory, the glory
as of the only begotten of the Father.”[35] And as a consequence, ”his disciples
believed on Him.” The work, besides its more immediate purpose, had a further
end and aim, the confirming, strengthening, exalting of their faith, who,
already believing in Him, were thus the more capable of receiving an increase of
faith,—of being lifted from faith to faith, advanced from faith in an earthly
teacher to faith in a heavenly Lord[36] (1Ki 17:24). This first miracle of the
New Covenant has its inner mystical meaning. The first miracle of Moses was a
turning of water into blood (Exo 7:20), nor was this without its symbolic
fitness; for the law, which came by Moses, was a ministration of death, and
working wrath (2Co 3:6-9);[37] but the first miracle of Christ was a turning of
water into Mine, and this too was a meet inauguration of all which should
follow, for his was a ministration of life; He came, the dispenser of that true
wine that maketh glad the heart of man (Psa 104:15). Another prophetic aspect
this miracle offers; which yet indeed is not another, but only a different
aspect of the same; namely, that even as Christ turned now the water into wine,
so should He turn the poorer dispensation, the thin and watery elements of the
Jewish religion (Heb 7:18), into richer and nobler, into the gladdening wine of
a higher faith. The whole Jewish dispensation in its comparative weakness and
poverty was aptly symbolized by the water; and only in type and prophecy could
point to Him, who should come “binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s
colt unto the choice vine;” who “washed his garments in wine and his clothes in
the blood of grapes” (Gen 49:11. cf. John 15:1), but now by this work of his He
gave token that He was indeed come, that his people’s joy might be full.[38] Nor
less do we behold symbolized here, that whole work which the Son of God is
evermore accomplishing in the world,—ennobling all that He touches, making
saints out of sinners, angels out of men, and in the end heaven out of earth, a
new paradise of God out of the old wilderness of the world. For the prophecy of
the world’s regeneration, of the day in which his disciples shall drink of the
fruit of the vine new in his kingdom, is here. In this humble supper we have the
rudiments of the glorious festival, which when it shall arrive, his hour shall
have indeed come, and He shall be there, Himself the Bridegroom, and his Church
the Bride.

Irenaeus,[39] in an interesting passage, associates this miracle and that of the
loaves; and contemplating them together as a prophecy of the Eucharist, finds
alike in each a witness against all Gnostic notions of a creation originally
impure. The Lord, he says, might have created, with no subjacent material, the
wine with which He cheered these guests, the bread with which He fed those
multitudes; but He rather chose to take his Father’s creatures on which to
display his power, in witness that it was the same God that at the beginning had
made the waters and caused the earth to bear its fruits, who did in those last
days give by his Son the cup of blessing and the bread of life.[40]

Footnotes

[1] Among the most felicitous and most convincing of Robinson’s slighter
rectifications of the geography of Palestine (Biblical Researches, vol. iii. pp.
204-208) is that in which he re-instates the true Cana in honours which had long
been usurped by another village. In the neighbourhood of Nazareth are two
villages, one of which bears the title of Kefr Kenna, and is about an hour and a
half N. E. from Nazareth; the other, Kâna el-Jelil, about three hours’ distance,
and nearly due north. The former, which has only greater nearness in its favour,
is now always shown by the monks and other guides to travellers as the Cana of
our history, though the name can only with

[2] A late tradition makes St. John not merely an eye-witness, but to have been
himself the bridegroom at this marriage, who, seeing the miracle which Jesus
did, forsook the bride and followed Him. The author of the Prologue to St. John,
attributed to Jerome, relates: Joannem nubere volentem a nuptiis per Dominum
fuisse vocatum, though without more close allusion to this miracle. The
Mahometans have received this tradition that John was the bridegroom from the
Christians (see D’Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient, s. v. Johanna). Nicephorus tells
the story with this variation, that it was not St. John, but Simon the Cananite,
who on this hint followed Jesus; but the Κανανίτης attached to his name (Mat
10:4), and which is probably the only foundation for this assumption, as little
means “of Cana” as “of Canaan;” which our translators, writing “the Canaanite,”
as though Κανανίτης = Χαναναῖος, must have assumed. It is rather a term of the
same significance as Ζηλωτής, the title which elsewhere (Luk 6:15; Acts 1:13) is
given him. He had belonged to these “zealots,” till his zeal for freedom, which
before had shown itself in stormy and passionate outbreaks of the natural man,
found its satisfaction in Him who came to make free indeed.. Yet see what
Greswell says (Dissert. vol. ii. p. 128 sqq.) against making ϝηλωτής =
Κανανίτης.

[3] Augustine, or another under his name (Serm. xcii. Appendix): Nec dedignatus
est conversationem hominum, qui usum carnis exceperat. Nee secularia instituta
contempsit, qui ad haec venerat corrigenda. Interfuit nuptiis, ut concordiae
jura firmaret. Tertullian, in his reckless method of snatching at any argument,
finds rather a slighting of marriage than an honouring it in the fact that
Christ, who was present at so many festivals, was yet present only at one
marriage. Or this at least he will find, that since Christ was present but at
one marriage, therefore monogamy is the absolute law of the new covenant. His
words are characteristic (DeMonogamid, 9): Ille vorator et potator homo,
prandiorum et coenarum cum publicanis frequentator, semel apud unas nuptias
coenat, multis utique nubentibus. Totiens enim voluit celebrare eas, quotiens et
esse.

[4] Epiphanius (Hares, lxvii.); Augustine (In. Ev. Joh. tract, xix.): Quod
Dominus invitatus venerit ad nuptias, etiam exceptâ mysticâ significatione,
confirmare voluit quod ipse fecit.

[5] How precious a witness have we in this conduct of our Lord against the
tendency which our indolence and our cowardice ever favours, of giving up to the
world, or to the devil, aught of human, which, in itself innocent, is capable of
being drawn up into the higher world of holiness, as it is in danger of sinking
down and coming under the law of the flesh and of the world! How remarkable a
contrast does Christ’s presence at this wedding feast offer to the manner in
which a man even of St. Cyprian’s practical strength and energy yields up these
very marriage festivals as occasions where, from the still surviving heathenism
of manners, purity must suffer—where the flesh must have its way; so that his
counsel is, not to dispute them with the world, not to vindicate them anew for
holiness and for God, but only to avoid them altogether (Be Hab. Virg. 3): Et
quoniam continentiea bonum quaerimus, perniciosa quaeque et infesta vitemus. Nec
ilia praetereo quae dum negligentiâ, in usum veniunt, contra pudicos et sobrios
mores licentiam sibi de usurpatione fecerunt. Quasdam non pudet nubentibus
interesse. And presently, after describing the disorders of such seasons, he
adds, 4: Nuptiarum festa improba et convivia lasciva vitentur, quorum periculosa
contagio est. Compare the picture which Chrysostom gives of marriage festivals
in his time (torn. iii. p. 195, Ben. ed.),—melancholy witnesses, yet not, as
some would have us believe, of a Church which had fallen back into heathen
defilements, but of one which had not as yet leavened an essentially heathen,
though nominally Christian, society, through and through with its own life and
power.

[6] Lightfoot supposes that it was a marriage in the house of Mary (John 19:25),
wife of Cleophas. For the arguments see his Harmony, in loc, and Greswell,
Dissert, vol. ii. p. 120.

[7] So Theophylact, Euthymius, and Neander (Leben Jesu, p. 370).

[8] So Cocceius: Verba nihil aliud portendunt quam Mariam tanquam solicitam et
parentem operuisse ipsi defectum vini, ex condolentiâ nimirum.

[9] Velim discedas, ut ceteri item discedant, antequam penuria patefiat.

[10] Ut piâ aliquâ exhortatione convivis taedium exirneret, ac simul levaret
pudorem sponsi.

[11] Τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί; cf. Jdg 11:12; 1Ki 17:18; 2Ki 3:13, where the same phrase
is used; it is elliptic, and the word κοινὸν may be supplied. Thus in the second
of these passages, “What is there in common to us twain, to me a sinful woman,
and thee a man of God, that we should have thus come together to my harm?” And
in the third, “What have we in common, I a prophet of the true God, and thou the
son of that idolatrous king Ahab, that thou shouldst ask counsel of me?” Cf. Jos
22:24; 2Sa 16:10; Mat 8:29; Mark 1:24; Luk 8:28. It is only out of an entire
ignorance of the idiom that some understand the words, “What is that to thee and
Me? What concerns it us twain that there is no wine?”

[12] Two examples for many. Irenaeus (iii. 16): Properante Mariâ ad admirabile
vini signum, et ante tempus volente participare compendii poculo, Dominus
repellens ejus intempestivam festinationem, dixit, Quid mini et tibi est,
mulier? nondum venit hora mea, expectans earn horam quae est a Patre
praecognita. He means by the compendii poculum, the cup of wine not resulting
from the slower processes of nature, but made per saltum, at a single
intervention of divine power, therefore compendiously. Cf. 3:11; and Chrysostom
ascribes her request to vanity (Hom. xxi. in Joh.): Ἐβούλετο... ἑαυτὴν
λαμπροτέραν ποιῆσαι διὰ τοῦ Παιδός.

[13] Maldonatus: Simulavit se matrem reprehendere, cum ininime reprehenderet, ut
ostenderet se non humano, non sanguinis respectu, sed solâ, caritate, et ut
sese, quis sit, declaret, miraculum facere. St. Bernard had gone before him in
this explanation: it was, he says, for our sakes Christ so answered, ut
conversos ad Dominum jam non sollicitet carnalium cura parentum, et
necessitudines illae non impediant exercitium spirituale.

[14] Horn. xxi. in Joh.

[15] It is ὁ καιρός there, ἡ ὥρα here

[16] So the author of a sermon in the Appendix to St. Augustine (Serm. xcii.):
Hac responsione interim debemus advertere quod de nuptiali vino pars aliqua
adhuc forte resederat. Ideo nondum erat Domini plena hora virtutum, ne miscere
magis elementa quam mutare videretur [ne aqua vino admixta crederetur: Grotius].
Maldonatus: Cur ergo miraculum fecit, si tempus non venerat? Non venerat cum
mater petivit; venerat cum fecit, modico licet intervallo. So Cyril, Chrysostom,
Theophylact, Euthymius.

[17] Hilary (De Trin. iii. 5): Sponsus tristis est, familia turbatur,
sollemnitas nuptialis convivii periclitatur.

[18] Augustine (Serm. cxxiii. 2): Qui poterat talia facere, diguatus est
indigere. Qui fecit de aquâ, vinum, potuit facere et de lapidibus panem.

[19] Horn. xxii. in Joh.

[20] The Vulgate rightly: Qui hauserant. De Wette: Welche das Wasser geschöfet
hatten. So the Ambrosian Hymn: Vel hydriis plenis aquae Vino saporem infuderis,
Hausit minister conscius Quod ipse non impleverat

[21] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, viii.): Ipse enim fecit vinum illo die in
nuptiis in sex illis hydriis quas impleri aquâ praecepit, qui omni anno facit
hoc in vitibus. Sicut enim quod miserunt ministri in hydrias, in vinum,
eonversum est opere Domini, sic et quod nubes fundunt, in vinum convertitur
ejusdem opere Domini. Illud autem non miramur, quia omni anno fit: assiduitate
amisit admirationem. And again (Serm. exxiii. 3): Quae aqua erat, vinum factum
viderunt homines et obstupuerunt. Quid aliud fit de pluviâ, per radicem vitis?
Ipse ilia fecit, ipse ista; ilia ut pascaris, ista ut mireris. So also De Gen.
ad Litt. vi. 13. Chrysostom (Horn. xxii. in Joh): Δεικνὺς ὅτι αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ ἐν
ταῖς ἀμπέλοις τὸ ὕδωρ μεταβάλλων, καὶ τὸν ὑετὸν διὰ τῆς ῥίζης εἰς οἶνον τρέπων,
ὅπερ ἐν τῷ φυτῷ διὰ πολλοῦ χρόνου γίνεται, τοῦτο ἀθρόον ἐν τῷ γάμῳ εἰργάσατο.
Cf. Gregory the Great, Moral. vi. 15.

[22] So by Severus; by Juvencus, who calls him summum ministrum; by Kuinoel, and
others.

[23] This ἀρχιτρίκλινος will then answer very much to the συμποσιάρχης among the
Greeks, and the rex convivii, or magister convivii, or modimperator, of the
Romans. It was his part, in the words of Plato, παιδαγωγεῖν συμπόσιον (Becker,
Charicles, vol. i. p. 465). He appears here as the προγεύστης. The word
ἀρχιτρίκλινος is late, and of rare occurrence; Petronius has triclinarches.

[24] Sir 32:1-2 : “If thou be made the master of a feast (ἡγούμενος), lift not
thyself up, but be among them as one of the rest; take diligent care of them,
and so sit down. And when thou hast done all thy office, take thy place, that
thou mayest be merry with them, and receive a crown for thy well ordering of the
feast.”

[25] Maldonatus: Non quod ad se venire jusserit, quod minime fuisset urbanum,
sed quod recumbentem appellans interrogaverit, quid optimum vinum in finem
reservâsset.

[26] Ἐλάσσω implies at once worse and weaker. We have in English the same use of
“small.” Perhaps “poorer” would be the nearest word. Pliny in like manner (H. N.
xiv. 14) speaks of the meanness of some, qui convivis alia quam sibimet ipsis
ministrant, aut procedente mensâ subjiciunt.

[27] Be Hah Virg. 3.

[28] Augustine, indeed, goes further than any, for he makes not merely the
guests, but the ruler of the feast himself to have “well drunk” indeed. The Lord
not merely made wine, but, he adds (Be Gen. ad Litt. vi. 13), tale vinum, quod
ebrius etiam conviva laudaret.

[29] The Attic μετρητής (=βάδος = 72 ξέσται = 72 sextarii) = 8 gallons 7365
pints, imperial measure; so that each of these six vessels, containing two or
three μετρηταί apiece, did in round numbers hold about twenty gallons or more.

[30] Calvin: Nostro vitio fit, si ejus benignitas irritamentum est luxurise;
quin potius haec temperantiae nostrae vera est probatio, si in mediâ affluentiâ
parci tamen et moderati sumus: cf. Suicer, Thes. s. v. οἶνος. It is instructive
to notice the ascetic tone which Strauss takes (Leben Jesu, vol. ii. p. 229),
when speaking of this “Luxuswunder,” as he terms it, contrasted with that which
he assumes when he desires to depreciate the character of John the Baptist: but
truly heis of that generation that call Jesus a wine-bibber, and say that John
has a devil; with whom that which is godlike can in no. form, find favour. Some
of Woolston’s vilest ribaldry (Fourth Discourse on the Miracles of our Saviour,
p. 23 sqq.) is spent upon this theme.

[31] Thus H. de Sto Victore (Be Arc. Mor. i. 1): Omnis namque homo, id est,
carnalis primum vinum bonum ponit, quia in suâ delectatione falsam quandam
dulcedinem sentit; sed postquam furor mali desiderii mentem inebriaverit, tune
quod deterius est propinat, quia spina conscientiae superveniens mentem, quam
prius falso delectabat, graviter cruciat. Sed Sponsus noster postremo vinum
bonum porrigit, dum mentem, quam sui dulcedine amoris replere disponit, quâdam
prius tribulationum compunctione amaricari sinit, ut post gustum amaritudinis
avidius bibatur suavissimum poeulum caritatis. Corn, a Lapide: Hie est typus
fallaciae mundi, qui initio res speciosas oculis objicit, deinde sub iis
deteriores et viles inducit, itaque sui amatores decipit et illudit. An unknown
author (Bernardi Opp. vol. ii. p. 513): In futurâ, enim vita, aqua omnis laboris
et actionis terrenae in vinum divinae contemplationis commutabitur,
implebunturque omnes hydriae usque ad summum. Omnes enim implebuntur in bonis
domûs Do mini, cum illae desiderabiles nuptial Sponsi et sponsae celebrabuntur:
bibeturque in summâ laetitiâ omnium clamantium Domino et dicentium; Tu bonum
vinum servâsti usque adhuc. I know not from whence this line comes, Ille merum
tarde, dat tamen ille merum; but it evidently belongs to this miracle.

[32] Jeremy Taylor, Life of Christ. Worthy to stand beside this, and the
unfolding of the same thought, is that exquisite poem in The Christian Year,
upon the second Sunday after Epiphany, suggested by this miracle, the Gospel of
that day. And Plato, Rep. x. 12, supplies a very interesting study as a heathen
parallel. He is there describing the close of the good man’s life and the bad;
the clustering honours which attend the evening of the good man’s days; the
scorn which even the world itself has in store for the bad.

[33] Thus Tertullian (De Bapt. 9) calls it, prima rudimenta potestatis suae. And
this day has been sometimes called, dies natalis virtutum Domini.

[34] Thus see Epiphanius (Haer. li. 20); from whose words it would appear that
some Catholics were inclined to admit these miracles of the Infancy, as
affording an argument against the Cerinthians, and a proof that it was not at
his Baptism first that the Christ was united to the man Jesus. And Euthymius (in
lcc.): ἱστόρησεν αὐτὸ [ὁ Ἰωάννης], χρησιμεῦον εἰς τὸ μὴ πιστεύειν τοῖς
λεγομένοις παιδικοῖς θαύμασι τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Cf. Chrysostom, Hom, xvi., xx., xxii.
in Joh.; and Thilo, Cod. Apocr. p. lxxxiv. sqq.

[35] The Eastern Church, as is well known, counted the Baptism of Christ, beings
his recognition before men and by men in his divine character, for the great
manifestation of his glory to the world, for his Epiphany, and was wont to
celebrate it as such. But the Western, which laid not such stress on the
Baptism, saw his Epiphany rather in the adoration of the Magians, the
first-fruits, of the heathen world, At a later period, indeed, it placed other
great moments in his life, moments in which his divine majesty, his δόξα,
gloriously shone out, in connexion with this festival; such, for instance, as
the Baptism, as the feeding of the five thousand, and as this turning of the
water into wine, which last continually affords the theme to the later writers
of the Western Church for the homily at Epiphany, as it gives us the Gospel for
one of the Epiphany Sundays. But these secondary allusions belong not, to the
first introduction of the feast, so that the following passage should have
prevented the editors of the new volume of St. Augustine’s sermons (Serm.
Inediti, Paris, 1842) from attributing the sermon which contains it (Serm.
xxxviii. in Epiph.) to that Father: Hodiernam diem Ecclesia per orbem celebrat
totum, sive quod stella prae ceteris fulgens divitibus Magis parvum non parvi
Regis monstravit hospitium, sive quod hodie Christus primum fecisse dicitur
signum, quando aquas repente commutavit in vinum, sive quod a Joanne isto die
creditur baptizatus et Patris consonâ voce Dei filius revelatur. The same mark
of a later origin cleaves to many other sermons which they have printed as his.
In his genuine, he knows only of the adoration of the Wise Men as the scriptural
fact which this festival of the Epiphany commemorates.

[36] This is plainly the true explanation (in the words of Ammonius, προσθήκην
ἐδέξαντό τινα τῆς εἰς αὐτὸν πίστεως, and not that which Augustine (Be Cons.
Evang. ii. 17), for the interests of his harmony, upholds, namely, that they are
here called “disciples” by anticipation; because subsequently to the miracle
they believed (non jam discipulos, sed qui futuri erant discipuli intelligere
debemus); as one might say, The Apostle Paul was born at Tarsus.

[37] Yet as Moses has here, where he stands in contrast to Christ, a mutatio in
deterius, so in another place, where he stands as his type, he has, like Him, a
mutatio in melius (Exo 15:25), changing the bitter waters to sweet; thus too
Elisha (2Ki 2:19-22); while yet the more excellent transmutation, which should
be not merely the rectifying of qualities already existing, but the imparting of
new, was reserved for the Son; who was indeed not a betterer of the old life of
man, but the bringer in of a new; who did not reform, but regenerate.

[38] Corn, a Lapide: Christus ergo initio suae praedicationis mutans aquam in
vinum significabat se legem Mosaicam, instar aquae insipidam et frigidam,
conversurum in Evangelium gratiae, quae instar vini est, generosa, sapida,
ardens, et efficax. And Bernard, in a preëminently beautiful sermon upon this
miracle (Bened. ed. p. 814), lias in fact the same interpretation: Tune [aqua]
mutatur in vinum, cum timor expellitur a caritate, et implentur omnia fervore
spiritâs et jucunda devotione; cf. De Divers. Serin, xviii. 2; and Eusebius
(Dem. Evang. ix. 8): Σύμβολον ἦν τὸ παραδοξὸν μυστικωτέρον κράματος,
μεταβληθέντος ἐκ τῆς σωματικωτέρας ἐπὶ τὴν νοερὰν καὶ πνευματικὴν εὐφροσύνην τοῦ
πιοτικοῦ τῆς καινῆς Διαθήκης κράματος. Augustine is in the same line, when he
says (In Ev. Joh. tract, ix.): Tollitur velamen, cum transieris ad Dominum,...
et quod aqua erat, vinum tibi fit. Lege libros omnes propheticos, non intellecto
Christo, quid tam insipidum et fatuum invenies? Intellige ibi Christum, non
solum sapit quod legis, sed etiam inebriat.. He illustrates this from Luk
24:25-27. Gregory the Great (Horn. vi. in Ezek.) gives it another turn: Aquam
nobis in vinum vertit, quando ipsa historia per allegorise mysterium, in
spiritalem nobis intelligentiam commutatur.—Before the rise of the Eutychian
heresy had made it unadvisable to use such terms as κρᾶσις, ἀνάκρασις, μῖξις, to
designate the union of the two natures in Christ, or such phrases as
Tertullian’s Deo mixtus homo, we sometimes find allusions to what Christ here
did, as though it were symbolical of the ennobling of the human nature through
its being transfused by the divine in his person. Thus Irenaeus (v. 1, 3)
complains of the Ebionites, that they cling to the first Adam who was cast out
of Paradise, and will know nothing of the second, its restorer: Reprobant-itaque
hi commixtionem vim coelestis, et solam aquam secularem voiuntesse,—so Darner
(Von der PersonChristi, p. 57) understands this passage: yet possibly he may
refer there to their characteristic custom of using water alone, instead of wine
mingled with water, in the Holy Communion: the passage will even then show how
Irenaeus found in the wine and in the water, the apt symbols of the higher and
the lower, of the divine and human.

[39] Con. Haer. iii. 11; Chrysostom in like manner, in regard to the
Manichaeans, Horn. xxii. in Joh.

[40] The account of this miracle by Sedulius is a favourable specimen of his
poetry: Prima suae Dominus, thalamis dignatus adesse, Virtutis documenta dedit;
convivaque praesens Pascere, non pasci, veniens, mirabile! fusas In vinum
convertit aquas; dimittere gaudent Pallorem latices; mutavit laesa [laeta?]
saporem Unda suum, largita merum, mensasque per omnes Dulcia non nato rubuerunt
pocula musto. Implevit sex ergo lacus hoc nectare Christus, Quippe ferax qui
Vitis erat, virtute colon a, Omnia fructificans, cujus sub tegrnine blando Mitis
inocciduas enutrit pampinus uvas. In very early times it was a favourite subject
for Christian Art. On many old sarcophagi Jesus is seen standing and touching
with the rod of Moses, the rod of might usually placed in his hand when He is
set forth as a worker of wonders, three vessels,—three, because in their
skill-less delineations the artists could not manage to find room for more.
Sometimes He has a roll of writing in his hand, as much as to say, This is
written in the Scripture; or the governor of the feast is somewhat earnestly
rebuking the bridegroom for having withheld the good wine till last; having
himself tasted, he is giving to him the cup, to convince him of his error
(Münter, Sinnbild. d. alt. Christ, vol. ii. p. 92).


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  CHAPTER 10: 10-2. THE HEALING OF THE NOBLEMAN'S SON
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2. The Healing of the Nobleman’s Son

John 4:46-54

There is an apparent contradiction in the words that introduce this miracle.
Jesus, it is said, “went into Galilee;” and why? “for He Himself testified that
a prophet hath no honour in his own country;” and yet Galilee was his own
country, and immediately after we are told that the Galilseans, so far from
rejecting, “received”[1] or gave Him honourable welcome, “having seen all the
things that He did at Jerusalem at the feast.” This must be removed, not as
Tittmann, and some older expositors propose, by making St. John, in fact, to say
that the Lord went into Galilee, though He had testified that a prophet was
unhonoured at home; for there is no compelling the words to mean this. Origen’s
explanation, which some moderns follow, can as little be accepted. He
understands our Lord’s “own country” as Judaea, and finds in this saying an
explanation of his retiring from thence into Galilee. But the Lord’s birth at
Bethlehem in Judaea being a fact not generally known (John 7:41-42), the slight
esteem in which He was there held, could not have had this explanation. Rather
we must accept “his own country”[2] in its narrowest sense, as the place where
He had been brought up, namely, Nazareth; and then these words will account for
his not returning thither (with a direct reference to the testimony which He
Himself had borne in its synagogue, “No prophet is accepted in his own country,”
Luk 4:24; Mat 13:57); but preferring Cana and other cities of Galilee. ”And the
Galilaeans,” as St. John, with an emphasis, relates, “received Him” albeit the
Nazarenes, the people of his own immediate city, had rejected, and would have
killed Him.[3]

“There was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum.” It is not wholly
improbable, which has been supposed by some,[4] that this “nobleman”[5] is no
other than Chuza, Herod’s steward, whose wife, remarkably enough, appears among
the holy women that ministered to the Lord of their substance (Luk 8:3. cf. ver.
53). Only some mighty and marvellous work of this kind would have been likely to
draw a steward of Herod’s, with his family, into the Gospel net. Or, as some
suggest, he may have been Manaen, the foster-brother of Herod (Acts 13:1).
Whether he was one of these, or some other not elsewhere named in Scripture,
“when he heard that Jesus was come out of Judaea into Galilee, he went unto Him,
and besought Him that He would come down and heal his son, for he was at the
point of death.” From a certain severity which speaks out in our Lord’s reply,
“Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe,” we gather that this
supplicant was one driven to Jesus by the strong constraint of an outward need,
a need which no other but He could supply (Isa 26:16), rather than one drawn by
the inner necessities and desires of his soul; such as would not have come at
all, but for this.[6] Sharing in the carnal temper of the Jews in general (for
plural, “ye will not believe,” includes them in the same condemnation), he had
(hitherto, at least) no organ for perceiving the glory of Christ as it shone out
in his person and in his doctrine. “Signs and wonders” might compel him to a
belief, but nothing else; unlike those Samaritans whom the Lord has just
quitted, and who, without a miracle, had “believed because of his word” (John
4:41). But “the Jews require a sign” (1Co 1:22), and this one, in the smallness
of his present faith, straitened and limited the power of the Lord. Christ must
“come down”[7] if his son is to be healed; he cannot raise himself to the height
of those words of the Psalmist, “He sent his word, and He healed them.”[8] And
yet if there be rebuke in the Lord’s answer, there is encouragement too; an
implied promise of a miracle, even while the man is blamed, that he needed a
miracle, that less than this would not induce him to put his trust in the Lord
of life.[9] And so he accepts it; for reading no repulse by this word of a
seeming, and indeed of a real, severity, he only urges his suit the more
earnestly, “Sir, come down, [10] ere my child die; “—still, it is true, he links
help to the bodily presence of the Lord; is still far off from his faith and
humility who said, “Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my
roof; but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.” Much less does
he dream of a power that could raise the dead; “Come down, ere my child die;”
Christ might heal his sick; he does not dream of Him as one who could raise his
dead. A faith so weak must be strengthened, and can only be strengthened through
being proved. Such a gracious purpose of at once proving and strengthening it we
trace in the Lord’s dealing with the man which follows. He does not come down
with him, as he had prayed; but sends him away with a mere word of assurance
that it should go Well with his child: “Go thy way; thy son liveth.” And the
nobleman was contented with that assurance; he “believed the word that Jesus had
spoken unto him, and he went his way” expecting to find that it should be done
according to that word. The miracle was a double one—on the body of the absent
child; on the heart of the present father; one cured of his sickness, the other
of his unbelief. A comparison of the Lord’s dealing with this man and with the
centurion of the other Gospels is instructive. He has not men’s persons in
admiration, who will not come, but only sends to the son of this nobleman (cf.
2Ki 5:10-11), Himself visiting the servant of that centurion.[11]. And there is
more in the matter than this. Here, being entreated to come, He does not; but
sends his healing word; there, being asked to speak at a distance that word of
healing, He rather proposes Himself to come; for here, as Chrysostom explains it
well, a narrow and poor faith is enlarged and deepened, there a strong faith is
crowned and rewarded. By not going He increases this nobleman’s faith; by
offering to go He brings out and honours that centurion’s humility.

“And as he was now going down, his servants met him, saying, Thy son liveth.”
Though faith had not struck its roots quickly in his soul, it would appear to
have struck them strongly at last. His confidence in Christ’s word was so great,
that he proceeded leisurely homewards: it was not till the next day that he
approached his house, though the distance between the two cities was not so
great that the journey need have occupied many hours; “he that believeth shall
not make haste. ““Then inquired he of them the hour when he began to amend”[12]
to be a little better; for at the height of his faith the father had looked only
for a slow and gradual amendment. “And they said unto him, Yesterday at the
seventh hour the fever left him” It was not merely, they would imply, that at
the hour they name there was a turning point in the disorder, and the violence
of the fever abated; but it, left[13] and forsook him[14] altogether. “So the
father knew that it was at the same hour in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy
son liveth: [15] and himself believed and his whole house.” This he did for all
the benefits which the Lord had bestowed on him, he accepted another and the
crowning benefit, even the cup of salvation; and not he alone; but, as so often
happened, his conversion drew after that of all who belonged to him; for by
consequences such as these God will bring us into a consciousness of the manner
in which not merely the great community of mankind, but each smaller community,
a nation, or as in this case a family, is united and bound together under its
federal head, shares in his good or in his evil (cf. Acts 16:15; Acts 16:34;
Acts 18:8§). But did he not believe before? Was not this healing itself a
gracious reward of his faith? Yes, he believed that particular word of the
Lord’s; but this is something more, of faith, the entering into the number of
Christ’s disciples, the giving of himself to Him as to the promised Messiah. Or,
admitting that he already truly believed, there may be indicated here a
heightening and augmenting of his faith. For faith may be true, and yet most
capable of this increase. In him who cried, “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine
unbelief (Mark 9:24), faith was indeed born, though as yet its actings were weak
and feeble. After and in consequence of the first miracle of the water made
wine, Christ’s “disciples believed on Him” (John 2:11), who yet, being
disciples, must have believed on Him already.[16] Apostles themselves exclaim,
“Lord, increase our faith” (Luk 17:5). The Israelites of old, who followed Moses
through the Red Sea, must have already believed that he was the instrument of
God for their deliverance; yet of them it is written after the great overthrow
of Pharaoh and his host, that they “believed the Lord, and his servant Moses”
(Exo 14:31). Compare 1Ki 17:24, where, after the mighty work which Elijah did,
raising the widow’s son, she addresses him thus: “Now by this I know thou art a
man of God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth.”[17] Knowing
him for such before (ver. 18), she now received a new confirmation of her faith
(cf. John 11:15; John 13:19); and so we may accept it here. Whether, then, we
understand that faith was first born in him now, or, being born already,
received now a notable increase, it is plain from either result that the Lord by
those words of his, “Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe, [18]
could not have intended to cast any slight on miracles, as a mean whereby men
may be brought to the truth; or having been brought to it, are more strongly
established and confirmed in the same.

Before leaving this miracle, there is one question which will claim a brief
discussion, namely, whether this is the same history as that of the servant
(παῖς) of the centurion, related by St. Matthew (viii. 5) and St. Luke (vii. 2),
and here repeated with only immaterial variations. It would almost seem as if
Irenaeus[19] had thought so; and there were certainly those in the time of
Chrysostom who identified the two miracles. Not, however, Chrysostom himself,
who properly rejects this rolling up of the two narratives into one. There is
nothing to warrant it, almost nothing to render it in the least plausible. Not
merely the external circumstances are widely different; the scene of that
miracle being Capernaum, of this Cana; the centurion there a heathen, the
nobleman here a Jew (for had he been other, it could not have past unnoticed);
that suppliant pleading for his servant, this for his son; there by others, in
person here; the sickness there a paralysis, a fever here; but more decisive
than all this, the heart and inner kernel’ of the two narratives is different.
That centurion is an example of a strong faith, this nobleman of a weak faith;
that centurion counts that if Jesus will but speak the word, his servant will be
healed, while this nobleman is so earnest that the Lord should come down,
because in heart he limits his power, and counts that nothing but his actual
presence will avail to help his sick; that other is praised, this rebuked of the
Lord. So striking indeed are these differences, that Augustine[20] not without
good reason compares, but for the purpose of contrasting, the faith of that
centurion and the unbelief of this nobleman. Against all this, the points of
likeness, and suggesting identity, are very slight and superficial; as the near
death of the sufferer, the healing at a distance and by a word, and the
returning and finding the sick well. It is nothing strange that two miracles
should have such circumstances as these in common.

Footnotes [1] Ἐδέξαντο = benevole et honorifice exceperunt; so often elsewhere.

[2] Πατρίς, cf. Mat 13:54; Mat 13:57; Mark 6:1; Mark 6:4; Luk 4:16. Chrysostom
(Horn. xxxv. in Joh.) has this right view of the meaning, with the exception,
indeed, of understanding by “his own country,” Capernaum (Luk 10:15) rather than
Nazareth; ἐμαρτύρησε will then have a pluperfect sense, as so often in the N. T.

[3] There is another view of the passage possible, namely, that St. John,
recording (ver. 43) Christ’s return to Galilee, is explaining why He should have
first left it (ver. 44), and why He should have returned to it now (ver. 45). He
left it, because, as He had Himself testified (ἐμαρτύρησε, a first aorist for a
pluperfect), a prophet is unhonoured in Ms own country; but He returned to it
now, because his countrymen, the Galilaeans, having seen the signs that He did
at Jerusalem, were prepared to welcome, and did welcome Him, in quite another
spirit from that which they manifested at his first appearance: “so (ver. 46)
Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee.” This is Neander’s explanation (Leben
Jem, p. 385), and Jacobi’s (Theol. Stud, und Krit., 1836, p, 906).

[4] Lightfoot, Chemnitz, and others.

[5] The precise meaning of βασιλικός here never can be exactly fixed; Chrysostom
(Horn. xxxv. in Joh.) can only suggest a meaning; showing that even in his day
it was not to be explained by the familiar usage of them with whom Greek was a
living language. Three meanings have been offered,. Either by the βασιλικός is
meant one of those that were of the king’s party, a royalist, in which case the
term would be much the same as Herodian, designating one of those that sided
with the faction of the Herods, father and son, and helped to maintain them on
the throne (Lightfoot); or, with something of a narrower signification, the
βασιλικός may be one especially attached to the court, aulicus, or as Jerome (In
Esai. lxv.) calls this man palatinus (Regulus qui Greece dicitur βασιλικός,
quern nos de aulâ regiâ rectius interpretari possumus palatinum); thus in the
margin of our Bibles it is “courtier;” or else, though this seems here the least
probable supposition, βασιλικός may mean one of royal blood; so in Lucian the
word is four times applied to those who are actually kings, or are related to
them. Perhaps no better term could be found than “nobleman,” which has something
of the doubtfulness of the original expression, and while it does not require,
yet does not deny, that he was of royal blood.

[6] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, xvi.) is disposed to take a still more
unfavourable estimate of the moral condition of this suppliant, to class him
with those who asked of the Lord a sign, tempting Him: Arguit hominem in fide
tepidum aut frigidum, aut omnino nullius fidei: sed tentare cupientem de
sanitate filii sui, qualis esset Christus, quis esset, quantum posset. Verba
enim rogantis audivimus, cor diffidentis non videmus; sed ille pronuntiavit, qui
et verba audivit, et cor inspexit. Yet the earnestness of the man’s rejoinder,
“Sir, come down ere my son die,” is very unlike this; nor would such have
carried away a blessing at the last.

[7] Gregory the Great (In Ev. Horn, xxviii.): Minus itaque in ilium credidit,
quem non putavit posse salutem dare, nisi praesens esset in corpore.

[8] Bengel will have this to be the especial point of the whole answer, laying
the entire emphasis thus: “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not
believe:” Innuit Jesus se etiam absenti reguli filio posse vitam dare; et
postulat ut regulus id credat, neque profectionem Jesu postulet suscipiendam cum
ipso sanationem apud lectulum visuro. Others have done the same: see Köcher,
Analecta (in loc).

[9] Simul autem miraculum promittitur, fidesque prius etiam desideratur, et dum
desideratur, excitatur. Responsum externâ quâdam repulsae specie et tacitâ opis
promissione mixtum, congruit sensui rogantis ex fide et imbecillitate mixto.

[10] Κατάβηθι, Capernaum lying upon the shore, and lower than Cana, where now
they were.

[11] Thus the Opus Imperf. in Matt. Horn. xxii.: Ilium ergo contemsit, quem
dignitas sublevabat regalis; istum autem honoravit, quern conditio humiliabat
servilis.

[12] Κομψότερον ἔσχε = meliuscule se habuit. Κομψός from κομέω,—so in Latin,
comptus, for adorned in any way. Thus in Arrian (Diss. Epict. iii. 10) κομψῶς
ἔχεις = belle habes (Cicero) are the words of the physician to his patient that
is getting better.

[13] Ammonius (in Catena): Οὐ γὰρ ἁπλῶς, οὐδὲ ὡς ἔτυχεν, ἀπηλλάγη τῆς ἀσθενείας
τὸ παιδίον, ἀλλ̓ ἀθρόον, ὡς φαίνεσθαι μὴ φύσεως ἀκολουθιαν εἶναι τὸ θαῦμα, ἀλλὰ
τῆς ἐνεργείας τοῦ Χριστοῦ.

[14] So it was plainly in the case of Simon’s wife’s mother; for at Christ’s
word, “immediately she arose and ministered unto them” (Luk 4:39); and there
exactly the same phrase (ἀφῆκεν αὐτήν) is used.

[15] A beautiful remark of Bengel’s: Quo curatius divina opera et beneficia
considerantur, eo plus nutrimenti fides acquirit.

[16] The Jews have their miracle, evidently founded upon, and in rivalry of,
this. Vitringa (De Synag. p. 147) quotes it: Quando aegrotavit filius E.
Gamalielis, duos misit studiosos sapientiae ad R. Chanina, Dusae filium, ut per
preces pro eo gratiam divinam implorarent. Postquam eos vidit, ascendit in
coenaculum suum, Deumque pro eo oravit. Ubi vero descendit, dixit, Abite, quia
febris ilium jam dereliquit.... Illi vero considentes, signate annotârunt illam
horam, et quando reversi sunt ad R. Gamalielem, dixit ipsis, Per cultum! Nec
excessu nec defectu temporis peccâstis, sed sic prorsus factum: eâ enim ipsa
horâ dereliquit ipsum febris, et petiit a nobis aquam potandam.Cf. Lampe, Com.
in Joh. vol. i. p. 813.

[17] Beda: Unde datur intelligi et in fide gradus esse, sicut et in aliis
virtutibus, quibus est initium, incrementum, et perfectio. Hujus ergo fides
initium. habuit, cum filii salutem petiit: incrementum, cum credidit sermoni
Domini dicentis, Filius tuus vivit; deinde perfectionem obtinuit, nuntiantibus
servis.

[18] This passage and Mat 12:38-40; Mat 16:1-4, are favourites with those who
deny that Christ laid any special stress on his miracles, as proving his divine
mission and authority. Those others have been stretched into proofs that He did
not even claim to do any. Thus by the modern rationalists, though the abuse of
the passage is as old as Aquinas, who takes note of and rebukes it. But our
Lord’s words there have no such meaning; He does not deny value of miracles, nor
say that He will do none; but only that He will do none for them, for an evil
and adulterous generation, which is seeking, not after helps and confirmations
of faith, but excuses and subterfuges for unbelief. These works of grace and
power are reserved for those who, are receptive of impressions from them. They
are seals which are to seal softened hearts; hearts utterly cold and hard would
take no impression from them, and therefore shall not be tried with them.

[19] Con. Haer. ii. 22: Filium centurionis absens verbo curavit dicens, Vade,
filius tuus vivit. Yet centurionis. may well be only a slip of the pen or of the
memory. In modern times only Semler, that I know, has held the same opinion.

[20] In Ev. Joli. tract, xvi.: Videte distinctionem. Regulus iste Dominum ad
domum suam descendere cupiebat; ille centurio indignum se esse dicebat. Illi
dicebatur, Ego veniam, et curabo eum: huic dictum est, Vade, films tuus vivit.
Illi praesentiam promittebat, hunc verbo sanabat. Iste tamen prsesentiam ejus
extorquebat, ille se praesentiâ ejus indignum esse dicebat. Hie cessum est
elationi; illic concessum est humilitati. Cf. Chrysostom, Horn. xxxv. in Joh.


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  CHAPTER 11: 11-3. THE FIRST MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES
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3. The First Miraculous Draught of Fishes

Luk 5:1-11

There have been in all times those who have deemed themselves bound to
distinguish the incident here narrated from that recorded in St. Matthew (iv.
18) and St. Mark (i. 16-20). Augustine,[1] for example, finds the differences so
considerable, that he can only suppose the event told by St. Luke to have first
happened; our Lord then predicting to Peter that hereafter he should catch men,
but not at that time summoning him to enter on the work; who therefore with his
fellows continued for a season in their usual employments; until on a somewhat
later occasion, that of which the two earlier Evangelists have preserved a
record, they heard the word of command, “Follow Me,” which they then at once
obeyed, and attached themselves for ever to their heavenly Lord.

Now certainly the existence of some difficulties, yet such as hardly deserve
that name, in the bringing to a perfect agreement of the two accounts, every one
will readily admit. But surely the taking refuge at once and whenever these
occur, in the assumption that events almost similar to one another, with only
slight and immaterial variations, happened to the same people two or three times
over, is a very questionable way of escape from embarrassments of this kind;
will hardly satisfy one who honestly asks himself whether he would be content in
any other case with such a method of bringing together the records, in slight
matters apparently conflicting, of any other events. In the extreme unlikelihood
that events should thus repeat themselves a far more real difficulty is created,
than any which it is sought to evade. If we only consider the various aspects,
various yet all true, in which the same incident will present itself from
different points of view to different witnesses, keep in mind how very few
points in a complex circumstance any narrative whatever can seize, least of all
a written one, which in its very nature is limited; and it will cause little
wonder that two or three relators have in part seized diversely the culminating
points of a story, have brought out different moments of an event. Rather we
shall be grateful to that providence of God, which thus often sets us not merely
in the position of one bystander, but of many; which allows us to regard the
acts of Christ, every side of which is significant, from many sides; to hear of
his discourses not merely so much as one disciple took in and carried away, but
also that which sunk especially deep into the heart and memory of another. A
work exclusively devoted to the miracles of our Lord has only directly to do
with the narrative of St. Luke, for in that only the miracle appears. What
followed upon the miracle, the effectual calling of four Apostles, appears in
the two parallel narratives as well—St. Luke’s narrative excellently completing
theirs, and explaining to us why the Lord, when He bade these future heralds of
his grace to follow Him, should have clothed the promise which went with the
command in that especial shape, “I will make you fishers of men.” These words
would any how have had their propriety, addressed to fishers whom He found
casting their nets, and unconsciously prophesying of their future work;[2] yet
they win a peculiar fitness, after He has just shown them what successful
fishers of the mute creatures of the sea He could make them, if only they would
be obedient to his word. Linking, as was so often his custom, the higher to the
lower, and setting forth that higher in the forms of the lower, He thereupon
bids them to exchange the humility of their earthly for the dignity of a
heavenly calling; which yet He contemplates as a fishing still, though not any
more of fish, but of men, whom at his bidding, and under his auspices, they
should embrace not less abundantly in the meshes of their spiritual net. But
when we compare John 1:40-42, would it not appear as though three of these four,
Andrew and Peter certainly, and most likely John himself (ver. 35), had been
already called? No doubt they had then, on the banks of Jordan, been brought
into a transient fellowship with their future Lord; but, after that momentary
contact, had returned to their ordinary occupations, and only at this later
period attached themselves finally and fully to Him, following Him whithersoever
He went.[3] “This miracle most likely it was, as indeed seems intimated at ver.
8, which stirred the very depths of their hearts, giving them such new insights
into the glory of Christ’s person, as prepared them to yield themselves without
reserve to his service. Certainly everything here bears evidence that not now
for the first time He and they have met. So far from their betraying no previous
familiarity, or even acquaintance, with the Lord, as some have affirmed, Peter,
in calling him “Master,” and saying, “Nevertheless at thy word I will let down
the net,” implies that he had already received impressions of his power, and of
the authority which went with his words. Moreover, the two callings, a first and
on this a second, are quite in the manner of that divine Teacher, who would
hasten nothing, who was content to leave spiritual processes to advance as do
the natural; who could bide his time, and did not expect the full corn in the
ear the day after He had sown the seed in the ground. On that former occasion He
cast the seed of his word in the hearts of Andrew and Peter; which having done,
He left it to germinate, till now returning He found it ready to bear the ripe
fruits of faith. Not that we need therefore presume such gradual processes in
all. But as some statues are cast in a mould and at an instant, others only
little by little hewn and shaped and polished, as their material, metal or
stone, demands the one process or the other, so are there, to use a memorable
expression of Donne’s, “fusile Apostles” like St. Paul, whom one and the same
word from heaven, as a lightning flash, at once melts and moulds; and others who
by a more patient process, here a little and there a little, are shaped and
polished into that perfect image, which the Lord, the great master-sculptor,
will have them to assume.

“And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon Him to hear the word of
God, He stood by the lake of Gennesaret, and saw two ships standing by the lake:
but the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets.[4] And He
entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would
thrust out a little from the land. And He sat down, and taught the people out of
the ship. Now when He had left speaking, He said unto Simon, Launch out into the
deep, and let down your nets[5] for a draught.” This He says, designing Himself,
the meanwhile, to take the fisherman in his net. For He, who by the foolish
things of the world would confound the wise, and by the weak things. of the
world would confound the strong,[6] who meant to draw emperors to Himself by
fishermen, and not fishermen by emperors, lest his Church should even seem to
stand in the wisdom and power of men rather than of God—He saw in these simple
fishermen of the Galilaean lake the fittest instruments for his work.[7] See
Augustine, Semi, ccclxxxi. “And Simon answering said unto Him, Master, we have
toiled all the night,[8] and have taken nothing;” but, with the beginnings of no
weak faith already working within him, he adds, “nevertheless, at thy word I
will let down the net”—for these must not be regarded as words of one despairing
of the issue; who, himself expecting nothing, would yet, to satisfy the Master,
and to prove to Him the fruitlessness of further efforts, comply with his
desire.[9] They are spoken rather in the spirit of the Psalmist: “Except the
Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep
the city, the watchman waketh but in vain” (Psa 127:1); as one who would say,
“We have accomplished nothing during all the night, and had quite lost hope of
accomplishing anything; but now, when Thou biddest, we are sure our labour will
not any longer be in vain.” And his act of faith is abundantly rewarded; “And
when they had this done, they enclosed a great multitude of fishes,” so many
indeed, that “their net brake,[10] and they beckoned to their partners in the
other ship, that they should come and help them.”

It was not merely that Christ by his omniscience knew that now there were fishes
in that spot. We may not thus extenuate the miracle. Rather we should
contemplate Him as the Lord of nature, able, by the secret yet mighty magic of
his will, to guide and draw the unconscious creatures, and make them minister to
the higher interests of his kingdom. He appears here as the ideal man, the
second Adam, in whom are fulfilled the words of the Psalmist: “Thou madest Him
to have dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his
feet,.....the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth
through the paths of the sea” (Psa 8:6; Psa 8:8). Of all this dominion bestowed
on man at the first, there is perhaps no part which has so entirely escaped him
as that over the fishes in the sea; but He who “was with the wild beasts” in the
wilderness (Mark 1:13), who gave to his disciples power to “take up serpents”
(Mark 16:18), declared here that the fishes of the sea no less than the beasts
of the earth were obedient to his will. Yet since the power by which He drew
them to that spot is the same that at all times guides their periodic
migrations, which, marvellous as it is, we yet cannot call miraculous, there is
plainly something that differences this miracle and that other of like kind
(John 21:6), to which we may add that of the stater in the fish’s mouth (Mat
17:27), from Christ’s other miracles,—in that these three are not comings in of
a new and hitherto unwonted power into the region of nature; but they are
coincidences, divinely brought about, between words of Christ and facts in that
world of nature. An immense haul of fishes, or a piece of money in the mouth of
one, are themselves no miracles;[11] but the miracle lies in the falling in of
these with a word of Christ’s, which has pledged itself to this coincidence
beforehand. The natural is lifted up into the miraculous by the manner in which
it is timed, and; we must also add, by the ends which it is made to serve.[12]

“And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they, began to sink.”[13] It
was a moment of fear, though not chiefly, or at all, upon this account; but
rather because Peter and his fellows now through this sign became aware of
something in the Lord which they had not perceived before, which filled them
with astonishment and awe. And Peter, who while drawing the multitude of fishes
into his net, has himself fallen into the net of Christ,[14] while taking a
prey, has himself also been taken a prey, the same man that he ever afterward
appears, as impetuous, yielding as freely to the impulse of the moment, with the
beginnings of the same quick spiritual insight out of which he was the first to
recognize under his human disguise the eternal Son of God, and to confess to Him
as such (Mat 16:16), could no longer, in the deep feeling of his own unholiness,
endure a Holy One so near, but “fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, Depart from
me, for I am a sinful man, 0 Lord. For he was astonished, and all that were with
him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken.” At moments like these
all that is merely conventional is swept away, and the deep heart utters itself,
and the deepest things that are there come forth to the light. And the deepest
thing in man’s heart under the law is this sense of God’s holiness as something
bringing death and destruction to the unholy creature. “Let not God speak with
us, lest we die;” this was the voice of the people to Moses, as “they removed
and stood afar off” (Exo 20:18-19). “We shall surely die, because we have seen
God” (Jdg 13:22; cf. Jdg 6:22-23; Dan 10:17; Isa 6:5). Below this is the utterly
profane state, in which there is no contrast, no contradiction felt between the
holy and the unholy, between God and the sinner. Above it is the state of grace;
in which all the contradiction is felt, God is still a consuming fire, but not
any more for the sinner, only for the sin. It is still felt, felt more strongly
than ever, how deep a gulf separates between sinful man and a holy God; but felt
at the same time that this gulf has been bridged over, that the two can meet,
that in One who shares with both they have already met. For his presence, though
indeed the presence of God, is yet of God with his glory veiled; whose nearness
thus even sinful men may endure, and in that nearness may little by little be
prepared for the glorious consummation, the open vision of the face of God; for
this, which would be death to the mere sinner, will be highest blessedness to
him who had been trained for it by beholding. for a while the mitigated
splendours of the Incarnate Word, and in this beholding has been more and more
changed into the same image, as by the Spirit of the Lord (2Co 3:18).

It would indeed have fared ill with Peter, had Christ taken him at his word, and
departed from him, as He departed from others who made the same request (Mat
8:34; Mat 9:1), but made it, as it needs not to say, in quite a different
spirit. and temper from Peter’s. He re-assures him first with that comfortable
“Fear not” which He so often had, and still so often has, to speak to the
trembling and sin-convinced hearts of his servants (John 6:20; Mat 28:5; Mat
28:10; Luk 24:8; Rev 1:17). And that Peter may have the less need to fear, He
announces to him the mission and the task which He has for him in store: “From
henceforth thou shalt catch men.” We can regard these words no otherwise than as
the inauguration of Peter and his fellows to the work of their Apostleship. Such
an inauguration is seldom wanting to them who are called to any signal work in
the kingdom of God; an inauguration not formal, nor always in its outward
accidents the same; on the contrary, in these displaying an infinite richness
and variety, such as reigns alike in the works of nature and of grace. But it
always is the same in this, that God manifests Himself to his future prophet or
Apostle, or other messenger, as He had never done before, and in the light of
this manifestation the man recognizes his own weakness and guilt and corruption,
as he had never done before, exclaims, “I am slow of speech and of a slow
tongue” (Exo 4:10), or “I cannot speak, for I am a child” (Jer 1:6), or “lama
man of unclean lips” (Isa 6:5), or as here, “I am a sinful man;”falls on his
face, sets his mouth in the dust, takes the shoes from off his feet; and then
out of the depth of this humiliation rises up another man, a fit instrument for
the work of God, such as he would have never been, if his earthly had not thus
paled before God’s heavenly; if the garish sun of this world had not thus set in
him, that the pure stars of the heavenly world might appear. The true parallels
to this passage, contemplated as such an inauguration as this, are Exo 4:10-17;
Isaiah vi.; Jer 1:4-10; Ezek. i. -iii.; Jdg 6:11-23; Acts 9:3-9; Dan. x. The
Lord clothes his promise in the language of that art which was familiar to
Peter; the fisherman is to catch men, as David, the shepherd, taken from among
the sheep-folds, was to feed them[15] (Psa 78:71-72). There is here a double
magnifying of Peter’s future occupation as compared with its past; it is men and
not poor fishes which henceforth he shall take; and he shall take them for life,
and not, as he had taken. his meaner prey, only for death; for no less is
involved in the word of the original![16] The word thus turns of itself the edge
of Julian’s malignant sneer,[17] who observed that “the Galilaean” did indeed
most aptly term his Apostles “fishers;” for as the fisherman draws out his prey
from the waters where they were free and happy, to an element in which they
cannot breathe, but must presently expire, even so did these.[18] But the word
selected, and we must presume that it found its equivalent in the Aramaic, does
with a singular felicity exclude and anticipate such a turn. Peter shall take
men, and take them for life, not for death. Those that were wandering, restless
and at random, through the deep unquiet waters of the world, full of whirlpools
and fears, the smaller of them falling a prey to the greater,[19] and all with
the weary sense as of a vast prison, lie shall gather and embrace within the
safe folds and recesses of the same Gospel net;[20] which if they break not
through, nor leap over, they shall at length be drawn up to shore, out of the
dark gloomy waters into the bright clear light of day, and shall there and then
be collected into vessels for eternal life (Mat 13:48).

It is not for nothing that the promise here clothes itself in language drawn
from the occupation of the fisher, rather, for instance, than in that borrowed
from the nearly allied pursuits of the hunter. The fisher more often takes his
prey alive; he draws it to him, does not drive it from him;[21] and not merely
to himself, but draws all which he has taken to one another; even as the Church
brings together the divided hearts, the fathers to the children, gathers into
one fellowship the scattered tribes of men. Again, the work of the fisher is one
of art and skill, not of force and violence;[22] so that Tertullian[23] finds in
this miracle a commencing fulfilment of Jer 16:16, “Behold, I will send for many
fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; “though indeed it may very
well be a question whether in those words there lies not rather a threat than a
promise. It is, however, quite in the spirit of the new covenant to take a
threatening of the old, and fulfil it, yet so to transform in the fulfilling,
that it shall be no longer what it was, but wholly changed for the better. Thus,
to fall into the hands of the Lord, would have been in the old time a woe, but
it may now be the chiefest blessing; and in this manner Tertullian’s application
of the words may be justified. There is now a captivity which is blessed,
blessed because it is deliverance from a freedom which is full of woe,—a “being
made free from sin and becoming servants to God,” that so we may have our “fruit
unto holiness, and the end everlasting life” (Rom 6:22). But the promise here
might be brought with more unquestionable propriety into relation with Eze
47:9-10, and the prophecy, there of the fishers that should stand on Engedi, and
of the great multitude of fish with which the healed waters should abound.[24]
And as the ministers of Christ are fishers, so the faithful are aptly likened to
fish. This comparison, so great a favourite in the early Church, probably did
not derive its first impulse from these words of our Lord; but rather from the
fact that through the waters of baptism men are first quickened,[25] and can
only live as they abide in that quickening element into which they were then
brought. The two images cannot stand together, excluding as they mutually do one
another; for in one the blessedness is to remain in the waters, as in the
vivifying element, in the other to be drawn forth from them into the purer and
clearer air. In one Christ is the Fish,[26] Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xviii. 23),
giving the well-known Greek anagram of ΙΧΘΥΣ, adds: In quo nomine mystice
intelligitur Christus, eo quod in hujus mortalitatis ahysso, velut in aquarum
profunditate vivus, hoc est, sine peccato esse potuerit. In the chasing away of
the evil spirit by the fish’s gall (Tob 8:2-3), a type was often found in the
early Church, of the manner in which, when Christ is near, the works of the
devil are destroyed. Thus Prosper of Aquitaine: Christus.... piscis in suâ
passione decoctus, cujus ex interioribus remediis quotidie illuminamur et
pascimur. in the other the chief Fisherman. As Himself this great Fisher of men
He is addressed in that grand Orphic hymn attributed to the Alexandrian Clement,
in words which may thus be translated:

“Fisher of mortal men, All that the saved are, Ever the holy fish From the wild
ocean Of the world’s sea of sin By thy sweet life Thou enticest away.”

“And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed
Him.” But what was that “all” which “they forsook,” one might be tempted to ask,
that they should afterwards make so much of it, saying, “Behold, we have
forsaken all, and followed Thee: what shall we have therefore” (Mat 19:27)?
Whatever it was, it was their all, and therefore, though it might have been but
a few poor boats and nets, it was much; for a man may be holden by love to a
miserable hovel with bands as fast as bind another to a sumptuous palace; seeing
it is the worldly affection which holds him, and not the world; and the essence
of forsaking lies not in the more or less which is renounced, but in the spirit
in which the renunciation is carried out. These Apostles might have left little,
when they left their possessions, but they left, and had a right to feel that
they had left much, when they left their desires.[27] A word or two here in
conclusion may find place generally upon the symbolic acts of our Lord, whereof,
according to his own distinct assurance, we here have one. The desire of the
human mind to set forth the truth which it deeply feels in acts rather than by
words, or it may be by blended act and word, has a very deep root in our nature,
which always strives after the concrete; and it manifests itself not merely in
the institution of fixed symbolic acts, as the anointing of kings, the breaking
of a cake at the old Roman marriages, the giving and receiving of a ring at our
own; but more strikingly yet, in acts that are the free products at the moment
of some creative mind, which has more to utter than it can find words to be the
bearers of, or would utter it in a more expressive and emphatic manner than
these permit. This manner of teaching, however frequent in Scripture (1Ki
2:30-31; 1Ki 22:11; Acts 13:51), yet belongs not to it alone, nor is it even
peculiar to the East, although there it is most entirely at home; but
everywhere, as men have felt strongly and deeply, and would fain make others
feel so, they have had recourse to such a language as this, which has so many
advantages for bringing home its truth through the eyes to the mind. When
Hannibal, for instance, as he was advancing into Italy, set some of his captives
to fight with one another,[28] placing before them freedom and presents and rich
armour for the victor, and at least escape from present extreme misery for the
slain; who does not feel that he realized to his army the blessings which not
victory alone, but even the other alternative of death, would give them, in
affording release from the intolerable evils of their present state, as words
could never have done? Not otherwise Diogenes expressed his contempt for.
humanity by his noonday lantern more effectually than by all his scornful words
he could ever have expressed it. As the Cynic philosopher, so too the Hebrew
prophets, though in quite another temper, would oftentimes weave their own
persons into such parabolic acts, would use themselves as a part of their own
symbol; and this they would do, because nothing short of this would satisfy the
earnestness with which the truth of God, whereof they desired to make others
partakers, possessed their own souls (Eze 12:1-12; Acts 21:11). And thus, too,
not this only, but many actions of our Lord’s were such an embodied
teaching,[29] the incorporation of a doctrine in an act, having a deeper
significance than lay upon the surface, and being only entirely intelligible
when we recognize in them a significance such as this (Mat 21:18-19; John
21:19). The deeds of Him who is the Word are themselves also words for us.[30]

Footnotes

[1] De Cons. Evang. ii. 17: Unde datur locus intelligere eos ex capturâ piscium
ex more remeâsse, ut postea fieret quod Matthaeus et Marcus narrant...,. Tune
enim non subductis ad terrain navibus tanquam curâ, redeundi, sed ita eum secuti
sunt, tanquam vocantem ac jubentem ut eum sequerentur. Mr. Greswell in the same
way (see his Dissert, vol. ii. Diss. 9) earnestly pleads for the keeping asunder
of the two narrations. Yet any one who wishes to see how capable they are, by
the expenditure of a little pains, of being exactly reconciled, has only to
refer to Spanheim’s Dub. Evang. vol. iii. p. 337. With him agree Lightfoot
(Harmony), Grotius, and Hammond, who see in all these records only one and the
same event.

[2] Auct. Oper. Imperf. in Matth. Horn. vi.: Futurae dignitatis gratiam
artificii sui opere prophetantes. Augustine (Serm. Inedd., Serin, lviii.):
Petrus piscator non posuit retia, sed mutavit.

[3] It is often said that the other was, Vocatio ad notitiam et familiaritatem,
or, ad fidem; this, ad apostolatum. See the remarks of Scultetus, Crit. Sac.
vol. vi. p. 1956.

[4] It is not unprofitably remarked by a mystic writer of the Middle Ages, that
this their washing and repairing (Mat 4:21) of their nets, after they had used
them, ought ever to be imitated by all “fishers of men” after they have cast in
their nets for a draught; meaning by this that they should seek carefully to
purify and cleanse themselves from aught which in that very act they may have
gathered of sin, impurities of vanity, of self-elation, or of any other kind;
and that this they must do, if they would use their nets effectually for a
future draught.

[5] Here more generally δίκτυον, from the old δικεῖν (which appears again in
δίστος, a quoit), to throw; but at Mat 4:18; Mark 1:16, it is specialized as the
ἀμφίβληστρον (=ἀμφιβολή), the casting net, as its derivation from ἀμφιβάλλω
plainly shows; in Latin, funda or jaculum. Its circular bell-like shape adapted
it to the office of a mosquito net, to which Herodotus (ii. 95) tells us the
Egyptian fishermen turned it; but see Blakesley, Herodotus (in loc).

[6] Compare with this the call of the prophet Amos: “I was no prophet, neither
was I a prophet’s son, but I was a herdman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit; and
the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go,
prophesy unto my people Israel” (7:14, 15. cf. 1Ki 19:19).

[7] See Augustine, Semi, ccclxxxi.

[8] See Lampe (Comm. in Joh. vol. iii. p. 727) for passages in proof of this,
which indeed is familiar to us all. Add this from Pliny (H. N. ix. 23): Vagantur
gregatim fere cujusque generis squamosi. Capiuntur ante solis ortum; turn maxime
piscium fallitur visus. Noctibus, quies: et illustribus aeque, quam die,
cernunt. Aiunt et si teratur gurges, interesse captures: itaque plures secundo
tractu capi, quam primo.

[9] Maldonatus: Non desperatione felicioris jactûs hoc dicit Petrus, aut quod
Christo vel non credat, vel obedire nolit: sed potius ut majorem in Christo
fidem declaret; quod cum totâ nocte laborantes. nihil prehendisset, tamen ejus
confidens verbis, iterum retia laxaret.

[10] On the nets breaking now, and not breaking, as it is expressly said they
did not, on occasion of the second miraculous draught of fishes (John 21:11),
and the mystical meaning which has been found in this, I would refer the reader
to what there will be said.

[11] Thus Yarrell (Hist, of British Fishes, vol. i. p. 125): “At Brighton in
June 1808, the shoal of mackerel was so great, that one of the boats had the
meshes of her nets so completely occupied by them that it was impossible to drag
them in. The fish and nets therefore in the end sunk together.”

[12] See page 13.

[13] βυθίζεσθαι. The word occurs once besides in the N. T., and then in a
tropical sense (1Ti 6:9).

[14] The author of a striking sermon, numbered ccv. in’ the Benedictine Appendix
to St. Augustine: Dum insidiatur Petrus gregibus aequoris, ipse in retia incidit
Salvatoris. Fit de praedone praeda, de piscatore piscatio, de piratâ
captivitas.—”Admire, “exclaims Chrysostom,” the dispensation of the Lord, how He
draws each by the art which is most familiar and natural to. him—as the Magians
by a star, so the fishermen by fish”—a thought which Donne in a sermon on this
text enlarges thus: “The Holy Ghost speaks in such forms and such phrases as may
most work upon them to whom He speaks. Of David, that was a shepherd before, God
says, He took him to feed his people. To those Magi of the East, who were given
to the study of the stars, God gave a star to be their guide to Christ at
Bethlehem. To those who followed Him to Capernaum for meat, Christ took occasion
by that to preach to them of the spiritual food of their souls. To the Samaritan
woman whom He found at the well, He preached of the water of life. To these men
in our text, accustomed to a joy and gladness when they took great or great
store of fish, He presents his comforts agreeably to their taste, they should be
fishers still. Christ makes heaven all things to. all men, that He might gain
all.”

[15] Origen finds in St. Paul’s handicraft a like prophecy of his future
vocation. The tent-maker shall become the maker of everlasting tabernacles (In
Num. Horn, xvii.): Unde mihi videtur non fortuito contigisse ut Petrus quidem et
Andreas et filii Zebedaei, arte piscatores invenirentur, Paulus vero arte faber
tabernaculorum. Et quia illi vocati ab arte capiendorum piscium, mutantur et
fiunt piscatores hominum, dicente Domino; Venite post me, et faciam vos
piscatores hominum: non dubium quin et Paulus, quia et ipse per Dominum nostrum
Jesum Christum vocatus apostolus est, simili artis suae transformatione mutatus
sit: ut sicut illi ex piscatoribus piscium, piscatores hominum facti sunt, ita
et iste a faciendis tabernaculis terrenis, ad coelestia tabernacula construenda
tralatus sit. Construit enim coelestia tabernacula docens unumquemque viam
salutis, et beatorum in coelestibus mansionum iter ostendens.

[16] Ζωγρεύειν, from ζωός and ἀγρεύω), to take alive (Num 31:15; Deu 20:16; Jos
2:13, LXX); and ζωγρεία, the prey which is saved alive (Num 21:35; Deu 2:24).
Cf. Homer, Il. ζ, ver. 46, where one pleading for his life exclaims, Ζώγρει
Ἀτρεὸς υἱὲ, σὺ δ̓ ἄξια δέξαι ἄποινα. It appears as if the old Italic version
took ζωγρέω in its other derivation (from ζωή and ἀγείρω), for we find the
passage quoted by St. Ambrose and other early Fathers, Eris vivificans homines;
but in the Vulgate, Homines eris capiens. See Suicer, Thes. s. v. ζωγρέω.

[17] His words, quoted by Theophanes (Hom, v.), are these: Ζωὴ μὲν τοῖς ἐνύδροις
τὸ ὕδωρ, θάνατος δὲ ὁ ἀήρ· εἰ δὴ τοῦτό ἐστιν ἀληθές, οἱ μαθηταὶ ἄρα τοῦ Ἰησοῦ
τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἀγρεύοντες διὰ τοῦ κηρύγματος, τῆ ἀπωλεία καὶ τῶ θανάτω, ὡς τοὺς
ἰχθύας, παραδιδόασι. See Suicer, Thes. s. v. ἁλιεύς. It was probably, as Origen
supposes (Con. Cels. i. 62), from a confused remembrance of this passage that
Celsus contemptuously styled the apostles “publicans and sailors” (ναύτας). But
this inexactness is only of a piece with his ignorance even of the number of the
Apostles; which was singular enough in one who undertook a formal refutation of
Christianity.

[18] There is indeed an aspect in which the death of the fish, which follows on
its being drawn out of the waters, has its analogy in the higher spiritual
world. The man, drawn forth by these Gospel nets from the worldly sinful element
in which before he lived and moved, does die to sin, die to the world; but only
that out of this death he may rise to a higher life in Christ. This is brought
out with much beauty by Origen (Horn. xvi. in Jerem.): Ἐκεῖνοι οἱ ἰχθύες οἱ
ἄλογοι ἀνελθόντες ἐν ταῖς σαγήναις ἀποθνήσκουσι θάνατον, οὐχὶ διαδεχομένης ζωῆς
τὸν θάνατον· ὁ δὲ συλληφθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν ἁλιέων Ἰησοῦ, καὶ ἀνελθὼν ἀπὸ τῆς θαλάσσης,
καὶ αὐτὸς μὲν ἀποθνήσκει, ἀποθνήσκει δὲ τῷ κόσμῳ, ἀποθνήσκει τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ, καὶ
μετὰ τὸ ἀποθανεῖν τῷ κόσμῳ καὶ τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ, ζωοποιεῖται ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου τοῦ Θεοῦ,
καὶ ἀναλαμβάνει ἄλλην ζωήν.

[19] Augustine (Enarr. in Psa 64:6): Mare enim in figurâ, dicitur seculum hoc,
falsitate amarum, procellis turbulentum: ubi homines cupiditatibus perversis et
pravis facti sunt velut pisces invicem se devorantes. Ambrose: Et bene
apostolica instrumenta piscandi retia sunt; qua3 non captos perimunt, sed
reservant, et de profundo ad lumen extrahunt, et fluctuantes de infernis ad
superna perduount.

[20] Augustine (Serm. Inedd. Serm. lix.): Nam sicut rete quos continet vagari
non patitur, ita et fides errare, quos colligit, non permittit: et sicut ibi
captos sinu quodam perducit ad navim, ita et hic congregates gremio quodam
deducit ad requiem. Yet this title of “fishers” itself also fails in part, and
does not set out the whole character of the Christian ministry; indeed only two
moments of it with any strength, the first and the last,—the bringing in to the
Church, as the enclosing within the net, and the bringing safely to the final
kingdom, as the landing of the net with its contents upon the shore (Mat 13:48).
All which is between it leaves unexpressed, and yields therefore in fitness and
completeness, as in frequency of use, to the image borrowed from the work of the
shepherd; as a consequence of which it has given us no such names as “pastor”
and “flock” to enrich our Christian language. That of “shepherd” expresses
exactly all which the term “fisher” leaves untouched, the habitual daily care
for the members of Christ, his peculium in every sense, after they are brought
into the fellowship of his Church, This title of “fisher” sets forth the work
more of the ingathering of souls, the missionary activity; that of shepherd more
the tending and nourishing of souls that have thus been ingathered. This,
therefore, fitly comes the first: it was said to Peter, “Thou shalt catch men,”
before it was said to him, “Feed my sheep;” and each time a different
commission, or at least a different side of the commission, is expressed; he
shall be both evangelist and pastor.

[21] Spanheim (Dub. Evang. vol. iii. p. 350): Non venatores Dominus vocatos
voluit, sed piscatores, non homines abigentes a se praedam, sed colligentes: and
many other likenesses between the fisher and the minister of Christ he brings
out. Yet the image still remains, even in the N. T., open to an opposite use;
thus in the ἐξελκόμενος καὶ δελεαζόμενος of Jas 1:14 are allusions to the fish
drawn from its safe hiding places, and enticed by the tempting bait (δέλεαρ) to
its destruction: cf. Hab 1:14-17; Eze 29:4-5.

[22] So Ovid (Halieut.): “Noster in arte labor positus cf. 2Co 12:16 : ὑπάρχων
πανοῦργος, δόλῳ ὑμᾶς ἔλαβον. And Augustine (De Util. Jejun. ix.) brings out the
difference between the fisher and the hunter: Quare Apostoli neminem coegerunt,
neminem impulerunt? Quiapiscator est, retia mittit in mare, quod incurrerit,
trahit. Venator autem sylvas cingit, sentes excutit; terroribus undique
multiplicatis cogit in retia. Ne hac eat, ne illic eat: inde occurre, inde
caede, inde terre; non exeat, non effugiat. Thus hunting is most often an image
used in malam partem: the oppressions of the ungodly are often described under
images borrowed from thence (Psa 10:9; Psa 35:7). Nimrod is “a mighty hunter
before the Lord” (Gen 10:9), where to think of any other hunting but a tyrannous
driving of men before him is idle. Augustine has given the right meaning of the
words (De Civ. Dei, xvi. 4): Quid significatur hoc nomine quod est venator, nisi
animalium terrigenarum deceptor, oppressor, extinctor? Luther, in one of his
Letters, speaks of a hunting party at which he was present: “Much it pitied me
to think of the mystery and emblems which lieth beneath it. For what does this
symbol signify, but that the Devil, through his godless huntsmen and dogs, the
bishops and theologians to wit, doth privily chase and snatch the innocent poor
little beasts? Ah, the simple and credulous souls came thereby far too plain
before my eyes.” Yet it is characteristic that the hunting, in which is the
greatest coming out of power, should of men be regarded as the noblest
occupation; and thus we find it even in Plato, who (De Legg. vii. p. 823 e. cf.
Plutarch, De Sol. Anim. 9) approves of it, while fishing he would willingly
forbid as an ἀργὸς θήρα and ἔρως οὐ σφόδρα ἐλευθέριος (Becker, Charicles, vol.
i. p. 437).

[23] Adv. Marc. iv. 9: De tot generibus operum quid utique ad piscaturam
respexit ut ab ilia in Apostolos sumeret Simonem et filios Zebedaei? Non enim
simplex factum videri potest, de quo argu mentum processurum erat, dicens Petro
trepidanti de copiosâ indagine piscium: Ne time, abhinc enim homines eris
capiens. Hoc enim dicto, intellectum illis suggerebat adimpletae prophetiae; se
eura esse qui per Hieremiam pronuntiarat, Ecce ego mittam piscatores multos, et
piscabuntur illos. Denique relictis naviculis sequuti sunt eum; ipsum
intelligentes, qui cosperat facere quod edixerat. Cf. Cyril of Alexandria, in
Cramer, Catena, who makes the same application of that verse from Jeremiah.

[24] Theodoret gives rightly the meaning of the passage: Λέγει ἰχθύων πλῆρες
τοῦτο γενήσεσθαι τὸ ὕδωρ· καὶ ἁλιέας ἕξειν πολλούς· πολλοὶ γὰρ οἱ διὰ τῶν ὑδάτων
τούτων εἰς σωτηρίαν θηρώμενοι, πολλοὶ δὲ καὶ οἱ τὴν ἄγραν ταύτην θηρεύειν
πεπιστευμένοι.

[25] Tertullian (De Baft, i.): Sed nos pisciculi secundum ἰχθὺν nostrum Jesum
Christum in aquâ nascimur; nec aliter quam in aqua permanendo salvi sumus. And
Chrysostom on these words, “I will make you fishers of men,” exclaims, “Truly, a
new method of fishing! for the fishers draw out the fishes from the waters, and
kill those that they have taken. But we fling into the waters, and those that
are taken are made alive.”

[26] Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xviii. 23), giving the well-known Greek anagram of
ΙΧΘΥΣ, adds: In quo nomine mystice intelligitur Christus, eo quod in hujus
mortalitatis ahysso, velut in aquarum profunditate vivus, hoc est, sine peccato
esse potuerit. In the chasing away of the evil spirit by the fish’s gall (Tob
8:2-3), a type was often found in the early Church, of the manner in which, when
Christ is near, the works of the devil are destroyed. Thus Prosper of Aquitaine:
Christus.... piscis in suâ passione decoctus, cujus ex interioribus remediis
quotidie illuminamur et pascimur.

[27] Augustine (Enarr. iii. in Ps. 53:17): Multum dimisit, fratres mei, multum
dimisit, qui non solum dimisit quidquid habebat, sed etiam quidquid habere
cupiebat. Quis enim pauper non turgescit in spem saeculi hujus? quis non
quotidie cupit augere quod liabet? Ista cupiditas praecisa est. Prorsus totum
mundum dimisit Petrus, et totum mundum Petrus accipiebat. And Gregory the Great,
following in the same line (Horn. v. in Evang.): Multum ergo. Petrus et Andreas
dimisit, quando uterque etiam desideria habendi dereliquit. Multum dimisit, qui
cum re possessâ etiam concupiscentiis renuntiavit. A sequentibus ergo tanta
dimissa sunt quanta a non sequentibus concupisci potuerunt. Cf. Clemens of
Alexandria, Quis Dives Salvus? 20, vol. ii, p. 946, Potter’s ed.

[28] Polybius, ii. 62.

[29] Lampe: In umbra praemonstrabatur quam Iaeto successu in omni labore, quern
in nomine Dei suscepturi essent, piscaturam praecipue mysticam inter gentes
instituentes, gavisuri sint. Grotius, who is much readier to admit mystical
meanings in Scripture than in general he is given credit for, be this for his
praise or the contrary, finds real prophecy in many of the subordinate details
here: Libenter igitur hîc veteres sequor, qui praecedentis historiae hoc putant
esse τὸ ἀλληγορούμενον, Apostolos non suâpte industriâ, sed Christi imperio ac
virtute expansis Evangelii retibus tantam facturos capturam, ut opus habituri
sint subsidiariâ, multorum εὐαγγελιστῶν opera; atque ita impletum iri non unam
navem, Judaeorum scilicet, sed et alteram gentium, sed quarum navium futura sit
arcta atque indivulsa societas.Cyril of Alexandria (see Cramer, Catena, in.
loc.) had anticipated this; Augustine, Serm. cxxxvii. 2; and Theophylact (in
loc.); this last tracing further in the night during which they had “taken
nothing,” the time of the law, during which there was no kingdom of God, with
all men pressing into it; nor until Christ was come, and had Himself given the
word.

[30] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, xxiv.): Nam quia ipse Christus Verbum est,
etiam. factum Verbi verbum nobis est. Ep. cii. qu. 6: Nam sicut humana
consuetudo verbis, ita divina potentia etiam factis loquitur.


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  CHAPTER 12: 12-4. THE STILLING OF THE TEMPEST
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4. The Stilling of the Tempest Mat 8:23-27; Mark 4:35-41; Luk 8:22-25 The three
Evangelists who relate this history agree in placing it immediately before the
healing of the possessed in the country of the Gadarenes. It was evening, the
evening, probably, of that day on which the Lord had spoken all those parables
recorded in Matthew 13 (cf. Mark 4:35), when, dismissing the multitude, He was
fain to pass over to the other side of the lake, and so, for a little while,
withdraw from the tumult and the press. With this intention, He was received by
the disciples “even as He was[1] in the ship.” But before the voyage was
accomplished, a sudden and violent squall,[2] such as these small inland seas,
surrounded with mountain gorges, are notoriously exposed to, descended on the
bosom of the lake: and the ship which bore the Saviour of the world appeared to
be in imminent peril, as, humanly speaking, no doubt it was; for these men,
exercised to the sea many of them from their youth, and familiar with all the
changes of that lake, would not have been terrified by the mere shadow of a
danger. But though the danger was so real, and was ever growing more urgent,
until “the waves beat into the ship, so that now it was full,” their Master,
weary, it may be, with the toils of the day, continued sleeping still: He was,
according to details which St. Mark alone has preserved, “in the hinder part of
the ship, asleep upon a pillow;” and was not roused by all the tumult and
confusion incident on such a moment. We behold in Him here exactly the reverse
of Jonah (Jon 1:5-6); the fugitive prophet asleep in the midst of a like danger
through a dead conscience, the Saviour out of a pure conscience—Jonah by his
presence making the danger, Jesus yielding the pledge and the assurance of
deliverance from the danger.[3] But the disciples understood not this. It was
long, we may believe, before they dared to arouse Him; yet at length the
extremity of the danger overcame their hesitation, and they did so, not without
exclamations of haste and terror; as is evidenced by the double “Master,
Master,” of St. Luke. In St. Mark, they awaken Him with words almost of rebuke,
as if He were unmindful of their safety, “Master, carest Thou not that we
perish?” though in this their “we” they included their beloved Lord as well as
themselves[4] Then the Lord arose; from St. Matthew it would appear, first
blaming their want of faith, and then pacifying the storm; though the other
Evangelists make the blame not to have preceded, but to have followed, the
allaying of the winds and waves. Probably it did both: He spoke first to them,
quieting with a word the tempest in their bosoms; and then, having allayed the
tumult of the outward elements, He again turned to them, and more deliberately
blamed their lack of faith in Him.[5] Still let it be observed that He does not,
according to St. Matthew, call them “without faith,” but “of little faith;” and
St. Mark’s, “How is it ye have no faith?” must be modified and explained by the
milder rebuke recorded in the other Evangelists. They were not wholly without
faith; for, believing in the midst of their unbelief, they turned to Christ in
their fear. They had faith, but it was not quick and lively; it was not at hand,
as the Lord’s question, “Where is your faith?” (Luk 8:25) sufficiently implies.
They had it, as the weapon which a soldier has, but cannot lay hold of at the
moment when he needs it the most. Their sin lay not in seeking help of Him; for
this indeed became them well; but in the excess of their terror, “Why are ye so
fearful?”[6] in their counting it possible that the ship which bore their Lord
could ever truly perish.

“Then He arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.”
Caesar’s confidence that the bark which contained him and his fortunes could not
sink, forms the earthly counterpart to the heavenly calmness and confidence of
the Lord. We must not miss the force of that word “rebuked” preserved by all
three Evangelists; and as little the direct address to the furious elements,
“Peace, be still,”[7] which St. Mark only records. To regard this as a mere
oratorical personification would be absurd; rather is there here, as Maldonatus
truly remarks, a distinct tracing up of all the discords and disharmonies in the
outward world to their source in a person, a referring them back to him, as to
their ultimate ground; even as. this person can be no other than Satan, the
author of all disorders alike in the natural and in the spiritual world. The
Lord elsewhere “rebukes” a fever (Luk 4:39), where the same remarks will hold
good. Nor is this rebuke unheard or unheeded. For not willingly was the creature
thus made “subject to vanity.” Constituted to be man’s handmaid at the first, it
is only reluctantly, and submitting to an alien force, that nature rises up
against him, and becomes the instrument of his hurt and harm. In the hour of her
wildest uproar, she knew the voice of Him who was her rightful Lord, gladly
returned to her allegiance to Him, and in this to her place of proper service to
that race of which He had become the Head, and whose lost prerogatives He was
reclaiming and reasserting once more.[8] And to effect all this, his word alone
was sufficient; He needed not, as Moses, to stretch a rod over the deep; He
needed not, as his servant had needed, an instrument of power, apart from
Himself, with which to do his mighty work (Exo 14:16; Exo 14:21; Exo 14:27); but
at his word only “the wind ceased, [9] and there was a great calm.” The
Evangelists proceed to describe the moral effect which this great wonder
exercised on the minds of those that were in the ship;—it may be, also on those
that were in the “other little ships,” which St. Mark has noted as sailing in
their company: “The men marvelled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even
the winds and the sea obey Him?” an exclamation which only can find its answer
in another exclamation of the Psalmist, “O Lord God of Hosts, who is like unto
Thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, Thou
stillest them” (Psa 89:8-9 [10]). We see here, no doubt, the chief ethical
purpose to which, in the providence of God who ordered all things for the glory
of his Son, this miracle was intended to serve. It was to lead his disciples
into thoughts ever higher and more awful of that Lord whom they served, more and
more to teach them that in nearness to Him was safety and deliverance from every
danger. The danger which exercised, should likewise strengthen, their faith,—who
indeed had need of a mighty faith, since God, in St. Chrysostom’s words, had
chosen them to be the athletes of the universe.[11] An old expositor has
somewhat boldly said, “This power of the Lord’s word, this admiration of them
that were with Him in the ship, holy David had predicted in the psalm, saying-,
’They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these
see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep’“ (Psa 107:23-30). And as
in the spiritual world the inward is ever shadowed forth by the outward, we may
regard this outward fact but as the clothing of an inward truth which in the
language of this miracle the Lord declares unto men. He would set Himself forth
as the true Prince of peace (Isa 9:6-9), as the speaker of peace to the troubled
and storm-stirred heart of man, whether the storms that stir it be its own inner
passions, or life’s outward calamities and temptations. Thus Augustine, making
application of all parts of the miracle: “We are sailing in this life as through
a sea, and the wind rises, and storms of temptations are not wanting. Whence is
this, save because Jesus is sleeping in thee? If He were not sleeping in thee,
thou wouldest have calm within. But what means this, that Jesus is sleeping in
thee, save that thy faith, which is from Jesus, is slumbering in thine heart?
What shalt thou do to be delivered? Arouse Him, and say, Master, we perish. He
will awaken; that is, thy faith will return to thee, and abide with thee always.
When Christ is awakened, though the tempest beat into, yet it will not fill, thy
ship; thy faith will now command the winds and the waves, and the danger will be
over.”[12]

We shall do no wrong to the literal truth of this and other of Christ’s
miracles, by recognizing the character at once symbolic and prophetic, which, no
doubt, many of them also bear, and this among the number. As the kernel of the
old humanity, Noah and his family, was once contained in the Ark which was
tossed upon the waves of the deluge, so the kernel of the new humanity, of the
new creation, Christ and his Apostles, in this little ship. And the Church of
Christ has evermore resembled this tempested bark, in that the waves of the
world rage horribly around it, in that it has evermore been delivered put of the
perils which seemed ready to overwhelm it,—and this because Christ is in it; who
being roused by the cry of his servants, rebukes these winds and these waters,
before they utterly overwhelm this ship.[13] In the O. T., Ezekiel gives us a
magnificent picture of a worldly kingdom under the image of a stately and
gorgeous galley, which he describes with every circumstance that could heighten
its glory and its beauty (xxvii. 4-9); but that ship with all its outward
bravery and magnificence utterly perishes: “thy rowers have brought thee into
great waters; the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas,” and they
that hoped in it, and embarked in it their treasures, wail over its wreck with a
bitter wailing (ver. 26-36); this kingdom of God meanwhile, seeming by
comparison but as the slight and unhonoured fishing-boat which any wave might
engulf, rides triumphantly over all, and comes safely into haven at the last.

Footnotes [1] Ὡς ἦν, probably, sine ullo ad iter apparatu.

[2] Σεισμός, which is generally an earth quake (so Matt. xxiv. 7); in Mark and
Luke, λαίλαφ, which is defined by Hesychius, ἀνέμου συστροφὴ μεθ’ ὑετοῦ, a
squall.

[3] Jerome (Comm. in Matth. in loc.): Hujus signi typum in Jonâ legimus, quando
ceteri’s periclitantibus ipse securus est et dormit et suscitatur; et imperio ac
sacramento passionis suae liberat suscitantes.

[4] On the different exclamations of fear which, the different Evangelists put
into the mouth of the disciples, Augustine says excellently well (De Cons.
Evang. ii. 24): Una eademque sententia est excitantium Dominum, volentiumque
salvari: nec opus est quaerere quid horum potius Christo dictum sit. Sive enim
aliquid horum trium dixerint, sive alia verba quae nullus Evangelistarum
commemoravit, tantumdem tamen valentia ad eandem sententiae veritatem, quid ad
rem interest? And presently after (28): Per hujusmodi Evangelistarum locutionos
varias, sed non contrarias, rem plane utilissimam discimus et pernecessariam;
nihil in cujusque verbis nos debere inspicere, nisi voluntatem, cui debent verba
servire: nec mentiri quemquam, si aliis verbis dixerit quid ille voluerit, cujus
verba non dicit; ne miseri aucupes vocum, apicibus quodammodo literarum putent
ligandam esse veritatem, cum utique non in verbis tantum, sed etiam in caeteris
omnibus signis animorum, non sit nisi ipse animus inqunendus. Cf. 66, in fine.

[5] Theophylact: Πρῶτον παύσας τὸν χειμῶνα τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτῶν, τότε λύει καὶ τὸν
τῆς θαλάσσης.

[6] Ο ὕ τ ω δειλοί, on which words Calvin: Qua, particulâ notat eos extra modum
pavescere;.... quemlibet vero timorem non esse fidei contrarium, inde patet,
quod si nihil metuimus, obrepit supina carnis securitas.

[7] Σιώπα, πεφίμωσο. We may compare Psa 106:9 : “He rebuked ἐπετίμησε, LXX) the
Red Sea also; “although there, as in a poem, the same stress cannot be laid on
the word as here.

[8] A notable specimen of the dexterity with which a neological interpretation
may be insinuated into a book of geography occurs in Röhr’s Palästina, p. 59, in
many respects a useful manual of the Holy Land. Speaking of this lake, and the
usual gentleness and calmness of its waters, he adds, that it is from time to
time disturbed by squalls from the neighbouring hills, which yet “last not long,
nor are very perilous (Mat 8:23-27). “What his reference to this passage means
is at once clear, and may be seen more largely expressed in Kuinoel, or any
other rationalist commentary, in loco.

[9] Ἐκόπασεν, as one ceases out of weariness (κοπάζω, from κόπος). Γαλήνη,
probably not, as some propose, from γάλα, to express the soft milky colour of
the calm sea, but from γελάω. So Catullus, describing the gently-stirred
waters,—leni resonant plangore cachinni.

[10] Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 20): Quum transfretat, Psalmus expungitur,
Dominus, inquit, super aquas multas [Psa 39:3]: quum undas freti discutit,
Abacuc adimpletur, Dispargens, inquit, aquas itinere [Hab 3:15]: quum ad minas
ejus eliditur mare, Naum quoqne absolvitur; Comminans, inquit, mari, et
arefaciens illud [Nan. i. 4j, utique cum ventis quibus inquietabatur.

[11] Bengel: Jesus habebat scholam ambulantem, et in eâ scholâ, multo solidius
instituti sunt discipuli, quam si sub tecto unius collegii sine ullâ
solicitudine atque tentatione vixissent.—A circumstance which has perplexed
some, that, apparently, the Apostles were never baptized, except some of them
with John’s baptism, has been by others curiously explained, that, as the
children of Israel were baptized into Moses in the Red Sea (1Co 10:2), so they
were in this storm baptized into Christ. Tertullian (de Bapt. 12): Alii plane
satis coacte injiciunt, tune Apostolos baptismi vicem implésse, quum in
naviculâ, fluctibus adspersi operti sunt.

[12] And again, Enarr. in Ps. 43:19: Si cessaret Deus, et non misceret
amaritudines felicitatibus seculi, oblivisceremur eum. Sed ubi angores
molestiarum faciunt fluctus animae, fides ilia quae ibi dormiebat, excitetur.
Tranquillum enim erat, quando dormivit Christus in mari: illo dormiente,
tempestas orta est, et coeperunt periclitari. Ergo in corde Christiano et
tranquillitas erit et pax, sed quamdiu vigilat fides nostra: si autem dormit
fides nostra, periclitamur. Sed quomodo ilia navis cum fluctuaret, excitatus est
Christus a fluctuantibus, et dicentibus, Domine, perimus: surrexit ille,
imperavit tempestatibus, imperavit fluctibus, cessavit periculum, facta est
tranquillitas; sic et te cum turbant concupiscentiae malae, persuasiones malae,
fluctus sunt, tranquillabuntur. Jam desperas, et putas te non pertinere ad
Dominum; Evigilet fides tua, excita Christum in corde tuo; surgente fide, jam
agnoscis ubi sis;.... Evigilante Christo tranquilletur cor tuum, ut ad portum
quoque pervenias.Thus again (In Ev. Joh. tract, xlix.): Fides tua de Christo,
Christus est in corde tuo. Intrant venti cor tuum, utique ubi navigas, ubi hanc
vitam tanquam procellosum et periculosum pelagus transis; intrant venti, movent
luctus, turbant navim. Qui sunt venti? Audisti convicium, irasceris: convicium
ventus est, iracundia fluctus est: periclitaris, disponis respondere, disponis
maledictum maledicto reddere, jam navis propinquat naufragio; excita Christum
dormientem. Ideo enim fluctuas, et mala pro malis reddere praeparas, quia
Christus dormit in navi. In corde enim tuo somnus Christi, oblivio fidei. Nam si
excites Christum, id est, recolas fidem, quid tibi dicit tanquam vigilans
Christus in corde tuo? Ego audivi, Daemonium habes, et pro eis oravi; audit
Dominus et patitur; audit servus et indignatur. Sed vindicari vis. Quid enim,
ego jam sum vindicatus? Cum tibi haec loquitur fides tua, quasi imperatur ventis
et fluctibus, et fit tranquillitas magna. Cf. Serm. lxiii.; Enarr. in Psa 55:8;
and Enarr. ii. in Ps. xxv. in init.

[13] Tertullian (De Bapt. 12): Caeterum navicula ilia figuram Ecclesise
praeferebat, quod in mari, id est seculo, fluctibus, id est persecutionibus et
tentationibus, inquietatur, Domino per patientiam velut dormiente, donec
orationibus sanctorum in ultimis suscitatus, com pescat seculum et
tranquillitatem suis reddat. Ambrose: Arbor quaedam in navi est crux in
Ecclesiâ, qua inter tot totius saeculi blanda et perniciosa naufragia incolumis
sola servatur. Compare a passage of much beauty in the Clementine Homilies
(Coteler. Patt. Apostt. vol. i. p. 609), beginning thus: Ἔοικεν γὰρ ὅλον τό
πρᾶγμα τῆς ἐκκλησίας νηῒ μεγάλῃ, διὰ σφοδροῦ χειμῶνος ἄνδρας φερούσῃ ἐκ πολλῶν
τόπων ὄντας, καὶ μίαν τινὰ ἀγαθῆς βασιλείας πόλιν οἰκεῖν θέλοντας, κ. τ. λ. The
image of the world as a great ship, whereof God was at once the maker and the
pilot, was familiar to the Indians (Philostratus, De Vita Apollonii, iii. 35;
Von Bohlen, Das Alte Indien); and the same symbolic meaning lay in the
procession of Egyptian priests bearing the sacred ship (the navigium auratum,
Curtius, iv. 7), full of the images of the gods (Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. ii. p.
9, 3d edit.). All this was recognized in the early Christian art, where the
Church is continually set forth as a ship, against which the personified winds
are fighting (Christi. Kunst-Symholik, p. 159). Aringhi describes an old
seal-ring in which the Church appears as this ship, sustained and supported by a
great fish in the sea beneath (Christ the ΙΧΘΥΣ. according to Psa 72:17,
Aquila), while on its mast and poop two doves are sitting; so that the three
Clementine symbols,, the ship, the dove, and the fish, appear here united in a
single group.


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  CHAPTER 13: 13-5. THE DEMONIACS IN THE COUNTRY OF THE GADARENES
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5. The Demoniacs in the Country of the Gadarenes Mat 8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luk
8:26-39 The consideration of this, the most important, and, in many respects,
the most perplexing of all the demoniac cures in the N. T., will demand some
prefatory remarks on the general subject of the demoniacs[1] of Scripture. It is
a subject of which the difficulty is very much enhanced by the fact that, as
with some of the spiritual gifts, the gift of tongues, for example, the thing
itself, if it still survives among us, yet does so no longer under the same
name, nor with the same frequency and intensity as of old. We are obliged to put
together, as best we can, the separate and fragmentary notices which have
reached us, and must endeavour out of them to frame such a scheme as will answer
the demands of the different phenomena; we have not, at least with certainty,
the thing itself to examine and to question, before our eyes.

It is, of course, easy enough to cut short the whole inquiry, and to leave no
question at all, by saying these demoniacs were persons whom we should call
insane—epileptic, maniac, melancholic This has been often said,[2] and the
oftener perhaps, because there is a partial truth in the assertion that these
possessions were bodily maladies. There was no doubt a substratum of disease,
which in many cases helped to lay open the sufferer to the deeper evil, and upon
which it was superinduced:[3] so that cases of possession are at once classed
with those of various sicknesses, and at the same time distinguished from them,
by the Evangelists; who thus at once mark the connexion and the difference (Mat
4:24; Mat 8:16; Mark 1:34). But the scheme which confounds these cases with
those of disease, and, in fact, identifies the two, does not, as every reverent
interpreter of God’s word must own, exhaust the matter; it cannot be taken as a
satisfying solution of the difficulties it presents; and this for more reasons
than one. And first, our Lord Himself uses language which is not reconcilable
with any such theory; He 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; “Hold thy peace, and come
out of him” (Mark 1:25). And the unworthy reply, that He fell in with and
humoured the notions of the afflicted in order to facilitate their cure,[4] is
anticipated by the fact that in his most confidential discourses with his
disciples He uses exactly the same language (Mat 10:8; and especially 17:21,
“This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting”[5].) The allegiance we owe
to Christ as the King of truth, who came, not to fall in with men’s errors, but
to deliver men out of their errors, compels us to believe that He would never
have used language which would have upheld and confirmed so serious an error in
the minds of men as the belief in satanic influences, which did not in truth
exist. For this error, if it was an error, was so little an innocuous one, such
as might be left to drop naturally away; did, on the contrary, reach so far in
its consequences, entwined its roots so deeply among the very ground-truths of
religion, that He would never have suffered it to remain at the hazard of all
the misgrowths which it could not fail to occasion. And then, moreover, even had
not the moral interests at stake been so transcendent, our idea of Christ’s
absolute veracity, apart from the value of the truth which He communicated, our
idea of Him as the Verax, no less than the Verus and the Veritas, forbids us to
suppose that He could have spoken as He did, being perfectly aware all the while
that there was no corresponding reality to justify the language which He used.
And in this there is no making a conscience about trifles, nor any losing sight
of that figurative nature of all our words, out of which it results that so much
which is not literally true, is yet the truest, inasmuch as it conveys the
truest impression,—no requiring of men to examine the etymologies of their words
before they venture to use them. It would have been quite a different thing for
the Lord to have fallen in with the popular language, and to have spoken of
persons under various natural afflictions as “possessed,” supposing He had found
such a language current, but now no longer, however once it might have been,
vividly linked to the idea of possession by spirits of evil. In this there had
been nothing more than in our speaking of certain forms of madness as lunacy. We
do not thus imply our belief, however it may have been with others in time past,
that the moon has wrought the mischief;[6] but finding the word current, we use
it: and this the more readily, since its original derivation is so entirely lost
sight of in our common conversation, its first impress so completely worn off,
that we do not thereby even seem to countenance an error. But suppose with this
same disbelief in lunar influences, we were to begin to speak not merely of
lunatics, but of persons on whom the moon was working, to describe the cure of
such, as the moon’s ceasing to afflict them; the physician to promise his
patient that the moon should not harm him any more, would not this be quite
another matter, a direct countenancing of error and delusion? would there not
here be that absence of agreement between thoughts and words, in which the
essence of a lie consists? Now Christ does everywhere speak in such a language
as this. Take, for instance, his words, Luk 11:17-26, and assume Him to have
known, all the while He was thus speaking, that the whole Jewish belief of
demoniac possessions was utterly baseless, that Satan exercised no such power
over the bodies or spirits of men, and what should we have here for a King of
truth? And then, besides this, the phenomena themselves are such as no
hypothesis of the kind avails to explain, and they thus bid us to seek for some
more satisfying solution. For that madness was not the constituent element in
the demoniac state is clear, since not only are we without the slightest ground
for supposing that the Jews would have considered all maniacs, epileptic or
melancholic persons, to be under the power of evil spirits; but we have distinct
evidence that the same malady they did in some cases attribute to an evil
spirit, and in others not; thus showing that the malady and possession were not
identical in their eyes, and that the assumption of the latter was not a mere
popular explanation for the presence of the former. Thus, on two occasions they
bring to the Lord one dumb (Mat 9:32), or dumb and blind (Mat 12:22), and in
both instances the dumbness is traced up to an evil spirit. Yet it is plain that
they did not consider all dumbness as having this root; for in the history given
by St. Mark (vii. 32) of another deaf and dumb, the subject of Christ’s healing
power, it is the evident intention of the Evangelist to describe one labouring
only under a natural defect; with no least desire to trace the source of his
malady to any demoniacal influence. There were no doubt signs sufficiently clear
distinguishing one case from the other; in that of the demoniac there probably
was not the outward hindrance, not the still-fastened string of the tongue; it
was not the outward organ, but the inward power of using the organ, which was at
fault. This, with an entire apathy, a total disregard of all which was going on
about him, may have sufficiently indicated that the source of his malady lay
deeper than in any merely natural cause. But, whatever may have been the signs
which enabled those about the sufferers to make these distinctions, the fact
itself that they did so discriminate between cases of the very same malady,
proves decisively that there were not certain diseases which, without more ado,
they traced up directly to Satan; but that they did designate by this name of
possession, a condition which, while it was very often a condition of disease,
was also always a condition of much more than disease. But what was the
condition which our Lord and his Apostles signalized by this name? in what did
it differ, upon the one side, from madness,—upon the other, from wickedness? It
will be impossible to make any advance toward the answer, without saying
something, by way of preface, on the scriptural doctrine concerning the kingdom
of evil, and its personal head, and the relation in which he stands to the moral
evil of our world. Alike excluding, on the one side, the Manichaean error, which
would make evil eternal as good, and so itself a god,—and the pantheistic, which
would deny any true reality to evil at all, or that it is anything else than
good at a lower stage, the unripe, and therefore still bitter, fruit,—the
Scripture teaches the absolute subordination of evil to good, and its
subsequence of order, in the fact that the evil roots itself in a creature, and
in one created originally pure, but the good in the Creator. Yet, at the same
time, it teaches that the opposition of this evil to the will of God is most
real, is that of a will which does truly set itself against his will; that the
world is not as a chess-board on which God is in fact playing both sides of the
game, however some of the pieces maybe black, and some white; but that the whole
end of his government of the world is the subduing of this evil; that is, not
abolishing it by main force, which were no true victory, but overcoming it by
righteousness and truth. And from this one central will, alienated from the will
of God, the Scripture derives all the evil in the universe; all gathers up in a
person, in the devil, who has a kingdom, as God has a kingdom—a kingdom with its
subordinate ministers,—”the devil and his angels.”[7] This world of ours stands
not isolated, not rounded and complete in itself, but in living relation with
two worlds,—a higher, from which all good in it proceeds,—and a lower, from
which all evil. It thus comes to pass that the sin of man is continually traced
up to Satan; Peter says to Ananias, “Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to
the Holy Ghost” (Acts 5:3)? and St. John, of Judas Iscariot, “the devil having
now put into his heart to betray Him” (John 13:2. cf. 1Jn 3:8; John 8:44); the
Scripture not by such language as this denying that the evil of men is truly
their evil, but affirming with this, that it has its ground in an anterior evil.
It is their evil, since an act of their will alone gives it leave to enter. To
each man the key is committed, with the charge to keep closed the gate of his
soul; and it is only through the negligent ward which he has kept that evil has
found admission there. At the same time it is the existence of a world of evil
beyond and without our world, which links to any remissness here such fatal and
disastrous results. This being so, the question which presents itself is this,
namely, what peculiar form of Satanic operation does the Scripture intend, when
it speaks of men as possessed, or having devils. Is their evil ethical, or is it
merely physical? Merely physical it certainly is not. Doubtless the suffering of
the demoniac often was great; yet we should err, if we saw in him, as in the
victims of ghastly and horrible diseases, only another example of the mighty woe
which Satan has brought in upon our race. Nor yet, on the other hand, is his
evil purely ethical; we have in him something else than merely a signal sinner,
a foremost servant of the devil, who with heart and will and waking
consciousness is doing his work; for this, whatever his antecedent guilt may
have been, and often, I should imagine, it had been great, the demoniac
evidently is not. But what in him strikes us the most is the strange confusion
of the physical and the spiritual, each intruding into the region of the other.
There is a breaking up of all the harmony of the lower, no less than of the
higher, life; the same discord and disorganization manifests itself in both. Nor
does the demoniac, like the wicked, stand only in near relation to the kingdom
of Satan as a whole. It is with him as if out of the malignant spirits of the
pit one had singled him out for its immediate prey; as when a lion or a leopard,
not hunting in the mass a herd of flying antelopes, has fastened upon and is
drinking out the life-blood of one. But the awful question remains, How should
any have sunken into this miserable condition? have been entangled so far into
the bands of the devil, or of his ministers? We should find ourselves altogether
upon a wrong track, did we conceive of the demoniacs as the worst of men, and
their possession as the plague and penalty of a wickedness in which they had
greatly exceeded others. Rather we must esteem the demoniac one of the
unhappiest, but not, of necessity, one of the guiltiest of our race.[8] So far
from this, the chief representatives and organs of Satan, false prophets and
antichrists, are never spoken of in this language.[9] We all feel that Judas’
possession, when Satan entered into him (John 13:27), was specifically different
from that of one of the unhappy persons who were the subjects of Christ’s
healing power. Or, to borrow an illustration from the world of fiction, none
would speak of Iago as δαιμονιζόμενος;, however all the deadliest malignity of
hell was concentrated in him; we should trace much closer analogies, to this
state in some aspects of Hamlet’s life. Greek tragedy supplies a yet apter
example. It is the noble Orestes, whom the “dogs of hell” torture into madness;
the obdurate Clytemnestra is troubled on account of her deed with no maddening
spectres from the unseen world. Thus, too, in actual life, the horror and deep
anguish of a sinner at the contemplation of Ms sin may have helped on this
overthrow of his spiritual life,—anguish which a more hardened sinner would have
escaped, but escaped it only by being a worse and more truly devilish man. We
are not then, I am persuaded, to see in these cases of possession the deliberate
giving in to the Satanic will;,, of an utterly lost soul, but the still
recoverable wreck of that which oftentimes was once a noble spirit.[10]

And, consistently with, this, we find in the demoniac the sense of a bondage in
which he does not acquiesce, of his true life absolutely shattered, of an ’alien
power which has mastered him wholly, and now is cruelly lording over him, and
ever drawing further away from Him. in whom only any. created intelligence can
find rest and peace. His state is, in the most literal sense of the word, “a
possession:” another is ruling in the high places of his soul, and has cast down
the rightful lord from his seat;. and he knows this; and out of his
consciousness of it there goes forth from him a cry for redemption,, so soon as
ever a glimpse of hope is afforded, an unlooked-for Redeemer draws near. This
sense of misery, this yearning after deliverance, is that, in fact, which
constituted these demoniacs subjects for Christ’s healing power. Without it they
would have been as little subjects of this as the devils, in whom evil has had
its perfect work, in whom there is nothing for the divine grace to take hold
of;—so that in their case, as in every other, faith was the condition of
healing. There was in them a spark of higher life, not yet trodden out, which,
indeed, so long as they were alone, was but light enough to reveal to them their
darkness; and which none but the very Lord of life could have fanned again into
a flame. But He who came “to destroy the works of the devil, “as He showed
Himself lord over purely physical evil, a healer of the diseases of men, and
lord no less over purely spiritual evil, a deliverer of men from their
sins,—manifested Himself also lord in these complex cases partaking of the
nature of either, ruler also in this border land, where these two regions of
evil join, and run so strangely and inexplicably one into the other.

Yet while thus “men possessed with devils” is in no wise an equivalent
expression for surpassingly wicked men, born of the serpent seed, of the devil’s
regeneration, and so become his children (Acts 13:10),—seeing that in such there
is no cry for redemption, no desire after deliverance, it is more than probable
that lavish sin, above all, indulgence in sensual lusts, superinducing, as it
often would, a weakness of the nervous system, wherein is the especial band
between body and soul, may have laid open these unhappy ones to the fearful
incursions of the powers of darkness. They were greatly guilty, though not the
guiltiest of all men. And this they felt, that by their own act they had given
themselves over to this tyranny of the devil, a tyranny from which, as far as
their horizon reached, they could see no hope of deliverance,—that to themselves
they owed that this hellish might was no longer without them, which being
resisted would flee from them; but a power which now they could not resist, and
which would not flee. The phenomena which the demoniacs of Scripture, especially
those now before us, exhibit, entirely justify this view of the real presence of
another will upon the will of the sufferer. They are not merely influences,
which little by little have moulded and modified his will and brought it into
subjection; but a power is there, which the man at the very moment he is
succumbing to it, feels to be the contradiction of his truest being; but which
yet has forced itself upon him, and possessed him, that he must needs speak and
act as its organ; however presently his personal consciousness, may reassert
itself for a moment.[11] This, that they have not become indissolubly one, that
the serpent and the man have not, as in Dante’s awful image,, grown together,
“each melted into other,”[12] but that they still are twain; this is, indeed,
the one circumstance of hope which survives amid the general ruin of the moral
and spiritual life. Yet this,, for the time being, gives the appearance,, though
a deceptive one, of a far entirer wreck of his inner life, than manifests itself
in wicked men, who have given themselves over wholly, without reserve and
without reluctancy, to the working of iniquity. In these last, by the very
completeness of their apostasy from the good, there is consistency at any rate;
there are no merest incoherencies, no violent contradictions at every instant
emerging in their words and in their conduct; they are at one with themselves.
But all these incoherencies and self-contradictions we trace in the conduct of
the demoniac; he rushes to the feet of Jesus, as coming to Him for aid, and then
presently he deprecates his interference. There is not in him one vast
contradiction to the true end of his being, consistently worked out, but a
thousand lesser contradictions, in the midst of which the true idea of his life,
not wholly obscured, will sometimes by fitful glimpses re-appear. There is on
his part an occasional reluctancy against this usurpation by another of his
spirit’s throne—a protest, which for the present, indeed, does but aggravate the
confusion of his life—which yet contains in it the pledge of a possible freedom,
of a redemption whereof he may be a partaker still.

There is one objection to this view of the matter which may still be urged,
namely, that if this possession is anything more than insanity in its different
forms, how comes it to pass that there are no demoniacs now? how account for the
fact that they have wholly disappeared from among us? But the assumption that
there are none now, itself demands to be proved. It is not hard to perceive why
there should be few by comparison; why this form of spiritual evil should have
lost greatly both in frequency and malignity, and from both these causes be far
more difficult to recognize. For in the first place, if there was anything that
marked the period of the coming of Christ, and that immediately succeeding, 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 a frantic eagerness
into sensual enjoyments as the refuge from these thoughts of despair. That whole
period was “the hour and power of darkness,” of a darkness which then, as just
before the dawn of a new day, was the thickest. The world was again a chaos, and
the creative words, “Let there be light,” though just about to be spoken, as yet
were not uttered. It was exactly the crisis for such soul-maladies as these, in
which the spiritual and bodily should be thus strangely intermingled, and it is
nothing wonderful that they should have abounded at that time; for the
predominance of certain spiritual maladies at certain epochs of the world’s
history, specially fitted for their generation, with their gradual decline and
total disappearance in others less congenial to them, is a fact itself admitting
no manner of question.[13]

Moreover we cannot doubt that the might of hell has been greatly broken by the
coming of the Son of God in the flesh; and with this a restraint set on the
grosser manifestations of its power; “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from
heaven” (Luk 10:18. cf. Rev 20:2). His rage and violence are continually hemmed
in and hindered by the preaching of the Word and ministration of the Sacraments.
It were another thing even now in a heathen land, above all in one where Satan
was not left in undisturbed possession, but wherein the great crisis of the
conflict between light and darkness was finding place through the first
proclaiming there of the Gospel of Christ. There we might expect to encounter,
whether in the same intensity or not, manifestations analogous to these.
Rhenius, a well-known Lutheran missionary in India, gives this as exactly his
own experience,[14]—namely, that among the native Christians, even though many
of them walk not as children of light, yet there is no such falling under
Satanic influence in soul and body, as he traced frequently in the heathen
around him; and he shows by a remarkable example, and one in which he is himself
the witness throughout, how the assault in the name of Jesus on the kingdom of
darkness, as it brings out all forms of devilish opposition into fiercest
activity, so calls out the endeavour to counterwork the truth through men who
have been made direct organs of the devilish will.

It may well be a question moreover, if an Apostle, or one with apostolic
discernment of spirits, were to enter into a madhouse now, how many of the
sufferers there he might not recognize as “possessed. “Certainly in many cases
of mania and epilepsy there is a condition very analogous to that of the
demoniacs. The fact that the sufferer, and commonly the physician, may apprehend
it differently,[15] is not of the essence of the matter; they will but in this
reflect the popular notion of the time. Thus, no doubt, the Jews multiplied
quite unnecessarily the numbers of the possessed, counting as they did, among
cases of possession, many lower forms of disharmony in the inner life; so too I
should believe it was in the early Church, and many then, who had not fallen
under this immediate tyranny of the devil, may yet have traced up their
sufferings directly to him. Now, however, the popular feeling which the unhappy
man brings with him into his forlorn state sets the opposite way, and in
agreement with this is the language which he uses. But the case immediately
before us is one in which no question can exist, since the great Physician of
souls Himself declares it one of a veritable possession, and treats it as such;
and to this we will address ourselves now The connexion is very striking in
which this miracle stands with that other which went immediately before. Our
Lord has just shown Himself as the pacifier of the tumults and the discords in
the outward world; He has spoken peace to the winds and to the waves, and hushed
the war of elements with a word. But there is something wilder and more fearful
than the winds and the waves, in their fiercest moods—even the spirit of man,
when it has broken loose from all restraints, and yielded itself to be his
organ, who brings confusion and anarchy wherever his dominion reaches. And
Christ will do here a yet mightier work than that which He accomplished there;
He will prove Himself here also the Prince of Peace, the restorer of the lost
harmony; He will speak, and at his potent word this madder strife, this blinder
rage which is in the heart of man, will allay itself, and here also there shall
be a great calm. In seeking to combine the “accounts given us of this memorable
healing, a difficulty meets us at the outset,[16] this, namely, that St. Matthew
speaks of two demoniacs, while St. Mark and St. Luke only of one. Many
reconciliations of their statements have been offered; as that one was a more
notable person in the country than the other, which is Augustine’s;[17] or that
one was so much fiercer as to cause the other by most persons hardly to be taken
note of, which is that of Maldonatus. However we may account for it, one, it is
evident, did fall into the background; and, therefore, following the later
Evangelists, I shall speak in the main as they do, of the one demoniac who met
the Lord as He came out of the ship;—not in the least as though the other was
not present: but these accounts, in which there appears but one, being those
which, as the fullest, I desire mainly to follow, it would cause much
embarrassment to use any other language. The picture of the miserable man is
fearful; and in drawing it each Evangelist has some touches which are peculiarly
his own; but St. Mark’s is the most graphic of all, adding many strokes which
wonderfully aggravate the terribleness of the man’s condition, and thus magnify
the glory of his cure. The man had his dwelling among the tombs, that is, in
places unclean because of the dead men’s bones which were there (Num 19:11; Num
19:16; Mat 23:27; Luk 11:44). To those who did not on this account shun them,
these tombs of the Jews would afford ample shelter, being either natural caves,
or recesses artificially hewn out of the rock, often so large as to be supported
with columns, and with cells upon their sides for the reception of the dead.[18]
Being, too, without the cities, and oftentimes in remote and solitary places,
they would attract those who sought “to avoid all fellowship of their kind.[19]
This man was possessed of that extraordinary muscular strength which maniacs so
often put forth (cf. Acts 19:16), and thus all efforts to bind and restrain him
(and such had been often repeated) had proved ineffectual (Mark 5:4). St.
Matthew alone relates how he had made the way impassable for travellers; St.
Luke alone that he was without clothing,[20] although this is involved in St.
Mark’s account, who tells us that after he was healed he was found “clothed, and
in his right mind” sitting at Jesus’ feet. Yet with all this, he was not so
utterly lost, but that there woke up in him continually a sense of his misery,
and of the terrible bondage under which he had come; although this could express
itself only in his cries, and in a blind rage “against himself as the true
author of his woe; out of which he wounded and cut himself with stones.[21] From
such an one as this did the Lord receive his first greeting on those shores
which now, probably for the first time, his feet were treading. This man with
his companion starting from the tombs, which were their ordinary dwelling-place,
rushed down to encounter, it may have been with hostile violence, the intruders
that had dared to set foot on their domain. Or it is possible that they were at
once drawn to Christ by the secret instinctive feeling that He was their helper,
and driven from Him by the sense of the awful gulf that divided them from Him,
the Holy One of God. At any rate, if it was with purposes of violence, ere the
man reached Him his mind was changed; “for He had commanded the unclean spirit
to come out. of the man” (Luk 8:29), and the unclean spirit had recognized one
that had a right to command, against whom force would avail nothing; and, like
others on similar occasions, sought by a strong adjuration to avert his coming
doom. He “cried with a loud voice, What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son
of the most high God? I adjure Thee by God that Thou torment me not.”[22] Herein
the true devilish spirit speaks out, which counts it a torment not to be
suffered to torment others, and an injury done to itself when it is no more
permitted to be injurious to others. In St. Matthew they say, “Art Thou come
hither to torment us before the time?” in which last words, “before the time,”
is the confession upon their part of a time coming, an inevitable hour, when
there shall be an entire victory of the kingdom of light over that of darkness,
and when all which belong unto the latter shall be shut up in the abyss (Rev
20:10), and all power of harming withdrawn from them for ever. All Scripture
agrees with this, that the judgment of the angels is yet to come (1Co 6:3); they
are “reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the
great day” (Jude 1:6); and what the unclean spirits deprecate here, is the
bringing in, by anticipation, of that final doom.

It is here noticeable, that the first bidding of Christ is not immediately
obeyed;—that the evil spirits remonstrate, and do not at once abandon their
prey. No doubt the Lord could have forced them to do so, had He pleased; but the
man might have perished in the process (cf. Mark 9:24). Even that first bidding
had brought on a terrible paroxysm. It was then of Christ’s own will, of the
Physician wise and tender as He was strong, to proceed step by step. And, first,
He demands of him his name,—some say, to magnify the greatness of the
deliverance and the Deliverer, by showing, through the answer, the power and
malignity of the foe that should be overcome. But, more probably, the question
was directed to the man. It should calm him, by bringing him to recollection, to
the consciousness of his personality, of which a man’s name is the outward
expression,—that he was a person, having once been apart from, nor even now
inextricably bound up with, those spiritual wickednesses which had dominion over
him. The question may thus have been intended to facilitate his cure.[23] But if
so meant, either the evil spirit snatches at the answer and replies for himself,
or the unhappy man, instead of recurring to his true name, that which should
remind him of what he was before he fell under this thraldom, declares his sense
of the utter ruin of his whole moral and spiritual being. In his reply, “My name
is Legion, for we are many,” truth and error are fearfully blended. They were
“many;” not on one side only, but on every side, the walls of his spirit have
been broken down; and he laid open to all the incursions of evil, torn asunder
in infinite ways, now under one hostile and hated power now under another. The
destruction is complete; they who rule over him are “lords many.” Only by an
image drawn from the reminiscences of his former life can he express his sense
of his own condition. He had seen the serried ranks of a Roman legion, that
fearful instrument of conquest, that sign of terror and fear to the conquered
nations, and before which the Jew more especially quailed. Even such, at once
one and many, cruel and inexorable and strong, were the powers that were
tyrannizing over him.[24] When it is said of Mary Magdalene, that out of her had
gone seven devils (Luk 8:2),. something of the same truth is expressed,—that her
spiritual life was laid waste, not on one side only, but on many (cf. Mat
12:45). And then again, with that interchange of persons which was continually
going forward, that quick shifting, so to speak, of the polarity, so that at one
moment the human consciousness became the positive, at another the negative
pole, the unclean spirit, or rather the man, become now his organ, speaks out
anew, entreating not to be sent into the abyss[25] (Luk 8:3 d), or, clothing his
petition in the form of a notion which belonged to the man whom he possessed,
“that He would not send them away out of the country” (Mark 5:10). The request
is in each case the same, for, according to Jewish notions, certain countries
being assigned to evil as well as to good spirits, the limits of which they were
unable to overpass, to be sent out of their own country, no other being open to
them, implied being sent into the abyss, since that alone would remain for them.
This request is in fact a repetition of their prayer that they should not be
tormented before the time.

Hereupon follows a circumstance which has ever proved a chief stumbling-block
offered by the Evangelical history. The devils, if they must leave their more
welcome habitation, the heart of man,, if indeed the Stronger is come, spoiling
the strong man’s goods, taking his thralls out of his power, yet entreat, in
their inextinguishable desire of harming, or, out of those mysterious affinities
which evermore reveal themselves between the demoniacal and the bestial,[26] to
be allowed to enter into the swine;—of which a large herd,—St. Mark with his
usual punctuality notes that they were “about two thousand,”—were feeding on the
neighbouring cliffs. But to the evil all things turn to evil. God’s saints and
servants appear not to be heard; and the very refusal of their requests is to
them a blessing (2Co 12:8-9). The wicked, Satan (Job 1:11) and his ministers and
servants, are sometimes heard, and the very granting of their petitions issues
in their worse confusion and loss.[27] So is it now: these evil spirits had
their prayer heard; but only to their ruin. They are allowed to enter into the
swine; but the destruction of the whole herd follows; and that which they most
dreaded came upon them; no longer finding organs in or through which to work,
they are driven perforce to that very prisonhouse which they most would have
shunned. The first cavil which has been raised here is this—What right had the
Lord to inflict this loss on the owners of the swine?—being the same which has
been raised on occasion of the cursing of the barren fig-tree (Mat 21:19). It
might be sufficient to answer to this, that Christ did not send the devils into
the swine; He merely drove them out from the men; all beyond this was merely
permissive.[28] But supposing that He had done so— a man is of more value than
many swine; and if this granting of the evil spirits’ request helped in any way
the cure of this sufferer, caused them to relax their hold on him more easily,
mitigated the paroxysm of their going forth (cf. Mark 9:26), this would have
been motive enough for allowing them to perish. It may have been necessary for
the permanent healing of the man that he should have this outward evidence and
testimony that the hellish powers which held him in bondage had quitted their
hold. He may have needed to have his deliverance sealed and realized to him in
the open destruction of his enemies; not otherwise to be persuaded that Christ
had indeed and for ever set him free; as Israel, coming out of Egypt, must see
the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore before they could indeed believe that the
rod of their oppressors had been broken for ever (Exo 14:30). But setting aside
all apologies, on what ground, it may be asked, is this which the Lord here
wrought, made more the subject of cavil than any other loss inflicted upon men
by Him from whom all things come, and who therefore can give or take away
according to the good pleasure of his will? Men might object with as good a
right against the murrain which causes cattle to die; the inundation that
destroys the fruits of the field, or any other natural calamity with which God
chastens his children, punishes, or seeks to make contrite the hearts of his
enemies. For oftentimes his taking away is in a higher sense a giving; a
withdrawing of the meaner thing, to make receptive of the better. Thus might it
well have been intended here, however the sin of these Gadarenes hindered the
gracious design. If these swine belonged to Jewish owners, and we know from
Josephus that there were numbers of hellenizing Jews just in these parts, there
may have been in this loss, a punishment meant for them who from motives of gain
showed themselves despisers of Moses’ law.. It must be owned, however, that the
population of the Decapolis was predominantly Gentile.; Josephus calls Gadara
itself a Greek city.[29] But the narrative is charged with contradiction and
absurdity. The unclean spirits ask. permission to enter into the swine, yet no
sooner have they thus done than they defeat their own purpose, destroying that
animal life, from which if they be altogether driven,, they have already
confessed they will be obliged to betake them to the more detested place of
their punishment. It is nowhere,, however, said that they drove the swine down
the steep place into the sea. It is just as easy, and much more natural, to
suppose that against their will the swine, when they found themselves seized by
this new and strange power, rushed themselves in wild and panic fear to their
destruction,—the foremost plunging headlong down the cliffs, and the rest
blindly following. But in either case, whether they thus destroyed themselves,
or were impelled by the foul spirits, there reveals itself here the very essence
and truest character of evil, which evermore outwits and defeats itself, being
as inevitably scourged in the granting of its requests as in their refusal;
which, stupid, blind, self-contradicting, and suicidal, can only destroy, and
will involve itself in the common ruin rather than not destroy. And what, if in
the fierce hatred of these foul spirits of darkness against the Prince of light
and life, they may have been willing to bring any harm on themselves, if only
they might so bring on Him the ill-will of men, and thus traverse and hinder his
blessed work? And this, no doubt, they did effectually here; for it was fear of
further losses, and alienation from Christ on account of those by his presence
already entailed upon them, which was the motive for their urging Him to leave
their country. But the point of most real difficulty is the entering of the
devils into the swine,—the working, that is, of the spiritual life on the
bestial, which seems altogether irreceptive of it, and to possess no organs
through which it could operate. I put aside of course here, as both in
themselves merely ridiculous, and irreconcilable with the documents as they lie
before us, the solutions of Paulus and his compeers, that the demoniac, in the
parting paroxysm of his madness, hunted the creatures over the precipices into
the lake, or that, while the swineherds were drawn by curiosity to watch the
encounter between Christ and the demoniac, or had gone to warn Him of the danger
of meeting the madman, the untended herd fell a fighting, and so tumbled
headlong over the cliffs. Whatever difficulties this miracle may present, it
certainly is not by shifts such as these to be evaded; and, their perplexity at
any rate claims to be respectfully treated, who find it hard to reconcile this
fact with what else they have been taught to hold fast as most precious
concerning the specific difference between man with the whole order of spiritual
existences on the one side, and the animal creation on the other. I will only
suggest that perhaps we make to ourselves a difficulty here, too easily assuming
that the lower animal world is wholly shut up in itself, and incapable of
receiving impressions from that, which is above it. The assumption is one
unwarranted by deeper investigations, which lead rather to an opposite
conclusion,—not to a breaking, down of the boundaries between the two worlds,
but to the showing in what wonderful ways the lower is subject to the
impressions of the higher, both for good and for evil.[30] Nor does this working
of the spiritual on the physical life stand isolated in this single passage of
Scripture, but we are throughout taught the same lesson (Gen 3:17; Rom 8:18).

“And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the city, and told
everything, and what was befallen to the possessed of the devils.” All three
Evangelists record the entreaty of the Gadarenes, so unlike that of the
Samaritans (John 4:40), which followed: “And, behold, the whole city came out to
meet Jesus; and when they saw Him, they besought Him that He would depart out of
their coasts,”—an entreaty which surely had not, as Jerome and others suggest,
its root in their humility, was in no respect a parallel to St. Peter’s, “Depart
from me, for I am a sinful man” (Luk 5:8); but, as already observed, was
provoked by the injury which already from his brief presence among them had
ensued to their worldly possessions, as perhaps by the fear of greater losses
which might. follow. This was their trial. It should now be seen whether the
kingdom of heaven was first in their esteem; whether they would hold all else as
cheap by comparison; so that in this aspect the destruction of the swine had in
regard of them an ethical purpose and aim. But under this trial they failed; it
was nothing to them that a man, probably a fellow-citizen, was delivered from
that terrible bondage, that they saw him “sitting at the feet of Jesus,” or
being taught of Him, as this language implies (Luk 10:39; Acts 22:3), “clothed,
and in his right mind.”[31] The breach in their worldly estate alone occupied
their thoughts. For spiritual blessings brought near to them they cared nothing
at all; and “they were afraid” being ignorant what next might follow. They felt
the presence of God’s Holy One intolerable to them, so long as they remained in
their sins; and that to them, so remaining, it could only bring mischiefs, of
which they had had the first experience already. And having no desire to be
delivered from their sins, they entreated Him to go; “for,” as St. Luke tells
us, “they were taken with great fear.” And their prayer also was heard (Psa
78:29-31); He did depart; He took them at their word, and, as they desired, He
let them alone[32] (cf. Exo 10:28-29).

But”the healed man, as St. Mark and St. Luke inform us, would fain have
accompanied his Healer: and “when He was come into the ship, prayed Him that he
might be with Him.” Was it that he feared, as Theophylact supposes, lest in the
absence of his Deliverer the spirits of the pit should resume their dominion
over him, and nowhere felt safe but in immediate nearness to Him?—or did he only
desire, out of the depth of his gratitude, henceforth to be a follower of Him to
whom he owed this mighty deliverance? Whatever was his motive, the Lord had
other purposes with him. He was Himself leaving them who had shown themselves so
unworthy of his presence; but He would not leave Himself without a witness among
them. This healed man should be to them a standing monument of his grace and
power, an evidence that He would have healed them, and was willing to heal them
still, of all the diseases of their souls: “Jesus suffered him not, but saith
unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord, hath
done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.”[33] And the man did so, and not
without effect: “He departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things
Jesus had done for him; and all men did marvel.”[34]

Yet this command that he should go and declare the great things done for him,
may have found its further motive in the peculiar moral condition of the man.
Only by a reference to this moral condition are we able to reconcile the
apparently contradictory injunctions which the Lord laid on those whom He had
healed:—some being forbidden to say anything of God’s goodness to them (Mat 8:4;
Luk 8:56),—this one commanded to publish everywhere the mercy which he had
received. Where there was danger of all deeper impressions being scattered and
lost through a garrulous repetition of the outward circumstances of the healing,
silence was enjoined, that so there might be an inward brooding over the
gracious and wondrous dealings of the Lord. But where, on the contrary, there
was a temperament over-inclined to melancholy, sunken and shut up in itself, and
needing to be drawn out from self, and into healthy communion with its
fellow-men,—as was evidently the case with such a solitary melancholic person as
we have here,—there the command was, that the man should go and tell to others
the great things which God had done for him, and in this telling preserve the
healthy condition of his own soul.

Footnotes

[1] The most common name in Scripture for one thus possessed is δαιμονιζόμενος
(Mat 4:24, and often). Besides this, δαιμονισθείς (Mark 5:18; Luk 8:36);
ἄνθρωπος ἐν πνεύματι ἀκαθάρτω (Mark 1:23); ἔχων πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον (Acts 8:7);
ἔχων δαιμόνια (Luk 8:27); ἄνθρωπος ἔχων πνεῦμα δαιμονίου ἀκαθάρτον (Luk 4:33).
Other more general descriptions, καταδυναστευόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ διαβόλου (Acts
10:38); ὀχλούμενος ὑπὸ πνευμάτων ἀκαθάρτων (Luk 6:18; Acts v. Hi). In classic
Greek, one under the power of an evil δαίμων was said δαιμονᾶν (AEschylus,
Choëphorce, 564), κακοδαιμονᾶν, and the state was called κακοδαιμονία, not
being, however, precisely a similar condition.

[2] As by Semler in Germany, Comm. de Daemoniacis quorum in N. T. ’fit Mentio,
Halae, 1770-1771); by Hugh Farmer in England, Essay on the Demoniacs of the N.
T., London, 1775.

[3] Origen (in Matth. torn. 13:6) finds fault with some (ἰατροί he calls them)
who in his day saw in the youth mentioned Mat 17:14, only one afflicted with the
falling sickness. He himself runs into the opposite extreme, and will see no
nature there, because they saw nothing but nature.

[4] Not to say that such treatment had been sure to fail.. Schubert in his book,
full of wisdom and love, Die Krankheiten und Störungen der menschlichen Seele,
several times observes how fatal all giving into a madman’s delusions is for his
recovery; how sure it is to defeat its own objects. He is living in a world of
falsehood, and what he wants is not more falsehood, but some truth—the truth
indeed in love, but still only the truth. And I know that the greatest
physicians in this line in England act exactly upon this principle.

[5] It is hardly necessary to observe, that by this “going out” that is not
implied, which Arnobius (Adv. Gent. i. 45) in the rudest manner expresses, when
he speaks of gens illa mersorum in visceribus daemonum. The notion of a
ventriloquism such as this, of a spirit having his lodging in the body of a man,
could only arise from a gross and entire confusion of the spiritual and
material, and has been declared by great teachers of the Church not to be what
they understand by this language (see Pet. Lombard, Sentent, ii. dist. 8). The
German “besessen” involves a besitzens, as ἐγκαθέζεσθαι, yet neither this as a
mechanical local possession.

[6] There are cases of lunambulism, in which, no doubt, it has influence; but
they are few and exceptional (see Schubert, p. 113). I am speaking of using the
term to express all forms of mental unsoundness.

[7] The devil is never in Scripture called δαίμων or δαίμόνιον, nor his inferior
ministers διαβολοί. In regard of δαίμόνιον and δαίμων, the first is in the N. T.
of far the most frequent occurrence, being used sixty times, while δαίμων occurs
but five times. The words are not perhaps perfectly equivalent; but there is
more of personality implied in δαίμων than δαίμόνιον. Other names are πνεῦμα
πονηρόν, πνεῦμα ἀκαθάρτον, πνεῦμα δαίμόνιον ἀκαθάρτου, and at Mat 8:16 they are
simply τὰ πνεύματα. The word δαίμων (=δαήμων) is either derived from δάω, scio,
and then signifies “the knowing,” the full of insight (in oldest Greek δάμων),
while to know is the special prerogative of spiritual beings (ὄτι φρόνιμοι καὶ
δαήμονες ἦσαν, Plato, Crat. 398 b; ob scientiam nominati, Augustine, De Civ.
Dei, ix. 20); or else from δαίω, in its sense of to divide; the δαίμονες are
then the distributors, the dividers and allotters of good and of evil to men,
and δαίμων would thus be very much the same as Μοῖρα derived from μέρος, a
portion. And this derivation is perhaps preferable, in that ever a feeling of
the fateful is linked with the word. In classic use the word is of much wider
significance than in scriptural, embracing all intermediate. beings between men
and the very highest divinities, whether the deified men of the golden age, or
created and inferior powers; and, as well as δαιμόνιος, is a middle term,
capable of being applied to the highest and the lowest, and first deriving from
its adjunct a good or an evil significance; thus we have ἀγαθοδαίμων,
κακοδαίμων. Yet Augustine (De Civ. Dei, lix. 19) observes, that in his time even
among the heathen the word had come to be used only in malam partem, which he
attributes to the influence which the Church use of the word only in that sense,
had spread even beyond its own limits. Nor is it to be denied that there was a
certain tendency to the use of δαίμων in malam partem which made itself felt at
a very early period. The word indeed might be equal Θεός, but it was much
oftener a god in his evil workings on men than in his good. This appears more
distinctly in δαιμόνιος, which, is never one under happy influences of the
heavenly powers; but always one befooled, betrayed, impelled or led by them to
his ruin. On the Greek idea of the δαίμονες, see Creuzer’s masterly discussion,
Symbolik, part hi. pp. 719-748, 3d edit., and Solger, Nachgelassene Schriften,
vol. ii. pp. 657-675.

[8] This is exactly Heinroth’s exaggeration, tracing up, as he does, insanity in
every case to foregoing sin; and not this alone, but affirming that none who had
not fallen deeply away from God could be liable to this infliction, that in fact
they are those who have fallen from Him the farthest, the outermost circle of
them who have obeyed the centrifugal impulses of sin. But every one who knows
what manner of persons have been visited by this terrible calamity, and also
what manner of persons have not, at once revolts against this doctrine thus
stated. Still Heinroth’s unquestionable merit remains, that more distinctly, I
believe, than any other had yet done, he dared to say out that such cases were
to be looked at as standing in a different, and oftentimes far nearer, connexion
to the kingdom of evil than a fever or a broken limb. The mere fact that
insanity is more and more allowed on all sides to demand a moral treatment, that
almost only out of this its removal may be hoped, the physical remedies being
merely secondary and subsidiary, should be alone sufficient to put it in wholly
another class from every other disease. The attempt to range it with them is
merely the attempt, natural enough in those who know not the grace of God in
Christ, to avoid looking down into the awful deeps of our fallen nature. For a
list of Heinroth’s works, almost all bearing upon this subject, see the
Conversations-Lexicon under his name. In speaking on such a subject he had the
inestimable advantage of being at once a theologian and physician. For
Schubert’s more qualified opinion on the same subject see p. 37 of his work
already referred to.

[9] So the accusation of the people, “Thou hast a devil” (John 7:20; John 8:48;
John 8:52; John 10:20), was quite different from, and betrayed no such deadly
malignity as, that of the Pharisees, that He cast out devils by Beelzebub (Mat
12:24). That first was a common coarse blasphemy, a stone flung at random; this,
which charged Him with being in willing and conscious alliance with the prince
of evil, was on the very verge of being the sin against the Holy Ghost (ver.
31). The distinction between wicked men and demoniacs was clearly recognized in
the early Church; it had its excommunications for the former, its exorcists for
the latter.

[10] Dallaeus (De Cult. Rel. Lat. i. p. 64) draws well the distinction: Etsi
quicunque sub peccati jugo sunt, omnes diaboli servi sint, latum tamen est inter
peccatorem et energumenon discrimen. In ilium daemon agit emcaciâ, ut sic dicam,
morali, in hunc physicá sive naturali. Illius animum objectis ad peccandum
illecebris pervenit, hujus corpus et corporis sensus vel interiores vel etiam
exteriores turbat; ilium vitiis, hunc morbis subigit; denique ilium volentem et
consentientem, hunc invitum et repugnantem tenet ac, ut loquimur, possidet. Alia
peccatori, alia energumeno comparata sunt remedia. Illius vitiis imbutus animus
ratione, exhortatione, verbo denique evangelico curandus est, hujus corpus vi
superiori et dono divinitus dato liberandum.

[11] How remarkable in accesses of delirium tremens, the penalty of lavish
indulgence in intoxicating drinks, to find something analogous to this double
consciousness. A late work, describing the victims of this, expresses itself
thus: “In his most tranquil and collected moments he is not to be trusted; for
the transition from that state to the greatest violence is instantaneous: he is
often recalled by a word to an apparent state of reason, but as quickly his
false impressions return; there is sometimes evidence, at the time, of a state
of double consciousness, a condition of mind which is sometimes remembered by
the patient when the paroxysm is over” (Bright and Addison, On the Practice of
Medicine, vol. i. p. 2G2). And Gfrörer, a German rationalist, is struck with a
like phenomenon in others (Das Heiligthum und die Wahrheit, Stuttgart, 1838, p.
302): Auch scheue ich mich trotz alien Aufklärern nicht zu bemerken, das
neuerdings hier zu Lande gar seltsame Erscheinungen der Art beobachtet worden
sind, und wenn ich recht unterrichtet bin, so hat die höchste ärtzliehe Behörde
in Würtemberg, der solche Fälle vorgelegt wurden, dahin entschieden, dass es
allerdings Krankheiten geben könne, durch welche zwei Bewusstseyn in den
Menschen entstehen, so zwar das der Betroffene überzeugt ist, neben seinem Ich
noch ein Anderes mit Gewalt eingedrungenes in sich zu haben. In a note he adds,
Mein Gewährsmann ist, ausser mehreren Anderen, ein Mann, den ich genau kenne von
kaltem Verstande, unbefangen, wahrhaftig, ein mathematischer Kopf.

[12] Dante, Inferno, xxv,

[13] Thus In Joh. Horn, xxxvi.: “As there it was not simply the nature of the
waters which healed, for then they would have always done so, but when was added
the energy of the Angel; so with us, it is not simply the water which works, but
when it has received the grace of the Spirit, then it washes away all sins.”

[14] In a letter of date March 27, 1818, printed in Von Meyer’s Blätter für
hohere Wahrheit, vol. vii. pp. 199-208.

[15] I understand that Esquirol, for I have not had the opportunity of myself
consulting his works, recognizes demoniacs now. There could not be a higher
authority.

[16] There is another difficulty, namely, that St. Matthew lays the scene of the
miracle in the country of the Gergesenes, St. Mark and St. Luke in that of the
Gadarenes. But the MSS. in all three Evangelists vary in their readings between
Γαδαρηνῶν, Γερασηνῶν, and Γεργεσηνῶν (see Tregelles, On the Printed Text of the
Greek Testament, p. 192); so that it is impossible to say that there exists even
a seeming contradiction here. Lachmann, for instance, finds none, who, certainly
not with any motive of excluding such, reads Γερασηνῶν throughout, which was the
reading Origen found in most MSS. of his day. Fritzsche, in like’ manner, reads
everywhere Γαδαρῖτις, which Winer also prefers (Realwörterbuch, s. v. Gadara).
This reading, Origen says, was not in many MSS. of his time; yet there seems
hardly a doubt that it is the right one; for Gadara, the capital city of Peraea,
lay S.E. of the southern point of Gennesareth, at a distance of not more than
60: stadia from Tiberias, its country being called Γαδαρῖτις. But Gerasa lay on
the extreme eastern limit of Peraea (Josephus, B. J. iii. 3, 3; iv. 9, 1); so as
sometimes to be numbered among the cities of Arabia, and much too far distant to
give its name to any district. on the borders of the lake. Origen, therefore, on
topographical motives, proposes Γέργεσα: but no evidence seems adducible, beyond
his assertion, to prove the existence of any city bearing that name in the
neighbourhood of the lake. Josephus never makes mention of it. If there did lie
any difference in the original readings, it would probably be. explained thus,
that the limits of the territory, which might be said to belong to each city,
were not very accurately determined, so that one Evangelist called it the
country of one city, and another of another.

[17] Augustine (De Cons. Evang. ii. 24): Intelligas unum eorum fuisse personae
alicujus clarioris et famosioris, quem regio ilia maxime dolebat; so
Theophylact, that one was ἐπισημότερος, and Grotius. See another solution in
Lightfoot, Exercit. on St. Mark, in loc. It remained for a modern interpreter,
Ammon, in his Biblische Theologie, to conjecture that the two were the madman
and his keeper! In the same way St. Matthew makes mention of two blind men (xx.
30), where the other Evangelists make mention only of one Mark 10:46; Luk
18:35).

[18] Burckhardt and other travellers mention many such tombs on the further side
of the lake, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the spot where Gadara stood,
as existing to this present day; see, above all, for the whole scenery of this
miracle, Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 372.

[19] Hävernick, on Dan 4:33, quotes AEtius, Be Melancholia, iii. 8; who says of
the melancholy-mad, οἱ πλείους ἐν σκοτείνοις τόποις χαίρουσι διατρίβειν, καὶ ἐν
μνήμασι, καὶ ἐν ἐρήμοις. And Warburton (The Crescent and the Cross, vol. ii. p.
352) remarkably illustrates this account: "On descending from these heights
[those of Lebanon], I found myself in a cemetery, whose sculptured turbans
showed me that the neighbouring village was Moslem. The silence of the night was
now broken by fierce yells and howlings, which I discovered proceeded from a
naked maniac, who was fighting with some wild dogs for a bone. The moment he
perceived me, he left his canine comrades, and bounding along with rapid
strides, seized my horse’s bridle, and, almost forced him backward over the
cliff, by the grip he held of the powerful Mameluke bit. "

[20] Prichard (On Insanity, p. 26) quotes from an Italian physician’s
description of raving madness or mania: “A striking and characteristic
circumstance is the propensity to go quite naked. The patient tears his clothes
to tatters;” and presently, in exact accordance with the description we have
here: “Notwithstanding his constant exertion of mind and body, the muscular
strength of the patient seems daily to increase. He is able to break the
strongest bonds, and even chains.”

[21] Prichard (On Insanity, p. 113), describing a case of raving mania: “He
habitually wounded his hands, wrists, and arms, with needles and pins;.....the
blood sometimes flowed copiously, dropping from his elbows when his arms were
bare.” Altogether we have here a fearful commentary on the words of St. Peter,
who describes such as this man as being καταδυναστευομένους ὑπὸ τοῦ διαβόλου
(Acts 10:38). An apocryphal allusion to this miracle adds one circumstance
more,—that they gnawed their own flesh: σαρκοφαγοῦντας τῶν ἰδίων μελῶν (Thilo,
God.. Apocryph. vol. i. p. 808).

[22] Baur (Apollonius von Tyana und Christus, p. 145) observes the remarkable
resemblance which the narrative in the Life of Apollonius (iv. 25) of the demon
which sought vainly to avert its doom, and at length yielded to the threatening
words of Apollonius, and abandoned the young man of Corcyra, has with the
present. Apollonius exercises there the same tormenting, and by the demon
irresistible, might. A resemblance may be traced even in the very words. As the
possessed exclaims here, Τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοὶ, Ἰησοῦ, υἱὲ τοῦ Θεοῦ του ὑψιστοῦ;
δέομαί σου, μή με βασανίσῃς, so there of the Lamia it is said, δακρύοντι ἐῴκει
τὸ φάσμα, καὶ ἐδεῖτο μὴ βασανίζειν αὐτὸ μηδὲ ἀναγκάζειν ὁμολογεῖν, ὅ, τι εἴη.
Baur does not doubt that that narrative was fashioned in imitation of this.
Another expulsion of a demon (iv. 20) has even more remarkable points of
resemblance; and he might have referred to yet another (iii. 38), in which many
features of the father’s intercession for his lunatic son (Mat 17:15-16), and of
the Syrophoenician mother for her absent daughter (Mat 15:22), appear curiously
blended together.

[23] In cases of somnambulism, which must be regarded as a disorder, though in
one of the mildest forms, of the spiritual life, the sleep-walker, when
everything else fails, may often be awakened and recalled to a healthy state of
consciousness through being addressed by his name (Schubert, Krankheiten und
Störungen der menschl. Seele, p. 368).

[24] See Olshausen, Commentary, in loc.

[25] Εἰς τὴν ἄβυσσον,—unhappily translated in our Version, “into the deep,” so
leaving room for a confusion with what follows, where the swine under their
influence rush down “into the sea.” Wiclifs was better, “Thei preieden hym that
he schulde not comande hem, that they schulden go in to hell.” With a like
liability to confusion, ἄβυσσος is translated “the deep,” Rom 10:7, where also
“hell,” meaning by that word Hades in its most comprehensive sense, as including
the gathering-place of the departed, no less than the φυλακή, the abode of evil
spirits, would have been better. Besides these two places, the word only occurs
in the Apocalypse, but there several times, as 9:1, 2, 11; 11:7; 17:8; 20:1, 3,
where it plainly means only the last, the τάρταρος (2Pe 2:4)—γέεννα. The word is
properly an adjective from βυσσός, Ionic for βυθός: so Euripides (Phaenissca, v.
1632), ταρτάρου ἄβυσσα χάσματα.

[26] Of which last the swine may be taken for the fittest exponents, as is
witnessed in the ethical language of most nations; in the Latin, for example,
where spurcus is in close connexion with porous (Döderlein, Lat. Synon. vol. ii.
p. 55), and in the French, cochonnerie.:

[27] See Augustine’s excellent words, hi Ep. Joh. tract, vi. 7, 8.

[28] Augustine: Expulsa et in porcos permissa daemonia; and Aquinas: Quod autem
porci in mare praecipitati sunt, non fuit operatio divini miraculi, sed operatio
daemonum e permissione divinâ.

[29] Antt. xvii. 11, 4.

[30] Kieser, who certainly would not go out of his way to bring his theory into
harmony with Scripture facts, distinctly recognizes (Tel lurismus, vol. ii. p.
72), with reference to this present miracle, the possibility of the passing over
of demoniac conditions upon others, and even upon animals (die Möglichkeit eines
Uebergangs damonischer Zustande auf Andere, und selbst auf Thiere). How
remarkable in. this respect are well-authenticated cases of clairvoyance, in
which the horse is evidently by its terror, extreme agitation, and utter refusal
to advance, a partaker of the vision of its rider (see Passavant, Unters. über
d. Hellsehen, p. 316). And indeed in our common life the horse, and the dog no
less, are eminently receptive of the spiritual conditions of their appointed
lord and master, Man. With what electric swiftness does the courage or fear of
the rider pass into the horse; and so too the gladness or depression of its
master is almost instantaneously reflected and reproduced in his faithful dog.
It is true that we might expect, as we should find, far less of this in the
grosser nature of the swine than in those creatures of nobler races. Yet the
very fierceness and grossness of these animals may have been exactly that which
best fitted them for receiving such impulses from the lower world as those under
which they perished.

[31] Augustine (Quasi. Evang. ii. qu. 13): Significat multitudinem vetustâ suâ
vitâ delectatam, honorare quidem, sed nolle pati, Christianam legem, dum dicunt
quod eam implere non possint, admirantes tamen fidelem populum a pristinâ
perditâ, conversatione sanatum. The name Gergeseni has been often since given to
those who will not endure sound doctrine (Erasmus, Adagia, p. 313).

[32] Augustine (Enarr. in Psa 86:3) has a noble passage on what the world calls
prosperity; which when Christ interrupts, then the world counts that He has
brought nothing good, and would fain have Him depart from it, if it might: Vides
enim si theatra et amphitheatra et circi starent incolumes, si nihil eaderet de
Babylonia, si ubertas esset circumfluentium voluptatum hominibus cantaturis et
saltaturis ad turpia cantica, si libido scortantium et meretrieantium haberet
quietem et securitatem, si non timeret famem in domo suâ qui clamat ut pantomimi
vestiantur, si haec omnia sine labe, sine perturbatione aliqua, fluerent, et
esset securitas magna nugarum, felicia essent tempora, et magnam felicitatem
rebus humanis Christus adtulisset. Quia vero caeduntur iniquitates, ut
exstirpata cupiditate plantetur caritas Jerusalem, quia miscentur amaritudines
vitae temporali, ut aeterna desideretur, quia erudiuntur in flagellis homines,
paternam accipientes disciplinam, ne judiciariam inveniant sententiam; nihil
boni adtulit Christus, et labores adtulit Christus.

[33] Erasmus rightly connects ὅσα not alone with πεποίηκεν, but also with
ἠλέησεν—of course, in the second case, adverbially: Et quantopere misertus sit
tui. It is true that we should rather expect in such a case to have the ὅσα
repeated; but there are abundant examples to justify the omission.

[34] Augustine (Quaest. Evang. ii. 13): Ut sie quisque intelligat post
remissionem peccatorum redeundum sibi esse in conscientiam bonam, et serviendum
Evangelio propter aliorum etiam salutem, ut deinde cum Christo requiescat; ne
cum praepropere jam vult esse cum Christo, negligat ministerium praedicationis,
fraternae redemptioni accommodatum. He makes in the same place this whole
account an historicoprophetic delineation of the exorcising, so to speak, of the
heathen world of its foul superstitions and devilish idolatries.


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  CHAPTER 14: 14-6. THE RAISING OF JAIRUS' DAUGHTER
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6. The Raising of Jairus’ Daughter Mat 9:18-19; Mat 9:23-26; Mark 5:22; Mark
5:24; Mark 5:35-43; Luk 8:41-42; Luk 8:49-56 The present miracle is, connected
by St. Mark and St. Luke immediately with, our Lord’s return from that eastern
side of the lake, which He had left at the urgent entreaty of its inhabitants.
In St. Matthew other events, the curing of the paralytic, his own calling, and
some discourses with the Pharisees, are inserted between. Yet of these only the
latter (ix. 10-17) the best harmonists find really to have here their proper
place. The two later Evangelists tell us also the name of the father of the
child”; St. Matthew, who has his eye only on the main fact, and passes over
everything that is not absolutely necessary for that; speaks of him more
generally as ’’a certain ruler;” they again designating what kind of a ruler,
namely that he was, one of the prefects of the synagogue.[1] This, we can hardly
doubt, was the synagogue of Capernaum, where now Jesus was (Mat 9:1); the man
therefore most probably made afterwards a part of that deputation which came to
the Lord pleading for the heathen centurion (Luk 7:3); ’“ the elders of the
Jews” there being identical with, the “rulers of the synagogue” here.

He who on that later occasion may have appeared pleading for another, presents
himself now before the Lord, touched by a yet nearer: calamity; for he comes
saying, ”My daughter is even now dead; but come and lay thy hand upon her, and
she shall live” Thus St. Matthew records his words, but the others with an
important variation: “My little daughter lieth at the point of death”[2] (Mark
5:23): “He had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a
dying” (Luk 8:42). Thus they make him speak of her as dying when he came, which
the latter facts of the history show to have been the more exact, St. Matthew as
already dead. Yet these differences are not hard to adjust; he left her at the
last gasp; he knew not whether to regard her as alive or dead; he only knew that
life was ebbing so fast when he quitted her side, that she could scarcely be
living now;[3] and yet, having no certain notices of her death, he was perplexed
whether to speak of her as departed or not, and thus at one moment expressed
himself in one language, at the next in another. It is singular enough that a
circumstance like this, so taken from the life, so testifying of the reality of
the things recorded, should have been advanced by some as a contradiction
between one Gospel and another. That Lord, upon whose ear the tidings of woe
might never fall in vain, at once “arose and followed him, and so did his
disciples” The crowd who had been listening to his teaching, followed also,
curious and eager to see the end. The miracle of the healing of the woman with
the issue of blood found place upon the way, but it will naturally be better
treated apart; being, as it is, entirely separable from this history, though not
altogether without its bearing upon it; for the delay, the words which passed
between the Lord and his disciples, and then between Him and the woman, must all
have been a sore trial to the agonized father, now when every moment was
precious, when death was shaking the last few sands in the hour-glass of his
daughter’s life,—a trial in its kind similar to that with which the sisters of
Lazarus were tried, when they beheld their beloved brother drawing ever nigher
to death, and the Lord tarried notwithstanding. But sore as the trial must have
been, we detect no signs of impatience on his part, and this no doubt was laid
to his account. While the Lord was yet speaking to the woman, “there came from
the ruler of the synagogue’s house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why
troublest[1] thou the Master any further?” St. Luke mentions but one, probably
that one who was especially charged with the message, whom others went along
with, as it is common for men in their thirst for excitement to have a kind of
pleasure in being the bearers even of evil tidings. Their hope had now perished.
They who, perhaps, had faith enough to believe that Christ could fan the last
expiring spark of life into a flame, yet had not the stronger faith to
anticipate the harder thing, that He could rekindle that spark of life, after it
had been quenched altogether. Perhaps the father’s hope would have perished too;
and thus no room would have been left for this miracle, when faith, the
necessary condition, was wanting; if a gracious Lord had not seen the danger,
and prevented his rising unbelief. “As soon as Jesus heard the word that was
spoken, He saith to the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe.”
There is something very gracious in that “as soon.” The Lord spake upon the
instant, leaving no room for a thought of unbelief to insinuate itself into the
father’s mind, much less to utter itself from his lips, but preoccupying him at
once with words of encouragement and hope.[4] And now He takes with Him three of
his Apostles, three only, the same three who were allowed, on more than one
later occasion, to be witnesses of things concealed from the others. This,
however, is the first time that we read of any such election within the
election,[5] and the fact of such now finding place would mark, especially when
we remember the solemn significance of the other seasons of a like selection
(Mat 17:1-2; Mat 26:37), that this was a new era in the life of the Lord. That
which He was about to do was so great and holy that those three only, the flower
and the crown of the apostolic band, were its fitting witnesses. The parents
were present on grounds altogether different. With those, and these, and none
other, “He cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the
tumult and them that wept and wailed greatly.” There, as every where else, He
appears calming and pacifying: “(He saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and
weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.”

Some, and those not unbelievers, nor yet timid half believers, who have learned
to regard miracles as so much perilous ware, from which it is always an
advantage when the Gospels can be a little lightened,—Olshausen, for
instance,[6] who manifests no wish to explain away the wonderful works of our
Lord,—have yet considered his words, repeated by all narrators of this miracle,
“The maid is not dead, but sleepeth,” to be so explicit and distinct a
declaration that death had not absolutely taken place, that in obedience, as
they believe, to the Lord’s own words, they refuse to number this among the
actual raisings from the dead. They will count it only a raising from a
death-like swoon; though one, it may have been, from which the maiden would
never have been recalled but for that- life-giving touch and voice. Had this,
however, been the case, Christ’s word to the father would clearly have been
different, when the tidings came that the spirit of the child was actually fled.
The consolation must have clothed itself in another language. He might have
brought out his own omniscience, and bidden the father to dismiss his fear, for
He knew that there was yet life in the child. But that “Be not afraid, only
believe,” points another way; it is an evident summoning him to a trust in the
all-might of Him, to whose help he had appealed. And as regards the Lord’s
declaration, that the maiden was not dead, but slept, He uses exactly the same
language concerning Lazarus, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth” (John 11:11); and
when to this obvious objection Olshausen replies, that Christ explains there
distinctly that He meant the sleep of death, adding presently, “Lazarus is
dead,” it is enough to answer that He only does so after his disciples have
plainly misunderstood his words: He would have left those words as He had spoken
them, but for their error in supposing that He had spoken of natural sleep; it
was only then that “Jesus said unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.” But as
Lazarus did but sleep, because Jesus was about to “awake him out of sleep,” so
was this maiden only sleeping, because her awakening in like manner was so
near.[7] Beside this, to speak of death as a sleep, is an image common to all
languages and nations. Thereby the reality of the death is not denied, but only
the fact implicitly assumed, that death will be followed by a resurrection, as
sleep is by an awakening. Nor is it hard to perceive why the Lord should have
used this language here. First, for the father’s sake. The words are for the
establishing of his trembling faith, which at the spectacle of all these signs
of mourning, of these evidences that all was finished, might easily have given
way altogether; they are a saying over again, “Be not afraid, only believe.” He,
the Lord of life, takes away that word of fear, “She is dead,” and substitutes
that milder word which contains the pledge of an awakening, “She sleepeth.” And
then in regard of the multitude, according to that holy humility which makes Him
ever withdraw his miracles as much as possible from observation, He will by this
word of a double signification cast a veil over that which He is about to
accomplish. And now, having thus spoken, He expelled from the house the crowd of
turbulent mourners; and this for two reasons. Their presence, in the first
place, Was inappropriate and superfluous there; they were mourners for the dead,
and she was not dead; or, at all events, death in her was so soon to give place
to returning life, that it did not deserve the name; it was but as a sleep and
an awakening. Here was reason enough. But more than this, the boisterous and
tumultuous grief of some, with the hired lamentations of others,[8] gave no
promise of the tone and temper of spirit, which became the witnesses of so holy
and awful a mystery, a mystery from which even Apostles themselves were
eluded—to say nothing of the profane and scornful spirit with which they had
received the Lord’s assurance, that the child should presently revive—”they
laughed Him to scorn” Such scorners shall not witness the holy act: the pearls
should not be cast before them. Compare 2Ki 4:33. The house was now solitary and
still. Two souls, believing and hoping, stand like funeral tapers beside the
couch of the dead maiden—the father and the mother. The Church is represented in
the three chief of its Apostles. And now the solemn awakening finds place, and
this without an effort on his part, who is absolute Lord of quick and dead. “He
took the damsel’’—she was no more than a child, being “of the age of twelve
years” (Mark 5:42)—” by the hand, and called, saying, Maid, arise.” St. Mark
preserves for us, probably from the lips of Peter, the very words which the Lord
spake in the very language wherein He uttered them, “Talitha Cumi,” as he does
the “Ephphatha” on another occasion (vii. 34 [9]). And at that word, and at the
touch of that hand, “her spirit came again, [10] and she arose straightway (Luk
8:55),, and walked” (Mark 5:42). Hereupon, at once to strengthen that life which
was come back to her, and to prove that she was indeed no ghost, but had
returned to the realities of a mortal existence (Luk 24:41; John 21:5; Acts
10:41), “He commanded to give her meat;” a precaution the more necessary, as the
parents in that ecstatic moment might easily have forgotten it.

These miracles of raising from the dead, whereof we have just considered the
first, have always been regarded as the mightiest outcomings of the power of
Christ; and with justice. They are those, also, at which unbelief is readiest to
stumble, standing as they do in a yet more striking contrast than any of the
other, to all that experience has known. The line between health and sickness is
not definitely fixed; the two conditions melt one into the other, and the
transition from this to that is frequent. In like manner storms alternate with
calms; the fiercest tumult of the elements allays itself at last; and Christ’s
word which stilled the tempest, did but anticipate and effect in a moment, what
the very conditions of nature must have effected in the end. Even the
transmutation from water to wine, and the multiplication of the bread, are not
without their analogies, however remote; and thus too is it with most of the
other miracles. But between being, and the negation of being, the opposition is
not relative, but absolute; between death and life a gulf lies, which no fact
which our experience furnishes, can help us even in imagination to bridge over.
It is nothing wonderful therefore that miracles of this class are signs more
spoken against than any other among the mighty works which the Lord
accomplished. The present will be a fitting moment to say something concerning
them, and the relations of difficulty in which the three recorded in the Gospels
stand, if not to the other miracles, yet to one another. For they are not
exactly the same miracle repeated three times over, but may be contemplated as
in an ever ascending scale of difficulty, each a more marvellous outcoming of
the power of Christ than the preceding. For as the body of one freshly dead,
from which life has but just departed, is very different from a mummy or a
skeleton, so is it, though not in so great a degree, different from a corpse,
whence for some days the breath of life has fled. There is, so to speak, a
fresh-trodden way between the body, and the soul which just has forsaken it, and
which lingers for a season near the tabernacle where it has dwelt so long, as
knowing that the links which united them have not even now been divided for
ever. Even science itself has arrived at the conjecture, that the last echoes of
life ring in the body much longer than is commonly supposed; that for a while it
is full of the reminiscences of life. Out of this we may explain how it so
frequently comes to pass, that air which marked the death-struggle passes
presently away, and the true image of the departed, the image it may be of years
long before, reappears in perfect calmness and in almost ideal beauty. Which
things being so, we shall at once recognize in the quickening of him that had
been four days dead (John 11:17), a yet mightier wonder than in the raising of
the young man who was borne out to his burial (Luk 7:12); since that burial,
according to Jewish custom, would have followed death by an interval, at most,
of a single day; and again in that miracle a greater outcoming of Christ’s power
than in the present, wherein life’s flame, like some newly-extinguished taper,
was still more easily re-kindled, being brought in contact with Him who was the
fountain-flame of all life. Immeasurably more stupendous also than all these
wonders, will be the wonder of that hour, when all the dead of old, who have
lain, some of them for many thousand years, in the dust of death, shall be
summoned from and shall leave their graves at the same quickening voice (John
5:28-29).

Footnotes

[1] In. Matthew simply ἄρχων which is explained in Mark εἷς τῶν ἀρχισυναγώγων,
in Luke ἄρχων τῆς συναγωγῆς. Many synagogues had but one of these (Luk 13:14),
the name itself indicating as much; yet it is plain from this and other
passages, as Acts 13:15, that a synagogue often had many of these “rulers.”
Probably those described as τοὺς ὄντας τῶν Ἰουδαίων πρώτους, whom St. Paul
summoned at Rome (Acts 28:17). were such chiefs of the synagogue (see Vitringa,
Be Synagogá, pp. 584, sqq.).

[2] Ἐσχάτως ἔχειν = in extremis esse; one of the frequent Latinisms of St. Mark.
So ἱκανὸν ποιῆσαι = satisfacere (15:15), σπεκουλάτωρ (6:27), φραγελλόω (15:15),
λεγεών (5:9, 15), πραιτώριον (15:16), κῆνσος (12:14), κεντυρίων (15:39),
κοδράντης (12:42), and others. The use of diminutives, such as the θυγάτριον
here, is also characteristic of this Evangelist; thus κοράσιον (5:41), κυνάρια
(7:27), ἰχθύδια (3:7), ὠτάριον (14:47).

[3] Bengel: Ita dixit ex conjecturâ,. Augustine (De Cons. Evang. ii. 28): Ita
enim desperaverat, ut potius earn vellet reviviscere, non credens vivam posse
inveniri, quam morientem reliquerat. But Theophylact, not, I think, rightly: Ἦν
αὐξάνων τὴν συμφορὰν, ὡς εἰς ἔλεον ἑλκύσαι τὸν Χριστόν.

[4] Titus Bostrensis (in Cramer, Cat. in Luc.): Ἵνα γὰρ μὴ εἴπῃ καὶ αὐτὸς,
Ἐπίσχες, οὐ χρείαν σου ἔχω, Κύριε, ἤδη γέγονε τὸ πέρας, ἀπέθανεν, ἣπροσεδοκῶμεν
ὑγιαίνειν· ἄπιστοςγὰρ ἦν, Ἰουςαϊκὸν ἔχων φρόνημα, φθάνει ὁ Κύριος καὶ φησι, Μὴ
φοβοῦ, παῦσον τῆς ἀπιστίας τὰ ῥήματα.

[5] The three, Peter, James, and John, are called therefore by Clement of
Alexandria, ἐκλεκτῶν ἐκλεκτότεροι.

[6] Origen (Con. Gels. ii. 48) has, I think, the same view of this miracle. He
is observing on the absence of all prodigality in the miracles, and notes that
we have but three raisings from the dead in all: mentioning this first of
Jairus’ daughter, he adds, περὶ ἧς οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅπως εἶπεν, Οὐκ ἀπέθανεν, ἀλλὰ
καθεύδει· λέγων τι περὶ αὐτῆς ὅ οὐ πᾶσι τοῖς ἀποθανοῦσι προσῆν, but he does not
express himself very plainly.

[7] Fritzsche: Puellam ne pro mortuâ habetote, sed dormire existimatote, quippe
in vitam mox redituram.

[8] The presence of the hired mourners at a funeral, in general women θρηνῳδοί,
præficæ, cornicines, tubicines), was a Greek and Roman, as well as a Jewish,
custom (see Becker, Charikles, vol. ii. p. 180).

[9] The mention of these words may be taken as an evidence that in the
intercourse of ordinary life our Lord served Himself, as was natural, of the
popular Aramaic. This does not, of course, decide anything concerning the
language which He used, addressing mixed assemblages of Jews and heathen,
learned and unlearned. On the extent to which Greek had at this time found its
way into Palestine, and was familiar to all classes there, there is a masterly
discussion in Hug’s Introduction to the New Testament, which must be considered
to have put the matter quite in a new light, and to have added greatly to the
probabilities that He often in his discourses employed that language. His
conversation with Pilate could scarcely have been carried on in any other.

[10] The words of St. Luke, καὶ ἐπέστρεψε τὸ πνεῦμα αὐτῆς, are exactly the same
as those 1Ki 17:22, LXX.


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  CHAPTER 15: 15-7. THE HEALING OF A WOMAN WITH AN ISSUE OF BLOOD
========================================================================

7. The Healing of a Woman with an Issue of Blood Mat 9:20-22; Mark 5:25-34; Luk
8:43-48 In all three accounts which we have of this miracle, it is mixed up with
that other of the raising of Jairus’ daughter, and cuts that narrative in two.
Such overflowing grace is in Him, the Prince of life, that as He is hastening to
accomplish one work of power, He accomplishes another, as by the way. “His
obiter,” in Fuller’s words, “is more to the purpose than our iter;” his
πάρεργον, one might add, than our ἔργον. To the second and third Evangelists we
owe the distinctive features of this miracle. St. Matthew relates it so briefly,
and passes over circumstances so material, that, had we not the parallel
records, we should miss much of the instruction which it contains for us. But it
was intended, if not by their human penmen, yet by their divine Author, that the
several Gospels should thus mutually complete one another. The crowd followed
and pressed upon the Lord, curious to witness what the issue would be, and
whether He could indeed raise the dead child, which, by his consenting to
accompany Jairus home, He seemed pledged to do; and yet not all in that crowd
out of idle curiosity and eagerness to witness some new thing. Mingled with the
unmannered multitude, and to most eyes confounded with it, was “a certain
woman[1] which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered manythings
of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered,
but rather grew worse.”[2] St. Mark, whose words I quote, shows himself here, as
ever, the most vigorous painter of the outward features of that which he
narrates. This woman, afflicted so long, who had suffered much from her disease,
perhaps more from her remedies,[3] all whose means had been wasted in the costly
but vain quest of some cure, “when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press
behind, and touched his garment; for she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I
shall be whole.” The faith of this poor sufferer was a most real faith (“ Thy
faith hath saved thee”), while yet the manner in which Christ’s healing power
presented itself to her as working, was not without error. It was a material
conception which she formed of it. He healed, as she must have supposed, not by
the power of his holy will, but rather by a certain magical influence and virtue
diffused through his person and round about Him; with which if she could put
herself in relation, she would obtain that which she desired.[4] And she may
have “touched the hem of his garment,” not merely as its extremest part, and
therefore that which she, timidly drawing near, could most easily reach, but as
attributing a peculiar sanctity to it. For this hem, or blue fringe on the
borders of the garment, was put there by divine command, and was to remind the
Jews that they were God’s people (Num 15:37-40; Deu 22:12). It had thus acquired
so peculiar a significance, that those who wished to be esteemed eminently
religious were wont to make broad, or to “enlarge the borders of their garments”
(Mat 23:5). But her faith, though thus imperfect in its form, and though it did
not, like a triumphant flood-tide, bear her over the peculiar difficulties which
beset her, a woman, coming to acknowledge a need such as hers, was yet most true
in its essence. It found, therefore, what it sought; was the channel to her of
the blessing which she desired. No sooner had she touched the hem of his robe
than “she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.”[5]

“And Jesus, immediately knowing in Himself that virtue had gone out of Him,
turned Him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?” The
Evangelists employ language which in a measure falls in with the current of the
woman’s thoughts; yet we cannot for an instant suppose that healing power went
forth from the Lord without the full consent of his will,[6]—that we have here,
on his part, an unconscious or involuntary healing, any more than on another
occasion, when we read that “the whole multitude sought to touch Him, for there
went virtue out of Him, and healed them all” (Luk 6:19). For if power went forth
from Him to heal, without reference, on his part, to the spiritual condition of
the person that was its subject, the ethical, which is ever the most important
part of the miracle, would at once disappear. But He who saw Nathanael under the
fig-tree (John 1:48), who “needed not that any should testify of man, for He
knew what was in man” (John 2:25), must have known of this woman how sorely in
her body she required his help, and how in her spirit she possessed that faith
which was the one condition of healing, the one channel of communication between
Him and any human need. Nor may the question which the Lord asked, “Who touched
my clothes?” be urged as implying that He was ignorant who had so done, and only
obscurely apprehended that something had taken place. The question, as the
sequel of the history abundantly proves, had quite another purpose than this.
Had she who came thus behind the Lord been allowed to carry away her blessing in
secret, as she proposed, it would not have been at all the blessing to her, and
to her whole after spiritual life, which it now was, when she was obliged, by
this repeated question of the Lord, to come out of her hiding-place, to avouch
at once what she had nought, and what she had found, of help and healing from
Him. And when some further argue that He could not have known, seeing it would
have been inconsistent with absolute truth for Him to have professed ignorance,
and asked the question which He did ask, if all the while He perfectly knew what
He thus implicitly averred Himself not to know, there is surely a
misapprehension here. A father when he comes among his children, and demands,
Who committed this fault? himself conscious, even while he asks, but at the same
time willing to bring the culprit to a free confession, and so to put him in a
pardonable state, can he be said in any way to violate the laws of the highest
truth? The same offence might be found in Elisha’s “Whence comest thou, Gehazi?”
(2Ki 5:25), when his heart went with his servant all the way that he had gone;
and even in the question of God Himself to Adam, “Where art thou?” (Gen 3:9),
and to Cain, “Where is Abel thy brother?” (Gen 4:9). In every case there is a
moral purpose in the question,—an opportunity given even at the latest moment
for making good at least a part of the error by its unreserved confession, an
opportunity which they whose examples have been here adduced, suffered to
escape; but which this woman. had grace given her to use. But this question
itself, “Who touched my clothes?” or as it is in St. Luke, “Who touched Me?”
when indeed the whole multitude was rudely pressing upon and crowding round Him,
may suggest, and has suggested, many profitable reflections. Out of that
thronging multitude one only touched with the touch of faith: all the others,
though as near or nearer in body, yet lacked that faith which would have been
the connecting link between Christ’s power and their need; for there may well
have been many sick and suffering among them; and thus they crowded upon Him,
but did not touch Him in any way that virtue should go out of Him on them. It is
evermore thus in his Church. Many throng Christ; his in name; near to Him and to
his sacraments outwardly; yet not touching Him, because not drawing near in
faith, not looking for, and therefore not obtaining, life and healing from Him,
and through these.[7] The disciples, and Peter as their spokesman, wonder at the
question, and in answer hardly stop short of finding fault with what is so
inexplicable to them: “Thou seest the multitude thronging Thee, and sayest Thou,
Who touched Me?” He, however, re-affirms the fact, “Somebody hath touched Me;
for I perceive that virtue is gone out of Me;” whereupon the woman, perceiving
that concealment was useless, that to repeat the denial which she probably had
made with the rest, for “all denied” (Luk 8:45), would profit her nothing;
unable, too, to escape his searching glance, for “He looked round about to see.
her” (Mark 5:32), “came trembling, and falling down, before Him, she declared
unto Him,” and this “before all the people, for what cause she had touched Him,
and how she was healed immediately.” Olshausen traces, with much beauty, here
the loving and gracious dealings of the Son of Man, who evermore sought to make
through the healing of the body a way for the healing of the soul. This woman
had borne away a maimed blessing, hardly a blessing at all, had she been
suffered to bear it away in secret and unacknowledged. She desired to remain in
concealment out of a shame, which, however natural, was untimely now, in this
crisis of her spiritual life: and this her loving Saviour would not suffer her
to do. By a gracious force He drew her from the. concealment she would have
chosen; while even here He spared her as far as He could; for not before, but
after she is healed, does He require the open confession from her lips. She had
found it perhaps altogether too hard, had He demanded it of her before;
therefore does He graciously wait till the cure is accomplished, and thus helps
her through the narrow way. Altogether spare her this painful passage He could
not, for it pertained to her birth into the new life.[8] And now He dismisses
her with words of gracious encouragement: “Daughter, be of good comfort, thy
faith hath made thee whole.”[9] Her faith had made her whole, and Christ’s
virtue had made her whole.[10] Not otherwise we say that we are justified by
faith, and justified by Christ; faith not being itself the blessing; but the
organ by which the blessing is received; the right hand of the soul, which lays
hold on Him and on his righteousness. “Go in peace;” this is not merely, “Go
with a blessing,” but, “Enter into peace, as the future element in which thy
life shall move;—and be whole of thy plague.”

Theophylact traces a mystical meaning in this miracle. The complaint of this
woman represents the ever-flowing fountain of sin; the physicians under whom she
was nothing bettered, the world’s prophets and sages, who, with all their
medicines, their systems and their philosophies, prevailed nothing to stanch
that fountain of evil in man’s heart. To touch Christ’s garment is to believe in
his Incarnation, wherein He, first touching us, enabled us also to touch Him:
and on this that healing, which in all those other things was vainly sought,
follows at once. And if we keep in mind how her uncleanness separated her off as
one impure, we shall have here an exact picture of the sinner, drawing nigh to
the throne of grace, but out of the sense of his impurity not “with boldness,
“rather with fear and trembling, hardly knowing what there he shall expect; but
who is welcomed there, and, all his carnal doubtings and questionings at once
hidden and expelled, dismissed with the word of an abiding peace resting upon
him.

Footnotes

[1] A sermon, wrongly attributed to St. Ambrose, makes this woman to have been
Martha, the sister of Lazarus.. Another legend, that of the gospel of Nicodemus
(see Thilo, God. Agocryph. vol. i. p. 562), makes her to have been Veronica.
There is a strange story, full of. inexplicable difficulties, told by Eusebius
(Hist. Ecc 7:18), of a statue, or rather two statues, in brass, one of Christ,
another of this woman kneeling to Him, which existed in his time at Caesarea
Paneas, and which, according to the tradition, had been raised by her in
thankful commemoration of her healing: see the 10th excursus in the Annotations
(Oxford, 1842) to Dr. Burton’s Eusebius. The belief that these statues did refer
to this event was so widely spread as to cause Julian, in his hatred against all
memorials of Christianity, or according to others, Maximinus, to destroy them.
There can be no doubt that a group, capable of being made to signify this event,
was there, for Eusebius. speaks as having himself seen it; but the correctness
of the application is far more questionable. Justin Martyr’s mistake of a statue
erected at Rome to a Sabine deity (Semoni Sanco) for one erected in honour of
Simon Magus, shows how little critical the early Christians sometimes were in
matters of this Mud (see Deyling, Obss. Sac. vol. i. p. 279).

[2] In the apocryphal report of Pilate to Tiberius he forcibly paints the
extreme emaciation of this woman from her complaint, ὡς πᾶσαν τὴν τῶν ὀστέων
ἁρμονίαν ϕαίνεσθαι‚ καὶ ὑέλου δίκην διαυγάζειν (Thilo, CodApocryphus, vol. i. p.
808).

[3] See Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. (in Marc. v. 26) for an extraordinary list of those
in use for this disorder.

[4] There was something in her, as Grotius well remarks, of the notion of the
philosophers, Deum agere omnia ϕύσει‚ οὐ βουλήσει.

[5] Ἀπò τῆς μάστιγος‚ scil. Θεοῦ, since disease must ever be regarded as the
scourge of God, not always of personal sin, but ever of the sin which the one
has in common with all; cf. 2 Mace. ix. 11, θεία μάστιξ‚, and Sir 40:9. So
Æschylus (Sept. adv. Theb.), πληγεὶς Θεοῦ μάστιγι. The word plague (πληγή,
plaga) is itself a witness for this truth.

[6] Chrysostom: Παρ᾿ ἑκóντος ἔλαβε τὴν σωτηρίαν‚ καὶ οὐ παρ᾿ ἄκοντος‚ ᾔδει γὰρ
τὴν ἁψαμένην

[7] Augustine (Serm. lxii. 4): Quasi enim sic ambularet, ut a nullo prorsus
corpore tangeretur, ita dicit, Quis me tetigit? Et illi, Turbae te comprimunt.
Et tanquam diceret Dominus, Tangentem quaero, non prementem. Sic etiam nunc est
corpus ejus, id est, Ecclesia ejus. Tangit earn fides paucorum, premit turba
multorum.... Caro enim premit, fides tangit; and again (Serm. lxxvii. 4): Corpus
ergo Christi multi moleste premunt, pauci salubriter tangunt. Elsewhere lie
makes her the symbol of all the faithful (Serm. ccxlv. 3): Illi premunt, ista
tetigit; Judaei affligunt, Ecclesia credidit; cf. Gregory the Great, Moral, iii.
20; xx. 17. Chrysostom has the same antithesis: ’Ὁ πιστεύων εἰς τòν Σωτῆρα
ἃπτεται αὐτοῦ• ὁ δὲ ἀπιστῶν θλίβει αὐτòν καὶ λυπεῖ. Chemnitz (Harm. Evang. 67):
Ita quoque in Ecclesia multi Christo approximant, externis auribus verbum
salutis accipiunt, ore suo sacramentum corporis et sanguinis ipsius manducant et
bibunt, nullam tamen efficaciam ex eo percipiunt, nec sentiunt fluxum ilium
peccatorum suorum sisti et exsiccari. Unde illud? Quia destituuntur verâ fide,
quae sola ex hoc fonte haurit gratiam pro gratiâ.

[8] Sedulius, then, has exactly missed the point of the narrative, when of the
Lord he says, ..........furtumque fidele Laudat, et ingenuae tribuit sua vota
rapinae; her fault lying in this, that she sought it as a furtum, when she
should have claimed it openly: and no less St. Bernard (De Divers: Serm. xcix.),
when he makes her the figure of all those who would do good hiddenly, avoiding
all human applause: Sunt alii qui nonnulla bona occulte faciunt,...... sed tamen
furari [regnum coelorum] dicuntur, quia laudem humanam vitantes, solo divino
testimonio contenti sunt. Horum figuram tenuit mulier in Evangelio, &e. Rather
she is the figure of those who would get good hiddenly, and without an open
profession of their faith, who believe in their hearts, but shrink from
confessing with their lips, that Jesus Christ is Lord, forgetting that this and
that alike are required (Rom 10:9).

[9] Tertullian, Adv. Marc. iv. 20.

[10] Her faith, ὀργανικῶς, Christ’s virtue, ἐνεργητικῶς. This, as the causa
efficiens; that, as the conditio sine quâ non


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 16: 16-8. THE OPENING OF THE EYES OF TWO BLIND IN THE HOUSE
========================================================================

8. The Opening of the Eyes of Two Blind in the House

Mat 9:27-31

We have here the first of those healings of the blind whereof so many are
recorded (Mat 12:22; Mat 20:30; Mat 21:14; John 9) or alluded to (Mat 11:5) in
the Gospels.[1] Nor will this little history be found without one or two
distinguishing features of its own. “And when Jesus departed thence”—from the
house of Jairus, Jerome supposes; but too much stress must not be laid on the
connexion in which St. Matthew sets the miracle, nor the conclusion certainly
drawn that he intended to place it in such immediate relation of time and place
with that other which he had just told—” two blind men followed Him, crying and
saying, Thou Son of David, have mercy on us.” Their faith appears to have been
tried, though not so rudely as was that of the Syrophoenician woman at a later
day. Not all at once did they obtain their petition; but the Lord seemed at
first rather to withdraw Himself from them, suffering them to cry after Him, and
for a while paying no regard to their cries. It was only “when He was come into
the house,” and “the blind men came to Him” there, so testifying the earnestness
of their desires and the faith of their hearts, that He yielded to them the
blessing which they sought;[2] nor even then, until He has first obtained a
confession of their faith from their own lips. “Believe ye that I am able to do
this?” He asks; and only after they, by their “Yea, Lord,” have avouched that
they had faith to be healed, do they obtain their boon. Then indeed “He touched
their eyes,” and that simple touch was enough, unsealing as it did for them the
closed organs of vision (cf. Mat 20:34). At other times He uses as conductors of
his power, and helps to the faith of those who should be healed, some further
means,—the clay mingled with spittle (John 9:6-7), or the moisture of his mouth
alone (Mark 8:23). We nowhere read of his opening the blind eyes simply by his
word, although this of course was equally competent to Him. The words which
accompany the act of grace, “According to your faith be it unto you” are
remarkable for the insight they give us into the relation of man’s faith and
God’s gift. The faith, which in itself is nothing, is yet the organ of receiving
everything. It is the conducting link between man’s emptiness and God’s fulness;
and herein is all the value which it has. It is the bucket let down into the
fountain of God’s grace, without which the man could never draw water of life
from the wells of salvation; the purse, which not in itself making its owner
rich, effectually enriches him by the treasure which it contains.[3]

“And Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man know it. But they,
when they were departed, spread abroad his fame in all that country.” It is very
characteristic, and rests on very deep differences, that of Romish interpreters
almost all, indeed I know no exception, should rather applaud these men for not
adhering strictly to Christ’s command, his earnest, almost threatening,[4]
injunction of silence,—that the teachers in that Church of will-worship should
see in their disobedience the irrepressible overflowings of grateful hearts,
which, as such, were to be regarded not as a fault, but a merit. Some, alas! of
the ancients, as Theophylact, go so far as to suppose that the men did not
disobey at all in proclaiming the miracle; that Christ never intended them to
observe his precept about silence, but gave it out of humility, being best
pleased when it was not observed.[5] But among interpreters of the Reformed
Church, whose first principle is to take God’s Word as absolute rule and law,
and to worship God not with self-devised services, but after the pattern that He
has shown them, all, so far as I know, stand fast to this, that obedience is
better than sacrifice, though the sacrifice be intended for God’s special honour
(1Sa 15:21). They see, therefore, in this publishing of the miracle, in the face
of Christ’s prohibition, a blemish in the perfectness of their faith who thus
disobeyed; a fault, which was still a fault, even though it might be one into
which only grateful hearts could have fallen.

Footnotes

[1] Their frequent recurrence need not surprise us; for blindness throughout all
the East is a far commoner calamity than with us. For this there are many
causes. The dust and flying sand, pulverized and reduced to minutest particles,
enters the eyes, causing inflammations which, being neglected, end frequently in
total loss of sight. The sleeping in the open air, on the roofs of the houses,
and the consequent exposure of the eyes to the noxious nightly dews, is another
source of this malady. A modern traveller calculates that there are four
thousand blind in Cairo alone; and another that you may reckon twenty such in
every hundred persons. In Syria, it is true, the proportion of blind is not at
all so great, yet there also the calamity is far commoner than in western lands;
so that we find humane regulations concerning the blind, as concerning a class,
in the Law (Lev 19:14; Deu 27:18).

[2] Calvin: Re igitur et verbis examinare voluit eorum fidem: suspensos enim
tenens, imo praeteriens quasi non exaudiat, patientiae ipsorum experimentum
capit, et qualem in ipsorum animis radicem egerit fides.

[3] Faith, the ὂργανον ληπτικόν, nothing in itself, yet everything because it
places us in living connexion with Him in whom every good gift is stored. Thus
on this passage Chemnitz (Harm. Evany. 68): Fides est instar haustri gratiæ
cœlestis et salutis nostræ, quo ex inscrutabili et inexhausto divinæ
misericordiæ et bonitatis fonte, ad quem aliter penetrare non possumus, haurimus
et ad nos attrahimus quod nobis salutare est. Calvin (Inst. iii. 11, 7): Fides
etiamsi nullius per se dignitatis sit, vel pretii, nos justificat, Christum
afferendo, sicut olla pecuniis referta hominem locupletat.

[4] Ἐνεβριμήσατο αὐτοῖς. Suidas explains ἐμβριμᾶσθαι=μετὰ ἀπειλῆς ἐντέλλεσθαι‚
μετ’ αὐστηρότητος ἐπιτιμᾶν.

[5] Thus Aquinas (Summ. Theol. 2a 2ae, qu. 104, art. 4): Dominus caecis dixit ut
miraculum occultarent, non quasi intendens eos per virtutem divini praecepti
obligare; sed sicut Gregorius dicit 19 Moral., servis suis se sequentibus
exeraplum dedit, ut ipsi quidem virtutes suas occultare desiderent, et tamen ut
alii eorum exemplo proficiant, prodantur inviti. Cf. Maldonatus, in loc.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 17: 17-9. THE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC
========================================================================

9. The Healing of the Paralytic Mat 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luk 5:17-26.[1] The
account of St. Luke would leave us altogether in ignorance where this miracle of
healing took place; but from St. Matthew we learn that it was in “his own city,”
and St. Mark tells us that by this we are to understand Capernaum. We have,
therefore, here one of the “mighty works,” with which the Lord at a later day
upbraided that impenitent city (Mat 11:23). “And it came to pass on a certain
day as He was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting
by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judaea, and Jerusalem.” It
may have been a conference, more or less friendly upon the part of these, which
had brought together as listeners and spectators a multitude so great that all
avenues of approach to the house were blocked up; “there was no room to receive
them, no, not so much as about the door; “[2] and thus for later comers no
opportunity, by any ordinary way, of near access to the Lord (cf. Mat 12:46-47).
Among these were some “bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four.”
Only St. Mark records for us this last little circumstance, namely, that the
bearers were four; only he and St. Luke the novel method to which they had
recourse for bringing him before the notice of the great Healer of bodies and of
souls: “When they could not come nigh unto Him for the press, they uncovered the
roof where He was; and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein
the sick of the palsy. lay” They first ascended to the roof; for, in Fuller’s
words, “love will creep, but faith will climb, where it cannot go;” yet this was
not so difficult, because commonly there was a flight of steps on the outside of
the house, reaching to the roof; in addition to, or sometimes instead of, an
internal communication of the same kind. Such every traveller in those parts of
southern Spain which bear a permanent impress of Eastern habits will have seen.
Our Lord assumes the existence of these outside stairs when He gives this
counsel, “Let him that is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of
his house” (Mat 24:17), he is to take the nearest and shortest way of escaping
into the country: but he could’ only avoid the necessity of descending through
the house by the existence of such steps as these.[3] Some will have it that the
bearers here, having thus reached the roof, did no more than let down their sick
through the grating or trap-door, already existing there (cf. 2Ki 1:2), or at
most, enlarged such an aperture, till it would allow the passage of their sick
man and his bed. Others,[4] that Jesus was sitting in the open court, round
which the houses in the East are commonly built; that to this they got access by
the roof, and breaking through the breast-work or battlement (Deu 22:8) made of
tiles, which guarded the roof, and removing the linen awning which was stretched
over the court, so let down their burden in the midst before the Lord. But all
this is without necessity and without warrant. It is impossible to read the
words of St. Mark otherwise than as saying that a portion of the actual roof was
removed, and so the bed on which the palsied man lay let down before the
Lord.[5] This will not seem so strange if only we keep in mind that it was in
all likelihood an upper chamber ὑπερῶον, where were assembled those that were
drawn together to hear the Lord. This, as the most retired (2Ki 4:10, LXX; Acts
9:37), and probably the largest room in the house, extending oftentimes over its
whole area, was much used for such purposes as that which now drew Him and his
hearers together[6] (Acts 1:13; Acts 20:8). The merciful Son of man, never
taking ill that faith which brings men to Him, but only the unbelief which keeps
them from Him, is in nothing offended at this interruption; yea, rather beheld
with an eye well pleased this act of theirs: “Jesus, seeing their faith, said
unto the sick of the palsy, Son, [7] be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven[8]
thee.” Had we only the account of St. Matthew, there would be nothing to tell us
wherein their special faith consisted, or why their faith, more than that of
many others who in like manner brought their sick to Jesus, should have been
noted; but the other Evangelists explain what he would have left obscure. From
them we have learned that it was a faith which pressed through hindrances, and
was not to be turned aside by difficulties. [9] Many, as Jerome and Ambrose,
understand by “their faith” the faith of the bearers only; but we must not so
limit the words. To them the praise justly was due;[10] but the sick man must
have approved all which they did, or it would not have been done: so that
Chrysostom, with greater reason, concludes that it was alike their faith and
his, which the Lord saw, approved, and rewarded. The words with which the Lord
welcomes this suppliant furnish a good example of the way in which He gives
before we ask, and better than we ask. This poor man had not as yet asked
anything, save, indeed, in the dumb asking of that ear nest effort to come near
to Him; and all that he dared to seek even in that, certainly all that his
friends and bearers sought for him, was that his body might be healed. Yet there
was, no doubt, in himself a deep feeling of his sickness in its innermost root,
as growing out of sin, perhaps as the penalty of some especial sin whereof he
was conscious; and some expression of contrition, some exclamation of a penitent
heart, may have been the immediate occasion of these gracious words of
forgiveness. From that “Son, be of good cheer” we gather that he was one
evidently burdened and cast down, and, as the Lord saw, with a more, intolerable
weight than that of his bodily sicknesses and pains. In other instances the
forgiveness of sins follows the outward healing—for we may certainly presume
that such a forgiveness was the portion of the thankful Samaritan (Luk 17:19),
of the impotent man, first healed, and then warned to sin no more (John
5:14),—but here the remission of sin takes the precedence: nor is it hard to see
the reason of this. In the sufferer’s own conviction there existed so close a
connexion between his sin and his plague, that the outer healing would have been
scarcely intelligible to him, would have hardly brought home to him the sense of
a benefit, unless in his conscience he had been also set free; perhaps he was
incapable even of receiving the benefit, till the message of peace had been
spoken to his spirit. Jas 5:14-15, supplies an interesting parallel, where the
same inner connexion is assumed as here between the raising of the sick and the
forgiving of his sin. The others, mentioned above, with a slighter sense than
this man of the relation between their sin and their suffering, were not first
forgiven and then healed; but their thankfulness for their bodily healing was
that which first made them receptive of that better blessing, the “grace upon
grace” which afterwards they obtained. The absolving words are not to be
regarded as optative merely, as a desire that it so might be, but as declaratory
that so it was; the man’s sins were forgiven. Nor yet were they declaratory
alone of something which past in the mind and intention of God; but, even as the
words were spoken, there was shed abroad in the heart of the man the sense of
forgiveness and reconciliation with God. For indeed God’s justification of a
sinner is not merely a word spoken about him, but a word spoken to him and in
him; not an act of God’s immanent in Himself, but transitive upon the sinner. In
it there is the love of God, and so the consciousness of that love, shed abroad
in his heart upon whose behalf the absolving decree has been uttered (Rom 5:5).
The murmurers and cavillers understood rightly what the Lord meant by these
words; that He, so speaking, did not merely wish and desire that this man’s sins
might be forgiven him; that He did not, as the Church does now, in the name of
another and wielding a delegated power, but in his own name, forgive him. They
also understood rightly concerning the forgiveness of sins itself, that it is a
divine prerogative; that, as no man can remit a debt save he to whom the debt is
due, so no one can forgive sin save He against whom all sin is committed, that
is, God; and out of this feeling, true in itself, but most false in their
present application of it, they said, “Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies?
Who can forgive sins but God only?”

Let us note, as Olshausen here invites us to do, the profound insight into the
relations between God and the creature, involved in the scriptural use of the
word “blasphemy.” Profane antiquity knew nothing like it. For it “to blaspheme”
meant only to speak something evil of a person[11] (a use not foreign to
Scripture, 1Co 4:13; Tit 3:2; 2Pe 2:2; Jude 1:8), and then, to speak something
of an evil omen. Only the monotheistic religion included in blasphemy not merely
outward words of cursing and outrage against the name of God, but all snatchings
on the part of the creature at honours which of right belonged only to the
Creator (Mat 26:65; John 10:36). Had He who in his own name declared, “Thy sins
be forgiven thee,” been less than the only-begotten Son. of the Father, the
sharer in all prerogatives of the Godhead, He would indeed have spoken
blasphemies, as they deemed. Believing Him only a man, they were right in saying
He blasphemed. Their sin was not in this, but in that self-chosen blindness of
theirs, which would not allow them to recognize any glory in Him higher than
man’s; in that, having arrived at a foregone conclusion as to what kind of
Saviour they would have, they wilfully closed their eyes to all in their own
Scriptures which set Him forth as other and higher than they had themselves
resolved to have Him.[12]

It is not for nothing that the Lord is said to have “perceived in his spirit
that they so reasoned within themselves.” His soul was human, but his “spirit”
was divine; and by this divine faculty He perceived the unuttered counsels and
meditations of their hearts; “[13] and perceiving these He laid them bare: “why
reason ye these things in your hearts?” Thus first He gave them to understand
that He was more than they esteemed,[14] since the thoughts of hearts were open
and manifest to Him, while yet God only searches into these (1Sa 16:7; 1Ch 28:9;
2Ch 6:30; Jer 17:10); only of the divine Word can it be affirmed that “He is a
discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb 4:12). “Whether is it
easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say,
Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?” In this question He indicates to them the
exact line in which their hard and evil thoughts of Him were at that moment
travelling. The charge which they inwardly made against Him, was not merely that
He challenged divine attributes, but that, doing so, He at the same time kept
Himself safe from detection, challenging those wherein, by the very nature of
things, it was not possible to prove the falsehood of his pretensions. Something
of this sort they were murmuring within themselves, “These honours are easily
snatched. Any pretender may go about the world, saying to this man and that, Thy
sins be forgiven thee! But where is the evidence that his word is allowed and
ratified in heaven, that this which is spoken on earth is sealed in heaven? The
very nature of the power which this man asserts for himself secures him from
detection; for this releasing of a man from the condemnation of his sin is an
act wrought in the inner spiritual world, attested by no outer and visible sign;
therefore it is easily claimed, since any disproof of it is impossible.” And our
Lord’s answer, meeting this evil thought in their hearts, is in fact this: “You
accuse Me that I am claiming a safe power, since, in the very nature of the
benefit bestowed, no sign follows, nothing to testify whether I have challenged
it rightfully or not. I will therefore put myself now to a more decisive proof.
I will speak a word, I will claim a power, which if I claim falsely, I shall be
convinced upon the instant to be an impostor and a deceiver. But that ye may
know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins (He saith to the
sick of the palsy), I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, [15] and go thy
way into thine house. [16] By the effects, as they follow or do not follow, you
may judge whether I have a right to say to him, Thy sins be forgiven thee.”[17]
In our Lord’s argument it must be carefully noted that He does not ask, “Which
is easiest, to forgive sins, or to raise a sick man?” for it could not be
affirmed that that of forgiving was easier than this of healing; but, “Which is
easiest, to claim this power or to claim that; to say, Thy sins be forgiven
thee, or to say, Arise and walk?” And He then proceeds: “That is easiest, and I
will now prove my right to say it, by saying with effect and with an outward
consequence setting its seal to my truth, the harder word, Rise up and walk. By
doing that which is submitted to the eyes of men, I will attest my right and
power to do that which, in its very nature, lies out of the region of proof. By
these visible tides of God’s grace I will give you to know in what way the great
under-currents of his love are setting, and make clear that those and these are
alike obedient to my word. From this which I will now do openly and before you
all, you may conclude that it is no ’robbery’ (Php 2:6) upon my part to claim
also the power of forgiving men their sins.”[18] Thus, to use a familiar
illustration of our Lord’s argument, it would be easier for a man, equally.
ignorant of French and Chinese, to claim to know the last than the first; not
that the language itself is easier; but that, in the one case, multitudes could
disprove his claim; and, in the other, hardly a scholar or two in the land. In
“power on earth” there lies a tacit opposition to “power in heaven.” “This power
is not exercised, as you deem, only by God in heaven; but also by the Son of man
on earth. You rightly assert that it is only exercised by Him who dwelleth in
the heavens; but He, who in the person of the Son of man, has descended also
upon earth, has brought down this power with Him here. On earth also is One who
can speak, and it is done. “We have at Mat 16:19; Mat 18:18, “on earth” and “in
heaven,” set over against one another in the same antithesis., The parallels,
however, are imperfect, since the Church binds and looses by a committed, and
not an inherent, power;, as has been beautifully said, Facit in terris opera
ccelorum,—but only in the name and might of her heavenly Head. It is at first
somewhat surprising that as “Son of man” He claims this power; for this of
forgiving sins being a divine attribute, we might rather have expected that He
would now have called Himself by his better name, since only as Son of God such
prerogative was his.[19] Alexandrian fathers, in conflict with the Nestorians,
pressed this passage in proof of the entire communication of all the properties
of Christ’s divine nature to his human; so that whatever one had, was so far
common to both that it might also be predicated of the other.[20] Assuredly,
unless the two natures had been indissolubly knit together in a single person,
no such language could have been used; yet “Son of man” being the standing title
whereby the Lord was well pleased to designate Himself, bringing out as it did
that He was at once one with humanity, and the crown of humanity, it is simpler
to regard the term here as merely equivalent to. Messiah, without attempting to
extort any dogmatic conclusions from it. The word of the Lord is confirmed, and
sealed by a sign following. The man did not refuse to answer this appeal: “And
immediately he arose, took up the bed, [21] and went forth before them all;”
they who before blocked up his path, now making way for him, and allowing free
egress from the assembly (cf. Mark 10:48-49). Of the effects of this miracle on
the Pharisees nothing is told; probably there was nothing good to tell. But the
people, far less hardened against the truth, far more receptive of divine
impressions, “were all amazed, and they glorified God, saying, We never saw it
on this fashion.” The miracle had done its office. The beholders marvelled at
the wonderful work done before their eyes; and this their marvel deepened into
holy fear, which found its utterance in the ascription of glory to God, “who had
given such power unto men.” We need not suppose that they very accurately
explained to themselves, or could have explained to others, their feeling of
holy exultation, but they felt truly that what was given to one man, to the Man
Christ Jesus, was given for the sake of all, and ultimately to all, that
therefore it was indeed given “unto men.” They dimly understood that He
possessed these powers as the true Head and Representative of the race, and
therefore that these gifts to Him were a rightful subject of gladness and
thanksgiving for every member of that race.

Footnotes

[1] Chrysostom mentions, in a sermon upon this healing (vol. iii. pp. 37, 38,
Bened. edit.), that many in his day confounded it with that of the impotent man
at Bethesda,—an error so groundless as hardly to be worth the complete
refutation which he gives it. In the apocryphal Evangelium Nicodemi (see Thilo,
Cod. Apocryph. vol. i. p. 55(5) there is a confusion of the two miracles.

[2] Τὰ πρὸς τὴν θύραν‚ scil. μέρη=πρόθυρον, vestibulum, atrium.

[3] The same must have existed in a Roman house, Livy, xxxix. 14. A witness,
whom it is important to preserve from being tampered with, is shut up in the
chamber adjoining the roof (coenaculum super aedes),—and, to make all sure,
scalis ferentibus in publicum obseratis, aditu in aedes verso (see Becker,
Oallus, vol. i. p. 94).

[4] Shaw, for instance, quoted in Rosenmüller (Alte und Neue Morgenland, vol. v.
p. 129). He makes τὸ μέσον to signify the central court, impluvium, cava
sediunu. And so, too, Titus Bostrensis (in Cramer, Catena): Εἲποι δ’ ἂν τις
ὓπαιθρον εἶναι τόπον‚ εἰς ὅν διὰ τῶν κεράμων κατεβίβασαν τὴν κλίνην τοῦ
παραλύτου‚ μηδὲν παντελῶς τῆς στέγης ἀνατρέψαντες. But against this use of εἰς
τὸ μέσον, or rather for the common one, see Luk 4:35; Mark 3:3; Mark 14:60.

[5] Bengel: Per omnia fides ad Christum penetrat. Gerhard (Harm. Evang. 43):
Pictura est quomodo in tentationibus et calamitatibus ad Christum nobis coneutur
intercludere hominum judicia, quales fuerunt amici Jobi, et qui Psa 3:3 dicunt:
Non est salus ipsi in Deo ejus. Item: Legis judicium et proprise conscientiae
accusationes. Et quomodo per ilia omnia fides perrumpere debeat, ut in
conspectum Christi Mediatoris se demittat.

[6] Tινὲς πιστότατοι‚, as in the Evangelium Nicodemi they are called.

[7] In St. Luke, "Man, thy sins are forgiven thee. "But as He addresses another
sorrowful soul, "Daughter, be of good comfort" Mat 9:22), probably the tenderer
appellation here also found place.

[8] Ἀϕέωνται (cf. Luk 7:48; 1Jn 2:12): the old grammarians are not at one in the
explanation of this form. Some make it=ἀϕῶνται‚, 2 aor. conj., as in Homer ἀϕέῃ
for ἀϕῇ; thus Eustathius. But others more lightly explain it as the præter.
indic, pass. = ἀϕεῖνται; though of these again some find in it an Attic, others,
more correctly, a Doric form: cf. Herod, 2:165, ἀνέωνται. This perfect passive
will then stand in connexion with the perfect active ἀϕεωκα for ἀϕεῖκα (Winer,
Grammatik, p. 77).

[9] Bengel: Per omnia fides ad Christum penetrat. Gerhard (Harm. Evang. 43):
Pictura est quomodo in tentationibus et calamitatibus ad Christum nobis coneutur
intercludere hominum judicia, quales fuerunt amici Jobi, et qui Psa 3:3 dicunt:
Non est salus ipsi in Deo ejus. Item: Legis judicium et proprise conscientiae
accusationes. Et quomodo per ilia omnia fides perrumpere debeat, ut in
conspectum Christi Mediatoris se demittat.

[10] Tινὲς πιστότατοι‚, as in the Evangelium Nicodemi they are called.

[11] Bλασϕημεῖν as opposed to εὐϕημεῖν

[12] Augustine (Enarr. iii. in Ps. 36:25): Quis potest dimittere peccata
[inquiunt] nisi solus Deus? Et quia ille erat Deus, talia cogitantes audiebat.
Hoc verum de Deo cogitabant, sed Deum praesentem non videbaut. Fecit ergo...
quod viderent, et dedit quod crederent.

[13] Grotius: Non ut prophetae per afflatum, sed suo spiritu.

[14] Gerhard (Harm. Evang. 43): Jesus igitur exponens Pharisaeis quid taciti
apud se in intimis cordium recessibus cogitabant, ostendit se plus esse quam
hominem; et eadem potestate, divinâ scilicet, qua, secreta cordium videat, se
etiam peccata remittere posse.

[15] Κράββατος, or as Tischendorf always spells it, affirming that so in all the
best MSS. he finds it, κράβαττος=grabatus (in Luke κλινίδιον, a mean and vile
pallet used by the poorest, =σκίμπους‚ ἀσκάντης. It is a Macedonian word,
entirely rejected by Greek purists (see Becker, Charikles, vol. ii. p. 121; and
Lobeck, Phrynichus, p. 62). In relation to this, Sozomen (Hist. Eccl. i. 11)
tells a curious story of a bishop in Cyprus, who, teaching the people from this
Scripture, and having to repeat the Lord’s words, substituted σκίμπους for
κράββατος, and was rebuked by another bishop present, who asked if the word
which Christ used was not good enough for him to use.

[16] Compare Isaiah’s words (xxxv. 3, LXX), when he is recounting the promises
of Messiah’s time: Ἰσχύσατε‚ χεῖρες ἀνειμέναι‚ καὶ λόνατα παραλελυμένα.

[17] Corn, a Lapide: Qui dicit, Remitto tibi peccata, mendacii argui non potest,
sive ea reverâ remittit, sive non, quia nec peccatum nec peccati remissio oculis
videri potest; qui autem dicit paralytico, Surge et ambula, se et famam suam
evidenti falsitatis periculo exponit; re ipsâ, enim si paralyticus non surgat,
falsitatis, imposturae et mendacii ab omnibus arguetur et convincetur... Unde
signanter Christus non ait, Quid est facilius, remittere peccata, an sanare
paralyticum, sed dicere, Dimittuntur tibi peccata, an dicere, Surge et ambula?
Jerome (Comm. in Matt, in loc.): Utrum sint paralytico peccata dimissa, solus
noverat, qui dimittebat. Surge autem et ambula, tam ille qui consurgebat, quam
hi qui consurgentem videbant approbare poterant. Fit igitur carnale signum, ut
probetur spirituale. Bernard (De Divers. Serm. xxv.): Blasphemare me
blasphematis, et quasi ad excusandum visibilis curationis virtutem, me
invisibilem dicitis usurpare. Sed ego vos potius blasphemos esse convinco, signo
probans visibili invisibilem potestatem.

[18] Maldonatus, with his usual straightforward meeting of a difficulty,
observes here, Poterit autem aliquis merito dubitare, quomodo Christus quod
probandum erat, concludat. Nam si remittere peccata erat re verâ difficilius,
dum experientiâ curati paralytici docet se quod re ipsâ facilius est, posse
facere: non bene probat posse et se peccata remittere, quod erat difficilius.
Respondeo, Christum tantum probare voluisse sibi esse credendum, quod bene
probat ab eo, cujus probatio erat difficilior; quasi dicat, Si non fallo cum
dico paralytico, Surge et ambula, ubi difficilius est probare me verum dicere,
cur creditis me fallere cum dico, Remittantur tibi peccata tua? Denique ex re,
quae effectu probari potest, in re, quae probari non potest, sibi fidem facit.
Augustine (Exp. ad Rom. § 23): Declaravit ideo se ilia facere in corporibus, ut
crederetur animas peccatorum dimissione liberare; id est, ut de potestate
visibili potestas invisibilis mereretur fidem.

[19] See Tertullian (Adv. Marc, iv, 10) for a somewhat different reason why the
Lord should here call Himself, Son of man.

[20] See Cyril of Alexandria, in Cramer, Catena, in loc. This is the
communicatio idiomatum.

[21] Arnobius (Con. Gen. i. 45), speaking generally of Christ’s healings, but of
course with allusion to this, magnifies the contrast of his so lately being
carried on, and now carrying, his bed: Suos referebant lectos alienis paulo ante
cervicibus lati.


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  CHAPTER 18: 18-10. THE CLEANSING OF THE LEPER
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10. The Cleansing of the Leper Mat 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luk 5:12-16

It is said in one place that the Lord confirmed the word of his servants with
signs following (Mark 16:20). Here He does the same for his own. His discourse
upon the Mount is ended, and following close on that discourse, this and other
of his most memorable miracles are performed. It is as though He would set his
seal to all that He had there taught, would approve Himself a prophet, with
right to speak in the language of authority which He has there held[1] (Mat
7:29). That great revision of the moral code was scarcely ended, ere the
opportunity occurred for thus solemnly confirming his word. As He was descending
from the mountain, “there came a leper and worshipped Him,” one, in the language
of St. Luke, “full of leprosy,” so that it was not a spot here and there, but
the tetter had spread over his whole body; he was leprous from head to foot.
This man had ventured, it may be, to linger on the outskirts of the listening
crowd, and, undeterred by the severity of the closing sentences of Christ’s
discourse, came now to claim the blessings promised at its opening to the
suffering and the mourning. But we shall ill understand this miracle, unless
first a few words have been said concerning leprosy in general, and the meaning
of the uncleanness attached to it in the Levitical law. The medical details, the
distinction between one kind of leprosy and another, as between the white λεύκη,
which among the Jews was the most frequent, and the yet more terrible
elephantiasis (thought by many to have been that with which Job was visited, and
so named because in it the feet swelled to an elephantine size), would be here
out of place. Only it will be necessary to correct a mistake, common to all
writers who, like Michaelis, can see in the Levitical ordinances little more,
for the most part, than regulations of police or of a board of health, or, at
the highest, rules for the well ordering of an earthly society; who miss
altogether a main purpose which these ordinances had—namely, that by them men
might be trained into a sense of the cleaving taint which is theirs from birth,
into a confession of impurity and of consequent separation from God, and thus
into a longing after purity and re-union with Him. I refer to the mistaken
assumption that leprosy was catching from one person to another; and that lepers
were so carefully secluded from their fellow-men, lest they might communicate
the poison of the disease to them; as, in like manner, that the torn garment,
the covered lip, the cry “Unclean, unclean” (Lev 13:45), were warnings to all
that they should keep aloof, lest unawares touching a leper, or drawing into too
great a nearness, they should become partakers of his disease. So far from any
danger of the kind existing, all who have looked closest into the matter agree
that the sickness was incommunicable by (ordinary contact from one person to
another. A leper might transmit it to his children,[2] or the mother of a
leper’s children might take it from him; but it was by no ordinary contact
communicable from one person to another.

All the notices in the O. T., as well as in other Jewish books, confirm this
assertion that we have here something very much higher than a mere sanitary
regulation. Thus, where the law of Moses was not observed, no such exclusion
necessarily found place; Naaman the leper commanded the armies of Syria (2Ki
5:1); Gehazi, with his leprosy that never should be cleansed, talked familiarly
with the king of apostate Israel (2Ki 8:5). And even where the law of Moses was
in force, the stranger and the sojourner were expressly exempted from the
ordinances in relation to leprosy; which could not have been, had the disease
been contagious, and the motives of the leper’s exclusion been not religious,
but civil.[3] How, moreover, should the Levitical priests, had the disease been
this creeping infection, have ever themselves escaped it, obliged as they were
by their very office to submit the leper to such actual handling and closest
examination? Lightfoot can only explain this by supposing in their case a
perpetual miracle. But there is no need of this. The ordinances concerning
leprosy had another and far deeper significance, into which it will be needful a
little to enter. It is clear that the same principle which made all having to do
with death, as mourning, a grave, a corpse, the occasions of a ceremonial
uncleanness, inasmuch as all these were signs and consequences of sin, might
consistently with this have made every sickness an occasion of uncleanness, each
of these being also death beginning, partial death—echoes in the body of that
terrible reality, sin in the soul. But instead of this, in a gracious sparing of
man, and not pushing the principle to’ the uttermost, God took but one sickness,
one of these visible outcomings of a tainted nature, in which to testify that
evil was not from Him, could not dwell with Him. He linked this teaching but
with one; by his laws concerning it to train men into a sense of a clinging
impurity, which needed a Pure and a Purifier to overcome and expel, and which
nothing short of his taking of our flesh could drive out. And leprosy, the
sickness of sicknesses, was through these Levitical ordinances selected of God
from the whole host of maladies and diseases which had broken in upon man’s
body. Bearing his testimony against it, He will bear his testimony against that
out of which every sickness grows, against sin, as not from Him, as grievous in
his sight; and against the sickness itself also as grievous, being as it was a
visible manifestation, a direct consequence, of sin, a forerunner of that death,
which by the portal of disobedience had found entrance into natures made for
immortality. And terrible indeed, as might be expected, was that disease, round
which this solemn teaching revolved. Leprosy was nothing short of a living
death, a corrupting of all the humours, a poisoning of the very springs, of
life; a dissolution little by little of the whole body, so that one limb after
another actually decayed and fell away. Aaron exactly describes the appearance
which the leper presented to the eyes of the beholders, when, pleading for
Miriam, he says, “Let her not be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed
when he cometh out of his mother’s womb” (Num 12:12). The disease, moreover, was
incurable by the art and skill of man;[4] not that the leper might not return to
health; for, however rare, such cases are contemplated in the Levitical law. But
then the leprosy left the man, not in obedience to the skill of the physician,
but purely and merely through the good will and mercy of God. This helplessness
of man in the matter dictates the speech of Jehoram, who, when Naaman is sent to
him, that he may heal him, exclaims, “Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that
this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy?” (2Ki 5:7); as
though the king of Syria had been seeking to fasten a quarrel upon him. The
leper, thus fearfully bearing about in the body the outward and visible tokens
of sin in the soul, was dealt with throughout as a sinner, as one in whom sin
had reached its highest manifestation, as one dead in trespasses and sins. He
was himself a dreadful parable of death. He bore about him the emblems of death
(Lev 13:45); the rent garments, mourning for himself as one dead; the head bare,
as they were wont to have it who were denied by communion with the dead (Num
6:9; Eze 24:17); and the lip covered (Eze 24:17[5]). In the restoration, too, of
a leper, precisely the same instruments of cleansing were in use, the
cedar-wood, the hyssop, and scarlet, as were used for the cleansing of one
rendered impure through a dead body, or aught pertaining to death, and which
were never in use upon any other occasion (cf. Num 19:6; Num 19:13; Num 19:18
with Ley. xiv. 4-7). No doubt when David exclaims, “Purge me with hyssop, and I
shall be clean” (Psa 51:7), looking through the outward to the inward, even to
the true blood of sprinkling, he contemplates himself as a spiritual leper, one
who had sinned a sin unto death, needing therefore to be restored to God from
the very furthest degree of separation from Him. And being this sign and token
of sin, and of sin reaching to and culminating in death, it naturally brought
about with it a total exclusion from the camp or city of God. God is not a God
of the dead; He has no fellowship with death, for death is the correlative of
sin; but only of the living.. But the leper was as one dead, and as such was to
be put out of the camp[6] (Lev 13:46; Num 5:2-4; 2Ki 7:3), or afterwards out of
the city.; and we find this law to have been so strictly enforced, that even the
sister of Moses might not be exempted from it (Num 12:14-15); and kings
themselves, as Uzziah (2Ch 26:21; 2Ki 15:5), must submit to it; men being by
this exclusion taught that what here took place in a figure, should take place
in the reality with every one who was found in the death of sin: he should be
shut out of the true city of God. Thus, taking up and glorifying this and like
ordinances of exclusion, St. John declares of the New Jerusalem, “There shall
nowise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh
abomination, or maketh a lie” (Rev 21:27).

Nothing of all this, as need hardly be observed, in the least implied that the
leper was a worse or guiltier man than his fellows; though being, as it was,
this symbol of sin, it was most often the theocratic punishment, the penalty for
offences committed against the theocracy, as those of Miriam, of Gehazi, of
Uzziah;[7] compare Deu 24:8, where the warning, “Take heed of the plague of
leprosy,” is no admonition diligently to observe the laws about leprosy, but to
have a care lest any disobedience of theirs should provoke God to visit them
with this plague.[8] The Jews themselves called it “the finger of God,” and
emphatically, “the stroke.” It attacked, they said, first a man’s house; and
then, if he refused to turn, his clothing; and lastly, should he persist in sin,
himself:[9]—a fine parable, let the fact have been as it might, of the manner in
which God’s judgments, if a man refuse to listen to them, reach ever nearer to
the centre of his life. So, too, they said that a man’s true repentance was the
one condition of his leprosy leaving him.[10]

Seeing then that leprosy was this outward and visible sign of the innermost
spiritual corruption, this sacrament of death, on no fitter form of evil could
the Lord of life show forth his power. He will thus prove Himself the conqueror
of death in life, as elsewhere of death accomplished: and his victory over this
most terrible form of physical evil is therefore fitly urged as a testimony of
his Messiahship: “The lepers are cleansed” (Mat 11:5). Nor may we doubt that the
terribleness of the infliction, the extreme suffering with which it was linked,
the horror with which it must have filled the sufferer’s mind, as he marked its
slow but inevitable progress, to be arrested by no human hand, the ghastly
hideousness of its unnatural whiteness (Num 12:10; Exo 4:6,; 2Ki 5:27), must all
have combined to draw out his pity,[11] in whom love went hand in hand with
power, the Physician and Healer of the bodies as of the souls of men. The leper
with whom we now have to do, came “and worshipped” Jesus—an act of profound
reverence, as from an inferior to a superior, yet not of necessity a recognition
of a divine character in Him to whom this homage was offered. What he would have
from the Lord he expresses in words which are remarkable as the utterance of a
simple and humble faith, willing to abide the issue, whatever that may be; and
having declared its desire, to leave the complying with it or not to a higher
wisdom and love: “Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean.”[12] There is no
questioning here of the power; nothing of his unbelief who said, “If Thou canst
do anything, have compassion on us and help us” (Mark 9:22). “And Jesus put
forth his hand and touched him”[13] ratifying and approving his utterance of
faith, by making the concession of his request in the very words wherein the
request itself had been embodied; “I will; be thou clean. [14] And immediately
his leprosy was cleansed.” This touching of the unclean by Christ is remarkable,
seeing that such contact under the law would naturally be avoided, as causing a
ceremonial defilement. The Gnostics, adversaries of the law, saw in this
Christ’s contempt for its ordinances, a witness that He regarded it as coming
not from the good God, but from the evil.[15] Tertullian answers them well.[16]
He first shows what was the deeper meaning of forbidding to touch the
ceremonially unclean, namely, that we should not defile our souls through
partaking in other men’s sins; as St. Paul, transfiguring these ceremonial
prohibitions into moral, exclaims, “Come out from among them, and be ye
separate, and touch not the unclean thing” (2Co 6:17). These outer prohibitions
held good for all, till He came, the Pure, to whom all things were pure; who,
incontaminable Himself, feared not the contamination of a touch; for in Him,
first among men, the advancing tide of this world’s evil was effectually
arrested and rolled back. Another would have defiled himself by touching the
leper; but He, Himself remaining undefiled, cleansed him whom He touched; for in
Him health overcame sickness,—and purity, defilement,—and life, death.

“And Jesus saith unto him, See thou tell no man.” Ambrose and others see in this
prohibition to divulge the cure a lesson of Christ to his followers that they
also should avoid ostentation in the good which they do; lest, as he adds, they
should be. themselves taken with a worse leprosy than any which they healed.[17]
I do not think so. If the motive was external, and not grounded on the inner
moral condition of the man, it more probably was, lest his stiller ministry
should be hindered by the untimely concourse of multitudes, drawn to Him by the
hope of worldly benefits (which by this very occasion did occur, Mark 1:45);
perhaps also by the premature violence of his enemies, roused to a more active
hate by the fame of his mighty deeds (John 11:46-47 [18]). But, as already has
been observed, the injunction to one that he should proclaim, to another that he
should conceal, the great things which God had done for him, may have had a
deeper motive, and have been grounded on the different moral conditions of the
persons healed. Grotius and Bengel suggest very plausibly that the “See thou
tell no man” here is to be taken with this limitation—”till thou hast done that
which I enjoin thee.” He then proceeds to impart his injunction, “Go thy way,
show thyself to the priests, and offer the gift that Moses commanded.” Till this
was done, he should say nothing; lest, if a rumour of these things had gone
before him, the priests at Jerusalem, out of envy, out of a desire to depreciate
Christ’s work, might have denied that the man had ever been a leper, or else
that he was now truly cleansed.[19] We may perhaps in this way account for the
notice of St. Mark, “He forthwith sent him away, ’’ or, put him forth;[20] would
allow no lingering, but required him to hasten on his errand, lest a report of
the cure should outrun him that was cured.

“For a testimony unto them,” some understand “for a proof even to these
gainsayers that I am come, not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it, not to
remove even a shadow, till I have brought in the substance in its room.[21]
These Levitical offerings I still allow and uphold, while as yet the better
offering, to which they point, has not. been made. “[22] We should understand
the words rather, “for a testimony against them (cf. Mark 6:11; Luk 9:5); for a
witness against their unbelief, who refuse to give credence to Me, even while I
am legitimating my claims by such mighty works as these; works whose reality
they have ratified themselves, accepting thy gift, re-admitting thee, as one
truly cleansed, into the congregation”[23] (John 5:36; John 15:24). For his
going to the priest had this object, that the priest might ascertain if really
his leprosy was cleansed (Lev 14:3), might, if so, accept his gift,[24] and
offer it as an atonement for him; and then, when all this was duly accomplished,
pronounce him clean, and reinstate him in all his rights and privileges
again.[5]

Footnotes

[1] Jerome (in loc.): Recte post prædicationem atque doctrinam signorum offertur
occasio, ut per virtutum miracula præteritus apud audientes sermo firmetur.

[2] See Robinson, Biblical Researches, vol. i. p. 359.

[3] See all this abundantly proved in pp. 1086-1089 of the learned dissertation
by Rhenferd, De Leprâ Cutis Hebraeorum, in Meuschen, Nov. Test, ex Talm. Must.
p. 1057; who concludes his disquisition on this part of the subject thus: Ex
quibus, nisi nos omnia fallunt, certe concludimus, praecipuis Judaeorum
magistris, traditionumque auctoribus nunquam in mentem incidisse ullam de leprae
contagio suspicionera, omneraque hanc de contagiosâ leprâ sententiam plurimis
antiquissimisque scriptoribus aeque ac Mosi plane fuisse incognitam. Compare the
extract from Balsamon, in Suicer, Thes. s. v. λεπρόδ, where, speaking of the
custom of the Eastern’ Church, he says, “They frequent our churches and eat with
us, in nothing hindered by the disease. “In like manner there was a place for
them, though a place apart, in the synagogues.

[4] Cyril of Alexandria calls it πάθος οὐκ ἰάσιμον.

[5] Spencer calls him well, sepulcrum ambulans; and Calvin: Pro mortuis habiti
sunt, quos lepra a sacro caetu abdicabat. And when through the Crusades leprosy
had been introduced into Western Europe, it was usual to clothe the leper in a
shroud, and to say for him the masses for the dead.

[6] Herodotus (i. 138) mentions the same law. of exclusion as existing among the
Persians, who accounted in like manner that leprosy was an especial visitation
on account of especial sins.

[7] No doubt the strange apocryphal tradition of Judas Iscariot perishing by the
long misery of a leprosy, in its most horrible form of elephantiasis, had this
same origin (see Gfrörer, Die heilige Sage, vol. i. p. 179.

[8] See Rhenferd, Be Leprâ Cutis Hebraeorum, in Meuschen, N. T. ex Talm.
illustr. p. 1082.

[9] Molitor, Philosophie der Geschichte, vol. iii. p. 191.

[10] Thus Jerome, following earlier Jewish expositors, explains "smitten of God"
Isa 53:4) as=leprosus; and out of that passage and the general belief in leprosy
as a νόσος θεήλατος, upgrew the old Jewish tradition of the Messiah being a
leper (see Hengstenberg, Christologie, vol. i. p. 382).

[11] Cf. Mark 1:41, ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς σ π λ αγχνισθείς

[12] Yet the Romanists in vain endeavour to draw from this passage an approval
of the timor diffidentiae in our prayers which have relation to the things of
eternal life, such as the forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Spirit. These we
are to ask, assuredly believing that we have them. There is this uncertainty in
the leper’s request, because he is asking a temporal benefit, which must always
be asked, under conditions, and which may be refused, though to the faithful man
the refusing is indeed a granting in a higher form (see Gerhard, Locc. Theoll.
loc. 17, § 138).

[13] Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 35): Quoniam ipse erat authenticus Pontifex Dei
Patris, inspexit illos secundum Legis arcanum, significantis Christum esse verum
disceptatorem et elimatorem humanarum macularum.

[14] Bengel: Echo prompta ad fidem leprosi maturam. Ipsa leprosi pratio
continebat verba responsionis optatae.

[15] In Tertullian’s words (Adv. Marc. iv. 9): Ut aemulus Legis tetigit leprosum
nihil faciens praeceptum legis, per contemptum inquinamenti.

[16] In Tertullian’s words (Adv. Marc. iv. 9): Non pigebit.... figuratae legis
vim ostendere; quae in exemplo leprosi non contingendi, inimo ab omni commercio
submovendi, communicationem prohibebat hominis delictis commaculati; cum
qualibus et apostolus cibum quoque vetat sumere; participari enim stigmata
delictorum, quasi ex contagione, si quis se cum peccatore miscuerit. Itaque
Dominus volens altius intelligi Legem, per carnalia spiritalia significantem; et
hoc nomine non destruens sed magis exstruens quam pertinentius volebat agnosci,
tetigit leprosum, a quo etsi homo inquinari potuisset, Deus utique non
inquinaretur, incontaminabilis scilicet. Ita non praescribetur illi quod
debuerit legem observare, et non contigere immundum, quern contactus immundi non
erat inquinaturus.He is not so successful in his interpretation of the spiritual
significance, when elsewhere (Be Pud. 20) he goes into more details in the
matter. So Calvin (in loc.): Ea est in Christo puritas, quae omnes sordes et
inquinamenta absorbeat, neque se contamiriat leprosum tangendo, neque Legem
transgreditur; and he beautifully finds in his stretching forth the hand’ and
touching, a symbol of the Incarnation: Nec tamen quidquam inde maculae
contraxit, sed integer manens, sordes omnes nostras exhausit, et nos perfudit
suâ sanctitate. Compare H. de Sto, Victore: Lepram tetigit, et mundus permansit,
quia veram humanitatis formam sumpsit, et culpam non contraxit.

[17] Exp. in Luk 5:5 : Sed ne lepra transire possit in medicum, unusquisque
Dominicæ humilitatis exemplo jactantiam vitet. Cur enim præcipitur nemini
dicere, nisi ut doceret non vulganda nostra beneficia, sed premenda? So
Chrysostom: Ἀτύϕους ἡμᾶς παρασκευάζων καὶ ἀκενοδόξους.

[18] See a good note by Hammond on Mat 8:4. Calvin: Tanta erat vulgi
opportunitas in flagitandis miraculis, ut non restaret doctrinse locus.

[19] Thus the Auct. Oper. Imperf. (Horn, xxi.): Ideo eum jubet offerre munera,
ut si postmodum vellent eum expellere, diceret eis: Munera quasi a mundato
suscepistis, et quomodo me quasi leprosum expellitis? Si leprosus adhuc fui,
munera accipere non debuistis quasi a mundato: si autem mundus factus sum,
repellere non debetis quasi leprosum.

[20] Ἐξέβαλεν αὐτόν.

[21] So Tertullian in his controversy with the Gnostics (Adv. Marc. iv. 9):
Quantum enim ad gloriae humanae aversionem pertinebat, vetuit eum divulgare,
quantum autem ad tutelam Legis, jussit ordinem impleri. Bengel: Ut testimonium
illis exhibeatur, de Messiâ praesente, Legi non deroganti.

[22] Augustine (Quaest. Evang. ii. qu. 3): Quia nondum esse coeperat sacrificium
sanctum sanctorum, quod corpus ejus est.

[23] Maldonatus: Ut inexcusabiles essent sacerdotes, si in ipsum non crederent,
cujus miracula probâssent. Witsius (De Mirac. Jesu, i. p. 32): Idcirco addidit
Jesus haec a se ita juberi εἰς μαρτύριον αὐτοῖς, ne deinceps ullâ specie negari
miraculum possit, et ut, dum eorum judicio approbatus, munus obtulisset,
testimonium contra se haberent, impie se facere, quod Christo obluctarentur.

[24] Δῶρον is used for a bloody offering by the LXX, as Gen 4:4; Lev 1:2-3; Lev
1:10; cf. Heb 8:4, where the δῶρα=δῶρά τε καὶ θυσίας of the verse preceding,
therefore also of ver. 1; cf. Mat 5:23. Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 9) brings out
too much the idea of a thank-offering in this gift of the cleansed leper, which
properly it was not, though the words are admirable, applied to such: Argumenta
enim figurata utpote prophetatae Legis adhuc in suis imaginibus tuebantur, qua,
signilicabant hominem quondam peccatorem, verbo mox Dei emaculatum, offerre
debere munus Deo apud templum, orationem scilicet et actionem gratiarum apud
Ecclesiam, per Christum Jesum, catholicum Patris Sacerdotem.

[25] All the circumstances of the leper’s cleansing yielded themselves so aptly
to the scheme of Church satisfactions, as it gradually shaped itself in the
Middle Ages, that it is not to be wondered at that it was used at least as an
illustration, often as an argument. Yet even then we find the great truth, of
Christ the alone Cleanser, often brought out as the most prominent. Thus by
Gratian (Be Poenitentiâ, dist. i.): Ut Dominus ostenderet quod non sacerdotali
judicio, sed largitate divinae gratiae peccator emundatur, leprosum tangendo
mundavit, et postea sacerdoti sacrificium ex lege offerre praecepit. Leprosus
enim tangitur, cum respectu divinae pietatis mens peccatoris illustrata
compungitur.....Leprosus semetipsum sacerdoti repraesentat, dum peccatum suum
sacerdoti poenitens confitetur. Sacrificium ex lege offert, dum satisfactionem
Ecclesiae judicio sibi impositam factis exsequitur. Sed antequam ad sacerdotem
perveniat, emundatur, dum per contritionem cordis ante confessionem oris peccati
veniâ indugetur. Cf. Pet. Lombard (Sent. iv. dist. 18): Dominus leprosum
sanitate prius per se restituit, deinde ad sacerdotes misit, quorum judicio
ostenderetur mundatus.....Quia etsi aliquis apud Deum sit solutus, non tamen in
facie Ecclesiae solutus habetur, nisi per judicium sacerdotis. In solvendis ergo
culpis vel retinendis ita operatur sacerdos evangelicus et judicat, sicut olim
legalis in illis, qui contaminati erant leprâ, quae peccatum signat.


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  CHAPTER 19: 19-11. THE HEALING OF THE CENTURION'S SERVANT
========================================================================

11. The Healing of the Centurion’s Servant Mat 8:5-13; Luk 7:1-10

There has been already occasion to denounce the error of confounding this
healing with that of the nobleman’s son recorded by St. John (iv. 46). ’But
while we may riot thus seek forcibly to harmonize two narratives which relate
events entirely different, there is matter still in the records of this miracle
on which the harmonist may exercise his skill. There are two independent
accounts, one given by St. Matthew, the other by St. Luke; and, according to the
first Evangelist, the centurion comes a petitioner in his own person for the
boon which he desires; according to the third, he sends others as mediators
between himself and the Lord, as intercessors, for him, with other differences
which follow and flow out of this. Doubtless the latter is the more strictly
literal account of the circumstance, as it actually came to pass; St. Matthew,
who is briefer, telling it as though the centurion had done in his own person
what, in fact, he did by the intervention of others—an exchange of persons of
which all historical narrative and all the language of our common life is
full.[1] A comparison of Mark 10:35 with Mat 20:20 will furnish another example
of the same.

“And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto Him a centurion,
beseeching Him, and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home grievously
tormented.” This centurion, probably one of the Roman garrison of Capernaum, was
by birth a heathen; but, like another of the same rank in the Acts (10:1), was
one of many who were at this time deeply feeling the emptiness and falsehood of
all the polytheistic religions, and who had attached themselves by laxer or
closer bonds to the congregation of Israel and the worship of Jehovah, finding
in Judaism a satisfaction of some of the deepest needs of their souls, and a
promise of the satisfaction of all.[2] 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 (13:43, 50; 16:14; 17:4,
17; 18:7), 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. But
with the higher matters which he had learned from his intercourse with the
people of the covenant, he had learned no doubt this, that all heathens, all
“sinners of the Gentiles,” were “without;” that there was a middle wall of
partition between them and the children of the stock of Abraham; that they were
to worship only as in the outer court, not presuming to draw near to the holy
place. And thus, as we learn from St. Luke (vii. 3), he did not himself
approach, but “when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto Him the elders of the Jews,
beseeching Him that He would come and heal his servant,” a servant, as St. Luke
has before told us, who “was dear unto him,”[3] but now “was sick and ready to
die.” The Jewish elders executed their commission with zeal, pleading for him as
one whose affection for the chosen people, and active well-doing in their
behalf, had merited this return of favour: “They besought Him instantly, saying
that he was worthy for whom He should do this; for he loveth our nation, and he
hath built us a synagogue. Then Jesus went with them” But presently even this
request seemed to the maker of it too bold. In his true and ever-deepening
humility he counted it a presumption to have asked, though by the intervention
of others, the presence under his roof of one so highly exalted. “And when He
was now not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to Him, saying, Lord,
trouble not Thyself: for I am not worthy that Thou shouldest enter under my
roof.” It was not merely that he, a heathen, might claim no near access to the
King of Israel; but there was, no doubt, beneath this and mingling with this, a
deep inward feeling of his own personal unworthiness and unfitness for a close
communion with a holy being, which was the motive of this message. And thus, in
Augustine’s words, “counting himself unworthy that Christ should enter into his
doors, he was counted worthy that Christ should enter into his heart”[4]—a far
better boon; for Christ sat down in the houses of many, as of that proud
self-righteous Pharisee (Luk 7:36), whose hearts for all this were not the less
empty of his presence. But this centurion received Him in his heart, whom he did
not receive in his house.[5] And, indeed, every little trait of his character,
as it comes forth in the sacred narrative, points him out as one in whom the
seed of God’s word would find the ready and prepared soil of a good and honest
heart. For, not to speak of those prime graces, faith and humility, which so
eminently shone forth in him,—the affection which he had evidently won from
those Jewish elders, the zeal which had stirred him to build a house for the
worship of the true God, his earnest care and anxiety about a slave,—one so
commonly excluded from all earnest human sympathies on the part of his master,
that even a Cicero excuses himself for feeling deeply the death of such a one in
his household,—all these traits of character combine to present him to us as one
of those “children of God” scattered abroad in the world, whom the Son of God
came that He might gather together into one (John 11:52). The manner is very
noteworthy in which the Roman officer, by help of an analogy drawn from the
circle of things with which he himself is most familiar, by a comparison
borrowed from his own military experience,[6] makes easier to himself his act of
faith. He knows that Christ’s word will be sufficient; for, he adds, “I am a man
under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to this man, Go, and he
goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he
doeth it.” His argument is here from the less to the greater. “I am,” he would
say, “one occupying only a subordinate place, set under authority, a subaltern,
with tribunes and commanders over me. Yet, notwithstanding, those that are under
me, obey me; and my word is potent with them. I have power to send them hither
and thither, and they go at my bidding, so that, myself sitting still, I can yet
have the things accomplished which I would. How much more Thou, not set, as I
am, in a subordinate place, but who art as a Prince over the host of heaven,[7]
who hast Angels and spirits to obey thy word and run swiftly at thy command,
canst fulfil from a distance all the good pleasure of thy will. What need, then,
that Thou shouldest come to my house; only commission one of these genii of
healing, who will execute speedily the errand of grace on which Thou shalt send
him.” [8] He contemplates the relation of Christ to the spiritual kingdom in an
aspect as original as it is grand. The Lord appears to him as the true Csesar
and Imperator, the highest over the hierarchy, not of earth, but of heaven (Col
1:16). In all this there was so wonderful a union of faith and humility, that it
is nothing strange to read that the Lord Himself was filled with admiration:
“When Jesus heard it, He marvelled [9] and said to them that followed, Verily, I
say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.”[10] St.
Matthew alone records these words, which beforehand we should rather have
expected to find recorded by St. Luke; for he, the companion of the Apostle to
the Gentiles, loves best to give prominence to that side of our Lord’s ministry,
on which it contemplated not merely the Jewish nation, but the heathen world
(3:38; 10:1; 15:11-32). Where faith is, there will be the kingdom of God; so
that this saying already contains a warning to his Jewish hearers, of the danger
they are in of forfeiting blessings whereof others are showing themselves
worthier than they.[11] But the words which follow are far more explicit; “For 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,” shall be
partakers of the heavenly festival, which shall be at the inauguration of the
kingdom; “but the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness;
there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth;”—in other words, the kingdom
should be taken from them, “and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits
thereof” (Mat 21:43); because of their unbelief, they, the natural branches of
the olive tree, should be broken off, and in their room the wild olive should be
graffed in (Rom 11:17-24; Mat 3:9).

“And Jesus said unto, the centurion,” or to him in his messengers, “Go thy way,
and as thou hast believed,[12].so be it done unto thee. And his servant was
healed in the self-same hour;”—not merely was there a remission of the strength
of the disease, but it left him altogether. There is a certain difficulty
respecting the exact nature of the complaint from which he was thus graciously
delivered. In St. Matthew it is described as “palsy;” with which the “grievously
tormented” which immediately follows, seems not altogether to agree, nor yet the
report in St. Luke, that he was “ready to die;” since palsy in itself neither
brings with it violent paroxysms of pain, nor is it in its nature mortal. But
paralysis with contraction of the joints is accompanied with intense suffering,
and, when united, as it much oftener is in the hot climates of the East and of
Africa than among us, with tetanus, both “grievously torments,” and rapidly
brings on dissolution.[13]

Footnotes

[1] Faustus the Manichaean uses these apparent divergences of the two
narratives, and the greater fulness of the one account than of the other, it
being said in one that “many shall come from the east and west,. and sit down
with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God,” while this is omitted in
the other, to cast a slight and suspicion upon both. It is, of course, this last
declaration which makes him bent anyhow on getting rid of this history. The
calumniator of the Old Covenant, he cannot endure to hear of the chiefs of that
covenant sitting down in the first places at the heavenly banquet. Augustine’s
admirable reply contains much which is applicable still, on the unfair way in
which gainsayers find or make discrepancies where indeed there are none,—as
though one narrator telling some detail in an event, contradicts another, who
passes over that detail,—one saying that a person did this, contradicts another
who states more particularly that he did it by the agency and intervention of
another. All that we demand, he says, is, that men should be as fair to
Scripture as to any other historic record; should suffer it to speak to men as
they are wont to speak one to another (Con. Faust, xxxiii. 7, 8): Quid ergo, cum
legimus, obliviscimur quemadmodum loqui soleamus? An Scriptura Dei aliter
nobiscum fuerat quam nostro more locutura? Cf. Be Cons. Evang. ii. 20.

[2] Remarkably enough all the Roman centurions who figure in the sacred
narrative are honourably mentioned; thus, besides these two, the centurion who
watched by the cross of Christ, and exclaimed, “Truly this was the Son of God”
(Mat 27:54; Luk 23:47); and Julius, who so courteously entreated Paul on his way
to Rome (Acts 27:3; Acts 27:43). Probably, in the general wreck of the moral
institutions of the heathen world, the Roman army was one of the few in which
something of the old virtues survived.

[3] Calvin: Lucas hoc modo dubitationem praevenit, quae subire poterat lectorum
animos: scimus enim, non habitos fuisse servos eo in pretio, ut de ipsorum vitâ
tam anxii essent domini, nisi qui singulari industriâ vel fide vel aliâ virtute
sibi gratiam acquisierant. Significat ergo Lucas non vulgare fuisse sordid
unique mancipium, sed fidelem et raris dotibus ornatum servum qui exiraiâ,
gratiâ apud dominum polleret: hinc tanta illius vitae cura et tarn studiosa
commendatio.

[4] Serm. lxii. 1: Dicendo se indignum praestitit dignum, non in cujus parietes,
sed in cujus cor Christus intraret. Neque hoc diceret cum tantâ fide et
humilitate, nisi illum quem timebat intrare in domum suam, corde gestaret. Nam
non erat magna felicitas si Dominus Jesus intraret in parietes ejus et non esset
in pectore ejus (Luc. vii. 36)

[5] Augustine (Serm. lxxvii. 8): Tecto non recipiebat, corde receperat. Quanto
humilior, tanto capacior, tanto plenior. Colles enim aquam repellunt, valles
implentur.

[6] Bengel: Sapientia fidelis ex ruditate militari pulchre elucens.

[7] The στρατιὰ οὐράνιος (Luk 2:13. cf. Rev 19:14). How true a notion this
indeed was, which in his simple faith the centurion bads conceived for himself,
we see from those words of our Lord’s, “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to
my Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels”
(Mat 26:53)? Jerome (in loc.): Volens ostendere Dominum quoque non per adventum
tanturn corporis, sed per angelorum ministeria posse implere quod vellet. Fuller
(Pisgah Sight of Palestine, vol. i. p. 109) takes it a little differently—”
Concluding from his own authority over his soldiers, that Christ, by a more
absolute power, as Lord High Marshal of all maladies, without his personal
presence, could by his bare word of command order any disease to march or
retreat at his pleasure.”

[8] Severus (in Cramer, Catena): Eἰ γὰρ ἐγὼ στρατυώτης ὤν‚ καὶ ὑπὸ ἐξουσίαν
βασιλέως τελῶν‚ τοῖς δορυϕόροις ἐντέλλομαι‚ πῶς οὐ μᾶλλον αὐτὸς ὁ τῶν ἄνω καὶ
ἀγγελικῶν δυνάμεων ποιητής‚ ὃ θέλεις ἐρεῖς καὶ γενήσεται; and Augustine (Enarr.
in Psa 46:9, and Serin, lxii. 2): Si ergo ego, inquit, homo sub potestate,
jubendi habeo potestatem, quid tu possis, cui omnes serviunt potestates? And
Bernard more than once brings out this as an eminent and characteristic feature
of his humility; thus Ep. cccxcii.: O prudens et vere corde humilis anima!
dicturus quod praelatus esset militibus, repressit extollentiam confessione
subjectionis: immo praemisit subjectionem, ut pluris sibi esset quod suberat,
quam quod praeerat; and beautifully, De Off. Episc. 8: Non jactabat potestatem,
quam nec solam protulit, nec priorem.... Praemissa siquidem est humilitas, ne
altitudo praecipitet. Nec enim locum invenit arrogantia, ubi tam clarum
humilitatis insigne praecesserat. Such explanation appears preferable to any of
those which make ἄνθρωπος ὑπὸ ἐξουσίαν, a man in authority. Rettig (Theol. Stud.
v. Krit. vol. xi. p. 472), reading with Lachmann ἄνθ. ὑπὸ ἐξους. τασσόμενος
(which last word, however, should not have been admitted into the text), has an
ingenious but untenable explanation in the latter and less eligible sense.
Different from all these, and entirely original, is the view of the passage
taken by the Auct. Oper. Imperf., who agrees so far with the right
interpretation that he makes ἄνθρωπος ὑπὸ ἐξουσίαν, a man in a subordinate
position; but then will not allow, but expressly denies, that it is thus a
comparison by way of contrast between himself and the Lord, which the centurion
is drawing,—that he is magnifying the Lord’s highest place by comparing it with
his own only subordinate, but that rather he is in all things likening the one
to the other: “As I am under worldly authorities, and yet have those whom I may
send, so Thou, albeit under thine heavenly Father, hast yet a heavenly host at
thy bidding. “(Ego sum homo sub potestate alterius, tam en habeo potestatem
jubendi eis qui sub me sunt. Nec enim impedior jubere minores, propter quod ipse
sum sub majoribus; sed ab illis quidem jubeor, sub quibus sum; illis autem
jubeo, qui sub me sunt: sic et tu, quamvis sub potestate Patris sis, secundum
quod homo es, babes tamen potestatem jubendi angelis tuis, nec impediris jubere
inferioribus, propter quod ipse habes superiorem.) This interpretation, though
just capable of a fair meaning, probably expresses the Arian tendencies of the
author.

[9] But since all wonder properly so called, arises from the meeting with
something unexpected and hitherto unknown, how could the Lord, to whom all
things were known, be said to marvel? To this some have answered that Christ did
not so much actually wonder, as commend to us that which was worthy of our
admiration. Thus Augustine (De Gen. Con. Man. i. 8): Quod mirabatur Dominus,
nobis mirandum esse significabat; and he asks in another place (Con. Adv. Leg.
et Proph. i. 7), how should not He have known before the measure of that faith,
which He Himself had created? (An vero alius earn in corde centurionis
operabatur, quam ipse qui mirabatur?) Yet a solution like this brings an
unreality into parts of our Lord’s conduct, as though He did some things for
show and the effect which they would have on others, instead of all his actions
having their deepest root in his own nature, being the truthful exponents of his
own most inmost being. On the other hand, to say that according to his human
nature He might have been ignorant of some things, seems to threaten a Nestorian
severance of the Person of Christ. But the whole question of the communio
idiomatum, with its precipices on either side, is one of the hardest in the
whole domain of theology. See Aquinas, Sum. Theol. 3a, qu. 15, art. 8; and
Gerhard, Loco. Theoll. iv. 2, 4.

[10] Augustine: In olivâ non inveni, quod inveni in oleastro. Ergo oliva
superbiens praecidatur; oleaster humilis inseratur. Vide inserentern, vide
praecidentem. Cf. In Joh. tract, xvi. ad finem.

[11] Augustine: Alienigenae came, domestici corde.

[12] Bernard (Serm. iii. Be Anima): Oleum misericordiae in vase fiduciae point.

[13] At 1 Mace. ix. 55, 56, it is said of Alcimus, who is described “as taken
with a palsy,” that he died presently “with great torment” (μετὰ βασάνου
μεγάλης), as here this servant is described as δεινῶς βασανιζόμενος (see Winer,
Realwörterbuch, s. v. Paralytische). In St. Matthew and St. Mark those thus
afflicted are always παραλυτικοί, in St. Luke, both in his Gospel and in the
Acts, παραλελυμένοι.


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  CHAPTER 20: 20-12. THE DEMONIAC IN THE SYNAGOGUE OF CAPERNAUM
========================================================================

12. The Demoniac in the Synagogue of Capernaum Mark 1:23-26; Luk 4:33-36 The
healing of this demoniac, the second miracle of the kind which the Evangelists
record at any length, may not offer so much remarkable as some similar works,
but has not the less its own special points of interest. What distinguishes it
the most, although finding parallels elsewhere (see Mark 1:34; Mat 8:29), is the
testimony which the evil spirit bears to Christ, and his refusal to accept it.
This history thus stands in very instructive relation with another in the Acts
(xvi. 16-18). There in like manner, a damsel possessed with a spirit of
divination bears witness to Paul and his company, “These men are the servants of
the most high God, which show unto us the way of salvation;” and Paul there, as
his Master here, will not suffer that hell should bear witness to heaven, the
kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light, and commands with power the unclean
spirit to come out. Our Lord was teaching, as was his wont upon a Sabbath, in
the synagogue of Capernaum; and the people were already wondering at the
authority with which He taught. But He was not mighty in word only, but also in
work, and it was ordained by the providence of his Heavenly Father, that the
opportunity should here be offered Him for making yet deeper the impression on
his hearers, and confirming the word with signs following. “There was in their
synagogue a man with an unclean spirit;” and this spirit felt at once the
nearness of One, who was stronger than all that kingdom whereunto he belonged;
who should destroy the works of the devil. And with the instinct and
consciousness of this danger which so nearly threatened his usurped dominion, he
cried out,—not the man himself, but the evil spirit,—”saying, Let us alone:[1]
what have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth?[2] art Thou come to
destroy us?” (Mat 8:29; 2Pe 2:4; Jude 1:6). “I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy
One of God.” Earth has not recognized her king, disguised as He is like one of
her own children; but heaven has borne witness to Him (Luk 2:11; Mat 3:17), and
now hell must bear its witness too; “the devils believe and tremble.” The
unholy, which is resolved to be unholy still, understands well that its
death-knell has sounded, when “the Holy One of God” (compare Psa 16:10 for the
first appearance of this phrase) has come to make war against it.

But, What, it may be asked, could have been the motive to this testimony, thus
borne? It is strange that the evil spirit should thus, without compulsion,
proclaim to the world the presence in the midst of it of the Holy One of God,
who should thus bring all the unholy, on which he battened and by which he
lived, to an end. “Was it not to be expected rather that he would have denied,
or sought to obscure, the glory of his person? It cannot be replied that this
was/ an unwilling confession to the truth, forcibly extorted by Christ’s
superior power, since it displeased Him in whose favour it professed to be
borne, and the mouth of its utterer is gagged.[3] It remains then either, with
Theophylact and Grotius, to take this as the cry of base and abject fear, that
with fawning and flatteries would fain avert from itself the doom, which with
Christ’s presence in the world must evidently be near;—to compare, as Jerome
does, this exclamation to that of the fugitive slave, dreaming of nothing but
stripes and torments when he encounters unawares his well-known lord/ and now
seeking by any means to deprecate his anger;[4]—or else, and so Christ’s
immediately stopping of his mouth would, seem to argue, this testimony was
intended only to do harm, to injure the estimation of Him in whose behalf it was
rendered. It was to bring the truth itself into suspicion and discredit, when it
received its attestation from the spirit of lies:[5] and thus these confessions
of Jesus as the -Christ may have been intended only to traverse and mar his
great purpose and plan, even as we see Mark 3:22 following hard on Mark 3:11.
Therefore the Lord would not allow this testimony: “Jesus rebuked him, saying,
Hold thy peace, and come out of him” [6] (cf. ver. 41); not “The Lord rebuke
thee” (Jude 1:9; cf. Acts 16:18), but rebuking in his own name and by his own
power.

It might seem as though the evil spirit was not altogether and at once obedient
to the word of Christ, that it was not altogether a word of power; since He bade
him to hold his peace, and yet in the next verse we learn that only after “he
had torn him, and cried with a loud voice, he came out of him”(cf. Acts 8:7).
But in truth he was obedient to this command of silence; he did not speak
anymore, and that was what our Lord forbade: this loud cry was nothing but an
inarticulate utterance of rage and pain. Neither is there any contradiction
between St. Luke, who says that the evil spirit “hurt him not” and St. Mark, who
describes him as having “torn him” he did not do him any permanent injury; no
doubt what evil he could do him he did. St. Luke himself reports that he cast
him on the ground; with which the phrase of the earlier Evangelist, that he
threw him into strong convulsions, in fact consents. We have at Mark 9:26 (cf.
Luk 9:42) an analogous case, only with worse symptoms accompanying the going out
of the foul spirit; for what the devil cannot keep as his own, he will, if he
can, destroy; even as Pharaoh never treated the children of Israel worse than
just when they were escaping from his grasp. Something similar is evermore
finding place; and Satan tempts, plagues, and buffets none so much as those who
are in the act of being delivered from his tyranny for ever.

St. Mark never misses an opportunity of recording the wonderful impression which
Christ’s miracles made on the witnesses of them,—the astonishment, the
amazement, with which these were filled. He lays nowhere greater emphasis on
this than here: “And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among
themselves, saying, What thing is this? What new doctrine is this? For with
authority commandeth He even the unclean spirits, and they do obey Him.”

Footnotes

[1] Ἔα, not the imperative from ἐάω, but an interjection of tenor, wrung out by
the ϕοβερὰ ἐκδοχὴ κρίσεως (Heb 10:27),—unless indeed the interjection was
originally this imperative.

[2] Ναζαρηνός here. The word appears in the N. T. in two other forms, Ναζαραῖος
and Ναζωραῖος. Of all these the last is the most frequent.

[3] Φιμώθητι, cf. Mat 22:12; and for the word used in its literal sense, 1Co
9:9.

[4] Grotius: Vult Jesum blanditiis demulcere, cui se certando imparem erat
expertus.Jerome (Comm. in Matt, ix.): Velut si servi fugitivi post multum
temporis dominum suum videant; nihil aliud nisi de verberibus deprecantur.

[5] Thus, with a slight difference, Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 7): Increpuit eum
Jesus, plane ut invidiosum et in ipsâ, confessione petulantern et male
adulantem, quasi haec esset summa gloria Christi, si ad perditionem daemonum
venisset, et non potius ad hominum salutem.

[6] Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 8): Illius erat, praeconium immundi spiritûs
respuere, cui Sancti abundabant. Calvin: Duplex potest esse ratio, cur loqui non
sineret: una generalis quod nondum maturum plenae revelationis tempus advenerat;
altera specialis, quod illos repudiabat praecones ac testes suae divinitatis,
qui laude suâ nihil aliud quam maculam, et sinistram opinionem aspergere illi
poterant. Atque haec posterior indubia est, quia testatum oportuit esse hostile
dissidium, quod habebat aeternae salutis et vitae auctor cum mortis principe
ejusque ministris.


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  CHAPTER 21: 21-13. THE HEALING OF SIMON'S WIFE'S MOTHER
========================================================================

13. The Healing of Simon’s Wife’s Mother Mat 8:14-17; Mark 1:29-31; Luk 4:38-40
This miracle is by St. Mark and St. Luke linked immediately, and in a manner
that marks historic connexion, with that which has just come under our notice.
Thus St. Mark: “And forthwith when they were come out of the synagogue, they
entered into the house of Simon and Andrew.” In St. Luke it is only “Simon’s
house;”[1] his stronger personality causing Andrew, though probably with the
natural prerogatives of an elder brother, and certainly with spiritual, as the
earlier called and the bringer of his brother to Jesus, here as elsewhere to
fall into the background. It was probably to eat bread that the Lord on this
Sabbath day entered into that house. “And when Jesus was come into Peter’s
house, He saw his wife’s mother laid and sick of a fever,”—”a great fever,” as
St. Luke informs us, as he also mentions the intercession of some on her behalf;
“they besought Him for her.” We owe to him also the remarkable phrase, “He
rebuked the fever,” even as on another occasion ’’ He rebuked the winds and the
sea.” St. Matthew alone records that “He touched her hand” (cf. Dan 10:16; Rev
1:17; Luk 7:14; Luk 8:54). From that life-giving touch of his health and
strength flowed into her wasted frame; “the fever left her,” and left her not in
that state of extreme weakness and exhaustion which fever usually leaves behind,
when in the ordinary course of things it has abated;[2] not slowly convalescent;
but so entire and unusual was her cure, that “immediately she arose, and
ministered unto them,”—providing for her sons’ guests what was necessary for
their entertainment;—serving, it has been often observed, as a pattern to all
restored to spiritual health, that they should use this strength in ministering
to Christ and to his people.[3] The fame of this miracle, following close upon
another wrought on the same day, spread so rapidly, that “when the even was
come” or, as St. Mark has it, “when the sun did set,” “they brought unto Him
many that were possessed with devils; and He cast out the spirits with his word,
and healed all that were sick.” There are two explanations of this little
circumstance, by all three Evangelists carefully recorded, that only when the
sun was setting. or had actually set, they brought their sick to Jesus;—either,
as Hammond and Olshausen suggest, that they waited till the heat of the middle
day, which these were ill able to bear, was past, and brought them in the cool
of the evening; or else to assume that this day being a Sabbath (cf. Mark 1:21;
Mark 1:29; Mark 1:32), they were unwilling to violate its sacred rest. This in
their own esteem they would have done by carrying their sick to be healed before
the close of that day. It did close, as is well known, at sunset. Thus
Chrysostom, on one occasion,[4] although on another he sees here more generally
an evidence of the faith and eagerness of the people, who, even when the day was
spent, still came streaming to Christ, and laying their sick at his feet. The
quotation which St. Matthew makes from Isaiah (liii. 4), after he has recorded
the numerous healings which Christ upon that day effected, is not without its
difficulties; “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the
prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.”[5] The
difficulty does not lie in the fact that St. Peter (1Pe 2:24) finds in the same
words a prophecy of the Messiah rather as the bearer of the sins, than the
healer of the sicknesses, of his people. As far as the words go, St. Matthew is
nearer to the original, which declares He came under our sicknesses and our
sorrows, the penal consequences of our sins; and any apparent difference between
the two inspired writers vanishes at once, when we keep in mind the intimate
connexion which Scripture every where asserts between sin and suffering; the
disorder of our moral, and the disorder of our physical, being; Gen 3:17; Gen
3:19, being the first in the series; and not Scripture only; for probably there
is no truth which has imprinted itself more deeply on all the language of men;
few languages failing to possess a word like our own “evil,” with its double
meaning of sin and of calamity. But the application of the verse is more
embarrassing. Those with best right to be heard on the matter, deny that “bore”
can mean “bore away,” or that “took” can be accepted in the sense of “removed,”
and affirm that the words must mean a taking upon Himself of the sufferings and
sorrows from which He delivered his people. But in what sense did our Lord take
upon Himself. the sicknesses which He healed? Did He not rather abolish, and
remove them altogether out of the way? It is, no doubt, a perfectly scriptural
thought, that Christ is the κάθαρμα, the ϕάρμακον, the piaculum, who is to draw
to Himself and to absorb all the evils of the world, in whom they are all to
meet, that in Him they all may be abolished and done away; yet He did not become
this through the healing of diseases, any more than through any other isolated
acts of his life and conversation. He was not more this piacular expiation,
after He had healed these sicknesses than before. We can understand his being
said in his death and passion to come Himself under the burden of those
sufferings and pains from which He released others; but how can this be affirmed
of Him when He was engaged in works of beneficent activity? Then He was rather
chasing away diseases and pains altogether,[6] than Himself undertaking them. An
explanation, which has found favour with many, has been suggested by the
circumstance that on this occasion his labours were not ended with the day, but
reached far into the evening;—so that He removed, indeed, sicknesses from
others, but with painfulness to Himself, and with the weariness attendant upon
labours unseasonably drawn out; and thus may not unfitly be said to have taken
those sicknesses on Himself,[7] Olshausen adopts, though in somewhat more
spiritual a manner, this explanation. The obscurity of the passage, he says,
only disappears when we learn to think more really of the healing activity of
Christ, as an actual outstreaming and outbreathing of the fulness of his inner
life. As therefore physical exertion physically wearied Him (John 4:6), so did
spiritual activity long drawn out spiritually exhaust Him; and this exhaustion,
as all other forms of suffering, He underwent for our sakes. A statement
questionable in its doctrine: moreover, I cannot believe that the Evangelist
meant to lay any such stress upon the unusual or prolonged labours of this day,
or that he would not as freely have cited these words in relating any other
cures which the Lord performed. Not this day only, even had it been a day of
especial weariness, but every day of his earthly life was a coming under, upon
his part, of those 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 (Gal 6:2), 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 truest of all in Him upon whom the help
of all was laid.[8] 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 these, as a real consequence of sin,
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 finally swallow up death, and all that
led to death, in victory.

Footnotes

[1] Maldonatus is greatly troubled that Peter should have a house, while it has
been said before that he “left all,” and to allow this really to have been
Simon’s house appears to him to militate against the perfection of his state.
His explanation and that of most of the Romish expositors is, that this house
was one which had been Peter’s, and which he had made over to his wife’s mother,
when he determined to follow Christ in the absolute renunciation of all things.
It is needless; the renunciation was entire in will (see Mat 19:27), and ready
in act to be carried out into all its details, as necessity arose.

[2] Jerome (Comm. in Matt, in loc.) observes this: Natura hominum istiusmodi
est, ut post febrim magis lassescant corpora, et incipiente sanitate
aegrotationis mala sentiant.

[3] Gerhard (Harm. Evang. 88): Simul vero docemur, quando spiritualiter sanati
sumus, ut membra nostra praebeamus arm a justitiae Dei [Deo?] et ipsi serviamus
injustitiâ et sanctitate te coram ipso, inservientes proximo, et membris
Christi, sicut haec muliercula Christo et discipulis ministrat.

[4] In Cramer, Catena, vol. i. p. 278.

[5] St. Matthew here forsakes the Septuagint, which would not have answered his
purpose (οὗτος τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν ϕέρει‚ καὶ περὶ ἡμῶν ὀδυνᾶται), and gives an
independent translation.

[6] Some have been tempted to make here λαμβάνειν and βαστάζειν=ἀϕαιρεῖν, as
Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iii. 17), abstulit. But this plainly will not suit with
the original, where Messiah is described not as the physician of men, but the
sufferer for men; or, at any rate, only the first through being the second.

[7] So Woltzogen, whom, despite his Socinian tendencies, here Witsius (Meletem.
Leidens. p. 402) quotes with approbation: Adeo ut locus hie prophetae bis fuerit
adimpletus; semel cum Christus corporis morbos abstulit ab hominibus non sine
summâ, molestiâ ac defatigatione, dum ad vesperam usque circa fegrorum
curationem occupatus, quodammodo ipsas hominum aegritudines in se
recipiebat..... Alterâ vice, cum suis perpessionibus ac morte spiritualiter
morbos nostrorum peccatorum a nobis sustulit. Cf. Grotius, in loc. Theophylact
had led the way to this explanation, finding an emphasis in the fact that the
sick were brought to Jesus in the evening, out of season (παρὰ καιρόν), though
he does not bring that circumstance into connexion with these words of Isaiah.

[8] Hilary (in loc.): Passione corporis sui infirmitates humanae imbecillitatis
absorbens. Schoettgen (Hor. Heb. in loc.) lias a remarkable quotation to the
same effect from the book Sohar.


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  CHAPTER 22: 22-14. THE RAISING OF THE WIDOW'S SON
========================================================================

14. The Raising of the Widow’s Son

Luk 7:11-16 The “city called Nain” is not mentioned elsewhere in Scripture. It
lay upon the southern border of Galilee, and on the road to Jerusalem, whither
our Lord was probably now going to keep the second passover of his open
ministry. Stanley points out its exact position, and even the spot where this
great miracle must have been wrought: “On the northern slope of the rugged and
barren ridge of Little Hermon, immediately west of Endor, which lies in a
further recess of the same range, is the ruined village of Nain. No convent, no
tradition marks the spot. But, under these circumstances, the name is sufficient
to guarantee its authenticity. One entrance alone it could have had—that which
opens on the rough hill-side in its downward slope to the plain. It must have
been in this steep descent, as, according to Eastern custom, they ’carried out
the dead man,’ that ’nigh to the gate’ of the village, the bier was stopped, and
the long procession of mourners stayed, and ’the young man delivered back’ to
his mother.” “Now when He came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a
dead man carried out, [1] the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and
much people of the city was with her.” That the Lord should thus meet the
funeral at “the gate of the city,” while it belonged no doubt to the
wonder-works of God’s grace, being one of those marvellous coincidences which,
seeming accidental, are yet deep laid in the councils of his wisdom and of his
love, is at the same time a natural circumstance, to be explained by the fact
that the Jews did not suffer the interring of their dead in towns, but buried
them without the walls. There was much in the circumstances of this sad
procession to arouse even their. compassion who were touched with no such lively
sense of human sorrows as belonged to our compassionate Lord; and it was this
which had brought that “much people” to accompany the bier. Indeed, it would be
hard to make the picture of desolation more complete, than in two strokes the
Evangelist has done, whose whole narrative here, apart from its deeper interest,
is a master-work for its perfect beauty. The bitterness of the mourning for an
only son had passed into a proverb; thus Jer 6:26 : “Make thee mourning as for
an only son, most bitter lamentation;” Zec 12:10 : “They shall mourn for Him as
one mourneth for his only son;” and Amo 8:10 : “I will make it as the mourning
of an only son. “And not otherwise the desolation of a widow (Ruth 1:20-21; 1Ti
5:5; Job 24:3).

“And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep
not.” How different this “Weep not” from the idle “Weep not,” which so often
proceeds from the lips of earthly comforters, who, even while they speak the
words, give no reason why the mourner should cease from weeping. But. He who has
come down from heaven that one day He may make good that word, “God shall wipe
away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither
sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain” (Rev 21:4), shows now
some effectual glimpses and presages of his power, wiping away, though as yet it
may not be for ever, the tears from the weeping eyes of that desolate mother.
Yet, as Olshausen has observed, it would be an error to suppose that compassion
for the mother was the determining motive for this mighty spiritual act on the
part of Christ: for, in that case, had the joy of the mother been the only
object which He had in view, the young man who was raised would have been used
merely as a means, which yet no man can ever be. That joy of the mother was
indeed the nearest consequence of the act, but not the final cause;—that, though
at present hidden, was, no doubt, the spiritual awakening of the young man for a
higher life, through which, indeed, alone the joy of the mother became a true
and an abiding joy.

“And He came and touched the bier”—an intimation rightly interpreted by those to
whom it was addressed; “and they that bare him stood still.” Then follows the
word of power, and spoken, as ever, in his own name: “Young man, I say unto
thee, Arise; —I, that am the Resurrection and the Life, quickening the dead, and
calling those things which be not, as though they were.” And that word was
heard, for “he that was dead sat up, and began to speak.” Christ rouses from the
bier as easily as another would rouse from the bed,[2]—different in this even
from his own messengers and ministers in the Old Covenant; for they, only with
prayer and effort (1Ki 17:20-22; cf. Acts 9:40), or after a long and patient
exercise of love (2Ki 4:34), won back his prey from the jaws of death; and this,
because there dwelt not the fulness of power in them, who were but as servants
in the house of another, not as a Son in his own.[3] So, too, in heathen legend,
she was only “rescued from Death by force,” and after a fierce conflict “whom
Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave.”[4]

“And He delivered him to his mother” (cf. 1Ki 17:23; 2Ki 4:36). So shall He
once, when his great “Arise” shall have awakened not one, but all the dead,
deliver all those that have fallen asleep in Him, to their beloved for personal
recognition and for a special fellowship of joy, amid the universal gladness
which shall then fill all hearts. We have the promise and pledge of this in the
three raisings from the dead which prefigure that coming resurrection. “And
there came a fear on all” (cf. Mark 1:27; Mark 5:15; Luk 5:9), “and they
glorified God” (Mark 2:12), “saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us,
and that God hath visited his people.” This could be no ordinary prophet, they
concluded rightly, since none but the very greatest of the olden times, an
Elijah or an Elisha, had revived the dead. They praised God, that with the
raising up of so great a prophet He had brought the long and dreary period to a
close, during which they had had no prophet more, till now it might have almost
seemed that there should never again be any “open vision,” that the last of the
prophets had arrived.[5]

Footnotes

[1] Ἐξεκομίζετο. The technical word is ἐκϕέρειν, and the carrying out, ἐκϕορά

[2] Augustine (Serm. xcviii. 2): Nemo tam facile excitat in lecto, quam facile
Christus in sepulcro.

[3] See what has been said already, p, 35. Massillon, in his sermon, Sur la
Divinite de Jesus-Christ, has these eloquent words: Elie ressuscite des morts,
il est vrai; mais il est oblige de se coucher plusieurs fois sur le corps de
l’enfant qu’il ressuscite: il souffle, il se rétrecit, il s’agite: on voit bien
qu’il invoque une puissance etrangere: qu’il rappelle de l’empire de la mort une
âme qui n’est pas soumise â sa voix: et qu’il n’est pas lui-même le maître de la
mort et de la vie. Jesus-Christ ressuscite les morts comme il fait les actions
les plus communes; il parle en maître à ceux qui dorment d’un sommeil éternel;
et l’on sent bien qu’il est le Dieu des morts comme des vivans, jamais plus
tranquille que lorsqu’il opere les plus grandes choses.

[4] See the Alcestis of Euripides, 849-861.

[5] Philostratus (Vita Apollonii, iv. 45) ascribes a miracle to Apollonius,
which is evidently framed in imitation and rivalry of this (on this rivalry see
p. 65, and Baur, Apollonius und Christus, p. 40). Apollonius met one day in the
streets of Rome a damsel earned out to burial, followed by her betrothed, and by
a weeping company. He bade them set down the bier, saying he would stanch their
tears; and having inquired her name, whispered something in her ear, and then
taking her by the hand, he raised her up, and she began straightway to speak,
and returned to her father’s house. Yet Philostratus does not relate this as
probably having been more than an awakening from the deep swoon of an apparent
death (ἀϕύπνισε τὴν κόρην τοῦ δοκοῦντος θανάτου), and suggests an explanation
that reminds one of the modern ones of Paulus and his school,—that Apollonius
perceived in her a spark of life which had escaped the notice of her physicians
and attendants; but whether it was this, or that he did truly kindle in her anew
the extinguished spark of life, he acknowledges it impossible for him, as it was
for the bystanders, to say.


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  CHAPTER 23: 23-15. THE HEALING OF THE IMPOTENT MAN AT BETHESDA
========================================================================

15. The Healing of the Impotent Man at Bethesda

John 5:1-16 The ablest commentator of the Romish communion begins his
observations on this miracle with the expression of his hearty wish that St.
John had added one word, and told us at what “feast of the Jews” it was
wrought.[1] Certainly a vast amount of learned discussion would so have been
spared; for this question has been much debated, and with an interest beyond
that which intrinsically belongs to it; for it affects the whole chronology of
St. John’s Gospel, and therefore of the ministry of our Lord; seeing that, if we
cannot determine the duration of that from the helps which this Gospel supplies,
we shall seek in vain to do it from the others. If this “feast of the Jews” was
certainly a passover, then St. John will make mention of four passovers, three
besides this present, namely, 2:13; 6:4; and the last; and we shall arrive at
the three years and a half, the half of a “week of years,” for the length of
Christ’s ministry, which many, with appearance of reason, have thought they
found designated beforehand for it in the prophecies of Daniel (ix. 27).[2]. But
if this be a feast of Pentecost, or, as in later times has found acceptance with
many, of Purim, then the half week of years which seems by prophecy to have been
measured out for the duration of Messiah’s ministry, however likely in itself,
will derive no confirmation from dates supplied by St. John; nor will it be
possible to make out from him, with any certainty, a period of more than between
two and three years from our Lord’s baptism to the time when, by a better
sacrifice, He caused “the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.” The oldest
opinion which we have on this much-contested point is that of Irenaeus. Replying
to the Gnostics, who pressed the words of Isaiah, “the acceptable year of the
Lord,” as meaning literally that our Lord’s ministry lasted but a single year,
he enumerates the several passovers which He kept, and expressly includes
this.[3] Origen, however, and the Alexandrian doctors, who drew from Isaiah’s
words the same conclusions which the Gnostics had drawn, did not, as
consistently they could not, agree with Irenaeus; nor did the Greek Church
generally; Chrysostom, Cyril, Theophylact, understanding the feast here to be
Pentecost. At a later period, however, Theodoret, wishing to confirm his
interpretation of the half week in Daniel, refers to St. John in proof that the
Lord’s ministry lasted for three years and a half,[4] and thus implies that for
him this feast was a passover. Luther, Calvin, and the Reformers generally were
of this mind; and were the question only between it and Pentecost, the point,
would have been settled long ago, as now on all sides the latter is given up.
But in modern times another scheme has been started,—Kepler was its first
author,—which has many suffrages in its favour; to wit, that we have here a
feast of Purim; that, namely, which fell just before the second passover in our
Lord’s ministry,[5] for second, and not third, would in that case be the
passover which St. John presently names (John 6:4). I am not disposed to accept
this newer disposition of the times and seasons of our Lord’s life. No doubt
there is something perplexing in this passover being so soon followed by
another; though, if we accept the supplementary character of St. John’s Gospel,
and that it mainly records our Lord’s ministry in Judaea and Jerusalem, on which
the other Evangelists had dwelt so little, this perplexity will disappear; above
all, when the immediate consequences of this miracle were an impossibility to
tarry there (5:1, 6; 6:1). Our Translation speaks, not of “the feast” but “a
feast of the Jews” and it is certainly doubtful whether the article should stand
in the Greek text or no; though Tischendorf has restored it in his last edition,
and it is found in that oldest of all MSS., the Codex Sinaiticus. If it should
have a place here, and “the feast” be the proper rendering, this would be nearly
decisive; for all other feasts so fall into the background for a Jew, as
compared with the passover, that “the feast” with no further addition or
qualification, could hardly mean any other feast but this (John 4:45; Mat
27:15). Still the uncertainty of the reading will not allow too great a weight
to be placed on this argument. That, however, which mainly prevails with me is
this—the Evangelist clearly connects, though not in as many words, yet by
pregnant juxtaposition, the Lord’s going to Jerusalem with the keeping of this
feast; for this He went up (cf. 2:13). But there was nothing in the feast of
Purim to draw Him thither. That was no religious feast at all; but a popular; of
human, not of divine, institution. No temple service pertained to it; but men
kept it at their own houses. And though naturally it would have been celebrated
at Jerusalem with more pomp and circumstance than anywhere else, yet there was
nothing in its feasting and its rioting, its intemperance and excess, which
would have made our Lord particularly desirous to sanction it with his presence.
As far as Mordecai and Esther and the deliverance wrought in their days stand
below Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, and the glorious redemption from Egypt, so in
true worth, in dignity, in religious significance, stood the feast of Purim
below the feast of the passover; however a carnal generation may have been
inclined to exaggerate the importance of that, in the past events and actual
celebration of which there was so much to flatter the carnal mind. There is an
extreme improbability in the hypothesis that it was this which attracted our
Lord to Jerusalem; and we shall do well, I think, to stand here upon the ancient
ways, and to take this feast which our Lord adorned with his presence and
signalized with this great miracle, as “the feast,” that feast which is the
mother of all the rest, the passover.

“Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep-market a pool,[6] which is called in the
Hebrew tongue Bethesda,[7] having five porches.” For many centuries the large
excavation near the gate now called St. Stephen’s gate, has been pointed out as
the ancient Bethesda.[8] It is true that its immense depth, seventy-five feet,
had perplexed many; yet the “incurious ease” which has misnamed so much in the
Holy Land and in Jerusalem, had remained without being seriously challenged,
until Robinson, among the many traditions which he has disturbed, brought this
also into question, affirming that “there is not the slightest evidence which
can identify it with the Bethesda of the New Testament.”[9] Nor does the
tradition which identifies them ascend higher, as he can discover, than the
thirteenth century. He sees in that excavation the remains of the ancient fosse,
which protected on the north side the citadel Antonia; and the true Bethesda he
thinks he finds, though on this he speaks with hesitation, in what now goes
under the name of the Fountain of the Virgin, being the upper fountain of
Siloam.[10]

“In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered.” Our
Version is slightly defective here. It leaves an impression that “impotent folk”
is the genus, presently subdivided into the three species, “blind, halt,
withered;” whereas, instead of three being thus subordinated to one, all four
are coordinate with one another. “We should read rather, “In these lay a great
multitude of sick, blind, halt, withered;” the enumeration by four, when meant
to be exhaustive, being a very favourite one in Scripture (Eze 14:21; Rev 6:8;
Mat 15:31). The words which complete this verse, “waiting for the moving of the
water” lie under strong suspicion, as the verse following has undoubtedly no
right to a place in the text. That fourth verse the most important Greek and
Latin copies are alike without, and most of the early Versions. In other MSS.
which retain this verse, the obelus which hints suspicion, or the asterisk which
marks rejection, is attached to it; while those in which it appears unquestioned
belong mostly, as Griesbach shows, to a later recension of the text. And this
fourth verse spreads the suspicion of its own spuriousness over the last clause
of the verse preceding, which, though it has not so great a body of evidence
against it, has yet, in a less degree, the same notes of suspicion about it.
Doubtless whatever here is addition, whether only the fourth verse, or the last
clause also of the third, found very early its way into the text; we have it as
early as Tertullian,—-the first witness for its presence.[11] The baptismal
Angel, a favourite thought with him, was here foreshowed and typified; as
somewhat later, Ambrose[12] saw a prophecy of the descent of the Holy Ghost,
consecrating the waters of baptism to the mystical washing away of sin; and
Chrysostom makes frequent use of the verse in this sense.[13] At first probably
a marginal note, expressing the popular notion of the Jewish Christians
concerning the origin of the healing power which from time to time these waters
possessed, by degrees it assumed the shape in which now we have it: for there
are marks of growth about it, betraying themselves in a great variety of
readings,—some copies omitting one part, and some another of the verse,—all
which is generally the sign of a later addition: thus, little by little, it
procured admission into the text, probably at Alexandria first, the birth-place
of other similar additions. For the statement itself, there is nothing in it
which need perplex or offend, or which might not have found place in St. John.
It rests upon that religious view of the world, which in all nature sees
something beyond and behind nature, which does not believe that it has
discovered causes, when, in fact, it has only traced the sequence of phenomena,
and which everywhere recognizes a going forth of the immediate power of God,
invisible agencies of his, whether personal or otherwise, accomplishing his
will.[14] That Angels should be the ministers of his will would be only
according to the analogy of other Scripture; while in “the Angel of the waters”
(Rev 16:5) we have a remarkable point of contact with the statement of this
verse. From among this suffering expectant multitude Christ singles out one on
whom He will display his power;—one only, for He came not now to be the healer
of men’s bodies, save only as He could annex to this healing the truer healing
of their souls and spirits. “And a certain man was there which had an infirmity
thirty and eight years.”[15] Some understand this poor cripple—a paralytic
probably (cf. ver. 8 with Mark 2:4; Acts 9:33-34), to have actually waited at
the edge of that pool for these “thirty and eight years.” Others take them for
the years of his life. But neither interpretation is correct; these “thirty and
eight years” express the duration not of his life, but of his infirmity; yet
without implying that he had expected health from that pool during all that
time; though the next verse informs us that he had there waited for it long.
“When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case,
He saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?” A superfluous question, it might
seem; for who would not be made whole, if he might? and his very presence at the
place of healing attested his desire. But the question has its purpose. This
impotent man probably had waited so long, and so long waited in vain, that hope
was dead or wellnigh dead within him, and the question is asked to awaken in him
anew a yearning after the benefit, which the Saviour, pitying his hopeless case,
was about to impart. His heart may have been as “withered” as his limbs through
his long sufferings and the long neglects of his fellow-men; it was something to
learn that this stranger pitied him, was interested in his case, would help him
if He could. So learning to believe in his love, he was being prepared to
believe also in his might. Our Lord assisted him now to the faith, which
presently He was about to demand of him. The answer, “Sir, I have no man, when
the water is troubled, to put me into the pool,” contains no direct reply, but
an explanation why he had continued so long in his infirmity. The virtues of the
water disappeared so fast, they were so pre-occupied, whether from the
narrowness of the spot, or from some cause which we know not, by the first
comer, that he, himself helpless, and with no man to aid, could never be this
first, always therefore missed the blessing: “while I am coming, another
steppeth down before me.” But the long and weary years of baffled expectation
are now to find an end: “Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.”
This taking up the bed shall serve as a testimony to all of the completeness of
the cure (cf. Mat 9:6; Acts 9:34). The man believed that power accompanied that
word; made proof, and found that it was so: “immediately the man was made whole,
and took up his bed, and walked. And on the same day was the Sabbath”—a
significant addition, explaining all which follows.

“The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, It is the Sabbath; it is not
lawful for thee to carry thy bed.” By “the Jews” we understand here, as always
in St. John, not the multitude, but the Sanhedrists, the spiritual heads of the
nation (John 1:19; John 7:1; John 9:22; John 18:12; John 18:14). These find
fault, with the man, for had not Moses said, “In it thou shalt not do any work”
(Exo 20:10), and Jeremiah more pointedly still, “Take heed to yourselves, and
bear no burden on the Sabbath days” (xvii. 21); so that they seemed to have
words of Scripture to justify their interference, and the offence which they
took. But the man’s bearing of his bed was not a work by itself; it was merely
the corollary, or indeed the concluding act,, of his healing, that by which he
should make proof himself, and give testimony to others, of its reality. It was
lawful to heal on the Sabbath day; it was lawful then to do whatever was
immediately involved in, and directly followed on, the healing. And here lay
ultimately the true controversy between Christ and his adversaries, namely,
whether it was more lawful to do good on that day, or to leave it undone (Luk
6:9). Starting from the unlawfulness of leaving good undone, He asserted that He
was its true keeper, keeping it as God kept it, with the highest beneficent
activity, which in his Father’s case, as in his own, was identical with deepest
rest,—and not, as they accused Him of being, its breaker. It was because He had
Himself” done those things” (see ver. 16), that the Jews persecuted Him, and not
for bidding the man to bear his bed, which was a mere accident involved in his
own preceding act.[16] This, however, first attracted their notice. Already the
pharisaical Jews, starting from passages such as Exo 23:12; Exo 31:13-17; Exo
35:2-3; Num 15:32-36; Nehem. 13:15-22; had laid down such a multitude of
prohibitions, and drawn so infinite a number of hair-splitting distinctions (as
we shall have occasion to see, Luk 13:15-16), that a plain and unlearned man
could hardly know what was forbidden, and what was permitted. This poor man did
not concern himself with these subtle casuistries. He only knew that One with
power to make him whole, One who had shown compassion to him, bade him do what
he was doing, and he is satisfied with this authority: “He answered them, He
that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk”[17]—surely
the very model of an answer, when the world finds fault and is scandalized with
what the Christian is doing, contrary to its traditions, and to the rules which
it has laid down!

After this greater offender they inquire now, as being the juster object of
censure and of punishment: “Then asked they him, What man is that which said
unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?” The malignity of the questioners reveals
itself in the very shape which their question “assumes. They do not take up the
poor man’s words on their more favourable side, which would also have been the
more natural; nor ask, “What man is he that made thee whole?” But, probably,
themselves knowing perfectly well, or at least guessing, who his Healer was,
they insinuate by the form of their question that He could not be from God, who
gave a command which they, the interpreters, of God’s law, esteemed so great an
outrage and transgression against it.[18] So will they weaken and undermine any
influence which Christ may have obtained over this simple man—an influence
already manifest in his finding the Lord’s authority sufficient to justify him
in the transgression of their commandment. But the man could not point out his
benefactor; “he that was healed wist not who it was; for Jesus had conveyed Him?
self away, a multitude being in that place”—not, as Grotius will have it, to
avoid ostentation and the applauses of the people; but this mention of the
multitude shall explain the facility with which He withdrew: He mingled with and
passed through the crowd, and so was lost from sight in an instant. Were. it not
that the common people usually were on his side on occasions like the present,
one might imagine that a menacing crowd under the influence of these chiefs of
the Jews had gathered together, while this conversation was going forward
betwixt them and the healed cripple, from whose violence the Lord, for his hour
was not yet come, withdrew Himself awhile.

“Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple.” We may accept it as a token of good
that Jesus found him there rather than in any other place. It lies near to
suppose that he was there, returning thanks for the signal mercy so lately
vouchsafed to him (cf. Isaiah xxxviii. 22; Acts 3:8). But He, whose purpose it
ever was to connect. with the healing of the body the better healing of the
soul, suffers not this matter to conclude thus; but by a word of solemn warning,
declares to the sufferer that all his past life lay open and manifest before
Him; interprets to him the past judgment, bids him not provoke future and more
terrible: “Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come
unto thee.” Assuredly these are words which give us an awful glimpse of the
severity of God’s judgments even in this present time; for we must not restrict
this “worse thing” to judgment in hell;—” a worse thing” than those eight and
thirty years of infirmity and pain. His sickness had found him a youth, and left
him an old man; it had withered up all his manhood, and yet “a worse thing” even
than this is threatened him, should he sin again.[19] Let no man, however
miserable, count that he has exhausted the power of God’s wrath. The arrows that
have pierced him may have been keen; but, if he shall provoke them, there are
sharper and keener behind.

What the past sin of this sufferer had been we know not, but the man himself
knew very well; his conscience was the interpreter of the warning. This much,
however, is plain to us; that Christ did connect the man’s suffering with his
own particular sin; for, however He rebuked elsewhere men’s uncharitable way of
tracing such a connexion, or that unrighteous Theodicee, which should in every
case affirm a man’s personal suffering to be in proportion to his personal
guilt, a scheme which all experience refutes, much judgment being deferred to
the great day; yet He never meant thereby to deny that much of judgment is even
now continually proceeding. However unwilling we may be to receive this,
bringing as it does God so near, and making retribution so real and so prompt a
thing, yet is it true notwithstanding. As some eagle, pierced with a shaft
feathered from its own wing, so many a sufferer, even in this present time, sees
and cannot deny that his own sin fledged the arrow of judgment, which has
pierced him and brought him down. And lest he should miss the connexion,
oftentimes he is punished, it may be is himself sinned against by his
fellow-man, in the very kind wherein he himself has sinned against others (Jdg
1:6-7; Gen 42:21). The deceiver is deceived, as was Jacob (Gen 27:19; Gen 27:24;
Gen 29:23; Gen 31:7; Gen 37:32); the violator of the sanctities of family life
is himself wounded and outraged in his tenderest and dearest relations, as was
David (2Sa 11:4; 2Sa 13:14; 2Sa 16:22). And many a sinner, who cannot read his
own doom, for it is a final and a fatal one, yet declares in that doom to others
that there is indeed a coming back upon men of their sins. The grandson of Ahab
is himself treacherously slain in the portion of Naboth the Jezreelite (2Ki
9:23); William Rufus perishes, himself the third of his family who did so, in
the New Forest, the scene of the sacrilege and the crimes of his race.[20]

“The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him
whole.” Whom he did not recognize in the crowd, he has recognized in the temple.
This is Augustine’s remark, who hereupon finds occasion to commend that inner
calm and solitude of spirit in which alone we shall recognize the Lord.[21] Yet
while such remarks have their own worth, they are scarcely applicable here. The
man probably learned from the bystanders the name of his deliverer, and went and
told it,—assuredly not, as some assume, in treachery, or to augment the envy
which was already existing against Him,—but gratefully proclaiming aloud and to
the rulers of his nation the physician who had healed him.[22] He may have
expected, in the simplicity of his heart, that the name of Him, whose
reputation, though not his person, he had already known, whom so many counted as
a prophet, if not as the Messiah Himself, would be sufficient to stop the mouths
of the gainsayers. Had he wrought in a baser spirit, he would not, as Chrysostom
ingeniously observes, have gone and told them “that it was Jesus, which had made
him whole” but rather that it was Jesus who had bidden him to carry his bed.
Moreover, we may be quite sure that the Lord, who knew what was in man, would
not have wasted his benefits on so mean and thankless a wretch as this man would
have thus shown himself to be. His word did not allay their displeasure, but
only provoked it the more. “And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and
sought to slay Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath day.” What
was the penalty for the wilful violation of the Sabbath, and they who would not
see in Jesus the Son of God could have only regarded Him as such a presumptuous
violator of it, we see Num 15:32-36. He, returning good for evil, endeavoured to
raise them to the true point of view from which to contemplate the Sabbath, and
his relation to it as the Only-begotten of the Father. He is no more a breaker
of the Sabbath than God is, when He upholds with an energy that knows no pause
the work of his creation from hour to hour and from moment to moment: “My Father
worketh hitherto, and I work;” my work is but the reflex of his work. Abstinence
from an outward work is not essential to the observance of a Sabbath; it is only
more or less the necessary condition of this for beings so framed and
constituted as ever to be in danger of losing the true collection and rest of
the spirit in the multiplicity of earthly toil and business. Man indeed must
cease from his work, if a higher work is to find place in him. He scatters
himself in his work, and therefore must collect himself anew, and have seasons
for so doing. But with Him who is one with the Father it is otherwise. In Him
the deepest rest is not ex-eluded by the highest activity; nay rather, in God,
in the; Son as in the Father, they are one and the same.[23] But so to defend
what He has done only exasperates his adversaries the more. They have here not a
Sabbath-breaker, only, but also a blasphemer; for, however others in later times
may have interpreted his words, they who first heard them interpreted them
correctly;[24] that the Lord was here putting Himself on an equality with God,
claiming divine attributes for Himself;; “Therefore the Jews sought the more to
kill Him, because He had not only broken the Sabbath, but said’ also that God
was his Father, making Himself equal with God.” Strange, if the Unitarian scheme
of doctrine is true,, that He should have suffered them to continue in their
error, that He did not at once take this stumbling-block out of their way, and
explain to them that indeed He meant nothing of the kind which they supposed.
But so far from. this, He only reasserts what has offended them so deeply, in a
discourse than which there is no weightier in Holy Scripture for the fast fixing
of the doctrine concerning the relations of; the Father and the Son.. Other
passages may be as important witnesses against the Arian, other against the
Sabellian, declension from the truth; but this upon both sides’ plants the
pillars of the faith; yet it would lead, too far from, the purpose of this:
volume to enter on it here.

I conclude with a brief reference” to a matter in part anticipated already,
namely, the types and prophetic symbols which many have traced in this history.
Many, as has been already noticed, found, in these healing influences of the
pool of Bethesda a foreshowing of future benefits, above all, of the benefit of
baptism; and, through familiarity with a miracle of a lower order, a helping of
men’s faith to the receiving the mystery of a yet higher healing which should be
linked with water.[25] They were well pleased also often to magnify the
largeness and freedom of the later grace, by comparing it with the narrower and
more stinted blessings of the former dispensation.[26] The pool with its one
healed, and that one at distant intervals,—once a year Theophylact and most
others assumed, although nothing of the kind is said, and the word of the
original may mean oftener or seldomer,—was the type of the weaker and more
restrained graces of the Old Covenant; when not as yet was there room for all,
nor a fountain, opened, and at all times accessible, for the healing of the
spiritual sicknesses of the whole race of men, but only of a single people. The
author of the work attributed to Ambrose (De Sacram. ii. 2): Tune inquam
temporis in figura, qui prior descendisset, solus curabatur. Quanto major est
gratia Ecclesiae, in qua, omnes salvantur, quicunque descendunt!

Thus Chrysostom, in a magnificent Easter sermon,[27] having its peculiar
fitness, for at that season multitudes of neophytes were baptized: “Among the
Jews also there was of old a pool of water. Yet learn whereunto it availed, that
thou mayest accurately measure the Jewish poverty and our riches. There went
down, it is said, an Angel and moved the waters, and who first descended into
them after the moving, obtained a cure. The Lord of Angels went down into the
stream of Jordan, and sanctifying the nature of water, healed the whole world.
So that there indeed he who descended after the first was not healed, for to the
Jews, infirm and carnal, this grace was given: but here after the first a second
descends, after the second a third and a fourth; and were it a thousand, didst
thou cast the whole world into these spiritual fountains, the grace would not be
worn out, the gift expended, the fountains defiled, the liberality exhausted.
“And Augustine, ever on the watch to bring out his great truth that the Law was
for the revealing of sin, and could not effect its removal, for making men to
know their sickness, not for the healing of that sickness, to drag them out of
the lurking-places of an imagined righteousness, not to provide them of itself
with any surer refuge, finds a type, or at least an apt illustration of this, in
those five porches, which showed their sick, but could not cure them, in which
they “lay, a great multitude of impotent folk, blind,, halt, withered.” It
needed that the waters should be stirred, before any power went forth for their
cure. This motion of the pool was the perturbation of the Jewish people at the
coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then powers were stirring for their healing;
and he who “went down,” he who humbly believed in his incarnation, in his
descent as a man amongst us, who was not offended at his lowly estate, was
healed of whatsoever disease he had.[28]

Footnotes

[1] Maldonatus, who seems almost inclined to fall out with St. John that he has
not done so: Magna nos Joannes molestiâ contentioneque liberâsset, si vel unum
adjecisset verbum, quo quis ille Judaeorum dies fuisset festus declarâsset.

[2] See Hengstenberg, Christologie, 2d edit. vol. ii. p. 180

[3] Con. Haer. ii. 22: Secundâ vice ascendit in diem festum Paschae in
Hierusalem, quando paralyticum qui juxta natatoriam jacebat xxxviii annos
curavit.

[4] Comm. in Dan., in loc.

[5] Hug has done everything to make it plausible; and it numbers Tholuck and
Olshausen decidedly, and Lücke somewhat doubtfully, among its adherents, also
Neander (Leben Jesu, p. 430) and Jacobi (Theoll. Stud. u. Krit. vol. xi. p. 861,
seq.). Hengstenberg (Christologie, 2d ed. vol. iii. pp. 180-189) earnestly
opposes it, and maintains the earlier view; so too does Paulus.

[6] Ἐπὶ τῇ προβατικῇ should be completed, not, as in the E. V., with ἀγορᾷ, but
with πύλῃ (see Neh 3:1; Neh 12:39, LXX, πύλη προβατική, and translated, “by the
sheep-gate” rather than “by the sheep-market.” Κολυνβήθρα = natatoria (cf. John
9:7), from κολυμβάω, to dive, or swim; we meet the word Ecc 2:6, for the
reservoir of a garden. It is used in ecclesiastical language alike for the
building in which baptisms are performed (the baptistery), and the font which
contains the water (see Suicer, Thes. s. vv. βαπτιστήριον and κολυμβήθρα.

[7] βηθεσδά= domus misericordiæ. Bengel and others appeal to this passage, as
important for fixing the date when this Gospel was written, as proving, at
least, that it was written before the destruction of Jerusalem. Yet in truth it
proves nothing. St. John might still have said, “There is at Jerusalem a pool,”
that having survived the destruction; or might have written with that vivid
recollection, which caused him to speak of the past as existing yet. The various
reading, ἦν for ἐστί, is to be traced to transcribers, who being rightly
persuaded that this Gospel was composed after the destruction of the city,
thought that St. John could not have otherwise written.

[8] Röhr, Palestina, p. 66, does so without a misgiving.

[9] Biblical Researches, vol. i. p. 489, seq.

[10] He was himself witness of that remarkable phenomenon, so often mentioned of
old, as by Jerome (In Isaiah viii.): Siloe.... qui non jugibus aquis, sed in
certis horis diebusque ebulliat; et per terrarum concava et antra saxi durissimi
cum magno sonitu veniat;—but which had of late fallen quite into discredit,—of
the waters rapidly bubbling up, and rising with a gurgling sound in the basin of
this fountain, and in a few minutes retreating again. When he was present they
rose nearly or quite a foot (Researches, vol. i. pp. 506-508; for other modern
testimonies to the same fact see Hengstenberg, in loc). Prudentius, whom he does
not quote, has anticipated the view that this Siloam is Bethesda, and that in
this phenomenon is “the troubling of the water,” however the healing virtue may
have departed. Variis Siloa refundit Momentis latices, nec fluctum semper
anhelat, Sed vice distinctâ largos lacus accipit haustus. Agmina languentum
sitiunt spem fontis avari, Membrorum maculas puro ablutura natatu; Certatim
interea roranti pumice raucas Expectant scatebras, et sicco margine pendent.
Perhaps it is not a slip of memory, and a confusion of this passage with John
9:7, but his belief in the identity of Siloam and Bethesda, which makes Irenæus
(Con. Haer. iv. 8) to say of our Lord: Et Siloâ etiam sæpe sabbatis curavit; et
propter hoc assidebant ei multi die sabbatorum.

[11] Be Bapt. 5: Angelum aquis intervenire, si novum videtur, exemplum futurum
praecucurrit. Piscinam Bethsaida angelus interveniens commovebat; observabant
qui valetudinem querebantur: Nam si quis praevenerat descendere illuc, queri
post lavacrum desinebat: Figura ista medicinae corporalis spiritalem medicinam
canebat, ea, forma qua semper carnalia in figura spiritalium antecedunt.
Proiiciente itaque hominibus gratia Dei plus aquis et angelo accessit: qui vitia
corporis remediabant, mine spiritum medentur: qui temporalem operabantur
salutem, nunc aeternam reformant: qui unum semel anno liberabant, nunc quotidie
populos conservant. It will be observed that he calls it above, the pool
Bethsaida; this is not by accident, for it recurs (Adv. Jude 1:13) in Augustine,
and is still in the Vulgate.

[12] De Spir. Sand. i. 7: Quid in hoc typo Angelus nisi descensionem Sancti
Spiritûs nuntiabat, quae nostris futura temporibus, aquas sacerdotalibus
invocata precibus consecraret? and DeMyst. 4: Illis Angelus descendebat, tibi
Spiritus Sanctus; illis creatura movebatur, tibi Christus operatur ipse Dominus
creaturae.

[13] Thus In Joh. Horn, xxxvi.: "As there it was not simply the nature of the
waters which healed, for then they would have always done so, but when was added
the energy of the Angel; so with us, it is not simply the water which works, but
when it has received the grace of the Spirit, then it washes away all sins. "

[14] Hammond’s explanation of this phenomenon, which reads like a leaf borrowed
from Dr. Paulus, is very singular, both in itself, and as coming from him. It
very early awoke earnest remonstrances on many sides,—see for instance Witsius,
in Wolf, Curae (in loc). The medicinal virtues of this pool were derived, he
supposes, from the washing in it the carcases and entrails of the beasts slain
for sacrifices. In proof that they were here washed, he quotes Brocardus, a monk
of the thirteenth century! whose authority would be worth nothing, and whose
words are these: Intrantibus porro Portam Gregis ad sinistram occurrit piscina
probatica, in qua Nathinaei lavabant hostias quas tradebant sacerdotibus in
Templo offerendas; that is, as is plain, washed their fleeces before delivering
them to be offered by the priests. Some in later times, knowing that the
sacrifices were washed in the temple and not without it, have amended this part
of the scheme by a suggestion that the blood and other animal matter was drained
off by conduits into this pool. But to proceed: The pool, he says, possessed
these healing powers only at intervals, because only at the great feasts,
eminently at the passover, was there slain any such multitude of beasts as could
tinge and warm those waters, making them a sort of animal bath for the time. The
ἄγγελος is not an Angel, but a messenger or servant, duly sent down to stir the
waters, that the grosser and thicker particles, in which the chief medicinal
virtue resided, but which as heaviest would have sunk to the bottom, might
reinfuse themselves in the waters. The fact that only one each time was healed
he explains, that probably the pool was purposely of very limited dimensions,
for the concentrating of its virtues, and thus would contain no more—its
strength by evaporation or otherwise being exhausted before place could be made
for another. He has here worked out at length a theory which Theophylact makes
mention of, although there is no appearance that he himself accepted it, as
Hammond affirms. His words are: Εἶχον δὲ οἱ πολλοὶ ὑπόληψιν‚ ὅτι καὶ ἀπὸ μόνου
τοῦ πλύνεσθαι τὰ ἐντόσθια τῶν ἱερείων δύναμιν τινὰ λαμβάνει θειότεραν τὸ ὕδωρ.
And after all it seems more than doubtful whether he does not mean that some
thought this grace was: given to the waters because they were used for washing
the altar sacrifices; and not that it was naturally imparted through that
washing. Certainly what follows in his exposition seems very nearly to prove
this. This explanation has found favour with one, a physician I should imagine
(Richter, Be Balrieo Animali, p. 107, quoted by Winer, Realworterbuch, s. v.
Bethesda), who writes: Non miror fontem tantû, adhuc virtute animali hostiarum
calentem, quippe in proxima loca tempestive effusum, ut pro pleniori partium
miscelâ, turbatum triplici maxime infirmorum classi, quorum luculenter genus
nervosum laborabat, profuisse; et quia animalis haec virtus cito cum calore
aufugit, et vappam inertem, immo putrem relinquit, iis tantum qui primi ingressi
sunt, salutem attulisse.

[15] These thirty and eight years of the man’s punishment answering so exactly
to the thirty-eight years of Israel’s punishment in the wilderness have not
unnaturally led many, old and new (see Hengstenberg, Christol. vol. ii. p. 568),
to find in this man a type of Israel after the flesh.

[16] Calvin: Non suum modo factum excusat, sed ejus etiam qui grabbatum suum
tulit. Erat enim appendix et quasi pars miraculi, quia nihil quam ejus
approbatio erat.

[17] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, xvii.): Non acciperem jussionem a quo
receperam sanitatem?

[18] Grotius: En malitiae ingenium! non dicunt, Quis est qui te sanavit? sed,
Quis jussit grabatum tollere? Quaerunt non quod, inrentur, sed quod
calumnientur.

[19] Calvin: Si nihil ferulis proficiat erga nos Deus, quibus leniter nos
tanquam teneros ac delicatos filios humanissimus pater castigat, novam personam
et quasi alienam induere cogitur. Flagella ergo ad domandum nostram ferociam
accipit...... Quare non mirum est si atrocioribus poenis quasi malleis conterat
Deus, quibus mediocris poena nihil prodest: frangi enim aequum est, qui corrigi
non sustinent.

[20] Tragedy in its highest form continually occupies itself with this
truth—nowhere, perhaps, so grandly as in the awful reproduction in the
Choëphorae of the scene in which Clytemnestra stood over the prostrate bodies of
Agamemnon and Cassandra—a reproduction with only the difference that now it is
she and her paramour that are the slain, and her own son that stands over her.

[21] In Ev. Joh. tract. xvii.: Difficile est in turbâ videre Christum... Turba
strepitum habet; visio ista secretum desiderat... In turba non eum vidit, in
templo vidit.

[22] Calvin: Nihil minus in animo habuit quam conflare Christo invidiam; nihil
enim minus speravit quam ut tantopere furerent adversus Christum. Pius ergo
affectus fuit, quum vellet justo ac debito honore medicum suum prosequi.

[23] Thus Augustine on the eternal Sabbath-keeping of the faithful (Ep.
Leviticus 9): Inest autem in illâ requie non desidiosa segnitia, sed quaedam
ineffabilis tranquillitas actionis otiosae. Sic enim ab hujus vitae operibus in
fine requiescitur, ut in alterius vitae actione gaudeatur. Cf. Philo, Leg. All.
i. § 3.

[24] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, xvii.): Ecce intelligunt Judaei, quod non
intelligunt Ariani.

[25] So especially Chrysostom (in loc).

[26] Tertullian (Adv. Jude 1:13) adduces as one of the signs that even these
scanty blessings did with the Jewish rejection of Christ cease altogether, that
from that day forth, this pool forfeited the healing powers which it before
possessed: Lex et Prophetae usque ad Joannem fuerunt; et piscina Bethsaida usque
ad adventum Christi, curando invaletudineo ab Israel, desiit a beneficiis deinde
cum ex perseverantiâ, furoris sui nomen Domini per ipsos blasphemaretur.

[27] Opp. vol. iii. p. 756, Bened. ed.

[28] Enarr. i. in Ps. 70:15: Merito lex per Moysen data est, gratia et veritas
per Jesum Christum facta est. Moyses quinque libros scrip sit; sed in quinque
porticibus piscinam cingentibus languidi jacebant, sed curari non poterant...
Illis enim quinque porticibus, in figurâ quinque librorum, prodebantur potius
quam sanabantur aegroti... Venit Dominus, turbata est aqua, et crucifixus est,
descendat ut sanetur aegrotus. Quid est, descendat? Humiliet se. Ergo quicumque
amatis litteram sine gratia, in porticibus remanebitis, aegri eritis; jacentes,
non convalescentes: de litterâ enim praesumitis. Cf. Enarr. in Psa 83:7 : Qui
non sanabatur Lege, id est porticibus, sanatur gratiâ, per passionis fidem
Domini nostri Jesu Christi. Serm. cxxv.: Ad hoc data est Lex, quae proderet
aegrotos, non quae tolleret. Ideo ergo segroti illi qui in domibus suis
secretius aegrotare possent, si illae quinque porticus non essent, prodebantur
oculis omnium in illis porticibus, sed a porticibus non sanabantur... Intendite
ergo. Erant illae porticus legem significantes, portantes aegrotos non sanantes,
prodentes non curantes. Cf. In Ev. Joh. tract, xvii..


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 24: 24-16. THE MIRACULOUS FEEDING OF FIVE THOUSAND
========================================================================

16. The Miraculous Feeding of Five Thousand Mat 14:15-21; Mark 6:35-44; Luk
9:12-17; John 6:5-14 This miracle, with the walking on the sea, which may be
regarded as its appendix, is the only one which St. John has in common with the
other Evangelists, and this he has in common with them all. It will follow that
it is the only miracle of which a fourfold record exists. It will be my
endeavour to keep all the narratives in view, as they mutually complete one
another. St. Matthew connects the Lord’s retirement to the desert place, on the
other side of the lake,[1] with the murder of John the Baptist; St. Mark and St.
Luke place the two events in juxtaposition, but do not make one the motive of
the other. From St. Mark, indeed, it might seem as if the Lord’s immediate
motive was another, namely, that the Apostles, who were just returned from their
mission, might have time at once for bodily and spiritual refreshment, might not
be always in a crowd, always ministering “to others, never to themselves. But
thither, “into a desert place belonging to the city called Bethsaida”[2] (John
12:21; Mat 11:21; John 1:45). the multitude followed Him, not necessarily
proceeding “afoot,” for the πεζῇ of St: Mark. (vi. 33) need not imply this, and
here does not;[3] but “by land,” as distinguished from Him, who went by sea.
This journey they made with such expedition, that’ although their way was much
longer about than’ his, who had only to cross the lake, they “outwent” Him,
prevented his coming, so that when He “went forth” not, that is, from the ship,
but from his solitude, and for the purpose of graciously receiving those who
thus had sought Him but, He “saw much people” waiting for Him. This their
presence entirely defeated the very intention for which He had sought that
solitude; yet He riot the less “received them, And spake unto them of the
kingdom of God, and healed them that had need of healing.” St. John’s apparently
casual notice of the fact that the passover was at hand, is not so much to fix a
point in the chronology of the Lord’s ministry, as’ to explain from whence these
great multitudes, that streamed to Jesus, came; they were on their road to
Jerusalem, there to keep the feast. The way is prepared for the miracle in a
somewhat different manner by the three earlier Evangelists, and by St. John.
According to them, “When it was evening his disciples came to Him, saying, This
is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they
may go into the villages, and buy themselves meat.” The first suggestion comes
here from the disciples; while in St. John it is the Lord Himself who, in his
question to Philip, “Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat?” (vi. 5)
first contemplates the difficulty. This difference, however, is capable of an
easy explanation. Our Lord may have put this question to Philip at a somewhat
earlier period of the afternoon; then left the difficulty which He had moved to
work in the minds of the Apostles; bringing them, as was so often his manner, to
see that there was no help in the common course of things; and when they had
acknowledged this, then, and not before, stepping in with his higher aid.[4]

St. John, who is ever careful to avert a misconstruction from the words of his
Lord (2:21; 21:22), above all, any which might seem to derogate from his perfect
wisdom or love, does not fail to inform us, that He asked this, not as needing
any counsel, not as being Himself in any real embarrassment, “for He Himself
knew what He would do,” but “tempting him,” as Wiclif ’s translation has
it,—which word if we admit, we must yet understand in its milder sense, as
indeed our Version has done, which has given it, “to prove him”[5] (cf. Gen
22:1). It was “to prove him,” and what measure of faith he had in that Master,
whom he had himself already acknowledged the Messiah, “Him of whom Moses in the
Law and the prophets did write” (John 1:45). It should now be seen whether
Philip, calling to mind the great things which Moses had done, who gave the
people bread from heaven in the wilderness, and the notable miracle which
Elisha, though on a smaller scale than that which now was needed, had performed
(2Ki 4:43-44), could so lift up his thoughts as to believe that He whom he had
recognized as the Christ, greater therefore than Moses or the prophets, would be
equal to the present need. Cyril sees a reason why to Philip, rather than to any
other Apostle, this question should have been put, namely that his need of the
teaching contained in it was the greatest; and refers to his later words, “Lord,
show us the Father” (John 14:8), in proof of the tardiness of his spiritual
apprehension.[6] But whatever the motive which led to the singling of him out
for proof, he does not abide that proof. Long as he has been with Jesus, he has
not yet seen the Father in the Son (John 14:9); as yet he knows not that the
Lord whom he serves is even the same who “openeth his hand and filleth all
things living with plenteousness,” who feeds and nourishes all creatures, who
has fed and nourished them from the creation of the world, and who therefore can
feed these few thousands that are this day more particularly dependent on his
bounty. He can conceive of no other supplies save such as natural means could
procure, and at once comes to the point: “Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not
sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little.” The sum he
names, he would of course imply, was much larger than the common purse could
yield.

Having drawn this confession of inability to meet the present need from the lips
of Philip, He left it to work;—till, somewhat later in the day, the disciples
came with their proposal. But the Lord will now bring them yet nearer to the end
at which He aims, and replies, “They need not depart; give ye them to eat:” and
when they repeat with one mouth what Philip had before affirmed, asking if they
shall spend two hundred pence[7] (for them an impossible outlay) in making the
necessary provision, “He saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? go and see.”
With their question we may compare that of Moses: “Shall the flocks and the
herds be slain for them, to suffice them ?” (Num 11:22. cf. Psa 78:19-20), for
there is the same mitigated infidelity in both; the same doubt whether the power
of the Lord is equal to that which his word, openly or implicitly, has
undertaken. In the interval between their going and their return to Him, they
purchase, or rather secure for purchase, the little stock which a single lad
among the multitude has to sell; so we may explain that in the earlier
Evangelists they speak of the five loaves and two fishes[8] as theirs, in St.
John as still belonging to the lad himself.[9] With this slender stock of
homeliest fare, for St. John informs us that the loaves were “barley loaves”
(cf. 2Ki 7:1; Jdg 7:13; Eze 4:12), the Lord undertakes to satisfy all that
multitude (Chrysostom quotes aptly here Psa 78:19 : “Shall God prepare a table
in the wilderness?”); “for He commanded them to make all sit down by companies
on the green grass” at that early spring season a delightful resting-place.[10]
The mention of this “green grass” or “much grass,” is another point of contact
between St. Mark and St. John. The former adds another graphic touch, how they
sat down in companies, “by hundreds and by fifties” and how these separate
groups showed in their symmetrical arrangement like so many garden-plots.[11] It
was a prudent precaution. The vast assemblage was thus subdivided and broken up
into manageable portions; there was less danger of tumult and confusion, or that
the weaker, the women and the children, should be past over, while the stronger
and ruder unduly put themselves forward; the Apostles were able to pass easily
up and down along the ranks, and to minister in orderly succession to the
necessities of all. The taking of the bread in hand would seem to have been a
formal act which went before the blessing or giving of thanks for it[12] (Luk
24:30; 1Co 11:23). This eucharistic act Jesus accomplished as the head of the
household, and according to that beautiful saying of the Talmud, “He that enjoys
aught without thanksgiving, is as though he robbed God. “Having blessed, He
“brake and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the
multitude;”—the marvellous multiplication taking place, as many affirm, first in
the Saviour’s own hands, next in those of the Aposties, and lastly in the hands
of the eaters. This may have been so; at all events it was in such a manner that
“they did all eat and were filled”[13] (Psal. 145:16). There was now fulfilled
for that multitude the pledge and the promise of the Saviour, “Seek ye first the
kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto
you. “They had come taking no thought, for three days at least, of what they
should eat or what they should drink, only desirous to hear the word of life,
only seeking the kingdom of heaven; and now the lower things, according to the
word of the promise, were added unto them.

Here too, even more remarkably than with the water changed into wine, when we
endeavour to realize to ourselves the manner of the miracle, it evermore eludes
our grasp. We seek in vain to follow it with our imaginations. For, indeed, how
is it possible’ to realize to ourselves, to bring within forms of our
conception, any act of creation, any becoming? how is it possible in our
thoughts to bridge over the gulf between not-being and being, which yet is
bridged over in every creative act? And this being impossible, there is no force
in the objection which one has made against the historical truth of this
narrative, namely, that “there is no attempt by closer description to make clear
in its details the manner and process in which this wonderful bread was formed.
“It is true wisdom, to leave the description of the indescribable
unattempted.[14] They who bear record of these things appeal to the same faith
which believes “that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things
which are seen, were not made of things which do appear” (Heb 11:3). An analogy
has been found to this miracle, a certain help to its understanding, in that
which year by year is accomplished in the field, where a single grain of corn
multiplies itself, and in the end unfolds in numerous ears;—and, having this
analogy in view, many beautiful remarks have been made; as this, that while
God’s everyday miracles had grown cheap in men’s sight by continual repetition,
He had therefore reserved something, not more wonderful, but less frequent, to
arouse men’s minds to a new admiration. Others have urged that here, as in the
case of the water made wine, He did but compress into a single moment all those
processes which in ordinary circumstances He, the same Lord of nature, causes
more slowly to succeed one another.[15] But, true as in its measure is this last
observation, it must, not be forgotten that the analogy does not reach through
and through. For that other work in the field is the unfolding of the seed
according to the law of its own being: thus, had the Lord taken a few grains of
corn and cast them into the ground, and, if a moment after, a large harvest had
sprung up, to this the name of such a “divinely-hastened process” might have
been fitly applied.[16] But with bread it is otherwise, since, before that is
made, there must be new interpositions of man’s art, and those of such a nature
as that by them the very life, which hitherto unfolded itself, must be crushed
and destroyed. A grain of wheat could never by itself, and according to the laws
of its natural development, issue in a loaf of bread. And, moreover, the Lord
does not start from the simple germ, from the lifeful rudiments, in which all
the seeds of a future life might be supposed to be wrapt up, and by Him rapidly
developed, but with the latest artificial result: one can conceive how the oak
is enfolded in the acorn, but not how it could be said to be wrapped up in the
piece of timber hewn and shaped from itself. This analogy then, even as such, is
not satisfying; and, renouncing all helps of this kind,[17] we must simply
behold in this multiplying of the bread an act of divine omnipotence[18] on his
part who was the Word of God,—not indeed now, as at the first, of absolute
creation out of nothing, since there was a substratum to work on in the original
loaves and fishes, but an act of creative accretion; a quantitative, as the
water turned into wine was a qualitative, miracle, the bread growing under his
hands, so that from that little stock all the multitude were abundantly
supplied: “they did all eat, and were filled.”

Thus He, all whose works were “signs,” and had a tongue by which they spoke to
the world, did in this miracle proclaim Himself the true bread of the world,
that should satisfy the hunger of men, the inexhausted and inexhaustible source
of all life, in whom there should be enough and to spare for all the spiritual
needs of all hungering souls in all ages.[19] For, in Augustine’s language, once
already quoted, “He was the Word of God; and all the acts of the Word are
themselves words for us; they are not as pictures, merely to look at and admire,
but as letters, which we must seek to read and understand.”[20] When all had
eaten and were satisfied, the disciples gather up the fragments which remained
over of the loaves, that nothing might be lost; only St. John mentions that it
is at Christ’s bidding they do this; the existence of these itself witnessing
that there was enough for all and to spare (2Ki 4:43-44; Ruth 2:14). For thus,
as Olshausen remarks, with the Lord of nature, as with nature herself, the most
prodigal bounty goes hand in hand with the nicest and exactest economy; and He
who had but now shown Himself God, again submits Himself to the laws and
proprieties of his earthly condition, so that, as in the miracle itself his
power, in this command his humility, shines eminently forth. “And they took up
of the fragments that remained, twelve baskets full”—for each Apostle his
basket. St. Mark mentions that it was so done in like manner with the fishes.
This which remained over must have immensely exceeded in bulk and quantity the
original stock; so that we have here a visible symbol of that love which
exhausts not itself by loving, but after all its outgoings upon others, abides
itself far richer than it would have done but for these, of the multiplying
which there ever is in a true dispensing; of the increasing which may go along
with a scattering (Pro 11:24; cf. 2Ki 4:1-7).

St. John,—always careful to note whatever actively stirred up the malignity of
Christ’s enemies,—to which nothing more contributed than the expression of the
people’s favour, all which thus drew on the final catastrophe,—alone tells us of
the effect which this miracle had upon the multitude; how “they that had seen
the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth the prophet that should
come into the world,” the prophet of whom Moses spake, like to himself, whom God
would raise up (Deu 18:15); and, ever eager for new things, they would fain,
with or without his consent, have made Him their king; and, as St. John’s word
may perhaps imply (ἁρπάζειν), being on their way to Jerusalem, would have borne
Him with them thither, to install Him there in the royal seat of David. It was
not merely the power which He here displayed that moved them so mightily, but
the fact that a miracle exactly of this character was looked for from the
Messiah. He was to repeat, so to say, the miracles of Moses. As Moses, the first
redeemer, had given bread of wonder to the people in the wilderness, even so
should the later Redeemer do the same.[21] Thus too, when the first enthusiasm
which this work had stirred was spent, the Jews compare it with that which Moses
had done, not any longer to find here a proof that as great or a greater prophet
was among them, but invidiously to depress the present by comparison with the
past miracle; and by the inferiority which they found in this, to prove that
Jesus was not that Messias who had a right to rebuke and command them. “What
sign showest Thou, that we may see and believe Thee? What dost Thou work? Our
fathers did eat manna in the desert, as it is written, He gave them bread from
heaven to eat” (John 6:30-31); “while the bread which Thou hast given,” for this
much they would imply, “is but this common bread, of earth, with which Thou hast
once nourished a few thousands.”[22] But although there is a resemblance between
that miracle and this, the resemblance is more striking between this and another
in the O. T., already referred to,—that which Elisha wrought, when with the
twenty loaves of barley he satisfied a hundred men (2Ki 4:42-44). All the
rudiments of this miracle there appear; [23] the two substances, one artificial,
one natural, from which the many persons are fed, as here bread and fish, so
there bread and fresh ears of corn. As here the disciples are incredulous, so
there the servitor asks, “Should I set this before a hundred men?” As here
twelve baskets of fragments remain, so there “they did eat, and left thereof,
“Yet were they only the weaker rudiments of this miracle; a circumstance which
the difference between the servants and the Lord sufficiently explains. The
prophets having grace only in measure, so in measure they wrought their
miracles; but the Son, working with infinite power, and with power not lent Him,
but his own, did all with much superabundance. Analogies to this miracle, but of
a remoter kind, are to be found in the multiplying of the widow’s cruse of oil
and barrel of meal by Elijah (1Ki 17:16), and in that other miracle of the oil,
which, according to the prophet’s word, continued to flow so long as there were
vessels to receive it (2Ki 4:1-7).[24]

Footnotes

[1] Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 371: “The eastern shores of the lake have
been so slightly visited and described, that any comparison Of their features
with the history must necessarily be precarious. Yet one general characteristic
of that shore, as compared with the western side, has been indicated, which was
probably the case in ancient times, though in a less degree than at present,
namely, its desert character. Partly this arises from its nearer exposure to the
Bedouin tribes; partly from its less abundance of springs and streams. There is
no recess in the eastern hills, no towns along its banks corresponding to those
in the Plain of Gennesareth. Thus the wilder region became a natural refuge from
the active life of the western shores. It was ’when He saw great multitudes
about Him’ that ’He gave commandment to depart unto the other side; and again He
said, ’Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile; for there
were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.’”

[2] Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 374: “’Bethsaida’ is the eastern city of
that name, which, from the importance of the new city Julias, built there by
Philip the Tetrarch [see Josephus, B. J. iii. 9, 1; Antiq. xviii. 2, 1; and cf.
Pliny, H. N. v. 15], would give its name to the surrounding” desert tract. The
’desert place’ was’ either one of the green tablelands visible from the hills on
the western side, or more probably part of the rich plain at the mouth of the
Jordan. In the parts of this plain not cultivated by the hand of man would be
found the ’much green grass,’ still fresh in the spring of the year when this
event occurred, before it had faded away in the summer sun,—the tall grass,
which, broken down by the feet of the thousands there gathered together, would
make as it were ’couches’ (κλισίας) for them to recline upon. “This Bethsaida
must be carefully distinguished from “Bethsaida; of Galilee”

[3] Herodotus, vii. 110; Plato, Menex. 239 e.

[4] For the reconciliation of any apparent contradiction, see Augustine, De
Cons. Evang. ii. 46.

[5] Πειράζων αὐτόν. Cf. Augustine (De Serm. Dom. in Mon. ii. 9): Illud factum
est, ut ipse sibi notus fieret qui tentabatur, suamque desperationem
condemnaret, saturatis turbis de pane Domini, qui eas non habere quod ederent
existimaverat.

[6] Cramer, Catena. (in loc).

[7] The specifying of this sum as inadequate to the present need is peculiar to
St. Mark and St. John: another proof that St. Mark’s Gospel is something else
than an epitome now of St. Matthew’s, now of St. Luke’s. It is clear he had
resources quite independent of theirs.

[8] Instead of ἰχθύες, St. John has ὀψάρια, both here and 21:9. This word, the
diminutive of ὄψον (from ἕψω, to prepare by fire), properly means any προσϕάγιον
or pulmentum, anything, as flesh, salt, olives, butter, &c. which should be
eaten as a relish with bread. But by degrees, as Plutarch (Symp. iv. 4) remarks,
ὄψον and ὀψάριον came in men’s language to be restricted with a narrower use to
fish alone, generally salt fish, that being the favourite or most usual
accompaniment of bread (see Suicer, Thes. s. v. ὀψάριον, the Diet, of Or. and
Mom. Antt. s. v. Opsonium, and Becker, Charikles, vol. i. p. 436).

[9] Grotius: Apud alios Evangelistas dicuntur habere id quod in. promptu erat,
ut emi posset.

[10] .....prostrati gramine molli, Praesertim cum tempestas arridet, et anni
Tempora conspergunt viridantes floribus herbas.

[11] Πρασιαί‚ πρασιαί = areolatim, as in square garden-plots. Theophylact:
Πρασιαὶ γὰρ λέγονται τὰ ἐν τοῖς κήποις διάϕορα κόμματα‚ ἐν οἷς ϕυτεύονται
διάϕορα πολλάκις λάχανα. Some derive it from πέρας, these patches being commonly
on the edges of the vineyard or gar. den; others from πράσον, porrum, the onion
being largely grown in them. Our English “in ranks” does not reproduce the
picture to the eye, giving rather the notion of continuous lines; Wiclif’s “by
parties” was better. Perhaps “in groups” would be as near as we could get to it
in English.

[12] In Matthew and Mark, εὐλόγησε,—in Luke, εὐλόγησεν αὐτούς, sc. τοὺς
ἄρτους,—in John, καὶ εὐχαριστήσας which word on occasion of the second
multiplying of the bread both Matthew (xv. 36) and Mark (viii. 6) use. The terms
are synonymous: cf. Mat 26:27, with the parallels, 1Co 10:16; 1Co 11:24; and see
Grotius on Mat 26:26. Origen’s view that our Lord wrought the wonder τῷ λόγῳ καὶ
τῇ εὐλογίᾳ, that this moment of taking the loaves into his hand and blessing,
was the wonder-crisis, is sustained by the fact that all four Evangelists bring
out the circumstance of the blessing, and most of all by St. Luke’s words,
εὐλόγησεν αὐτούς: cf. John 6:23.

[13] Χορτάζεσθαι, properly, to fodder cattle, was transferred by writers of the
later Comedy to the feeding of men; see examples in Athenaeus (Deipnos. in. 56),
where one justifies himself for using χορτασθῆναι as—κορεσθῆναι (cf. Sturz, Be
Dial. Maced. pp. 200-202).

[14] Thus Hilary (De Trin. iii. § 6): Fallunt momenta visum, dum plenam
fragmentis manum sequeris, alteram sine damno portionis suae contueris.... Non
sensus non visus profectum tam inconspicabilis operationis assequitur. Est, quod
non erat; videtur quod non intelligitur; solum superest ut Deus omnia posse
credatur. Cf. Ambrose, Exp. in Luc. vi. 85.

[15] Augustine (Serm. cxxx. 1): Grande miraculum: sed non multum mirabimur
factum, si adtendamus facientem. Ilia multiplicavit in manibus frangentium
quinque panes, qui in terra gerniinautia multiplicat semina. ut grana pauca
mittantur, et horrea repleantur. Sed quia illud omni anno facit, nemo miratur.
Admirationem tollit non facti vilitas sed assiduitas. And again (In Ev. Joh.
tract, xxiv.): Quia enim.... miracula ejus, quibus totum mundum regit,
universamque creaturam administrat assiduitate viluerunt, ita ut pene nemo
dignetur attendere opera Dei mira et stupenda in quolibet seminis grano;
secundum ipsam suam miserieordiam servavit sibi quaedam quas faceret opportuno
tempore praetor usitatum cursum ordinemque naturae, ut non majora sed insolita
videndo stuperent, quibus quotidiana viluerant.... Illud mirantur homines, non
quia majus est, sed quia rarum est. Quis enim et nunc pascit universum mundum,
nisi ille qui de paucis granis segetes creat? Fecit ergo quomodo Deus. Unde enim
multiplicat de paucis granis segetes, inde in manibus suis multiplicavit quinque
panes. Potestas enim erat in manibus Christi. Panes autem illi quinque quasi
semina erant, non quidem terrae mandata, sed ab eo qui terrain fecit,
multiplicata. And again, 8erm. cxxvi. 3: Quotidiana miracula Dei non facilitate
sed assiduitate viluerant.....Mirati sunt homines, Dominum Deum nostrum Jesum
Christum de quinque panibus saginasse tot millia, et non mirantur per pauca
grana impleri segetibus terras.... Quia tibi ista viluerant, venit ipse ad
facienda insolita, ut et in ipsis solitis agnosceres Artificem tuum. Cf. Serm.
ccxlvii.

[16] In the apocryphal Evangelium S. Thomae such a miracle is ascribed to the
child Jesus; the miraculous, however, not consisting in the swiftness, but the
largeness, of the return. He goes out at sowing time with Joseph into the field,
and sows there a single grain of wheat; from this He has the return of a hundred
cors, which He distributes to the poor (Thilo, Cod. Apocryphus, p. 302).

[17] The attempt to find in the natural world analogies, nearer or more remote,
for the miracles may spring from two, and those very opposite, sources. It may
be that men are endeavouring herein to realize to themselves, so far as this is
allowed them, the course of the miracle, and by the help of workings not wholly
dissimilar, to bring it vividly before the eye of their mind,—delighted in thus
finding traces of one and the same God in the lower world and the higher, and in
marking how the natural and supernatural are concentric circles, though one
wider than and containing the other; as when in animal magnetism analogies have
been found to the healing power which streamed forth from Christ, and this even
by some who have kept this obscure and perilous power of our lower nature
altogether distinct from that pure element of light and life, which went forth
and was diffused from Him. But these analogies may be sought out and welcomed in
a very different spirit, in the hope, by the aid of these, of escaping from the
miraculous in the miracle altogether; as when some have eagerly snatched at
these same facts of animal magnetism, not as lower and remote analogies, but as
identical, or wellnigh identical, facts with the miraculous healings of our
Lord.

[18] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, ix.): Omnipotentia Domini quasi fons panis
erat; and again (Enarr. ii. in Ps. Exodus 10): Fontes panis erant in manibus
Domini.

[19] Thus Prudentius: Tu cibus panisque noster, tu perennis suavitas; Nescit
esurire in aevum qui tuam sumit dapem, Nee lacunam ventris implet, sed fovet
vitalia.

[20] Verbum Dei est Christus, qui non solum sonis sed etiam factis loquitur
hominibus; cf. In Ev. Joh. tract, xxiv.: Interrogemus ipsa miracula quid nobis
loquantur de Christo; habent enim, si intelligantur, linguam suam.

[21] Schoettgen (Hor. Heb. in loc, from the Midrasch Coheleth): Quemadmodum Goël
primus, sic quoque erit postremus. Goël primus descendere fecit Man, q. d. Exo
16:4, Et pluere faciam vobis panem de coelo. Sic quoque Goël postremus
descendere facit Man, q. d. Psa 72:16, Erit multitudo frumenti super terrain.

[22] Tertullian (Adv. Mare. iv. 21): Non uno die, sed annis quadraginta, nec de
inferioribus materiis panis et piscis, sed de mannâ coelesti, nec quinque
circiter sed sexcenta millia hominum protelavit.

[23] Tertullian notes this prefiguration of the miracles of Christ in those of
his servants, against the Gnostics, who would fain have cut loose the New T.
from the Old, and found not merely distinction, but direct opposition, between
them (Adv. Marc. iv. 21): Invenies totum hunc ordinem Christi circa ilium Dei
hominem, qui oblatos sibi viginti hordeaceos panes cum populo distribui
jussisset, et minister ejus proinde comparatâ multitudine et pabuli
mediocritate, respondisset, Quid ergo hoc dem in conspectu centum hominum? Da,
inquit, et manducabant,.... O Christum et in novis veterem! Haec itaque quae
viderat, Petrus, et cum pristinis comparat, et nontantum retro facta, sed et in
futurum jam tune prophetantia recognoverat, interroganti Domino, quisnam illis
videretur, cum pro omnibus responderet, Tu es Christus, non ’potest non eum
sensisse Christum, nisi quem noverat in scripturis, quem jam recensebat in
factis.

[24] I have promised, p. 81, a specimen or two of the rationalist explanations
of the miracles. It were thrice to slay the slain to enter at the present time
on a serious refutation of them; new forms of opposition to the truth have risen
up, but this has gone by; yet as curiosities of interpretation, they may deserve
a passing notice. This then is the scheme of Paulus for a natural explanation of
the present miracle. He assumes that, though many of the multitude had nothing
to eat, there were others who had some stock and store by them; which was the
more probable on the present occasion, as we know that the Jews, when travelling
to any distance, used to carry their provisions with them,—and of this multitude
many were thus coming from far to the passover at Jerusalem. These stores they
had hitherto withheld from the common needs; but now, put to shame by the free
liberality of Jesus, they brought forth and distributed, He having first led the
way, and freely imparted the little stock at his own command. Many difficulties
certainly seem to stand in the way of this,—that is, of the Evangelists having
actually meant to relate this; for Paulus does not say that they made a mistake,
and exalted an ordinary event into a miracle, but that this is what they
actually intended to relate. It is, for example, plainly a difficulty that, even
supposing the people to have followed “the example of laudable moderation” which
Jesus showed them, there should have remained twelve baskets of fragments from
his five loaves. But to this Paulus replies that they indeed affirm nothing of
the kind; that St. John, so far from asserting this (ver. 13), is rather
accounting for the fact that there should be any residue whatsoever, explaining
why the Lord should have had need (ver. 12) to bid gather up a remnant at all,
from the circumstance that the Apostles had set before the people so large a
supply that there was -more than enough for all;—and it is exactly, he says,
this which ver. 13 affirms, which verse he thus explains: “For they got together
(συνήγαγον οὖν) and had filled ἐγέμισαν, an aor. 1 for plusq. perf.) twelve
baskets with fragments (i. e. with bread broken and prepared for eating) of the
five loaves, which were more than enough (ἃ ἐπερίσσευσε) for the eaters; “—so
that St. John is speaking, not of remnants after the meal, but of bread broken
before the meal. That this should be called presently after a σημεῖον (ver. 14)
does but mean a sign of his humanity and wisdom, by which He made a little to go
so far. But this may suffice.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 25: 25-17. THE WALKING ON THE SEA
========================================================================

17. The Walking on the Sea Mat 14:22-33; Mark 6:45-52; John 6:14-21 The three
Evangelists who narrate this miracle alike place it in immediate sequence to the
feeding of the five thousand, and on the evening of the same day. The two first
relate, that when all were fed, and the Lord was now about to dismiss the
multitude, “straightway He constrained Ms disciples to get into the ship.” Why
He should have found it necessary to “constrain” them, they do not say. Some
vaguely suggest a general unwillingness on the part of the disciples to be
separated, even for a season, from their beloved Lord.[1] But the true key to
the phrase is obtained, when we compare the parallel record of St. John. There
we learn that the multitude desired to take Jesus by force and make Him a king;
and that He only avoided this, by departing into a mountain Himself alone. The
disciples could not have helped being aware of the shape which the popular
enthusiasm was taking; and this was exactly to their mind; this was precisely
what they had long hoped would arrive, so that they must have been most
reluctant to quit their Master at the moment of his approaching exaltation.
Thus, however, it must be, and while He dismisses the people, they must “go to
the other side before unto Bethsaida.” There is no contradiction here between
St. Mark’s “Bethsaida,” and St. John’s statement that they “went over the sea
towards Capernaum;” since this Bethsaida, not identical with that just before
mentioned by St. Luke (ix. 10), and for distinction called Bethsaida Julias, but
the city of Philip and Andrew and Peter (John 1:44), lay on the western side of
the lake, in the same direction as, and near to, Capernaum. St. Matthew, and St.
Mark with him, makes two evenings to this day,—one which had already commenced
before the preparations for the feeding of the multitude had begun (ver. 15),
the other, now when the disciples had entered into the ship, and commenced their
voyage (ver. 23). And this was an ordinary way of speaking among the Jews,, the
first-evening being very much our afternoon (see Luk 9:12,. where the “evening”
of Matthew and Mark is described as the season “when the day began to wear
away”); the second evening[2] being the twilight, or from six o’clock to
twilight; on which absolute darkness followed. It was the first evening, or
afternoon, when the preparations for feeding the five thousand commenced; the
second, when the disciples took ship.

“And when He had sent the multitudes away, He went up into a mountain apart to
pray; and when even was come, He was there alone.” From thence, with the
watchful eye of love, “He saw them toiling in rowing” (cf. Exo 3:7; Psa 56:8);
for in their Lord’s absence they were able; to make no effectual progress: “the
wind was contrary,” and the sea rough: their sails, of course, could profit them
nothing. It was now “the fourth watch of the night,” near morning therefore, and
notwithstanding all their efforts they had not accomplished more than “five and
twenty or thirty furlongs,” scarcely, that is, more than half of their way, the
lake being forty or forty-five furlongs in breadth. Probably they were ever
finding themselves more unable to proceed, the danger probably was ever
increasing, when suddenly they see their Lord “walking on the sea,” [3] and
already close to their bark. It was his purpose in all the events of this night,
as Chrysostom well brings out, to train his disciples to higher things than
hitherto they had learned. That first storm (Mat 8:24) was by day, this was by
night. Then He was present in the ship with them; if it came to the worst, they
knew that they might rouse Him; while the mere sense of his presence must have
given them the sense of a comparative security. But they must learn to walk by
faith and not by sight; He will not have them as the ivy, needing always an
outward support, but as hardy forest-trees, which can brave a blast; and this
time He puts them forth into the danger alone, even as some loving mother-bird
thrusts her fledglings from the nest, that they may find their own wings and
learn to use them. And the happy issue of all shall awaken in them an abiding
confidence in his ever-ready help; for as his walking on the sea must have been
altogether unimagined and unimaginable by them, they may have easily despaired
of that help reaching them; but He, when He has tried them to the uttermost, “in
the fourth watch of the night,” appears beside them; thus teaching them for all
their after life, in all coming storms of temptation, that He is near them; that
however He may not be seen always by their bodily eyes, however they may appear
cut off from his assistance, yet is He indeed a very present help in the needful
time of trouble. Nor ought we, I think, to fail to recognize the symbolic
character which this whole transaction wears. As that bark upon those stormy
billows, such is oftentimes the Church, tossed to and fro on the waves of the
troublesome world. It seems as though it had not its Lord with it, such little
way does it make; so baffled is it and tormented by opposing winds and waves.
But his eye is on it still; He is in the mountain apart praying; ever living, an
ascended Saviour, to make intercession for his people. And when at length the
extremity of the need has arrived, He is suddenly with it, and that in
marvellous ways past finding out; and then all that before was so laborious is
easy, and the toiling rowers are anon at the haven where they would be.[4]

“And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea they were troubled, saying,
It is a spirit;[5] and they cried out for fear.” It is often so. Let Him only
come to his people in some unwonted manner, as He has not been used to come in
time past, in the shape of some affliction, in the way of some cross, and they
know Him not. Their Lord, and charged with blessings for them, He yet seems to
them as some terrible phantom of the night. They too cry out for fear. The
disciples perhaps on this occasion might have pleaded that there was that in his
approach to their bark, which would not allow them to recognize Him for what He
was. He “would have passed them by.”[6] How could they suppose that this was
their Lord, hastening to the help of his own? The circumstance perplexed them
for a moment; it has perplexed others lastingly. Those who are on the watch to
discover inner inconsistencies in the Gospels have asked, “Why appear to pass
them by and to escape them, when the only aim of his coming was to re-assure and
to aid them? when He so little really meant to do this, that no sooner was He
recognized and detained by their cries, than He ascended into the ship where
they were ?” Doubtless this, as each other dealing of God with his people, is
hard to be understood of those to whom the entire life of faith is altogether
strange. He will seem to pass them by, seem to forsake them, so evoking their
prayer and their cry, that He would not pass them by, that He would not forsake
them.[7] Not otherwise, walking with his two disciples to Emmaus, after his
resurrection, “He made as though He would have gone further” (Luk 24:28), thus
drawing out from them the entreaty that He would abide. It is evermore thus; we
have here no exceptional dealing, but one finding its analogies everywhere in
the Scripture and in the Christian life. What part does Christ sustain here
different from that which in the parable of the Unjust Judge (Luk 18:2), or the
churlish Friend (Luk 11:5), He ascribes to God? or different from that which He
Himself sustained when He came not to the help of the sisters of Bethany in what
seemed the utmost extremity of their need (John 11:6)? And are not all the
complaints of the faithful in the Psalms, that God hides his face, that He gives
them into the hands of their enemies, that He is absent from them so long,
confessions that He does so deal with his servants, that by delaying and seeming
to pass them by, He quickens their faith, and calls out their prayers that He
would come to them soon, and abide with them always? And now, as one by that cry
of distress detained and arrested, He at once scatters and rebukes their fears:
“Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.” Whereupon follows that
characteristic rejoinder of Peter, which, with its consequences, St. Matthew
alone records: “Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water” That
“if” must not be interpreted as implying a doubt whether it was the Lord or not.
A Thomas, indeed, may have required to have Jesus with him in the ship, ere he
would fully believe that it was no phantom, but his very Lord; but Peter’s fault
would be of another kind. His words mean rather: “Since it is Thou, command me
to come unto Thee; “for he feels rightly that Christ’s command must go before
his coming. And, doubtless, it was the promptness and forwardness of love which
made him ask for this command, which made him desire to be where his Lord was
(John 21:7). Perhaps, too, he would compensate for that exclamation of terror in
which he had joined with the rest, by an heroic act of courage and affiance. And
yet there was a fault in all this, as the issue proved, which made the whole
incident a rehearsal of the greater presumption, and the more serious fall which
was in store for the too confident disciple (Mat 26:33; Mat 26:70). In that “Bid
me,” the fault lay. He will outdo and outdare the other disciples; will
signalize himself by a mightier testimony of faith than any of them would
venture to render. It is but in another shape, “Although all shall be offended,
yet will not I.”

Let us observe, and with reverence admire, the wisdom and love of the Lord’s
answer. Another, having enough of spiritual insight to detect the fault which
lurked in Peter’s proposal, by a coarser treatment might have marred all, and
lost for him the lessons it so much behoved him to receive. Had the Lord, for
example, commanded him to remain where he was, He would at the same time have
checked the outbreaks of his fervent spirit, which, when purified from the
carnal which clung to them, were to carry him so far, and caused him to miss the
instruction which through his partial failure he obtained. But with more
gracious and discriminating wisdom the great Master of souls, who yet, knowing
what the event must prove, pledges not Himself for the issue of his coming.
Peter had said, “Bid me;” there is no “I bid,” in the Lord’s reply. Peter had
said, “come unto Thee;” the “unto Me” disappears from the Lord’s answer; which
is only “Come;” “Come, that is, if thou wilt; make the experiment, if thou
desirest.” It is a merely permissive “Come;” like Joab’s “Run” to Ahimaaz (2Sa
18:22). In that “Come,” an assurance is, indeed, involved that Peter should not
be wholly swallowed up by the waves, but no pledge for the successful issue of
the feat; which all, in the very faithfulness of the Lord, would have been
involved, had his words been the entire echo of his disciple’s. What the issue
should be, depended upon Peter himself,—whether he should keep the beginning of
his confidence firm unto the end. And He who knew what was in man, knew that he
would not; that this was not the pure courage of faith; that what of carnal
overboldness there was in it would infallibly be exchanged, when the stress of
the trial came, for fear and unbelief.

It was even so. “When Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the
water, to go to Jesus” This for a while; so long as he looked to his Lord and to
Him only, he also was able to walk upon the unsteady surface of the sea, to
tread upon the waters, which for him also were not waves. But when he took
counsel of flesh and blood, when he saw something else besides Jesus, when,
because “he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid, and beginning to sink, he
cried, saying, Lord, save me.” He who had thought to make a show before all the
other disciples of a courage which transcended theirs, must now in the presence
of them all confess his terror, and reveal the weakness, as he had thought to
display the strength, of his faith. In this moment of peril his swimmer’s art
(John 21:7) profits him nothing; for there is no mingling of nature and grace in
this way. “He who has entered the wonder-world of grace must not suppose that he
may withdraw from it at any moment that he will, and betake himself to his old
resources of nature. He has foregone these, and must carry through what he has
begun, or fail at his peril. But Peter has to do with One who will not let him
greatly fall. His experience shall be that of the Psalmist: “When I said, My
foot slippeth, thy mercy, O Lord, held me up. “[8] His “Lord, save me,” is
answered at once. “Immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him.”
And then how gracious the rebuke! “Oh thou of little faith!” not “Oh thou of
none 1” and “wherefore didst thou doubt?.” not “wherefore didst thou come?” not
checking, as He then would have done, the future impulses of his servant’s
boldness, but rather encouraging them, showing him how he could do all things
through Christ strengthening him, and that his fault lay, not in having
undertaken too much, but in having too little relied upon the strength that
would have upheld him in his undertaking.[9] And not until by that sustaining
hand He has restored confidence to the fearful one, and made him feel that he
can indeed tread under foot those waves of the unquiet sea, does He speak even
this word of a gentle rebuke. The courage of the disciple has already returned,
so that the Master speaks of his doubt as of something which is already past:
“Wherefore didst thou doubt? Before the doubt arose in thy heart, thou didst
walk on these waves, and now that thy faith has returned, thou dost walk on them
again; thou seest that it is not impossible, that it lies but in thy faithful
will; that all things are possible to him that believeth.”

We must look at this episode of the miracle as itself also symbolic. Peter is
here the example of all the faithful of all times, in the seasons of their
unfaithfulness and fear. So long as they are strong in faith, they are able to
tread under foot all the most turbulent agitations of an unquiet world; but when
they are afraid, when, instead of “looking unto Jesus,” they look at the stormy
winds and waters, then these prevail against them, and they begin to sink, and
were it not for Christ’s sustaining hand, which is stretched out in answer to
their cry, they would be wholly overwhelmed and swallowed up.[10]

“And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased” Those on the watch for
disagreements between one Evangelist and another are pleased here to discover
such, between St. Matthew and St. Mark on one side, and St. John on the other.
If we are to believe the former, the Lord did now with his disciple go up into
the ship; if, on the contrary, we accept the authority of St. John, we must then
suppose that the disciples were willing to receive Him; but did not so in fact,
the ship being rapidly, and, as would seem, with miraculous swiftness, brought
to the land. The whole question turns on the words which we translate, and I
have no doubt rightly as regards the circumstance which actually took place,
“they willingly received Him into the ship.” It is quite true they would be more
literally rendered, “they were willing to receive Him into the ship;” but with
the implicit understanding that what they were willing to do, they actually did.
Those who a little before were terrified and dreaded his approach, as though it
had been a spirit, were now willing to receive Him into the ship with them, and
did so receive Him; and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.”

St. Mark, as is so often his wont, does not fail to describe to us how this and
all which they had witnessed called forth the infinite astonishment of his
disciples: “they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered;”
while from St. Matthew we learn that the impression was not confined to them
alone; but “they that were in the ship,” others who were sailing with them,[11]
caught a momentary glimpse of the greatness of Him in whose presence they stood;
and “came and worshipped Him, saying, Of a truth Thou art the Son of God” (cf.
John 1:49). They felt more or less clearly that here was One who must stand in
wonderful relation with Him of whom it is written, “Thy way is in the sea, and
thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known” (Psa 77:19);
“Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great
waters” (Hab 3:15); “Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon
the waves of the sea” (Job 9:8[12]

It is a docetic[13] view of the person of Christ, which conceives of his body as
permanently exempt from the law of gravity, and in this way explains the
miracle; a hard and mechanical view, which places the seat of the miracle in the
waters rendered solid under his feet. Rather was it the will of Christ, which
bore Him triumphantly above those waters; even as it was the will of Peter, that
will, indeed, made in the highest degree active and potential by faith on the
Son of God, which should in like manner have enabled him to walk on the great
deep, and, though with partial and transient failure, did so enable him. It has
been already observed that the miracle, according to its true idea, is not the
violation, nor yet the suspension of law, but the incoming of a higher law, as
of a spiritual in the midst of natural laws, and the momentary assertion, for
that higher law, of the predominance which it was intended to have, and but for
man’s fall it would always have had, over the lower; and with this a prophetic
anticipation of the abiding prevalence which it shall one day recover. Exactly
thus was there here a sign of the lordship of man’s will; when that will is in
absolute harmony with God’s will, over external nature. In regard of this very
law of gravitation, a feeble, and for the most part unconsciously possessed,
remnant of his power survives to man in the well-attested fact that his body is
lighter when he is awake than sleeping;[14] a fact which every nurse who has
carried a child would be able to attest. From this we conclude that the human
consciousness, as an inner centre, works as an opposing force to the attraction
of the earth and the centripetal force of gravity, however unable now to
overbear it.[15]

Footnotes

[1] As Jerome, and Chrysostom: Τὸ ἠνάγκασεν δὲ εἶπεν‚ τὴν πολλὴν προσεδρίαν
δεικνὺς τῶν μαθητῶν.

[2] Ὀψία δευτέρα.

[3] Many have supposed that Lucian (Ver. Hist. ii. 4), in his account of the
cork-footed race (ϕελλόποδες), whom in his voyage he past ἐπὶ τοῦ πελάγους
διαθέοντας, intended a scoff against tills miracle. I doubt whether so expert a
scoffer, if he had meant this, would not have done it better; still the hint
which he gives (1, 2), that something lies under these absurd and extravagant
travellers’ tales which he has strung together, that they contain every one
allusions to the fables and portents of poets and historians and philosophers,
makes it not altogether improbable; and in the Philopseudes, where there seem to
me far more evident side-glances at the miracles of the Gospel,—as for instance,
a miraculously-healed man taking up his bed (11), the expulsion of the evil
spirit from a demoniac (16), reminding one singularly of that recorded Mark
9:14-29; this also of walking on the water recurs (13), among the incredible
things proposed for the wise man’s belief. The Golden City of the Blest, with
its diamond walls, its floors of ivory, and its vines bearing fruit every month
(Ver. Hist. ii. 11-13), may very well be written in rivalry and in ridicule of
the description of the New Jerusalem, Kev. xxi. 19; xxii. 2; as the story of the
great multitude of men comfortably housed for some years in the belly of a whale
(Ib. i. 30-42) may be intended to be an outdoing of the history of Jonah and his
three days’ abode in a like place. This we know was an especial object of the
flouts of the heathen; see Augustine, Ep. cii. qu. 6; and Josephus (Antt. ix.
10, § 2), aiming to make his works acceptable to the educated heathen, gets over
it with a λόγος—”as some say.” On the point of view under which Lucian
contemplated Christianity there is an Essay by Krebs, De Malitioso Luciani
Consilio, do. in his Opusc. Acad. p. 308; and see Tzschirner, Fall des
Heidenthums, p. 320; and the Theott. Studien u. Kritiken, 1851, pp. 826-902.

[4] Thus Bede: Labor discipulorum in remigando et contrarius eis ventus labores
sanctae Ecclesiae varios designat, quae inter undas seculi adversantis et
immundorum flatus spirituum ad quietem patriae coelestis, quasi ad fidam litoris
stationem, pervenire conatur. Ubi bene dicitur, quia navis erat in medio mari et
ipse solus in terra; quia nonnunquam Ecclesia tantis Gentilium pressuris non
solum afflicta, sed et foedata est, ut, si fieri posset, Redemptor ipsius earn
prorsus deseruisse ad tempus videretur.....Videt [tamen] Dominus laborantes. in
mari”, quamvis ipse positus in terrâ; quia etsi ad horam differre videatur
auxilium tribulatis impendere, nihilominus eos, ne in tribulationibus deficiant,
suae respectu pietatis corroborat, et aliquando etiam manifesto adjutorio,
victis adversitatibus, quasi calcatis sedatisque fluctuum voluminibus, liberat.
Cf. Augustine, Serm. lxxv. So too Anselm (Horn, iii.): Nam quia insurgunt
fluctus, potest ista navicula turbari, sed quia Christus orat, non potest
mergi..

[5] Φάντασμα=ϕάσμα νυκτερινόν (Job 20:8).

[6] Calvin: Pii audito ejus nomine, quod illis est certum et divini amoris et
suae salutis pignus, quasi a morte in vitam excitati animos colligunt, et quasi
serenum coelum hilares conspiciunt, quieti in terra, resident, et omnium malorum
victores ejus presidium omnibus perieulis opponunt.

[7] Augustine (De Cons. Evang. ii. 47): Quomodo ergo eos volebat praeterire,
quos paventes ita confirmat, nisi quia ilia voluntas praetereundi ad eliciendum
ilium clamorem valebat, cui subveniri oportebat? Corn, a Lapide: Volebat
praeterire eos, quasi eos non curans, nec ad eos pertinens, sed alio pergens, ut
in eis metum et clamorem excitaret.

[8] Augustine very beautifully brings together those words of the Psalmist and
this incident, making them mutually to illustrate one another (Enarr. in Fs.
xciii. 18).

[9] Bengel: Non reprehenditur quod exierit e navi, sed quod non manserit in
firmitate fidei.

[10] Augustine (Enarr. in Psa 39:6): Calca mare, ne mergaris in mari. And again
(Serm. lxxxvi. 6): Attendite seculum quasi mare, ventus valid us et magna
tempestas. Unicuique sua cupiditas, tempestas est. Amas Deum, ambulas super
mare: sub pedibus tuis est seculi tumor. Amas seculum, absorbebit te. Amatores
suos vorare novit, non portare. Sed cum fluctuat cupiditate cor tuum, ut vincas
tuam cupiditatem, invoca Christi divinitatem.... Et si motus est pes tuus, si
titubas, si aliqua non superas, si mergi incipis, die, Domine, pereo, libera me.
Die, Domine, pereo, ne pereas. Solus enim a morte earn is liberat te, qui
mortuus est in carne pro te. And again: Titubatio ista, fratres, quasi mors
fidei fuit. Sed ubi exclamavit, fides iterum resurrexit. Non ambularet, nisi
crederet, sed nec mergeretur, nisi dubitaret. In Petro itaque communis omnium
nostrum consideranda conditio, ut si nos in aliquo tentationum ventus conatur
subvertere, vel unda submergere, clamemus ad Christum. Cf. Be Cant. Novo, 2.

[11] Jerome: Nautae atque vectores.

[12] Ὁ περιπατῶν‚ ὡς ἐπ᾽ ἐδάϕους‚ ἐπὶ θαλάσσης. Eusebius (Dem. Evang. ix. 12)
finds a special fulfilment of these words of Job in this miracle, as also in
these waves the symbol of a mightier and wilder sea, even that of sin and death,
which Christ trod under his feet when He, in a far higher sense than that in
which the words were first spoken, ....metus omnes et inexorabile fatum Subjecit
pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari; and he quotes Psa 74:13-14 : “Thou didst
divide the sea by thy strength, Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the
waters; Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest them to be
meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness;” and Job 38:16-17, where the
Almighty says to man: “Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast
thou walked in the search of the depth? Have the gates of death been opened unto
thee, and hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?” that is, “Hast thou
done this, as I have done?”).

[13] The Cathari, a Gnostic sect of the Middle Ages, actually appealed to this
miracle in confirmation of their errors concerning the body of Christ, as a
heavenly, and not a truly human, body (Neander, Kirch. Gesch. vol. v. p. 1126).

[14] It was noticed long ago by Pliny, H. N. vii. 18.

[15] Prudentius (Apotheosis, 655) has some sounding lines upon this miracle:
Ipse super fluidas plantis nitentibus undas Ambulat, ac presso firmat vestigia
fluctu; Increpat ipse notos, et flatibus otia mandat... Ninguidus agnoscit
Boreas atque imbrifer Eurus Nimborum dominum, tempestatumque potenteni,
Excitamque hyemem verrunt ridente sereno.


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  CHAPTER 26: 26-18. THE OPENING OF THE EYES OF ONE BORN BLIND
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18. The Opening of the Eyes of One Born Blind

John 9

It is on the whole most probable that this work of grace and power crowned the
day of that long debate with Jewish adversaries, which, beginning at John 7:34,
reaches to the end of the following chapter,—the history of the woman taken in
adultery being, only an interruption, and an intercalation easily betraying
itself as such. Our Lord then, as He was passing from the temple, to escape the
last arguments of his foes, will have paused—probably in the immediate
neighbourhood of the temple, where beggars, cripples, and other afflicted
persons took their station (Acts 3:1-2), to accomplish this miracle. Nothing in
the narrative indicates a break. That long “contradiction of sinners” which the
Lord endured found place, we know, on a Sabbath, for the last day of the feast
of tabernacles (vii. 37) was always such; and on a Sabbath, to all appearance
the same Sabbath, He opened this blind man’s eyes (ix. 14). Moved by these
reasons, the ancient interpreters see here a continuous unbroken narration, and
with them most of the modern consent.[1].

It has been by some objected, that, first concealing Himself, and then escaping
for his life, He must on that day have left the temple alone; here, on the
contrary, his disciples are around Him. But what more natural than that they
also should have extricated themselves, though not in the same wonderful manner
as He did, from the angry multitude, and have rejoined their Master without?
Then again, if it be urged that this work was wrought in a more leisurely
manner, with more apparent freedom from all fear of interruption than could well
have been, when now He had only just withdrawn Himself from the extreme malice
of his foes, may not all this be accepted as a beautiful evidence of his
calmness in the midst of his enemies, who found no time inopportune for a work
of mercy and love; who, having hardly left behind Him the Jewish stones, tarried
to accomplish this work of grace? And may not something of this lie in ver. 4,
5? “I must work this work now, however out of season it may seem: for ’the
night’ which my enemies are bringing on, is near, and then the time for working
will be over” (compare the exactly parallel passage, John 11:7-10).

It is singular that some should ask, How could the disciples have known that
this man “was blind from his birth”?[2] He was evidently a well-known beggar in
Jerusalem, with whose tale many were acquainted (ver. 8); he may have himself
proclaimed his lifelong calamity, with the object of stirring pity in the
passers by. One way or other the fact had come to the knowledge of the
disciples, and out of it their question grew. Their Master must solve for them
the difficulty which this more than ordinary calamity presented, and explain to
them its cause. “Who did sin,” they ask, “this man, or his parents, that he was
born blind?” But what they could have had in their minds when they suggest the
former alternative, how they could have supposed it possible that for his own
sins the man had been born blind, has naturally been the source of much
perplexity.

Three or four explanations have been offered: the first, that the Jews believed
in a transmigration of souls; and thus that the sins which the disciples assumed
as possible causes of his blindness, were those of some anterior life,—antenatal
sins, which were being punished and expiated now. This, as is well known, is the
doctrine of the Buddhists; and not an accident, but belonging to the centre, of
their religious convictions: but it cannot be proved that there was any such
faith among the Jews. It may have been the dream of a few philosophic Jews, who
had obtained some acquaintance with the speculations of the East, but was never
the faith of plain and simple men: so that this explanation may be regarded as
altogether antiquated, and not worthy even to be considered.[3]

Lightfoot adduces passages to show that the Jews believed a child might sin in
its mother’s womb, in proof of which their Rabbis referred to the struggle
between Jacob and Esau (Gen 25:22); and he, and others after him, think that out
of this popular belief the question of the disciples grew.

Tholuck, following an earlier interpreter, supposes their notion to have been
that God had foreknown some great sin which this man would commit, and so by
anticipation had punished him. But as such a dealing on God’s part is altogether
without analogy in Scripture,, so is there not the slightest hint that men had
ever fallen on it as an explanation of the suffering in the world; nor, indeed,.
could they: for while the idea of retribution is one of the deepest in the human
heart, this of punishment running before the crime which it punishes, is one
from which it as wholly revolts.

Chrysostom imagines that it was upon their part a reductio ad absurdum of the
argument which connected sin and suffering together. The man could not have
brought this penalty on himself; for he was born with it. His parents could not
by their sin have brought it on him; for we know that each man shall bear his
own burden, that the children’s teeth are not set on edge because the parents
ate sour grapes. But this is very artificial, and with little of likelihood in
it. Honest and simple-hearted men, like those who asked the question here, would
have been the last to try and escape a truth, to which the deepest things in
their own hearts bore witness, by an ingenious dilemma.

Rather, I believe they did not see, at the moment when they put the question,
the self-contradiction, as far at least as words go, which was involved in the
first alternative which they put before their Lord; so that, while they rightly,
and by a most true moral instinct, discerned the links which unite the sin and
suffering of the world together, yet in this case they did not realize how it
must have been the sin and suffering, not of this man as “an individual, but of
him as making part of a great whole, which were thus connected together. They
did not at the moment perceive that the mere fact of this calamity reaching back
to his birth at once excluded and condemned the uncharitable suspicion, that
wherever there was a more than ordinary sufferer, there was also a more than
ordinary sinner,—leaving only the most true thought, that a great sin must be
cleaving to a race, of which any member could so greatly suffer.

This, as it is continually affirmed in Scripture, so we cannot suppose that it
was intended to be denied in the answer of the Lord: “neither hath this man
sinned, nor his parents” —words which of course need for their completion—” that
he should have been born blind. “The Lord neither denies the sin of his parents,
nor his own; all that He does is to check in his disciples that most harmful
practice of diving down with cruel surmises into the secrets of other men’s
lives, and, like the friends of Job, guessing for them hidden sins in
explanation of their unusual sufferings. This blindness, He would say, is the
chastening of no peculiar sin on his own part, nor on his parents’. Seek,
therefore, its cause neither here nor there; but see what nobler explanation the
evil in the world, and this evil in particular, is capable of receiving. The
purpose of the lifelong blindness of this man is “that the works of God should
be made manifest in him;” and that through it and its removal the grace and
glory of God might be magnified. Not, indeed, as though this man had been used
merely as a means, visited with this blindness to the end that the power of God
in Christ might be manifested to others in its removal. The manifestation of the
works of God has here a wider reach, and embraces in it the lasting weal of the
man himself; it includes, indeed, the manifestation of those works to the world
and on the man; but it does not exclude, rather of necessity includes, their
manifestation also to him and in him. It entered into the plan of God for the
bringing of this man to the light of everlasting life, that he should thus for a
while be dark outwardly; that so at once upon this night, and on the night of
his heart, a higher light might break, and the Sun of righteousness arise on
him, with healing in his wings for all his bodily and all his spiritual
infirmities: while again this was part of a larger whole, and fitted in,
according to his eternal counsels, to the great scheme for the revelation of the
glory and power of the Only-begotten to the world (cf. John 11:4; Rom 5:20; Rom
9:17; Rom 11:25; Rom 11:32-33).

Yet, while it was thus, we are not to accept this as the entire and exhaustive
solution of this man’s blindness. For it is the pantheistic explanation of evil,
that it is not really evil, but only the condition of, and the transition to, a
higher good; only appearing, indeed, as evil at all from a low standing point,
and one which does not as yet behold the end. But this explanation of the
world’s evil, tempting as it has ever shown itself, so tempting that multitudes
have been unable to resist its attraction, is not that which the Scriptures
offer. They ever recognize the reality of evil; and this, even while that evil,
through the boundless resources of the Divine love, magnifies more the glory of
the Creator, and ultimately exalts higher the blessedness of the creature. This
cannot, then, be the whole explanation of the blindness which this man had
brought with him into the world; but God, who though not the author, is yet the
disposer, of evil,—who distributes that which He did not Himself bring in, and
distributes it according to the counsels of his wisdom and righteousness and
grace, had willed that on this man should be concentrated more than the ordinary
penalties of the world’s universal sin, that a more than ordinary grace and
glory might be revealed in their removing. And now the Lord girds up Himself to
the work which is before Him, and justifies Himself in undertaking it: “I must
work the works of Him that sent Me,[4] while it is day; the night cometh, when
no man can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
“Whatever perils attended that work, yet it must be accomplished; for his time,
“the day” of his open activity, of his walking up and down among the people, and
doing them good, was drawing to an end. “The night,” when He should no longer
lighten the world with his presence, nor have the opportunity of doing, with his
own hands at least, works like these, was approaching. He worked in the day, and
was Himself the light of the day. The image is borrowed from our common day and
our common night, of which the first is the time appointed for labour, “man
goeth forth to his work until the evening” (Psa 104:23); while the latter, by
its darkness, opposes to many kinds of labour obstacles insurmountable. The
difficulty which Olshausen finds in the words, “when no man can work,” inasmuch
as, however Christ was Himself withdrawn from the earth, yet his disciples did
effectually work, rises solely from his missing the point of the proverbial
phrase. Our Lord does not affirm “The night cometh, in which no other man can
work; in which no work. can be done;” but only, in the language of a familiar
proverb which is as true for the heavenly kingdom as for this present world, “No
man who has not done his work in the day, can do it in the night; for him the
time cometh in which he cannot work;” and He does not exclude even Himself from
this law.[5] And then, with prophetic allusion to the work before Him, “As long
as I am in the world, I am the light of the world; what work then will become Me
better than this of opening the blind eyes? where should I find so fit a symbol
of my greater spiritual work, the restoring of the darkened spiritual vision of
mankind?”[5]

Having thus justified the work which is before Him, He proceeds to the cure.
“When He had thus spoken, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle,
and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay.” A medicinal value was
attributed in old time to saliva,[6] it is similarly used in the case of another
blind man (Mark 8:23), and of one suffering from a defect in the organs of
speech and hearing (Mark 7:33); neither are we altogether without examples of
the medicinal use of clay.[7] Still we must not suppose that, besides his divine
power, the Lord also used natural remedies, or that these were more than
conductors, not in themselves needful, but which He freely assumed as channels
for the conveying of his grace (cf. 2Ki 4:41; Isa 38:21); for other blind eyes
He opened without employing any such means (Mat 20:30-34). Probably the reasons
which induced their use were ethical. It may have been a help to the weak faith
of this man to find that something external was done.

What was the exact purport of the command, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam”? It
was certainly something more than a mere test of obedience. Was the cure itself
to result, altogether, or in part, from that washing? Or was the tempered clay
the sole agent of healing, and the washing merely designed to remove the
hindrances which this itself, if suffered to remain, would have opposed even to
the restored organs of vision? Our answer to this question must in good part
depend on the answer we give to another—this namely, Did St. John see anything
significant and mystical in the etymology of Siloam, that he should add it here,
“which is by interpretation, Sent”? Was it his intention to give here an
etymology merely, or did he trace any symbolic meaning in the fact that the Lord
should have sent the man to a pool bearing such a name? If the latter, I must
needs believe that it was also his intention to connect the actual cure with the
washing in that pool. But how is it possible to suppose that he did not see a
prophetic significance in the name “Siloam,” or that, except for this, he would
have paused to insert in his narrative the derivation of the word? (cf. 1:38,
42). This, appropriate enough in a lexicon, would have been quite inappropriate
in a gospel. At the same time, it is not very easy to determine exactly what his
allusion is. Olshausen dissents from those who find in “Sent” a reference to
Christ Himself, and this on the ground that He was not now the “Sent,” but the
Sender. Yet might the Evangelist Very well have alluded, not to this particular
healing, in which it is true He is more Sender than Sent, but rather to the
whole work of his ministry, which was a mission,[8] which He ever characterizes
as a work whereto He was the Sent of God (John 7:29; John 8:42); so that He
bears this very title, “the Apostle[2] of our profession” (Heb 3:1). These
waters of Siloam, in which the blind man washed and was illuminated, may well
have been to St. John the type of the waters of baptism, or indeed of all the
operations of grace by which the spiritually blind eyes are opened; the very
name of the pool having in his eyes a presaging fitness, which by this notice he
would indicate as more than accidental. The man is no Naaman, resenting the
simplicity of the means by which his cure should be effected, and only after a
while persuaded to adopt them. He was at once obedient to the word of the Lord:
“He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing;” returned, that is,
according to all appearance, to his own house; it does not seem that he came
back to the Lord. His friends and neighbours are the first who take note of the
cure which has been wrought;—well-disposed persons, as would appear, but
altogether under the influence of the Pharisees. They wonder, debate whether it
is indeed he whom they had known so long; for the opening of the eyes, those
windows of the soul, would have altered the whole character of the
countenance.[9] “Some said, This is he; others said, He is like him;” and so the
debate proceeded, until the man himself cut it short, and “said, I am he.” They
would fain learn how the cure was effected; and hearing from his lips of the
wonderworker who had wrought it, desire to see Him. Finally, as the safest
course, they bring the man, with no evil dispositions either towards him or
towards Christ, to their spiritual rulers,—not, that is, before the great
Sanhedrim, for that was not always sitting, but the lesser,—”to the Pharisees.”
The Sanhedrim did not indeed exclusively consist of these (for Caiaphas was a
Sadducee, and see Acts 23:6), but these were the most numerous and influential
party there, and the bitterest enemies of the Lord. The neighbours may have
misdoubted of the work, as having been done on the Sabbath; and on this account
deemed it advisable to bring the matter before their ecclesiastical rulers.

More formally examined by them, the man can only repeat his simple tale: “He put
clay upon mine eyes, and I washed, and do see.” Very characteristically he
speaks of the clay only, for, being blind, that only came within the scope of
his knowledge, who judged by the feeling alone; how the clay had been tempered
he was ignorant. The Pharisees first discuss the matter among themselves. Some
seek to rob the deed of its significance by a charge against the doer: “This man
is not of God, because He keepeth not the Sabbath day.” Granting then its
reality, it proved nothing in favour of Him that wrought it; rather was it to be
inferred, since He was thus an evident transgressor of God’s commandment, that
He was in connexion with the powers of evil. No lighter charge than that which
they made at another time, when they said, “He casteth out devils through the
prince of the devils” (Mat 9:34), was involved in this word of theirs. But there
was throughout all these events, which were so disastrously fixing the fortunes
of the Jewish people, an honester and better party in the Sanhedrim, of which
Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were the noblest representatives; men like the
Poles and Contarinis at another great epoch of the Church; not in number,
perhaps still less in courage, equal to the stemming of the fierce tide of
hostility which was rising against the truth,—a tide which probably in the end
drew most even of them into its current (cf. John 12:42-43); only here and there
one and another, such as those above named, extricating themselves from it.
These from time to time made their voices to be heard in the cause of
righteousness and truth. Thus, on the present occasion, did they at the first
claim that He should not at once be prejudged a sinner and a breaker of God’s
law, who had done such miracles as these. Even their own Doctors were not
altogether at one concerning what was permitted on the Sabbath, and what not;
some allowing quite as much as this and more, for only the alleviation of
disorders in the eyes. They might therefore plead that the Spirit of God might
well have directed Him in this that He did, and they ask, “How can a man that is
a sinner do such miracles?” Yet the shape which their interference takes, the
form of a question in which it clothes itself, is, as Chrysostom remarks, that
of timid and irresolute men, who dare only to hint their convictions. No wonder
that they should be in the end overborne and silenced by their more unscrupulous
adversaries, even as now they, prove unequal to the obtaining of a fair and
impartial hearing of the matter. The interrogation in the verse following, “What
sayest thou of Him, that He hath opened thine eyes?” has been frequently, but
wrongly, understood, not as one question, but as two. The mistake is a very old
one, for Theodore of Mopsuestia finds fault with them who divide the question
here into two clauses, as thus—”What sayest thou of Him? That He hath opened
thine eyes?” making the second clause to have its rise in the doubts which the
Pharisees felt, or pretended to feel, concerning the reality of the miracle. In
truth there is but one question, “What sayest thou of Him because[10] He hath
opened thine eyes? what conclusion drawest thou from thence?” The answer is then
to the point, “He said, He is a prophet;”[11]—not yet the Messiah, not yet the
Son of God; of these higher dignities of his benefactor the man as yet has no
guess; but what he believes Him he boldly declares Him, “a prophet,”—one
furnished with a message from above, and attesting that message by deeds which
no man could do, except God were with him (John 3:2; John 4:19; John 6:14). They
who asked this, cared not in the least for the judgment of the man, but they
hoped to mould him into an instrument for their own wicked purposes. Chrysostom
indeed, whom Theophylact and Euthymius follow, understands this “What sayest
thou of Him P” as the speech of the better-disposed in the Sanhedrim, who hope
that the testimony of the man himself may go for something; but this is little
probable. Rather the drift of the question is that he, perceiving what would be
welcome to them, and following the suggestions which they had thrown out, should
turn against his benefactor, and ascribe the opening of his eyes to the power of
an evil magic. But a rare courage from above is given to him, and he dares, in
the face of these formidable men whom he is making his foes, to avouch his
belief that the work and the doer of the work were of God. The inquisitors now
summon his parents, hoping to tamper more successfully with them, to win a lie
from them, a declaration that their son had not been born blind. But they
prosper no better in this quarter.. His parents reply as those who will not be
made accomplices in a fraud, though with no very high desire to witness or to
suffer for the truth. Nay, there is something selfish, and almost cowardly, in
their manner of extricating themselves from a danger in which they are content
to leave their son. The questions put to them are three: “Is this your son?”—”
Whom ye say was born blind?” —”How then doth he now see?” The first two they
answer in the affirmative: “This is our son”—” He was born blind” —the third
they altogether decline—” By what means he now seeth, we know not; or who hath
opened his eyes, we know not: he is of age; ask him: he shall speak for
himself.” They could not have told the truth without saying something to the
honour of Jesus; and they will not do this, fearing to come under the penalties
which the Sanhedrim had lately pronounced against any that should “confess that
He was Christ.”. We are not to understand by this that the Sanhedrim had
formally declared Jesus to be an impostor, a false Christ, but only that, so
long as the question of the truth or falsehood of his claims to be the Messiah
was not yet clear,—and they, the great religious tribunal of the nation, had not
given their decision,—none were to anticipate that decision; and any who should
thus run before, or, as it might prove, run counter to, their decision, “should
be put out of the synagogue,”—that is, should be excommunicated. There appear to
have been two, or some say three, kinds of excommunication among the Jews,
greatly differing in degrees and intensity; and Christ often speaks of them, as
among the sharpest trials which his servants would have to endure for his name’s
sake (John 16:2). The mildest form was exclusion for thirty days from the
synagogue; to this period, in case the excommunicated showed no sign of
repentance, a similar or a longer period, according to the will of those that
imposed the sentence, was added: in other ways too it was made sharper; it was
accompanied with a curse; none might hold communion with him now, not even his
family, except in cases of absolute necessity. Did the offender show himself
obstinate still, he was in the end absolutely separated from the fellowship of
the people of God, cut off from the congregation,—a sentence answering, as many
suppose, to the delivering to Satan in the apostolic Church[12] (1Co 5:5; 1Ti
1:20). The man had been removed, while his parents were being examined. The
Pharisees now summon him again, and evidently by their address would have him to
believe that they had gotten to the bottom of all, had discovered the whole
fraud, so that any longer persistence in it would be idle: “Give God the praise;
we know that this man is a sinner.” They are as men seeking to obtain confession
from one they suspect, by assuring him that others have confessed, and thus that
for him to stand out in denying, will only make matters worse for him in the
end. “Now we know,” they would say, “that it is all a collusion; we have
indubitable proofs of it; do thou also give glory to God, and acknowledge that
it is so.” Our “Give God the praise” sets the English reader of this passage on
a wrong track. They do not mean, “Give the glory of thy cure to God, and not to
this sinful man, who in truth could have contributed nothing to it,
“—attempting, in Hammond’s words, “to draw him from that opinion of Christ which
he seemed to have, by bidding him to ascribe the praise of his cure wholly to
God, and not to look on Christ with any veneration.” So indeed Jeremy Taylor:
“The spiteful Pharisees bid him give glory to God, and defy the minister; for
God indeed was good, but He wrought that cure by a wicked hand.” But they cannot
mean this; for they did not allow that any cure had taken place at all; on the
contrary, they professed to believe that it was a deception and conspiracy
throughout, gotten up between Christ and the man who was before them. The words
are rather an adjuration to him that he should speak the truth[13] (cf. Jos
7:19). Hitherto he has been acting as though he could deceive not merely men but
God, but now let him honour or “give glory” to God, uttering that which is truth
before Him, and avouching so his belief in Him as a God of knowledge, of
righteousness, and of truth; whom no lie will escape, and who will show Himself
a swift witness against all ungodliness of men. “We know that this man is a
sinner, a more than ordinary transgressor, one, therefore, to whom last and
least of all would God have given this higher power; your story then cannot be
true; we who have the best opportunities of knowing, know this. “They will
overbear him with the authority of their place and station, and with their
confident assertion. The man, whom we must recognize throughout as ready-witted,
genial, and brave, declines altogether to enter on a question which was plainly
beyond his knowledge; “Whether He be a sinner or no, I know not;” yet, as
Chrysostom observes, he does not in the least by his answer allow the alter-
-native that He was so. This is a matter which he knows not; he will speak,
however, the thing which he does know, and they may draw their own conclusions;
“One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.”They perceive that they
can gain nothing in this way, and they require him to tell over again the manner
of his cure;”Then said they to him again, What did He to thee? how opened He
thine eyes? “hoping either to detect on a second repetition some contradictions
in his story, or to find something which they can better lay hold of, and wrest
into a charge against the Lord; or perhaps, utterly perplexed how to escape from
their present entanglement, they ask for this repetition to gain time, and in
the hope that some light may break upon them presently. But the man has grown
weary of the examinations to which they are submitting him anew, and there is
something of defiance in his answer: “I have told you already, and ye did not
hear: wherefore would ye hear it again?”—and then, with an evident irony, “Will
ye also[14] be his disciples?” It is clear that these words cut them to the
quick, though it is not so clear what exactly is the taunt conveyed by them. Is
it this? “How idle to tell you over again, when there is that deep-rooted enmity
in your hearts against this man, that, though convinced a hundred times, you
would yet never acknowledge it, or sit as learners at his feet.[15] Will ye also
become his disciples? I trow not.” This is the commonest explanation of the
words; but does not, however, agree perfectly with their reply. In that they
earnestly repel the indignity of being, or intending to be, disciples of his.
Such a disclaimer would have been beside the mark, if he, so far from accusing
them of any such intention, had on the contrary laid to their charge, that no
evidence, no force of truth, could win them to this. More probably then the man,
in this last clause of his answer, affects to misunderstand their purpose in
asking a repetition of his story: “Is it then, indeed, that the truth is at
length winning you also to its side, so that you too would fain find my story
true, and yourselves sit as disciples at this man’s feet?” With this the angry
rejoinder of the Pharisees will exactly correspond. Nothing could have stung
them more than the bare suggestion of such a discipleship on their parts: “They
reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple,” or “Thou art that man’s
disciple,”[16] “but we are Moses’ disciples” —setting, as. was their wont, Moses
against the Lord, and contrasting their claims: “we know that God spake unto
Moses;” he had a commission and an authority; but “as for this fellow, we know
not from whence He is;” all is obscure, uncertain about Him; there is no proof
that God has given Him a commission, no one can certainly affirm whether He be
from above or from beneath. This confession of their inability to explain this
new and wonderful appearance, this acknowledgment that they were at fault,
emboldens the man yet further. They had left a blot, and this plain yet
quick-witted man fails not to take instant advantage of it. There is an irony
keener yet in his present retort than in his last: “Why herein is a marvellous
thing, that ye know not from whence He is, and yet He hath opened mine eyes.
This is wonderful; here is one evidently clothed with powers mightier than
man’s, able to accomplish a work like this; and you, the spiritual rulers of our
nation, you that should try the spirits, should be able to pronounce of each new
appearance whether it be of God or not, here acknowledge your ignorance, and
cannot decide whence He is, whether of earth or of heaven,[17] But I know, for
you have yourselves declared the same (see ver. 24), that God heareth not
sinners; now this man He hath heard, and enabled Him to do a work without
parallel; therefore I know whence He is; He is of God; for were He otherwise He
could have never done the things which He has done.”

It is interesting to observe how rapidly the man’s faith and insight and courage
have grown during this very examination. He who had said a little while before,
“Whether He be a sinner or no, I know not” avoiding the answer, now declares
boldly, “We know that God heareth not sinners.” Nor need we take exception, as
many have taken, at his maxim, nor urge, as they have thought it needful to do,
that this saying has no scriptural authority,[18] being the utterance neither of
Christ nor of one of his inspired servants, but only of a man not wholly
enlightened yet, in whose mind truth and error were yet struggling. That the
words have in themselves no authority is most true; still they may well be
allowed to stand, and that in the intention of the speaker. For the term
“sinner” has a twofold meaning in Scripture. Sometimes it is applied to all men,
as they are fallen children of Adam, each with the burden of his own sin upon
him. If, taking the word in this sense, it were affirmed, “God heareth not
sinners,” this were indeed to say, God heareth not any man; or if by “sinners”
were understood those who have been in time past more than ordinary
transgressors, and it were implied that such therefore would not be heard,
though they truly turned, this too would be an impeaching of God’s grace. But
the Scripture more commonly knows another and emphatic use of the term
“sinners,”—men in their sins, and not desiring to be delivered out of them[19]
(Isa 33:14; Gal 2:15); and in this sense, which is the sense of the speaker
here, as of the better among the Pharisees, who a little earlier in the day had
said, “How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles?” (ver. 16;, cf. 10:21),
it is most true “that God heareth not sinners;” their prayer is an abomination;
and even if they ask, they obtain not their petitions[2] (Isa 1:11-15; Isa
59:1-2; Pro 1:28; Pro 15:8; Pro 15:29; Pro 28:9; Ps. 1. 16; 66:18; 59:7; Job
27:9; Job 35:13; Jer 14:12; Amo 5:21-23; Mic 3:4; Jas 4:3). This was what least
of all the Pharisees could endure, that the whole relations between themselves
and this man should thus be reversed,—that he should thus be their teacher; and
while it was now plain that he could neither be cajoled nor terrified from his
simple yet bold avowal of the truth, their hatred and scorn break forth without
any restraint: “Thou wast altogether born in sins, not imperfect in body only,
but, as we now perceive, maimed and deformed in soul also, and dost thou teach
us?[20] Thou that earnest forth from thy. mother’s womb with the note of thy
wickedness upon thee, dost thou school us, presuming to meddle and be a judge in
such matters as these?” They take the same view of his calamity, namely, that it
was the note of a more than ordinary sinfulness, which the disciples had
suggested; but make hateful application of it. It is characteristic enough that
they forget that the two charges, one that he had never been blind, and so was
an impostor,—the other that he bore the mark of God’s anger in a blindness which
reached back to his birth,—will not agree together. “And they cast him out,”
—which does not merely mean, as some explain it (Chrysostom, Maldonatus,
Grotius, Tholuck), rudely flung him forth from the hall of judgment, wherever
that may have been; but, according to the decree which had gone before, they
declared him to have come under those sharp spiritual censures denounced against
any that should recognize the prophetic office of the Lord. Only so would the
act have the importance which (ver. 35) is attached to it. No doubt the sign and
initial act of this excommunication was the thrusting him forth and separating
him from their own company;[21] and so that other explanation of the passage has
its relative truth.[22] Yet this was not all, or nearly all, involved in the
words. This violent putting of him forth from the hall of audience was only the
beginning of the things which he should suffer for Christ’s sake. Still there
was, to use the words of Fuller on this very occasion, this comfort for him,
that “the power of the keys, when abused, doth not shut the door of heaven, but
in such cases only shoot the bolt beside the lock, not debarring the innocent
person entrance thereat.” And in him were to be fulfilled in a very eminent
sense those words, “Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall
separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name
as evil, for the Son of man’s sake” (Luk 6:22). He is cast out from the meaner
fellowship, to be received into the higher,—from that which was about to vanish
away, to be admitted into a kingdom not to be moved. The synagogue, so soon’ to
be “the synagogue of Satan,” rejects him; the Church of the living God, and
Christ the great bearer of the keys in that kingdom, receives him; for in him
the words of the Psalmist shall be fulfilled, “When my father and my mother
forsake me, the Lord taketh me up” (Psa 27:12). He has not been ashamed of
Christ, and now Christ reveals his true name and his glory unto him; so that he
beholds Him no longer as a prophet from God, which was the highest height to
which hitherto his faith had reached, but as the Son of God Himself. Thus to him
that hath is given, and he ascends from: faith to faith. ’“Jesus heard that they
had cast him out” and, Himself the Good Shepherd, went in search of his sheep in
this, favourable hour for making it his own for ever, bringing, it safely home
to the true; fold;—” and when He had found him” encountered him, it may be, in
the temple (cf. John 5:14), “He; said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of
God?”’ The man knows what the title means, that it is equivalent to Messiah, but
he knows not any who has a right to claim it for his own: such trust, however,
has he in his Healer, that whomsoever He will point out to him as such, he will
recognize. “He answered and said unto Him, Who is He, Lord, that I might believe
on Him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that
talketh with thee.” These words “Thou hast seen Him” do not refer to some
anterior seeing; for it does not appear that the man, after his eyes were opened
at the pool, had returned to the Lord, or that he had enjoyed any opportunity of
seeing Him since; but contain a reply to the question, “Who is He, Lord, that I
might believe on Him?”“ He is one whom thou hast seen already; thou askest to
see Him, but this seeing is not still to do; ever since thou hast been speaking
with Me thine eyes have beheld Him, for it is no other than Himself that talketh
with thee.”[23] And now the end to which all that went before was but an
introduction, has arrived: “He said, Lord, I believe; and he worshipped Him:”
not that even now we need suppose him to have known all that was contained in
that title, “Son of God,”—or that, worshipping Him, he intended to render Him
that supreme adoration, which is indeed due to Christ, but only due to Him
because He is one with the Father. For “God manifest in the flesh,” is a fact
far too transcendant for any man to receive at once: the minds even of Apostles
themselves could only dilate little by little to receive it. There were,
however, in him the preparations for that crowning faith. The seed which should
unfold into that perfect flower was safely laid in his heart; and he fell down
at the feet of Jesus as of one more than man, with a deep religious reverence
and fear and awe. And thus the faith of this poor man was accomplished; step by
step he had advanced, following faithfully the light which was given him;
undeterred by opposition which would have been fatal to a weaker faith, and must
have been so to his, unless the good seed had cast its roots in a soil of more
than ordinary depth. But because it was such a soil, therefore when persecution
arose, as it soon did, for the word’s sake, he was not offended (Mat 13:21); but
enduring still, to him at length that highest grace was vouchsafed, to know the
only-begotten Son of God, however as yet he may not have seen all the glorious
treasures that were contained in that knowledge. So wonderful was the whole
event, so had it brought out the spiritual blindness of those who ought to have
been the seers of the nation, so had it ended in the illumination, spiritual as
well as bodily, of one who seemed among the blind, that it called forth from the
Saviour’s lips those remarkable words in which He moralized the whole: “For
judgment 1 am come into this world, that they which see not might see, and that
they which see might be made blind: I am come to reveal every man’s innermost
state; I, as the highest revelation of God, must bring out men’s love and their
hatred of what is divine as none other could (John 3:19-21); I am the
touchstone; much that seemed true shall at my touch be proved false, to be
merely dross; much that for its little sightliness was nothing accounted of,
shall prove true metal: many, whom men esteemed to be seeing, such as the
spiritual chiefs of this nation, shall be shown to be blind; many, whom men
counted altogether unenlightened, shall, when my light touches them, be shown to
have powers of spiritual vision undreamt of before. “Christ was the King of
truth,—and therefore his open setting up of his banner in the world was at once
and of necessity a ranging of men in their true ranks, as lovers of truth or
lovers of a lie;[24] and He. is here saying of Himself the same thing which
Simeon had said of Him before: “Behold, this Child is set for the fall and
rising again of many in Israel,.... that the thoughts of many hearts may be
revealed” (Luk 2:34-35). He is the stone on which men build, and against which
men stumble,—and set for this purpose as well as that (1Pe 2:6-8; cf. 2Co 2:16).
These words call out a further contradiction on the part of the Pharisees, and
out of this miracle unfolds itself that discourse which reaches down to ver. 21
of the ensuing chapter. They had shown what manner of shepherds of the sheep
they were in their exclusion of this one from the fold: “with force and with
cruelty have ye ruled them” (Eze 34:4 [25]): our Lord proceeds to set over
against them Himself, as the good Shepherd and the true.

Footnotes [1] As Maldonatus, Tittmann, Tholuck, Olshausen

[2] Ἐκ γενετῆς=ἐκ κοιλίας μητρός, Acts 3:2; Acts 14:8. There, as here, a
lifelong defect is removed.

[3] The passages quoted from the Wisdom of Solomon (viii. 19, 20) and from
Josephus (B. J. ii. 8, 14) are misunderstood, when applied in this sense.

[4] This was a favourite passage “with the Arians; see Augustine, Serm. cxxxv.
1-4, and his answer there to their abusive interpretation.

[5] The power of triviality can reach no further than it has reached in the
exposition of Paulus. Christ is for him no more than a skilful oculist, who
says, “I must take this cure in hand while there is yet daylight to see; for
when it is dark I could not attempt so fine and delicate an operation.” See
back, pp. 78 81.

[6] So Cyril: Ἐπείπερ ἀϕῖγμαι ϕωτίσων τὰ ἐν ἐνδείᾳ ϕωτὸς‚ δεῖ με καὶ τοῖς τοῦ
σώματος τὸ ϕῶς μεταδοῦναι.

[7] The virtue especially of the saliva jejuna, in cases of disorders of the
eyes, was well known to antiquity. Pliny (H. N. xxviii. 7) says, Lippitudines
matutinâ quotidie velut inunctione arceri. In both accounts (Suetonius, Vespas.
7; Tacitus, Hist. iv. 8) of that restoring of a blind man to sight, attributed
to Vespasian, the use of this remedy occurs. In the latter the man appears
begging of the emperor, ut genas et oculorum orbes dignaretur respergere oris
excremento; and abundant quotations to the same effect are to be found in
Wetstein (in loc).

[8] Augustine (Serm. cxxxv. 1): Quis est ipse Missus, nisi qui dixit in ipsâ
lectione, Ego, inquit, veni ut faciam opera ejus qui misit me; and In Ev. Joh.
tract, xliv.: Misit ilium ad piscinam qua; vocatur Siloë. Pertinuit autem ad
Evangelistam commendare nobis nomen hujus piscinae, et ait, Quod interpretatur
Missus. Jam quis sit Missus agnoscitis: nisi enim ille fuisset missus, nemo
nostrum esset ab iniquitate dimissus. So Chrysostom, Horn. lvii. in Joh. On St.
John’s derivation of Siloam, see Tholuck’s Beiträge zur Spracherklärung des N.
T. p. 123, where he also enters into the hard question of its position, whether
at the east or west side of the city.

[9] Augustine: Aperti oculi vultum mutaverant.

[10] Ὅτι=ὑπὲρ ὧν.

[11] Our Version no doubt in general conveys to the English reader the wrong
impression; it had done so at least for many years to me. Yet the manner of
pointing, with the absence of the second note of interrogation, shows that the
Translators had rightly apprehended the passage.

[12] Our Lord is thought to refer to all these three degrees of separation, Luk
6:22, expressing the lightest by the ἀϕορίζειν, the severer by the ὀνειδίζειν,
and the severest of all by the ἐκβάλλειν. But it may well be doubtful whether
these different grades of excommunication were so accurately distinguished in
his time (see Winer, Realwörterbuch, s. v. Bann, and Vitringa, De Synagogá, p.
738).

[13] The phrase is often used more generally as an adjuration to repentance of
every kind, which is indeed in the highest. sense a taking shame to ourselves,
and in that a giving glory only to God (1Sa 6:5; Jer 13:16; 1 Esdr. ix. 8; Rev
16:9). Seneca (Ep. 95) speaks very nobly of this giving glory to God, as the
great work of every man: Primus, est Deorum cultus, Deos credere: deinde reddere
illis majestatem suam, reddere bonitatem, sine quâ nulla majestas est.

[14] Σὺ εἶ μαθητὴς ἐκείνου. Bengel well: Hoc verbo removent Jesum a sese.

[15] In the καὶ ὑμεῖς of the man there may lie, as Chrysostom has observed, a
confession that lie was, or intended to be, a follower of this prophet. Bengel:
Jucunde observari potest fides apud hunc hominerm, dum Pharisaei

[16]Calvin: Significat quamvis centies convicti fuerint, maligno hostilique
affectu sic esse occupatos ut nunquam cessuri sint.

[17] Compare our Lord’s question to his adversaries, Mat 21:25 : "The baptism of
John, whence was it (πόθεν ἦν)? from heaven or of men?" which best explains the
πόθεν (=ἐν ποίᾳ ἐξουσίᾳ‚, ver. 24) here. In the same way Pilate’s question to
our Lord, "Whence art Thou?" John 19:9) is to. be explained, "To what world dost
Thou belong’?"

[18] Thus Origen (In Esai. Horn, v.): Peccatores exaudit Deus. Quod si timetis
illud quod in Evangelio dicitur, Scimus quia peccatores non exaudiat Deus,
nolite pertimescere, nolite credere. Coecus erat qui hoc dixit. Magis. autem
credite ei qui dicit, et non mentitur, Etsi fuerint peccata vestra ut coccinum,
ut lanam dealbabo. But elsewhere rightly (Comm. in Rom 5:18): Aliud est peccare,
aliud peccatorem esse. Peccator dicitur is, qui multa delinquendo in
consuetudinem, et, ut ita dicam, in studium peccandi jam venit. Augustine (Serm.
cxxxvi.): Si peccatores Deus non exaudit, quam spem habemus? Si peccatores Deus
non exaudit, ut quid oramus et testimonium peccati nostri tunsione pectoris
dicimus [Luk 18:10]. Certe peccatores Deus exaudit. Sed ille qui ista dixit,
nondum laverat faciem cordis de Siloâ. In oculis ejus praecesserat sacramentum:
sed in corde nondum erat effectum gratiae beneficium. Quando lavit faciem cordis
sui coecus iste? Quando eum Dominus foras missum a Judaeis, intromisit ad se.
Cf. Serm. cxxxv. 5. Elsewhere (Con. Lit. Parmen. ii. 8) he shows that his main
desire is thus to rescue the passage from Donatist abuses. These last, true to
their plan of making the sacraments and other blessings of the Church to rest on
the subjective sanctity of those through whose hands they passed, and not on the
sure promise of Him from whose hands they came, misapplied these words. “God
heareth not sinners;” how then, they. asked, can these minister blessings to
others? It would be enough to answer that it is not them whom God hears, but the
Church which speaks through them; nor did it need, because of this abuse of the
words, to make exception against the statement itself, as though it smacked of
errors from which the man was not yet wholly delivered. Calvin better: Falluntur
qui coecum ex vulgi opinione sic loquutum esse putant. Nam peccator hie quoque
ut paulo ante impium et sceleratum significat (ver. 24). Est autem haec perpetua
Scripturae doctrina, quod Deus non exaudiat nisi a quibus vere et sincero corde
vocatur..... Ideo non male ratiocinatur coecus, Christum a Deo profectum esse,
quern suis votis ita propitium habet.

[19] Thus Augustine. (Enarr. in Psa. 56:18): Non est hoc nomen [peccatores] in
Scripturis usitatum eorum, qui licet juste ac laudabiliter vivant, non sunt sine
peccato. Magis enim, sicut interest inter irridentes et irrisores, inter
murmurantes et murmuratores, inter scribentes et scriptores, et cetera similia:
ita Scriptura peccatores appellare consuevit valde iniquos, et grandibus
peccatorum sarcinis onerosos.

[20] Bengel: Exprobrant de coecitate pristinâ. Calvin: Perinde illi insultant,
acsi ab utero matris cum scelerum suorum notâ prodiisset.

[21] Corn, a Lapide: Utrumque eos fecisse est credibile, scilicet coecum ex
domo, et hoc symbolo ex Ecclesia sua, ejecisse. Ἐκβάλλειν will then have the
technical meaning which it afterwards retained in the Church (see Suicer, Thes.
s. v.).

[22] See Vitringa, De Synagogâ, p. 743.

[23] Corn. a Lapide: Et vidisti eum, nunc cum se tibi ipse videndum offert.

[24] Augustine (In Ev. Job. tract. xliv.): Dies ille diviserat inter lucem et
tenebras.

[25] This whole chapter of Ezekiel may be profitably read in the light of the
connexion between these 9th and 10th chapters of St. John.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 27: 27-19. THE RESTORING OF THE MAN WITH A WITHERED HAND
========================================================================

19. The Restoring of the Man with a Withered Hand Mat 12:9-13; Mark 3:1-5; Luk
6:6-11 This is not the first of our Lord’s cures on the Sabbath day, [1] which
stirs the ill-will of his adversaries, or which is used by them as a pretext for
accusing Him; twice already we have seen the same results to follow (John 5:16;
John 9:12); yet I have reserved till now the consideration, once for all, of the
position which our Lord Himself took in respect of the Sabbath, and the light in
which He regarded it. For this the present is the most favourable occasion;
since here, and in the discourse which immediately precedes this miracle, and
which stands, if not quite in such close historic connexion as might at first
sight appear on reading it in the Gospel of St. Matthew, yet in closest inner
relation to it, our Lord Himself deals with the matter, and delivers the
weightiest words which on this matter fell from his lips. To go back then to
that preceding discourse, and the circumstances which gave rise to it;—the
Pharisees were offended with the disciples for plucking ears of corn and eating
them upon the Sabbath,—not indeed with the act itself, as an invasion of other
men’s property, for the very law which they claimed to vindicate had expressly
permitted as much: “When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbour,
then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand” (Deu 23:25); and the disciples
had done no more. By limitations even slight as this upon an absolute
proprietorship God asserted that He was Himself the true proprietor of all the
land, and that all other holders held only of Him. Not in what they did then,
but in the day on which they did it, the fault of the disciples, if any,
consisted. The Pharisees accuse them to their Lord: “Why do they on the Sabbath
day that which is not lawful?” Either He shall be obliged to confess his
followers transgressors of the law; or, defending them, shall become a defender
of the transgression;—in either case a triumph for his foes. So they calculate,
but the issue disappoints their calculation. The Lord seeks in his reply to
raise the objectors to a truer point of view from which to contemplate the act
of his disciples; and by two examples, and these taken from that very law which
they believed they were asserting, would show them how the law, if it is not to
work mischievously, must be spiritually handled and understood. These examples
are borrowed, one from the O. T. history, the other from that temple service
continually going on before their eyes. The first, the well-known event which
occurred during David’s flight from Saul (1 Sam. xxi. l-6); his claiming and
obtaining the show-bread from the High priest, would naturally carry much weight
with them whom Christ was seeking to convince, David being counted the great
pattern and example of O. T. holiness: “Will ye affirm that they did
wrong,—David who in that necessity claimed, or the priest who gave to him, the
holy bread?” The second example came yet nearer home to the gainsayers, and was
more convincing still, being no exceptional case, but grounded in the very
constitution of the Levitical service: “Ye do yourselves practically acknowledge
it right that the rest of the Sabbath should give place to a higher interest, to
the service of the temple; that, as the lesser, it should be subordinated, and,
where needful, offered up to this as the greater: the sacrifices, with all the
laborious preparations which they require, do hot cease upon the Sabbath (Num
28:8-9); all which is needful for completing them is accomplished upon that day;
yet no one accounts the priests to be therefore in any true sense violators of
that holy day;[2] rather would they be so, if they left these things undone.”[3]
And then, lest the Pharisees should retort, or in their hearts make exception,
that the work referred to was done in the service of the temple, and was
therefore permitted, while here there was no such serving of higher interests,
He adds, ’’ But I say unto you, That in this place is One greater than the
temple;” One whom therefore, by still better right, his servants may serve, and
be guiltless.[4] He contemplates his disciples as already the priests of the New
Covenant, of which He is Himself the living Temple.[5] It was in their needful
service and ministration to Him, which so occupied them as that they had not
time regularly to prepare food or to eat, that they were an hungred, and
profaned, as their adversaries accounted it, the Sabbath. But if those who yet
ministered in that temple which was but the shadow of the true, were thus
privileged,—if, as every man’s conscience bore witness, they were blameless in
such a profanation as this, and only seemingly transgressed the law, really to
keep it, how much more those who ministered about the Temple not made with
hands, the true Tabernacle, which the Lord had pitched and not man?[6] But it is
not enough to absolve his disciples of any fault in this matter; the malignant
accusation must not pass without rebuke: these “judges of evil thoughts” shall
be themselves judged. Therefore He continues: “But if ye had known what that
meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the
guiltless” If with all their searching into the Scripture, all their busy
scrutiny of its letter, they had ever so entered into the spirit of that law,
whereof they professed to be the jealous guardians and faithful interpreters, as
to understand that Scripture, they would not have blamed them in whom no true
blame can be found. The citation, now made for a second time by our Lord (cf.
Mat 9:13), is from Hos 6:6, and leaves some ambiguity on the mind of an English
reader; which would have been avoided by some such translation as this, “I
desire mercy, and not sacrifice.”[7] The words are most memorable; they, contain
one of those prophetic glimpses of the Gospel, one of those slights cast upon
the law even during the time when the law was in force,[8] an example of that
“finding fault” on God’s part with that very thing which He had Himself
established (Heb 8:8), whereby a witness was borne even to them that lived under
it, that it was not the highest, God having some better and higher thing in
reserve for his people (Jer 31:31-34). The prophet of the Old Covenant is here
anticipating the great Apostle of the New, and saying in other words, but with
as distinct a voice: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of Angels, and
though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be
burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing” (1Co 13:1-3). He is
declaring that what God longs for on the part of men is not the outward
observance, the sacrifice in the letter, but the inward outpouring of love, that
which the “sacrifice” symbolized, the giving up of self in the self-devotion of
love (cf. Heb 10:5-10; Psa 51:16-17). This must underlie every outward sacrifice
and service which is to have any value in his sight; and when the question
arises between the form and the spirit; so that the one can only be preserved at
the loss of the other, then the form must yield to the life, as the meaner to
the more precious.[9] But the application of the words in the present case still
remains unsettled. For it either may be: “If you had truly understood what God
asks of men, what service of theirs pleases Him best, you would have understood
that my disciples were offering that, who in true love and pity for perishing
souls had so laboured and toiled as to go without their necessary food, being
thus obliged to satisfy the cravings of a present hunger;[10] you would have
owned that their loving transgression was better than many a man’s cold and
heartless clinging to the letter of the commandment. “Or else the words may have
more direct reference to the Pharisees themselves: “If you had understood the
service wherein God delighted the most, you would have sought to please Him by
meekness and by mercy,—by a charitable judgment of your brethren,—by that love
out of a pure heart, which to Him is more than all whole burnt-offerings and
sacrifices (Mark 12:33), rather than in the way of sharp and severe censure of
your brethren” (Pro 17:15; Isa 5:23). In this way Olshausen,[11] who adds: “This
merciful love was just what was wanting in the fault-finding of the Pharisees.
It was no true bettering of the disciples which they desired; no pure zeal for
the cause of God urged them on. Rather sought they out of envy and an inner
bitterness to bring something against the disciples; and, in fact, out of this
did, in an apparent zeal for the Lord, persecute the Lord in his disciples. They
’condemned the guiltless; for the disciples had not out of ennui, for mere
pastime’s sake, plucked the ears, but out of hunger (ver. 1). Their own they had
forsaken, and they hungered now in their labour for the kingdom of God. They
stood therefore in the same position as David the servant of God, who, in like
manner, with them that were with him, hungered in the service of the Lord; as
the priests, who in the temple must labour on the Sabbath, and so for the Lord’s
sake seem to break the law of the Lord. While this was so, they also might
without scruple eat of the show-bread of the Lord: what was God’s, that was
theirs.”

St. Mark has alone preserved for us the weighty words which follow: “The Sabbath
was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (ii. 27). The end for which the
Sabbath was ordained was to bless man; the end for which man was created was not
to observe the Sabbath. A principle is here laid down, which it is clearly
impossible to confine to the Sabbath alone. Rather it must extend to the whole
circle of outward ordinances. It does in fact say this, the law was made for
man; not man for the law. Man is the end, and the ordinances of the law the
means; not these the end, and man the means (cf. 2Ma 5:19; a remarkable
parallel). Man was not made to the end that he might observe these; but these
were given, that they might bless man, that they might train and discipline him
till he should be ready to serve God from the free impulses of his spirit.[12]
And all this being so, “therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.”
Now to say here with Grotius, that “Son of man” has no wider and deeper meaning
than “man” in the verse preceding, that the context will admit of no other, and
to draw from these words that the Sabbath being made for man, man therefore can
deal with the Sabbath as he will, is a serious error.[13] For, in the first
place, there is no one passage of the N. T. where “Son of man” (occurring as it
does eighty-eight times) means other than the Messiah, the man in whom the idea
of humanity was altogether fulfilled. And then secondly, among all the bold
words with which St. Paul sets out man’s relations to the law, he never speaks
of him, even after he is risen with Christ, as being its “lord;” so that an
interpretation might well be suspicious, even if it had everything else to
recommend it, which claimed this prerogative for him. “The redeemed man is not,
indeed, under the law; he is released from its rule, so that it is henceforth
with him, as a friendly companion, not over him, as an imperious
schoolmaster.[14] But for all this it is God’s law; and he, so long as he is
still in the flesh, and therefore may continually need its restraints upon his
flesh, never stands above it; rather, at the first moment of his falling away
from the liberty of a service in Christ, will come under it anew. Even of the
ceremonial law man is not lord, to loose himself from it, as upon the plea of
insight into the deeper mysteries which it shadows forth: he must wait a loosing
from it at those hands from which it first proceeded, and which first imposed it
upon him. But the Son of man, who is also Son of God, He has power over all
these outward ordinances: He Himself first gave them for the training of man, as
a preparatory discipline; and when they have done their work, when this
preparatory discipline is accomplished, He may remove them (Heb 9:11-15). “Made
under the law” in his human nature (Gal 4:4), He is above the law, and lord of
it, by fight of that other nature which is joined with his human. He therefore
may pronounce when the shadow shall give place to the substance, when his people
have so embraced the last that they may forego the first. And it was the sign
and evidence that these outward ordinances had done their work, when He was
come, in whom the highest gifts of God to men were imparted. The very fact that
the highest was committed to Him involved his power over all lower forms of
teaching. Christ is “the end of the law,”— in every way the end, as that to
which it pointed, as that in which it is swallowed up; being Himself living law;
yet not therefore in any true sense the destroyer of the law, as the adversaries
charged Him with being, but its transformer and glorifier, changing it from law
into liberty, from shadow to substance, from letter to spirit[15] (Mat 5:17-18).
To this our Lord’s clearing of his disciples, or rather of Himself in his
disciples (for the accusation was truly against Him), the healing of the man
with a withered hand is by St. Matthew, as we have seen, immediately attached,
although St. Luke shows us that it did not find place till the following
Sabbath. Like another healing, very similar in its circumstances, that of the
woman with the spirit of infirmity (Luk 13:11), like that too of the demoniac at
Capernaum (Mark 1:2-3), it was wrought in a synagogue. There, on the ensuing
Sabbath, in “their synagogue,” the synagogue of those with whom He had thus
disputed, He encountered “a man who had his hand withered;” his “right hand” as
St. Luke tells us. The disease under which he laboured, and which probably
extended throughout the whole arm, was one occasioned by a deficient absorption
of nutriment in the limb; it was, in fact, a partial atrophy, showing itself in
a gradual wasting of the size of the limb, with a loss of its powers of motion,
and ending with its total death. When once thoroughly established, it is
incurable by any art of man.[16] The apparent variation in the different records
of this miracle, that in St. Matthew the question proceeds from the Pharisees,
in St. Mark and Luke from the Lord, is no real one; the reconciliation of the
two accounts is easy. The Pharisees first ask Him, “Is it lawful to heal on the
Sabbath day?” He answers this question, as was often his custom (see Mat 21:24),
by another question. That this is such another counter-question comes out most
plainly in St. Luke: “I will ask you one thing. Is it lawful on the Sabbath days
to do good or to do evil? to save life or destroy it?” With the same infinite
wisdom which we admire in his answer to the lawyer’s question, “Who is my
neighbour?” (Luk 10:29), He shifts the whole argument, lifts it up altogether
into a higher region, where at once it is seen on which side is the right and
the truth. They had put the alternative of doing or not doing; there might be a
question here. But He shows that the alternative is, doing good or failing to do
good,—which last He puts as identical with doing evil, the neglecting to save as
equivalent with destroying (Pro 24:11-12). Here there could be no question; this
under no circumstances could be right; it could never be good to sin. Therefore
it is not merely allowable, but a duty, to do some things on the Sabbath.[17]
“Yea,” He goes on, “and things much less important and earnest than that which I
am about to do, you would not yourselves leave undone. “Which of you would not
draw your sheep from the pit into which it had fallen on the Sabbath? and shall
not I, the true Shepherd, rescue a sheep of my fold, a man, that is far better
than a sheep? Your own consciences tell you that such were a true Sabbath work;
and how much worthier this! You have asked me, Is it lawful to heal on the
Sabbath? I reply, It is lawful to do well on that day, and therefore to. heal.
“They can answer Him nothing further, “they held their peace”

“Then” —that is, “when He had looked round about on them with anger, being
grieved for the hardness of their hearts (Mark 3:5),—saith He to the man,
Stretch forth thy hand.” The existence of grief and anger together in the same
heart is no contradiction. Indeed, with Him who was at once perfect love and
perfect holiness, grief for the sinner must ever have gone hand in hand with
anger against the sin; and this anger, which with us is ever in danger of
becoming a turbid thing, of passing into anger against the man, who is God’s
creature, instead of being anger against the sin, which is the devil’s
corruption of God’s creature,—with Him was perfectly pure; for it is not the
agitation of the waters, but the sediment at the bottom, which troubles and
defiles them, and where no sediment is, no impurity will follow on their
agitation. This important notice of the anger with which the Lord looked round
on these evil men we owe to St. Mark alone, who has so often preserved for us a
record of the passing lights and shadows which swept over the countenance of the
Lord. The man obeyed the word, which was a word of power; he stretched forth his
hand, “and it was restored[18] whole like as the other.” Hereupon the madness of
Christ’s enemies rises to the highest pitch. He had broken their traditions; He
had put them to silence and to shame before all the people. Wounded pride,
disappointed malice, rancorous despite, were mingled with and exasperated their
other feelings of ill-will toward Him. “They were filled with madness;” and in
their blind hate they snatch at any weapon whereby they may hope to destroy Him.
They do not shrink from joining league with the Herodians, the Romanizing party
in the land,—attached to Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, who was only kept
on his throne by Roman influence,—if between them they may bring to nothing this
new power which seems equally to threaten both. So, on a later occasion (Mat
22:16), the same parties combine together to ensnare Him. For thus it is with
the sinful world: it lays aside for the moment its mutual jealousies and
enmities, to join in a common conspiracy against the truth. It is no longer a
kingdom divided against itself, when the kingdom of light is to be opposed.
Herod and Pilate can be friends together, if it be for the destroying of the
Christ (Luk 23:12). He meanwhile, aware of their machinations, withdraws Himself
from their malice to his safer retirements in the immediate neighbourhood of the
sea of Galilee (Mark 3:7).

Footnotes

[1] The cures recorded are seven in. number, namely, that of the demoniac in the
synagogue of Capernaum (Mark 1:21); that of Simon’s wife’s mother (Mark 1:29);
of the impotent man at Bethesda (John 5:9); of. this man with a withered hand;
of the man born blind (John 9:14); of the woman with a spirit of infirmity (Luk
13:14); of the man who had a dropsy (Luk 14:1). We have a general intimation of
many more, as at Mark 1:34; and the “one work” to which our Lord, alludes, John
7:21-23, is perhaps no recorded miracle, but one which is only referred to
there.

[2] They had themselves a maxim to the same effect: Ministerium pellit sabbatum.

[3] It is the same argument which He pursues John 7:22-23, There He says, "For
the sake of circumcision you do yourselves violate the Sabbath. Rather than not
keep Moses’ commandment, which requires the child to be circumcised upon the
eighth day, you will, if that day fall upon a Sabbath, accomplish all the work
of circumcision upon that. You make, that is, the Sabbath, which is lower, give
place to circumcision, which is higher, and therein you have right. But the
cures which I accomplish are greater than circumcision itself: that is but
receiving the seal of the covenant upon a single member; my cures are a making
the entire man (ὅλος ἄνθρωπος) whole. Shall not the Sabbath then by much better
right give place to these works of mine?"

[4] Cocceius gives admirably the meaning here: Hoc argumentum urget contra
tacitam exceptionem, nempe, discipulos Christi in agro non in templis fecisse
opus non sacerdotale. Christus ostendit majorem templo hie esse, significans se
Dominum templi esse, Mal 3:1; Jer 11:15.Quemadmodum igitur sacerdotes licite
fecerunt opera, quae pertinebant ad cultum Dei ceremonialem; ita discipuli
Christi licite fecerunt ilia quae necesse erat facere, ut servirent ipsi vero
templo et Domino templi. The argument is not affected by admitting μεῖζον
instead μεῖζων into the text, as Lachmann and the best critical editions have
done: compare Mat 12:42, ἰδοὺ πλεῖον Σολομῶντος ὧδε.

[5] Irenaeus (Con. Haer. iv. 8, 3): Per legis verba suos discipulos excusans, et
significans licere sacerdotibus libere agere.... Sacerdotes autem sunt omnes
Domini Apostoli, qui neque. agros neque domos haereditant hie, sed semper altari
et Deo serviunt.

[6] Irenaeus (Con. Haer. iv. 8, 3): Per legis verba suos discipulos excusans, et
significans licere sacerdotibus libere agere.... Sacerdotes autem sunt omnes
Domini Apostoli, qui neque. agros neque domos haereditant hie, sed semper altari
et Deo serviunt.

[7] In the LXX, Ἔλεος θέλω‚ ἢ θυσίαν‚ καὶ ἐπίγνωσιν Θεοῦ‚ ἢ ὁλοκαυτώματα.

[8] Among those slights, the words, “Wherefore I gave them also statutes that
were not good, and judgments whereby they should riot live” (Eze 20:25), are
often enumerated; by Melancthon, by Reineccius (Deus ne suae quidern legi hunc
honorem tribuit, quod mereatur vitam aeternam), and by many more; but this
erroneously. Depreciating words are spoken of the Old Covenant; yet this is ever
relatively, and only in comparison with the New; never this absolute blame
(Vitringa, Obss. Sao. vol. i. p. 265; præcepta non bona, ἐν ἐμϕάσει, in quibus
nihil inerat boni). The verse is to be explained by the verse ensuing, with
which it stands in intimate connexion. The “I gave” here, is but the παρέδωκεν
αὐτοὺς ὁ Θεὸς of Rom 1:26; cf. Acts 7:42; 2Th 2:11. ’These “statutes that were
not good” were the heathen abominations to which God gave them over.

[9] Exactly in obedience to this precept, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice,”
and with a true insight into the law of love, as the highest law of all, those
holy men have acted, that in great needs have sold the most sacred vessels of
the Church for the redemption of captives, or for the saving in some great
famine lives which otherwise would have perished.

[10] So Maldonatus: Hoc est quod Apostolos maxime excusabat, quod in praedicando
et faciendis miracuiis adeo fuissent occupati, ut nec parare cibum nec capere
possent.

[11] In like manner Wolf (Curae, in loc.): Non dubitaverim verba haec opponi
judicio Pharisaeorum iminiti et rigido, de discipulis tanquam violatoribus
sabbati, rato.

[12] Even in the Talmud it was said, "The Sabbath is in your hands, not you in
the hands of the Sabbath; for it is written, The Lord hath. given you the
Sabbath, Exo 16:29; Eze 20:12. "

[13] Cocceius answers well: Non sequitur; Hominis causá factum est sabbatum:
Ergo homo est dominus sabbati. Sed bene sequitur: Ergo is, cujus est homo, et
qui propter hominem venit in mundum, quique omnem potestatem in coelo et terrâ
possidet, in hominis salutem et bonum est et Dominus sabbati. Ce Dominus sabbati
non esset, nisi esset supremus νομοθέτης, et nisi ad ipsius gloriam pertineret
sabbati institutio, et ejus usus ad salutem hominis.

[14] He is not, to use Augustine’s fine distinction, sub lege, but cum lege and
in lege.

[15] Augustine (Serin, cxxxvi. 3): Dominus sabbatum solvebat: sed non ideo reus.
Quid est quod dixi, sabbatum solvebat? Lux ipse venerat, umbras removebat.
Sabbatum enim a Domino Deo praeceptum est, ab ipso Christo praeceptum, qui cum
Patre erat, quando lex ilia dabatur: ab ipso praeceptum est, sed in umbrâ
futuri.

[16] See Winer, Realwörterbuch, s. v. In the apocryphal Gospel according to the
Hebrews, in use among the Nazarenes and Ebionites, which consisted probably of
our St. Matthew, with some extraneous additions, this man appeared as a mason,
and thus addresses the Lord: Caementarius eram, manibus victum quaeritans:
precor te, Jesu, ut mihi restituas sanitatem, ne turpiter mendicem cibos. The
χεῖρα ἔχων ξηράν is = τὴν χεῖρα ἀδρανὴς ὤν of Philostratus (Vita Apollon. iii.
39), whom the Indian sages heal.

[17] Danzius (in Meuschen, N. T. ex Talm, illustr. p. 585): Immutat ergo
beneficus Servator omnem controversiae statum, ac longe eundem rectius, quam
fraudis isti artifices, proponit. The object of the interesting and learned
Essay, Christi Curatio sabbathica vindicata ex legibus Judaicis, from which the
above quotation is made, is to prove by extracts from their own books that the
Jews were not at all so strict, as now, when they wanted to find an accusation
against the Lord, they professed to be, in the matter of things permitted or
prohibited on the Sabbath. He finds an indication of this (p. 607) in our
Saviour’s words, “Thou hypocrite” addressed on one of these occasions to the
ruler of the synagogue (Luk 13:15). Of course the great difficulty in judging
whether he has made out his point, is to know how far the extracts in proof,
confessedly from works of a later, often a far later, date than the time of
Christ, do fairly represent the earlier Jewish canons. The fixity of Jewish
tradition is much in favour of the supposition that they do; but there always
remains something in these proofs, which causes them to fail absolutely to
prove. In the apocryphal gospels, as for instance in the Evangelium Nicodemi
(see Thilo, Codex Apocryphus, pp. 502, 558), it is very observable how prominent
a place among the accusations brought against Christ on his trial, are the
healings wrought upon the Sabbath.

[18] Ἀποκατεστάθη. Josephus (Antt. viii. 8, 5) uses the remarkable word
ἀναζωπυρεῖν in relating the restoration of Jeroboam’s withered arm (1Ki 11:6).


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  CHAPTER 28: 28-20. THE WOMAN WITH A SPIRIT OF INFIRMITY
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20. The Woman with a Spirit of Infirmity

Luk 13:10-17

We have here another of our Lord’s cures, which being accomplished on the
Sabbath, awoke the indignation of the chief teachers of the Jewish Church;
cures, of which many, though not all, are recorded chiefly for the sake of
showing how the Lord dealt with these cavillers; and what He Himself
contemplated as the true hallowing of that day. This being the main point which
the Evangelist has in his eye, everything else falls into the background. We
know not where this healing took place; we are merely told of the Lord that “He
was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath.” While there was but one
temple in the land, and indeed but one for all Jews in all the world, there were
synagogues in every place; and in these, on every Sabbath, prayer was wont to be
made, and the word of God to be read and explained (Acts 13:14-15). “And,
behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and
was bowed together, and could in nowise lift up herself.” Had we only these
words, “a spirit of infirmity,” we might be doubtful whether St. Luke meant to
trace up her complaint to any other than the natural causes, whence flow the
weaknesses and sufferings which afflict our race. But from later words of the
Lord concerning this woman,—”whom Satan hath bound,”—we learn that her calamity
had a deeper root; and that she should be classed with those possessed by evil
spirits, though the type of her possession was infinitely milder than that of
many others, as is shown by her permitted presence at the public worship of God.
Her sickness having its first seat in her spirit, had brought her into a moody
melancholic state, of which the outward contraction of the muscles of her body,
the inability to lift herself, was but the sign and the consequence.[1]

“And when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him, and said, Woman, thou art loosed
from thine infirmity.” He did not here wait till his aid was sought, though it
may have been that her presence in that place was, on her part, a tacit seeking
of his help,—as, indeed, seems implied in the words of the ruler of the
synagogue, bidding the multitude upon other days than the Sabbath to “come and
be healed.” “And He laid his hands on her,”[2]—those hands being here the
channel by which the streams of his truer life should flow into her,—uttering at
the same time (for though recorded, as was necessary, one after another, we are
to assume the words and imposition of hands as in fact contemporaneous) those
words of grace and power. He said, and it was done; the bands, spiritual and
bodily, by which she was held, were loosened; and “immediately she was made
straight, and glorified God.” Some part of this glory could not but redound to
Him, the author of her health. But this the ruler of the synagogue could not
bear (cf. Mat 21:15-16),—a “hypocrite,” as the Lord calls him,—zeal for God
being but the cloak which he wore to hide, whether from others only, or, in a
more hopeless hypocrisy, from his own heart also, his hatred of all that was
holy and divine.[3] His indignation was in fact less that the Sabbath was
violated, than that. Christ was glorified. Therefore, because he put forward as
the ground of his anger that which was not so indeed, he drew down upon himself
that sharp rebuke from Him, whose sharpest rebuke was uttered only in love, and
who now would, if possible, have torn from off this man’s heart the veil which
was hiding his true self even from his own eyes. Another part of his falseness
was, that, not daring directly to find fault with the Lord, lie seeks
circuitously to reach Him through the people, who were more under his influence,
and whom he feared less. He takes advantage of his position as the interpreter
of the law and the oracles of God, and from “Moses’ seat” would fain teach the
people that this work done to the glory of God—this restoring of a human body
and a human soul—this undoing the heavy burden—this unloosing the chain of
Satan,—was a servile work, and one therefore forbidden on the Sabbath. Blaming
them for coming to be healed, he indeed is thinking not of them, but means that
rebuke to glance off on Him who has put forth on this day his power to help and
to save.

“The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you
on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to
watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath
bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?”
Every word of this answer tells. The Lord does not defend his breach of the
Sabbath, but denies that He has broken it at all:[4] “You have your relaxations
of the Sabbath’s strictness, required by the very nature and necessities of your
earthly condition; you make no difficulty in the matter, where there is danger
that by the omission of some act loss would ensue, your property would be
jeopardized. Your ox and your ass are precious in your sight, and, whatever you
may hold or teach concerning the strictness with which the Sabbath should be
kept, disciples of Hillel or disciples of Schammai, you loose them on that day;
yet ye will not that I should loose a human spirit, which as such is of more
value than many beasts. They too, when you loose them, have not been tied up for
more than some briefest space; while I, in your thoughts, may not unloose from
the thraldom of Satan this captive of eighteen years,[5] Yours, farther, is a
laborious process of unfastening and leading away to water,—which yet (and
rightly) you do not omit; being at the same time offended with Me, who have only
spoken a word, and with that word have released a soul.”[6] There lies at the
root of this argument, as of so much else in Scripture, an implied assertion of
the specific difference between man, the lord of creation, for whom all other
things were made, on the one side, and all the inferior orders of beings that
tread the same earth with him, and to which upon the side of his body he is
akin, on the other. He is, yet at the same time he is much more than, the first
link in this chain and order of beings (cf. 1Co 9:9 : “Doth God take care of
oxen?” and Psa 8:8). But this woman has further claims than the general claims
of humanity; she is a “daughter of Abraham;”—an inheritress, as some understand,
of the faith of Abraham,—however, for the saving of her soul in the day of the
Lord, she had come for some sin under the scourge of Satan and this long and
sore affliction of the flesh. Yet more probably Christ intends but this, that
she was one of the chosen race, a “daughter of Abraham” after the flesh; though
we may well believe that after and through this healing, she became something
more, an inheritress of his faith as well.[7]

Footnotes

[1] This woman is often contemplated as the representative of all those whom the
poet addresses— Oh curvae in terras animae! The erect countenance of man, in
contrast with that bent downward of all other creatures, being the sign
impressed upon his outward frame, of his nobler destiny, of a heavenly hope,
with which they have nothing in common; Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri
Jussit, et erectos in sidera tollere vultus: and Juvenal, Sat. xv. 142-147, in a
nobler strain: cf. Plato, Timaus, 90 a.; and the derivation of ἄνθρωπος, namely,
the upward looking, which some have suggested, is well known. On the other hand,
the looks ever bent upon the ground are a natural symbol of a heart and soul
turned earthward altogether, and wholly forgetful of man’s time good, which is
not beneath, but above, him. Thus of Mammon Milton writes: Mammon, the least
erected spirit that fell From heaven; for even in heaven his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent. Thus Augustine (Enarr. ii. in Psa 68:24): Qui bene
audit, Sursum cor, curvum dorsum non habet. Erectâ quippe staturâ exspectat spem
repositam sibi in coelo.... At vero qui futurae vitae spem non intelligunt, jam
excoecati, de inferioribus cogitant: et hoc est habere dorsum curvum, a quo
morbo Dominus mulierem illam liberavit. Cf. Enarr. in Psa 37:7; Quaest. Evang.
ii. qu. 29; Ambrose, Hexaëm. iii. 12; Theophylact (in loc.): Ταῦτα δέ μοι
λάμβανε τὰ θαύματα καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν ἐντὸς ἄνθρωπον συγκύπτει γὰρ ψυχὴ ὅταν ἐπὶ τὰς
γηΐνας μόνας ϕροντίδας νεύῃ‚ καὶ μηδὲν οὐράνιον ἢ θεῖον ϕαντάζηται.

[2] Chrysostom (in Cramer, Catena): Προσεπιτίθησι δὲ καὶ χεῖρας αὐτῇ‚ ἵνα
μάθωμεν ὅτι τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ λόγον [Λόγου?] δύναμίν τε καὶ ἐνέργειαν ἡ ἁγία πεϕόρηκε
σάρξ.

[3] Augustine (Enarr. ii. in Psa 68:24): Bene scandalizati sunt de ilia erectâ,
ipsi curvi. And again (Serm. cccxcii. 1): Calumniabantur autem erigenti, qui,
nisi curvi?

[4] Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 30): Unusquisque vestrûm sabbatis non solvit
asinum aut bovem suum a praesepi et ducit ad potum? Ergo secundum conditionem
legis operatus, legem confirmavit, non dissolvit, jubentem nullum opus fieri,
nisi quod fieret omni animae, quanto potius humanae. Cf. Irenaeus, Con. Haer.
iv. 8.

[5] Ambrose (Exp. in Luc. vii. 175): Vinculum vinculo comparat..... Cum ipsi
animalibus sabbato solvunt vincula, reprehendunt Dominum, qui homines a
peccatorum vinculis liberavit.

[6] Chemnitz (Harm. Evang. 112): Tempus etiam inter se confert. Jumenta
fortassis ad noctem unam aut paucos dies praesepi alligantur. At vero haec
foemina vel saltern ob temporis prolixitatem omnium commiseratione dignissima
est.

[7] In a Sermon on the Day of the Nativity (Serm. Inedd. p. 33) Augustine makes
the following application of this history: Inclinavit se, cum sublimis esset, ut
nos qui incurvati eramus, erigeret. Incurvata siquidem erat humana natura ante
adventum Domini, peccatorum onere depressa;. et quidem se in peccati vitium
spontaneâ voluntate curvaverat, sed sponte se erigere non valebat.....Haec autem
mulier formam incurvationis totius humani generis praeferebat. In hac muliere
hodie natus Dominus noster vinculis Satanae alligatos absolvit, et licentiam
nobis tribuit ad superna conspicere, ut qui olim constituti in miseriis tristes
ambulabamus, hodie venientem ad nos medicum suscipientes, nimirum gaudeamus.


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  CHAPTER 29: 29-21. THE HEALING OF THE MAN WITH A DROPSY
========================================================================

21. The Healing of the Man with a Dropsy

Luk 14:1-6

All which is most remarkable in the circumstances of this miracle has been
already anticipated in others, chiefly in the two just considered, to which the
reader is referred. Our Lord in his great long-suffering did not even at this
late period of his ministry treat the Pharisees as wholly and finally hardened
against the truth; but still seeking to win them for his kingdom, He had
accepted the invitation of a chief among them “to eat bread” in his house. This
was upon the Sabbath, with the Jews a favourite day for their festal
entertainments: for it is a great mistake to suppose that the day was with them
one of rigorous austerity; on the contrary, the practical abuse of the day was
rather a turning of it into a day of riot and excess.[1] The invitation, though
accepted in love, yet had not been given in good faith; in the hope rather that
the close and more accurate watching of his words and ways, which such an
opportunity would afford, might furnish matter of accusation against Him.[2]
Mischief lurked in the apparent courtesy which was shown Him, nor could the
sacred laws of hospitality defend Him from the ever-wakeful malice of his foes.
They “watched Him.”[3]

“And behold, there was a certain man before Him which had the dropsy.” Some have
even suggested that this sufferer was of design placed before Him; and they urge
in proof that he would scarcely without permission have found entrance into a
private house. But although it is quite conceivable of these malignant
adversaries, that they should have laid such a snare as this, still there is no
warrant for ascribing to them such treachery here; and the difficulty which some
find, that if no such plot had existed, the man would scarcely have found his
way into the house of the Pharisee, rests upon an ignorance of the almost public
life of the East, and a forgetting how easily in a moment of high excitement,
such as this of our Saviour’s presence must have been, the feeble barriers which
the conventional rules of society might have opposed to his entrance would have
been overthrown (Luk 7:36-37). At any rate, if such plot there was, the man
himself was no party to it; for the Lord “took him, and healed him, and let him
go.” But this He did, justifying first the work which He would accomplish, as
more than once He had justified like works of grace and love wrought upon the
Sabbath, and demanding of these lawyers and Pharisees, interpreters of the law,
“Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?” Here, as in so many matters of
debate, it only needs for the question to be rightly stated, and all is so
clear, that the possibility of its remaining a question any longer has for ever
vanished;”[4] there can be but one answer. But as this answer they would not
give, they did what alone was possible, “they held their peace;” for they will
not assent, and they cannot gainsay. He proceeds: “Which of you shall have an
ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the
Sabbath day?” Olshausen: “As on other occasions (Mat 12:11; Luk 13:15), the Lord
brings back those present to their own experience, and lets them feel the keen
contradiction in which their blame of Christ’s free work of love sets them with
themselves, in that, where their worldly interests were at hazard, they did that
very thing whereof they made now an occasion against Him. “We may observe, that
as in that other case, where the woman was bound, He adduces the example of
unbinding a beast (Luk 13:15),—so in this, where the man was dropsical, or
suffering from water, the example He adduces has an equal fitness.[5] “You
grudge that I should deliver this man on such a day from the water that is
choking him; yet if the same danger from water threatened ought of your own, an
ass[6] or an ox, you would make no scruple of extricating that on the Sabbath.
Why then do you not love your neighbour as yourselves? why are you unwilling
that he should receive the help which you would freely render to your own? And
they could not answer Him again to these things.” They were silenced, but not
convinced; and the truth, which did not win them, did the only other thing which
it could do, exasperated them the more; they replied nothing, biding their time
(cf. Mat 12:14).

Footnotes

[1] On the abuses in this kind of the Jewish Sabbath at a later day see
Augustine, Enafr. in Psa 41:1; Enarr. ii. in Psa 32:2; Serm. ix. 3.

[2] The emphasis, however, which Hammond finds in the καὶ αὐτοί, even they that
had invited Him did treacherously watch Him,—as though the Evangelist would
bring into notice the violation here of the laws of hospitality,—is
questionable. Such a superabounding use of /cat is not unusual in St. Luke.

[3] Ἦσαν παρατηρούμενοι. For a similar use of παρατηρεῖν compare Luk 6:7; Luk
20:20; Mark 3:2; Dan 6:11.

[4] Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 12): Adimplevit enim et hie legem, dum
conditionem interpretatur ejus, dum operum differentiam, illuminat, dum facit
quae lex de sabbati feriis excipit, dum ipsum sabbati diem benedictione Patris
aprimordio sanctum, benefactione suâ efficit sanctiorem, in quo scilicet divina
praesidia ministrabat.

[5] So Augustine (Quaest. Evang. ii. 29): Congruenter hydropicum animali quod
cecidit in puteum, comparavit: humore enim laborabat; sicut et illam mulierem
quam decem et octo annis alligatam dixerat.... comparavit jumento quod solvitur
ut ad aquam ducatur. Grotius: Hydropicum submergendae pecudi, ut τὴν
συγκύπτουσαν pecudi vinctae, comparavit.

[6] Strange as the reading υἱός instead of ὄνος at first sight appears, “a son,”
and not “an ass,” the authorities for it are so overwhelming (I believe they
include all the Uncial MSS.), that one has no right on the ground of internal
difficulties to reject it. Those, moreover, are not so serious as at first sight
they seem. It is true the argument a minori ad majus is thus invalidated, but
another is substituted in its room; an appeal, namely, to the great ethical
rule, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Griesbach recommended υἱός;
Scholz, Tischendorf, and Lachmann have all received it. The passage at Exo
21:33, to which the supporters of the reading ὄνος appeal, to which I appealed
myself in earlier editions of this book, tells both ways. It may support the
reading ὄνος, but it may also help to explain the substitution of this for
another more correct one.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 30: 30-22. THE CLEANSING OF THE TEN LEPERS
========================================================================

22. The Cleansing of the Ten Lepers

Luk 17:11-19 The Jews who dwelt in Galilee, in their necessary journeys to keep
the passover at Jerusalem, very commonly took the longer route, leading them
across the Jordan, and through the region of Peraea (the Gilead of the O. T.),
that so they might avoid the vexations and annoyances, or worse outrages,[1] to
which they were exposed in passing through the unfriendly land of the
Samaritans. For these, at all times unfriendly to Jews, were naturally most
unfriendly of all to the pilgrims who, travelling up to the great feasts at
Jerusalem, did thus witness in act against the will-worship of Mount Gerizim,
and the temple of Samaria in which was no presence of the living God (John
4:22). It is generally understood that now, despite the discomforts and dangers
of that inhospitable route (see Luk 9:51-56; John 4:9), our Lord, with the band
of his disciples, on this his last journey to the holy city, took the more
direct and shorter way which led Him straight from Galilee “through the midst of
Samaria” to Jerusalem. Certainly the words of the original, “And it came to pass
as He went to Jerusalem, that He passed through the midst of Samaria and
Galilee,” may bear this meaning; in our Version they manifestly bear it. At the
same time there may very well be a question whether the Evangelist does not
rather mean that the Lord passed between these two regions, having one on his
right hand, the other on his left, and skirting them both. This will explain the
otherwise unaccountable mention of Samaria before Galilee. He will then have
journeyed due eastward toward Jordan, having Galilee on his left hand, and
Samaria, which is therefore first named, on his right: and on reaching the
river, He will either have passed over it at Scythopolis, where we know there
was a bridge, crossing it again by the fords near Jericho[2] (Jos 2:7), or will
have kept on the western bank till He reached that city, where presently we find
Him (xviii. 35).

“And as He entered into a certain village, there met Him ten men that were
lepers, which stood afar off.” Their common misery had drawn these poor outcasts
together (2Ki 7:3). It had done more. It had caused them to forget the fierce
national antipathy which kept Jew and Samaritan apart; for a Samaritan had found
admission into this forlorn company. In this border land such a fellowship may
have been more natural than elsewhere. There has been already occasion to speak
of the nature and meaning of leprosy in the law of Moses; that it was the
outward symbol of sin in its deepest malignity,—and therefore as involving
entire separation from God; not of spiritual sickness only, but of spiritual
death, since absolute separation from the one fountain of life must needs be no
less. These poor outcasts, in obedience to the commandment (Lev 13:46), “stood
afar off;” and out of a deep sense of their misery, yet not without hope that a
healer was at hand, all of them in earnest now to receive the benefit, however
at a later period some were remiss in giving thanks for it, “lifted up their
voices and said, Jesus, Master, [3] have mercy on us!”

“And when He saw them, He said unto them, Go, show yourselves unto the priests.”
Most instructive is it to observe the differences in our Lord’s dealing with the
different, sufferers and mourners brought in contact with Him; the manifold
wisdom of the great Physician, varying his treatment according to the varying
needs of his patients; how He seems to resist a strong faith, that He may make
it stronger yet (Mat 15:23-26); how He meets a weak, faith, lest it should prove
altogether too weak in the trial (Mark 5:36); how one He forgives first, and
heals after (Mat 9:2; Mat 9:6); and another, whose heart could only be reached
through, an earthly benefit, He first heals, and then pardons (John 5:8; John
5:14). There is here, too, no doubt a reason why these ten are dismissed as yet
uncleansed, and bidden to go show themselves to the priests; while that other,
whose healing was before recorded (Mat 8:2-4), is first cleansed, and not till
afterwards bidden to present himself in the temple. Herein was a keener trial of
their faith. With no signs of restoration as yet upon them, they were bidden to
do that which implied that they were perfectly restored,—to take a journey,
which would have been ridiculous, a labour in vain, unless Christ’s words and
promise proved true. In their prompt obedience they showed plainly that at least
some weak beginnings of faith were working in them, the germs of a higher faith,
which yet in the end were only perfectly unfolded in one of them.[4] They showed
this, for they knew very well that they were not sent to the priests, that these
should heal them, it being no part of the priests’ functions to cure, but only
to pronounce cured; they cleansed, not in the sense of ridding the leper of his
disease; but only, after this had disappeared, as restoring him with ceremonial
washings and offerings to the fellowship of the congregation.

There was also here a stronger temptation to ingratitude. When they first felt
and found their benefit, they were not in the immediate presence of their
benefactor; more probably, already out of his sight, and some little way upon
their journey;[5] we know not how far, being only told that “as they went, [6]
they were cleansed;” it was not therefore an easy and costless effort to render
their thanks to Him. Some, indeed, suppose that the return of the one
“Samaritan, whose heart was stirred with a lively gratitude to his Healer, did
not take place till after he had accomplished all which was commanded him; that
he had been to Jerusalem—that he had offered his gift—that he had been
pronounced clean—and, this his first duty accomplished, that he then returned to
render thanks to the author of his benefit; the sacred narrative leaping over
large spaces of time and many intermediate events for the purpose of bringing
together the beginning and the end of this history.[7] But certainly the
impression which the narrative leaves is different;—that, having advanced some
very little way on their commanded journey, so little that no time would be
really lost by the return, perhaps in the very village itself, they were aware
of the grace which had overtaken them; they knew themselves cleansed; and then
this one turned back in the fulness of a grateful heart to give glory to God and
thanks to his great Healer and Saviour; like the Syrian Naaman, who, delivered
from the same hideous disease, came back with all his company, beseeching the
man of God to take a blessing at his hands (2Ki 5:15); the residue meanwhile
enduring to carry away the benefit without one grateful acknowledgment rendered
unto Him who was its author and its source, and to whose feet the slightest
labour would have brought them. A sin only too common! for, as Bishop Sanderson
says, with allusion to their former crying: “We open our mouths wide till God
open his hand; but after, as if the filling of our mouths were the stopping of
our throats, so are we speechless and heartless. “[8]

It gives a special significance this miracle, and explains the place which it
finds in that Gospel which is eminently the Gospel for the heathen, that this
thankful one should have been a Samaritan, a stranger therefore by birth to the
covenants of promise, while the nine unthankful were of the seed of Abraham. It
was implied in this that the Gentiles (for this Samaritan was no better) were
not excluded from the kingdom of God, nay rather, might find a place in it
before others who by nature and birth were children of the kingdom; that the
ingratitude of these might shut them out, while the faith of those might give to
them an abundant entrance into all its blessings.

Even He who emphatically “knew what was in man,” who had already so often proved
his ingratitude, seems to have marvelled at the height of the ingratitude here:
for He asks, “Were there not ten cleansed?” or father, “Were not the ten
cleansed—but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory
to God, save this stranger.” Him now He dismisses with a second and a better
blessing; the earlier had reached but to the healing of his body, and he had
that in common with the unthankful nine; but gratitude for a lower mercy obtains
for him a higher, a blessing which is singularly his, and reaches not merely to
the springs of bodily health, but to the healing of the very fountains of his
spiritual being. That which the others missed, to which their bodily healing
should have led them up, and would, if they had received it aright, he has
obtained; for to him, and to him only, it is said, “Go thy way; thy faith hath
made thee whole.”[9]

How aptly does the image which this history supplies set forth the condition of
the faithful in this world! They too are to take Christ’s word that they will be
cleansed, that in some sort they are so already (John 15:3); for in baptism they
have the pledge and promise and the initial act of it all. And this they must
believe, even while they yet feel in themselves the leprous taint of sin,—must
go forward in faith, being confident that in the use of his Word, and of his
Sacraments, and all his appointed means of grace, slight as they may seem to
meet and overcome such mighty mischiefs, they will find that health, which
according to the sure word of promise is already theirs; and as they go,
believing this word, using these means, they are healed. And for them, too, a
warning is here—that they forget not the purging of their old sins (2Pe 1:9)—nor
what those sins were, how hideous; how loathsome; in this only too like those
nine, who perhaps did not r. eturn as men who would do their best to obliterate
the very memory of all which once and so lately they had been. Let those who now
are clean through the word spoken to them, not fail to keep in memory the times
of their past anguish,—the times when everything seemed defiled to them, and
they to everything; when they saw themselves as “unclean, unclean,” shut out
from all holy fellowship of God and men, and cried out in their anguish, “Jesus,
Master, have mercy on us.” Let them see to it, that they forget not this; but
let each remembrance of the absolving word which was spoken to them, with each
new consciousness of a realized deliverance from the power and pollution of sin,
bring them anew to the Saviour’s feet, giving glory to God by Him; lest, failing
in this, their guilt prove greater than even that of these unthankful nine. For
these carried away only temporal mercies unacknowledged; but we should in such a
case be seeking to carry away spiritual; not, indeed, that we should succeed in
so doing; since the spiritual mercy which is not evermore referred to its
Author, sooner or later inevitably ceases from him who hopes on any ether
conditions to retain it.[10]

Footnotes

[1] Josephus (Antt. xx. 6, 1) gives an account of the massacre by the Samaritans
of a great number of Galilaean pilgrims, which happened a little later than
this.

[2] So Wetstein: Non via recta et brevissimâ septentrione versus meridiem per
Samariticam regionem iter fecit, sed cum confinia Samariae et Galilaeae
venisset, ab itinere deflexit versus orientem, ita ut Samariam ad dextram,
Galilaeam ad sinistram haberet; et Jordanem Scythopoli, ubi pons erat, videtur
transiisse, et juxta ripam Jordanis in Peraeâ descendisse, donec e regione
Jerichuntis iterum trajiceret.

[3] Ἐπιστάτα. The word is peculiar to St. Luke (5:5; 8:24, 45; 9:33, 49). It is
instead of the κύριε of St. Matthew.

[4] Calvin: Quamvis enim foetidam adhuc scabiem in came sua conspiciant, simul
tamen ac jussi sunt se ostendere sacerdotibus, parere non detrectant; Adde quod
nunquam, nisi fidei impulsu, profecti essent ad sacerdotes: ridiculum enim
fuisset ad testandam suam munditiem, leprae judicibus se offerre, nisi pluris
illis fuisset Christi promissio, quam praesens morbi sui intuitus. Visibilem in
carne suâ lepram gestant, unico tamen Christi verbo confisi mundos se profited
non dubitant: negari igitur non potest eorum cordibus insitum fuisse aliquod
fidei semen... Quo magis timendum est, ne et nobis contingat scintillas fidei in
nobis micantes extinguere.

[5] Calvin suggests another reason, which may have kept them away: Ut morbi
memoriam extinguerent furtim elapsi sunt.

[6] We learn from Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 35) that the Gnostic Marcion saw in
this healing of the lepers by the way, this taking, upon Christ’s part, of the
work out of the hands of the Levitical priests, a contempt cast, and intended to
be cast, by Him on the Mosaic institutions: Hie Christum semulum [legis]
affirmat praevenientem solennia legis etiam in curatione decem leprosorum, quos
tantummodo ire jussos ut se ostenderent sacerdotibus, in itinere purgavit, sine
tactu jam et sine verbo, tacitâ potestate, et sola voluntate; and again, Quasi
legis illusor, ut in itinere curatis ostenderet nihil esse legem cum ipsis
sacerdotibus. It is needless to observe that there was no such passing of them
by, since the priests’ work was not to cleanse, but to pronounce clean.

[7] Calvin halts between this opinion and that which follows: Mihi tamen magis
probabile est, non nisi audito sacerdotis judicio ad gratias agendas venisse...
Nisi forte magis placet diversa conjectura, simul ac mundatum se vidit, antequam
testimonium expeteret a sacerdotibus, ad ipsum auctorem pio et sancto ardore
correptum venisse, ut sacrificium suum a gratiarum actione inciperet.

[8] Bernard: Importuni ut accipiant, inquieti donec acceperint, ubi acceperint
ingrati. Calvin: Sic inopia et esuries fidem gignit, quam occidit saturitas.

[9] Calvin: Servandi verbum quidam interpret. es ad carnis munditiem
restringunt; verum si ita est, quum vivam in hoc Samaritano fidem commendet
Christus, quaeri potest quomodo servati fuerint alii noverm; nam eadem promiscue
omnibus sanitas obtigit. Sic ergo habenduin est Christum hie aliter sestimâsse
donum Dei quam soleant profani homines, nempe tanquam salutare paterni amoris
symbolum vel pignus. Sanati fuerunt novem leprosi, sed quia Dei gratiam impie
obliterant, ipsam sanitatem inficit et contaminat eorum ingratitudo, ut quam
decebat utilitatem ex ea non percipient. Sola igitur fides dona Dei nobis
sanctificat, ut pura sint, et cum legitimo usu conjuncta in salutem nobis
cedant.... Servatus est suâ fide Samaritanus.. Quomodo? certe non ideo tantum,
quod a leprâ curatus sit (nam hoc et reliquis commune erat), sed quia in numerum
filiorum Dei acceptus est, ut paterni amoris tesseram ex ejus manu acciperet.

[10] Chemnitz (Harm. Evang. 125): Remittit nos Filius Dei ad ministerium Verbi
et Sacramentorum in Ecclesia; et quemadmoduni hi sanati sunt dum iverunt, et
mandato Christi obtemperarunt, ita et nos dum in Ecclesia Verbum Dei audiinus,
absolutione et Sacramentis utimur, vult nobis Christus peccata remittere, nos
sanare, ut in coelesti Jerusalem mundi coram Deo compareamus... Omnes nati sumus
filii irae, in baptismo remittitur nobis ille reatus, sed non statim in coelos
abripimur: verum dicit nobis, Ite, ostendite vos sacerdotibus. Leve quid ut
videtur injungit. Utut autem leve sit, sequitur tamen enarrabile bonum, quia is
qui nobis hoc prsecipit, est omnipotens Deus, qui ex minimis maxima producere
potest. Cf. Augustine, Quaest. Evang. ii. 40.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 31: 31-23. THE HEALING OF THE DAUGHTER OF THE SYROPHENIGIAN WOMAN
========================================================================

23. The Healing of the Daughter of the Syrophenigian Woman Mat 15:21-28; Mark
7:24-30 At no time during his earthly ministry does our Lord seem to have
overpassed the limits of the Holy Land; not even when He “departed into the
coasts of Tyre and Sidon” It was only “into the borders of Tyre and Sidon,” as
St. Mark expressly tells us (vii. 24), that He went; and even St. Matthew’s
words need not, and certainly here do not, mean more than that He approached the
confines of that heathen land.[1] The general fitness of things, and more than
this, his own express words on this very occasion, “I am not sent but unto the
lost sheep of the house of Israel” combine to make it most unlikely that He had
now brought his healing presence to any other but the people of the Covenant;
and, moreover, when St. Matthew speaks of the “woman of Canaan” as coming out of
that district, or “of the same coasts” he clearly shows that he did not intend
to describe the Lord as having done more than drawn close to the skirts of that
profane land. Being there, He “entered into a house, and would have no man know
it:” but as “the ointment bewrayeth itself,” so He, whose “Name is like ointment
poured out,” on the present occasion “could not be hid;” and among those
attracted by its sweetness was a woman of that country,—” a woman of Canaan” as
St. Matthew terms her, “a Greek, a Syrophenician,” as St. Mark,[2] meaning by
the first term to indicate her religion, that it was not Jewish, but heathen; by
the second, the stock of which she came, being even that accursed race once
doomed of God to a total excision, root and branch (Deu 7:2), but of which some
branches had been spared by those first generations of Israel that should have
destroyed all (Jdg 2:2-3). Everything, therefore, was against her; yet she was
not hindered by that everything from drawing nigh and craving the boon that her
soul longed after. She had heard of the mighty works which the Saviour of Israel
had done: for already his fame had gone through all Syria; so that they brought
unto Him, besides other sick, “those which were possessed with devils, and those
which were lunatic, and He healed them” (Mat 4:24). And she has a boon to ask
for her daughter, say rather for herself; so entirely has she made her
daughter’s misery her own: “Have mercy on me, 0 Lord, Thou Son of David; my
daughter is grievously vexed with a devil;” as on a later occasion the father of
the lunatic child, “Have compassion on us, and help us” (Mark 9:22). But she
finds Him very different from that which report had described Him to her. That
had spoken of Him as merciful and gracious, not breaking the bruised reed, nor
quenching the smoking flax, inviting every weary and afflicted soul to draw nigh
and find rest with Him. He who of Himself anticipated the needs of others,
withdrew Himself from hers; “He answered her not a word.” In the language of
Chrysostom, “The Word has no word; the fountain is sealed; the physician
withholds his remedies;” until at last the disciples, wearied out with her long
entreaties, and to all appearance more merciful than their Lord, themselves
“came and besought Him, saying, Send her away.” Yet was there in truth a worm of
selfishness at the root of this compassion of theirs, which showed itself as
livelier than their Lord’s; for why is He to satisfy her and dismiss her? “for
she crieth after us;” she is making a scene; she is drawing on them unwelcome
observation. Theirs is that heartless granting of a request, whereof all are
conscious; when it is granted out of no love to the suppliant, but to leave
undisturbed the peace and selfish ease of him from whom at length it is
extorted,—a granting such as his who gave, but gave saying, “lest by her
continual coming she weary me” (Luk 18:5). Here, as so often, behind a seeming
severity lurks the real love, while under the mask of greater easiness
selfishness lies hid.

These intercessors meet with no better fortune than the suppliant herself; and
Christ stops their mouth with words which might appear to set the seal of
hopelessness op her suit: “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of
Israel” (cf. Mat 10:5-6). But in what sense was this true? All prophecy which
went before declared that in Him, the promised Seed, not one nation only, but
all nations of the earth, should be blest: He Himself declared, “Other sheep I
have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my
voice” (John 10:16). It has happened, indeed, before now with the founders of
false religions that, as success beckoned them on, the circle of their vision
has widened; and they who meant at first but to give a faith to their tribe or
nation, have aspired at last to give one to the world. But here all must have
been always known; the world-embracing reach of his faith was contemplated by
Christ from the beginning. In what sense then, and under what limitations, could
it be said with truth that He was not sent but unto the lost sheep of Israel
only? Clearly it must be in his own personal ministry.[3] That, for wise
purposes in the counsels of God, was to be confined to his own nation; and every
departure from this, the prevailing rule of his ministry, was, and was clearly
marked as, an exception. Here and there, indeed, there were preludes of the
larger mercy which was behind,[4] first drops of that gracious shower which
should one day water the whole earth. Before, however, the Gentiles should
glorify God for his mercy, He must first be “a minister of the circumcision for
the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers”’(Rom 15:8”, 9).
It was only as it were by a rebound from them that the grace was to light upon
the heathen world; while yet that issue, which seemed thus accidental, was laid
deep in the deepest counsels of God (Acts 13:44-49; Rom. xi.). In the form of
Christ’s reply, as St. Mark gives it, “Let the children first be filled,” the
refusal does not appear so absolute and final; and a glimpse appears of the
manner in which the blessing would pass on to others, when as many of these,
“the children,” as would, have accepted it. But there, too, the present repulse
is absolute. The time is not yet; others intermeddle not with the meal, till the
children have had enough. The woman hears the repulse, which the disciples who
had ventured to plead for her receive; but is not daunted or disheartened
thereby. Hitherto she had been crying after the Lord, and at a distance; but
now, instead of being put further still, “came she and worshipped Him, saying,
Lord, help me.” On this He breaks the silence which hitherto He has maintained
towards her; but it is with an answer more discomfortable than was even the
silence itself: “He answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s
bread, [5] and to cast it to dogs.” “The children” are, of course, the Jews,
“the children of the kingdom” (cf. Mat 8:12). He who spoke so sharply to them,
speaks thus honourably of them; nor is there any contradiction in this: for here
He is speaking of the position which God has given them in his kingdom; there,
of the manner in which they have realized that position. On the other hand,
extreme contempt was involved in the title of “dog”[6] given to any one, the
nobler characteristics of the animal, although by no means unknown to antiquity,
being never brought out in Scripture (see Deu 23:18; Job 30:1; 1Sa 17:43; 1Sa
24:14; 2Sa 3:8; 2Sa 9:8; 2Sa 16:9; 2Ki 8:13; Mat 7:6; Php 3:2; Rev 22:15).

There are very few for whom this would not have been enough; who, even if they
had persevered thus far, would not now at length have turned away in anger or
despair. Not so, however, this heathen woman; she, like the centurion, and under
still more unfavourable circumstances than his, was mighty in faith; and from
the very word which seemed to make most against her, draws with the ready wit of
faith an argument in her own behalf. She entangles the Lord, Himself most
willing thus to be so entangled, in his own speech; she takes the sword out of
his own hand, with which to overcome Him:[7] “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of
the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Upon these words Luther, who
has dwelt on all the circumstances of this little history with a peculiar love,
and is never weary of extolling the mighty faith of this woman, exclaims, “Was
not that a master-stroke? she snares Christ in his own words. “And oftentimes he
sets this Canaanitish woman before troubled and fainting hearts, that they may
learn from her how to wring a Yea from God’s Nay; or, rather, how to hear the
deep-hidden Yea, which many times lurks under his seeming Nay. “Like her, thou
must give God right in all He says against thee, and yet must not stand off from
praying, till thou overcomest as she overcame, till thou hast turned the very
charges made against thee into arguments and proofs of thy need, till thou too
hast taken Christ in his own words.” Our translation of the woman’s answer is
not, however, altogether satisfactory. For, indeed, she accepts the Lord’s
declaration, not immediately to make exception against the conclusion which He
draws from it, but to show how in that very declaration is involved the granting
of her petition.[8] “Saidest Thou dogs? it is well; I accept the title and the
place; for the dogs have a portion of the meal,—not the first, not the
children’s portion, but a portion still,—the crumbs which fall from the masters’
table. In this very putting of the case, Thou bringest us heathen, Thou bringest
me, within the circle of the blessings which God, the great householder, is ever
dispensing to his family. We also belong to his household, though we occupy but
the lowest place in it. According to thine own showing, I am not wholly an
alien, and therefore I will abide by this name, and will claim all which in it
is included.” By the “masters” she does not intend the Jews, which is
Chrysostom’s mistake; for thus the whole image would be deranged and disturbed;
they are “the children;” but the great Heavenly householder. She uses the
plural, “masters,” to correspond to the plural, “dogs,” which Christ had used
just before; compare “sons” to correspond with “kings” at Mat 17:26; while yet
it is the one Son only, the Only-begotten of the Father, who is intended
there.[9] He who fills all things living with plenteousness spreads a table for
all flesh; and all that depend on Him are satisfied from it, each in his own
order and place, the children. at the table, and the dogs beneath it. There lies
in her statement something like the Prodigal’s petition, “Make me as one of thy
hired servants, “—a recognition of diverse relations, some closer, some more
distant, in which divers persons stand to God,—yet all blest, who, whether in a
nearer or remoter station, receive their meat from Him.

She has conquered at last. She, who before heard only those words of a seeming
contempt, now hears words of a most gracious commendation,—words whose like are
addressed but to one other in all the Gospel history: “O woman, great is thy
faith!” He who showed at first as though He would have denied her the smallest
boon, now opens to her the full treasure-house of his grace, and bids her to
help herself, to carry away what she will: “Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.”
He had shown to her for a while, as Joseph showed to his brethren, the aspect of
severity; but, like Joseph, He could not maintain it long;—or rather He would
not maintain it an instant longer than it was needful, and after that word of
hers, that mighty word of an undaunted faith, it was needful no more: “For this
saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.”

Like, the centurion at Capernaum (Mat 8:13), like the nobleman at Cana (John
4:53), she made proof that his word was as potent, spoken far off as near. She
offered in her faith a channel of communication between her distant child and
Christ. With one hand of that faith she laid hold on Him in whom all healing
grace was stored, with the other on her suffering daughter,—thus herself a
living conductor by which the power of Christ might run, like an electric flash,
from Him to the object of her love. “And when she was come to her house, she
found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed,” weak and
exhausted, as these last words would imply, from the paroxysms of the spirit’s
going out;—unless, indeed, they indicate that she was now taking that quiet
rest, which hitherto the evil spirit had not. allowed. It will then answer so to
the “clothed and in his right mind” (Luk 8:35) of another who had been similarly
tormented. But the interesting question remains, Why this bitterness was not
spared her, why the Lord should have presented Himself under so different an
aspect to her, and to, most other suppliants? Sometimes He anticipated their
needs, “Wilt thou be made whole?”. (John 5:6); or if not so, He who was waiting
to be gracious required not to be twice asked for his blessings. Why was it that
in this case, to use the words of an old divine, Christ “stayed long, wrestling
with her faith, and shaking and trying whether it were fast-rooted” or no?
Doubtless because He knew that it was a faith which would stand the proof, and
that she would come out victorious from this sore trial; and not only so, but
with a stronger, mightier, purer faith than if she had borne away her blessing
merely for the asking. Now she has learned, as then she never could have
learned, “that men ought always to pray and not to faint;” that when God delays
a boon, He does not therefore deny it. Slip has learned the lesson which Moses
must have learned, when “the Lord met him, and sought to kill him” (Exo 4:24);
she has won the strength which Jacob won from his night-long wrestling with the
Angel. There is, indeed, a remarkable resemblance between this history and that
of Jacob (Gen 32:24-32). There, as here, we note the same persevering struggle
on the one side, the same persevering refusal on the other; there, as here, the
stronger is at last overcome by the weaker. God Himself yields to the might of
faith and prayer; for a later prophet, interpreting that mysterious struggle,
tells us the weapons which the patriarch wielded: “He wept and made supplication
unto Him,” connecting with this the fact that “he had power over the Angel, and
prevailed” (Hos 12:3-4). The two histories, indeed, only stand out in their full
resemblance, when we keep in mind that the Angel there, the Angel of the
Covenant, was no other than that Word, who, now incarnate,[10] “blest” this
woman at last, as He had blest at length Jacob at Peniel,—in each case so
rewarding a faith which had said, “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless
me.”

Yet, when we thus speak of man overcoming God, we must never, of course, for an
instant lose sight of this, that the power whereby he overcomes the resistance
of God, is itself a power supplied by God. All that is man’s is the faith, or
the emptiness of self, with the hunger after God, which enables him to
appropriate and make so largely his own the fulness and power of God; so that
here also that word comes true, “Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven.” Thus when St. Paul (Col 1:29) speaks of himself under an
image which rested originally on Jacob’s struggle, if there was not a direct
allusion to it in the Apostle’s mind, as striving for the Colossians,
striving,[11] that is, with God in prayer (see 4:12), he immediately adds,
“according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.”

We may observe, in conclusion, that we have three ascending degrees of faith, as
it manifests itself in the breaking through hindrances which would keep from
Christ, in the paralytic (Mark 2:4); in the blind man at Jericho (Mark 10:48);
and in this woman of Canaan. The paralytic broke through the outward hindrances,
the obstacles of things merely external; blind Bartimaeus through the hindrances
opposed by his fellow-men; but this woman, more heroically than all, through
apparent hindrances even from Christ Himself. These, in their seeming weakness,
were three mighty ones, not of David, but of David’s Lord and Son, who broke
through opposing hosts, until they could draw living water from wells of
salvation (2Sa 23:16).

Footnotes

[1] Kuinoel here: In partes Palsestinae regioni Tyriorum et Sidoni-orum
finitimas. So Exo 16:35 : εἰς μέρος τῆς Φοινίκης (LXX), “to the borders of
Canaan.”

[2] Συροϕοινίκισσα, Lachmann; Σύρα Φοινίκισσα, Tischendorf; and between these
readings the best MSS. are divided. Συροϕοίνισσα is very weakly attested: it is
indeed the more Greek form, yet not therefore here to be preferred, but rather
the contrary. See a learned note by Grotius, on Mat 15:22. This woman’s name,
according to the Clementine Homilies (ii. 19), was Justa, where legends of her
later life, and her passage from heathenism to Judaism, are to be found.

[3] Augustine (Semi, lxxvii. 2): Hic verborum istorum oritur quaestio: Unde nos
ad ovile Christi de gentibus venimus, si non est missus nisi ad oves quae
perierunt domûs Israel? Quid sibi vult hujus secreti tarn alta dispensatio, ut
cum Dominus sciret quare veniret, utique ut Ecclesiam haberet in omnibus
Gentibus, non se missum dixerit, nisi ad oves quas perierunt domus Israel?
Intelligimus ergo praesentiam corporis sui, nativitatem suam, exhibitionern
miraculorum, virtutemque resurrectionis in illo populo eum ostendere debuisse.
Jerome (Comm. in Matt, in loc.): Perfectam salutern gentium passionis et
resurrectionis tempori reservabat.

[4] Calvin: Praeludia quaedam dare voluit communis misericordiae.

[5] Maldonatus: Habent canes panem suum minus delicatum, quam frill; res
naturales, Sol, Luna, pluvia, et cetera idem genus canum id est Gentilium, panis
sunt; quae providentia, quidem Dei, sed generali minusque accurata dispensantur,
et omnibus in commune, sicutporcis glandes, projiciuntur: Evangelica gratia,
quae supra naturam est, panis est nliorum non projiciendus temere, sed majore
consilio rationeque distribuendus.

[6] Many, as Maldonatus, assume that there is yet a further aggravation of the
contempt in the κυναρίοις (the Vulgate, catellis), not even dogs, but whelps.
Yet rather I should be inclined to say with Olshausen that there is in the
diminutive a slight mitigation of the exceeding sharpness of the words; yet not
so but that they remain most severe and cutting still. Calvin brings out well
the force of the βαλεῖν: Projiciendi verbo utitur significando non bene locari,
quod Ecclesiae Dei ablatum profanis hominibus vulgatur. Clarius exprimitur
consilium Christi apud Marcum vii. 27, ubi habetur, Sine prius saturari filios.
Nam Cananaeam admonet præpostere facere, quæ velut in mediâ, coenâ in mensam
involat.

[7] Corn, a Lapide: Christum suis verbis irretit, coinprehendit, et capit
Rationem contra se factam in ipsum leniter retorquet.

[8] There is nothing adversative in καὶ λάρ=etenim (see Passow), which would
justify the “yet”, of our Version, or the “nevertheless” of Tyndale’s. Wiclif’s,
Cranmer’s, the Genevese and Rhemish versions have the light translation; thus
the Genevese: “Truth, Lord, for indeed the whelps eat of the crumbs;” in this
following the Vulgate: Etiam, Domine, nam et catelli edunt. So De Wette: Ja,
Herr! denn es essen ja die Hunde. Maldonatus, always acute, and with merits as
an interpreter, which, setting apart his bitter polemical spirit, deserve the
highest recognition, has exactly caught the meaning of her reply: Hoc est quod
volo, me esse canem, nam et catelli comedunt de micis quae cadunt de mensâ
dominorum suorum. The “crumbs” are something” more than that which should
accidentally fall from the table: for it was the custom during eating to use,
instead of a napkin, the soft white parts of the bread (ἀπομαγδαλία), which were
afterwards thrown to the dogs; Eustathius: Εἰς ὃ τὰς χεῖρας ἀποματτόμενοι‚ εἶτα
κυσὶν ἔβαλλον (see Becker, Charikles, vol. i. p. 431).

[9] Maldonatus: Loquitur pluraliter propter canes, quorum suum quisque dominum
habet.

[10] This has been doubted by some; but see the younger Vitringa. Diss. de Luctâ
Jacobi, p. 18, seq., in his Diss. Sac; and Deyling, Obss. Sac. p. 827, seq.

[11] Ἀγωνιζόμενος: cf. Col 2:1, where Grotius says rightly, Per ἀγῶνα intelligit
non sollicitudinem tantum, sed preces assiduas.


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  CHAPTER 32: 32-24. THE HEALING OF ONE DEAF AND DUMB
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24. The Healing of One Deaf and Dumb

Mark 7:31-37

St. Matthew tells us in general terms that when the Lord had returned from those
coasts of Tyre and Sidon unto the sea of Galilee, “great multitudes came unto
Him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed,[1] and many
others, and cast them down at Jesus’ feet, and He healed them” (xv. 30). Out of
this number of cures St. Mark selects one to relate more in detail, and this, no
doubt, because it was signalized by some circumstances not usual in other like
cases of healing. “They bring unto Him one that was deaf and had an impediment
in his speech,” one who, if he was not altogether dumb, was yet incapable of
making any articulate sounds.[2] His case differs, apparently, from that of the
dumb man mentioned Mat 9:32; for while that man’s evil is traced up distinctly
and directly to a spiritual source, nothing of the kind is intimated here, nor
are we, as Theophylact suggests, to presume such. Him his friends now brought to
the great Healer, “and they beseech Him to put his hand upon him.” But it is not
exactly in this way that He will heal him.

It has been already observed, that there must lie a deep meaning in all the
variations which mark the different healings of different sick and afflicted, a
wisdom of God ordering all the circumstances of each particular cure. Were we
acquainted as accurately as He who “knew what was in man,” with the spiritual,
condition of each who was brought within the circle of his grace, we should then
perfectly understand why one was healed in the crowd, another led out of the
city ere the work of restoration was commenced; why for one a Word effected a
cure, for another a touch, while a third was sent to wash in the pool of Siloam
ere “he came seeing;” why for this one the process of restoration was
instantaneous, while another saw at first “men as trees, walking.” We are not
for an instant to suppose in cures gradually accomplished any restraint on the
power of the Lord, save such as He willingly imposed on Himself,—and this,
doubtless, in each case having reference to, and being explicable by, the moral
and spiritual state of the person who was passing under his hands. It is true
that our ignorance prevents us from at once and in every case discerning “the
manifold wisdom” which ordered each of his proceedings, but we are not less sure
that this wisdom ordered them all.[3] On the present occasion He first “took him
aside from the multitude,” whom He would heal; compare Mark 8:23 : “He took the
blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town. “But with what intent does
He isolate him thus? The Greek Fathers generally reply, for the avoiding of all
show and ostentation. But this cannot be, since of all the miracles which He
did, we have only two in which any such withdrawal is recorded. Shall we say
then that there was show and ostentation in all the others? It is not much
better to answer, with Calvin, that He might pray with greater freedom.[4] He,
whose life was altogether prayer, needed not solitude for this. His purpose was,
rather, that apart from the tumult and interruptions of the crowd, in solitude
and silence, the man might be more receptive of deep and lasting impressions;
even as the same Lord does now oftentimes lead a soul apart, sets it in the
solitude of a sick chamber, or in loneliness of spirit, or takes away from it
earthly companions and friends, when He would speak with it, and heal it. He
takes it aside, as He took this deaf and dumb out of the multitude, that in the
hush of the world’s din it may listen to Him; as on a greater scale He took his
elect people aside into the wilderness, when He would first open their spiritual
ear, and deliver unto them his law.

Having this done, Christ “put his finger into his ears, and He spit and touched
his tongue.” These are symbolic actions, which it is easy to see why He should
have employed in the case of one afflicted as this man was;—almost all other
avenues of communication, save by sight and feeling, were of necessity closed.
Christ by these signs would awaken his faith, and stir up in him the lively
expectation of a blessing. The fingers are put into the ears as to bore them, to
pierce through the obstacles which hindered sounds from reaching the seat of
hearing. This was the fountain-evil; he did not speak plainly, because he did
not hear; this defect, therefore, is mentioned as being first removed.[5] Then,
as often through excessive drought the tongue cleaves to the roof of the mouth,
the Lord gives here, in what next He does, the sign of the removal of this evil,
of the unloosing of the tongue. And, at the same time, the healing virtue He
shows to reside in his own body; He looks not for it from any other quarter; but
with the moisture of his own mouth upon his finger touched, the tongue which He
would release from the bands which held it fast. -It is not for its medicinal
virtue that use is made of this, but as the apt symbol of a power residing in,
and going forth from, his body.[6]

St. Mark, abounding as he does in graphic touches, reproducing before our eyes
each scene which he narrates, tells us of the Lord, how this doing, “and looking
up to heaven, He sighed.” He has further preserved for us the very word which He
spake, in the very language in which He spake it; He “saith unto him, Ephphatha,
that is, Be opened.” The “looking up to heaven” was a claiming of the divine
help; or rather, since the fulness of divine power abode permanently in Him, and
not by fitful visitation as in others, an acknowledgment of his oneness with the
Father, and that He did no other things save those which He saw the Father do
(cf. Mat 14:19; John 11:41-42). Some explain the words “He sighed” or “He
groaned,” which are the words in the Rhemish version, as the deep voice of
prayer in which He was at the moment engaged; but rather we suppose that this
poor helpless creature now brought before Him, this living proof of the wreck
which sin had brought about, of the malice of the devil in deforming the fair
features of God’s original creation, then wrung that groan from his heart. He
that always felt, was yet now in his human soul touched with a liveliest sense
of the miseries of the race of man.[7] Thus on another still greater occasion,
“He groaned in the spirit and was troubled” (John 11:33), with a trouble which
had in like manner its source in the thought of the desolation which sin and
death had effected. As there the mourning hearts which were before Him were but
a sampler of the mourners of all times and all places, so was this poor man of
all the variously afflicted and greatly suffering children of Adam.[8] In the
preservation of the actual Aramaic “Ephphatha” which Christ spoke, as in the
“Talitha cumi” of Mark 5:14, [9] we recognize the narrative of an eye and
ear-witness, St. Peter, no doubt, from whom the Evangelist had his account, and
on whose memory the words of power, which opened the ears, and loosed the
tongue, and raised the dead, had indelibly impressed themselves.[10] The
injunction, “He charged them that they should tell no man,” implies that the
friends of this afflicted man had accompanied or followed Jesus out of the
crowd, and having been witnesses of the cure, were now included with him in the
same prohibition of divulging what had been done. On the reasons which induced
the Lord so often to give this charge of silence something has been said
already. On this, as on other occasions (see Mat 9:31; Mark 1:44-45), the charge
is nothing regarded by those on whom it is laid; “the more He charged them, so
much the more a great deal they published it.” The exclamation in which men’s
surprise and admiration finds utterance, “He hath done all things well” reminds
us of the words of the first creation (Gen 1:31 [11]), upon which we are thus
not unsuitably thrown back, for Christ’s work is in the truest sense “a new
creation.” The concluding notice of St. Matthew, “they glorified the God of
Israel,” implies that of those present a great. number were heathens, as we
should naturally expect in this half-hellenized region of Decapolis, and that
these, beholding the mighty works which were done, confessed that the God who
had chosen. Israel was above all gods.

Footnotes

[1] Κυλλός, properly, crippled or maimed in the hand, as Jerome (in loc.)
observes: Quomodo claudus dicitur, qui uno claudicat pede, sic κυλλὸς
appellatur, qui unam manum debilem habet. Nos proprietatem hujus verbi non
habemus. We are equally without a single word which is its equivalent. At Mat
18:8 it is evidently “maimed of the hand,” but does not here mean so much; for
though, of course, it lay in the power of Christ to supply a lost limb, yet we
nowhere meet any miracle of this kind; neither should we expect to meet such;
for He was come now, a Redeemer, that is a setter free of man in his body and in
his soul from alien powers which held him in bondage—a Redeemer, but not a
Creator. Even in his miracles which approach nearest to creation, He ever
assumes a substratum on which to work: water, to turn into wine; bread, to
multiply by his power; and in man’s case we may presume the same. It is no
limitation of this divine power of Christ, to suppose that it had thus a law
according to which it wrought, and beyond which it did not extend; for this law
is only the law of infinite fitness, which it received from itself.

[2] Some make μογιλάλος here to signify mute, chiefly on account of the ἀλάλους
of ver. 37; and they refer to Isa 35:6 (LXX), τρανὴ δὲ ἔσται γλῶσσα μογιλάλων,
in proof; as also to Exo 4:11, where, though not the Septuagint, yet the three
other Greek translations use this word in the sense of dumb. Yet the ἐλάλει
ὀρθῶς of ver. 35 makes it to me far more probable that the meaning which the
derivation of the word more naturally suggests, and our translation has given,
is the true. He was βραδύγλωσσος‚ ἀγκυλόγλωσσος, balbutiens—that is, lie could
make no intelligibly sounds; but was not absolutely dumb; cf. Isa 32:4 (LXX): αἱ
γλῶσσαι αἱ ψελλίζουσαι.

[3] Maldonatus: Videtur etiam voluisse Christus non semper aequaliter suam
divinitatem potentiamque declarare, quod non semper, etiamsi nos causa lateat,
convenire judicaret. Aliquando solo verbo daemones ejicit, mortuos exsuscitat,
ostendens se omnino esse Deum; aliquando tactu, salivâ, luto, sanat aegrotos,
accommodans quodamraodo potentiam suam ad modum agendi causarum naturalium, et
ad sensum et consuetudinem hominum.

[4] Ut precandi ardorem liberius effundat.

[5] Grotius: Saepe Christus externo aliquo signo inadspectabilem efficaciam
velut spectandam exhibebat. Ita digitis in aures immissis, irrigataque lingua
testatum fecit se eum esse cujus vi clausi meatus quasi perterebrarentur, et
lingua palato adhaerescens motum recuperaret.

[6] Grotius: Nee alio hoc referendum mihi videtur quam quo superiora, ut hoc
quoque indicio ostenderetur ab ipso. Jesu prodiisse hanc salutiferam virtutem,
cum nihil admotum esset affecto corpori, praeter ipsa quae ipsius Jesu erant
propria.

[7] Chrysostom (in Cramer, Catena): Τὴν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ϕύσιν ἐλεῶν εἰς ποῖαν
ταπείνωσιν ἤγαγεν ταύτην ὅ τε μισόκαλος διάβολος‚ καὶ ἡ τῶν πρωτοπλάστων
ἀπροσεξία.

[8] In the exquisite poem in The Christian Year which these words have
suggested, this sigh is understood rather as the sigh of one who looked onward
to all the deeper spiritual evils of humanity, which would so often wilfully
resist even his power of healing: The deaf may hear the Saviour’s voice, The
fetter’d tongue its chain may break; But the deaf heart, the dumb by choice, The
laggard soul that will not wake, The guilt that scorns to be forgiven;— These
baffle even the spells of Heaven; In thought of these his brows benign, Not even
in healing, cloudless shine.

[9] It is quite in St. Mark’s manner to give the actual Aramaic words which
Christ used, but adding in each case their interpretation (Mark 3:17; Mark 5:41;
Mark 7:11; Mark 14:36; Mark 15:34; cf. Mark 10:46; Mark 15:22).

[10] Grotius: Haec autem vox Ephphatha simul cum salivâ et tactu aurium ac
linguae ex hoc Christi facto ad Baptismi ritus postea translata sunt, ut
significaretur non minus interna mentis impedimenta tolli per Spiritum Christi,
quam in isto homine sublata fuerant sensuum impedimenta. Nam et cor dicitur
διανοίγεσθαι, Acts 16:14. Imo et cordi aures tribuuntur. The rite to which
Grotius refers is one that found place in the Latin Church alone, as it survives
in that of Rome. The practice of the priest’s touching the nostrils and ears of
the child or catechumen about to be baptized, with moisture from his mouth, had
its origin here; as is plainly indicated by the word Epheta, which he used at
the same time. Ambrose, addressing the catechumens, speaks thus (De Init. 1):
Aperite igitur aures, et bonum odorem vitas aaternse inhalatum vobis munere
sacramentorum carpite, quod vobis significavimus, cum apertionis celebrantes
mysterium di-ceremus Epheta, quod. est, Adaperire; ut venturas unusquisque ad
gratiam, quid interrogaretur cognosceret, quid responderet, memin-isse deberet.
Cf. the work, De Sacram. i. 1, attributed to him.

[11] Here καλῶς πάντα πεποίηκε: there πάντα ὅσα ἐποίησε‚ καλὰ λίαν


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  CHAPTER 33: 33-25. THE MIRACULOUS FEEDING OF FOUR THOUSAND
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25. The Miraculous Feeding of Four Thousand Mat 15:32-39; Mark 8:1-9

Almost everything which might have been said upon this miracle, the preceding
one of the same nature has anticipated already. Whether this was wrought nearly
in the same locality, namely, in the desert country belonging to Bethsaida,[1]
and not rather on the western, as the former on the eastern, side of the lake,
has been sometimes debated. On the whole it is most probable that it was wrought
nearly on the same spot; for thither the narrative of St. Mark appears to have
brought the Lord. Leaving the coasts of Tyre and Sidon after the healing of the
daughter of the Syrophenician woman, He is said to have again reached the sea of
Galilee, and this through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis (vii. 31). But
all the cities of the Decapolis save one lay beyond Jordan, and on the eastern
side of the lake; this notice therefore places Him on the same side also. Not
less does the fact that immediately after the miracle He took ship and came to
the region of Magdala (Mat 15:39), since Magdala was certainly on the western
side, and his taking ship was more probably to cross the lake than to coast
along its shores.[2] With many points of likeness, there are also some points of
unlikeness in the two miracles. Here the people had continued with the Lord
three days, but on the former occasion nothing of the kind is noted; the
provision too is somewhat larger, seven loaves and a few fishes, instead of five
loaves and two fishes; as the number fed is somewhat smaller, four thousand now
instead of the five thousand then; and the remaining fragments in this case fill
but seven baskets, while in the former they had filled twelve.[3] Of course the
work, considered as a miraculous putting forth of the power of the Lord, in each
case remains exactly the same. At first it excites some surprise that the
disciples, with that other miracle fresh in their memories, should now have been
as much at a loss how the multitude should be fed as they were before. Yet this
surprise rises out of our ignorance of man’s heart, of our own heart, and of the
deep root of unbelief which is there. It is evermore thus in times of difficulty
and distress. All former deliverances are in danger of being forgotten;[4] the
mighty interpositions of God’s hand in former passages of men’s lives fall out
of their memories; each new difficulty appears insurmountable; as one from which
there is no extrication; at each recurring necessity it seems as though the
wonders of God’s grace are exhausted and have come to an end. God may have
divided the Red Sea for Israel, yet no sooner are they on the other side, than
because there is no water to drink, they murmur against Moses, and count that
they must perish for thirst, crying, “Is the Lord among us, or not” (Exo
17:1-7)? or, to adduce a still nearer parallel, once already the Lord had
covered the camp with quails (Exo 16:13), yet for all this even Moses himself
cannot believe that He will provide flesh for all that multitude (Num 11:21-22).
It is only the man of a full-formed faith, a faith such as Apostles themselves
at this time did not possess, who argues from the past to the future, and truly
derives confidence from God’s former dealings of faithfulness and love (cf. 1Sa
17:34-37; 2Ch 16:7-8).

Nothing but a strange unacquaintance with the heart of man could have made any
find here an evidence of the inaccuracy and general untrustworthiness of the
records of our Lord’s life; arguing, as some do, that the disciples, with the
experience of one miracle of this kind, could not on a second occasion have been
perplexed how the wants of the multitude should be supplied; that we have here
therefore evidence of a loose tradition, which has told the same event twice
over. Or, looking at the matter from another point of view, might it not easily
have happened that the disciples, perfectly remembering how their Master had
once spread a table in the wilderness, and fully persuaded that He could do it
again, may yet very well have doubted whether He would choose a second time to
put forth his creative might;—whether there was in these present multitudes that
spiritual hunger, which was worthy of being met and rewarded by this
interposition of divine power; whether they too were seeking the kingdom of
heaven, and were thus worthy to have all other things, those also which pertain
to this lower life, to the supply of their present needs, added unto them.[5]
But so it was; and the same hand which fed the five thousand before, fed the
four thousand now.

Footnotes [1] Not Bethsaida, “the city of Andrew and Peter,” but the Bethsaida
already mentioned, p. 265.

[2] St. Mark, who for Magdala substitutes Dalmanutha, does not help us here, as
there are no further traces of this place; yet that it was on the western side
of the lake may be concluded from the fact that Christ’s leaving it and crossing
the lake is described as a departing εἰς τὸ πέραν, an expression in the N.T.
applied almost exclusively to the country east of the lake and of Jordan. In
some maps, in that for instance which Lightfoot gives, Magdala is placed at the
S. E. of the; lake; but this is a mistake, and does not agree with passages
which he himself quotes from Jewish writers (Chorograph. 76), which all go to
show that it was close to Tiberias. It is most probably the modern El-Madschdel,
lying on the S. W. of the lake, and in the neighbourhood of the city just
named.. So Greswell, Dissert, vol. ii. p. 3^4; Winer, Realwörterbuch, s. v.
Magdala; Robinson, Biblical Researches, vol. iii. p. 278.

[3] It is remarkable that all four Evangelists, in narrating the first miracle,
agree in using the term κοϕίνους to describe, the baskets which were filled with
the remaining fragments, while the two that relate the second equally agree
there in using the term σπυρίδας. And that this variation was not accidental,
but that there was some difference, is clear from our Lord’s after words; when
referring to the two “miracles, He preserves the distinction, asking his
disciples how many κοϕίνους on the first occasion they gathered up; how many
σπυρίδας on the last (Mat 16:9-10; Mark 8:19-20). What the distinction was, is
more difficult to say. The derivation of κόϕινος from κόπτω (= ἀγγεῖον πλεκτόν,
Suidas), and σπυρίς from σπεῖρα, does not help us, as each points to the baskets
being of wicker-work. See, however, another derivation of σπυρίς in Greswell,
Dissert, vol. ii. p. 358, and the distinction which he seeks to draw from it.
Why the people, or at least the Apostles, should have been provided with the one
or the other has been variously explained. Some say, to carry their own
provisions with them, while they were travelling through a polluted land, such
as Samaria. Greswell rather supposes, that they might sleep in them, so long as
they were compelled to lodge sub dio; and quotes Juvenal (Sat. iii. 13):
Judaeis, quorum cophinus foenumque supellex. It appears from Acts 9:25 that the
σπυρίς might be of size sufficient to contain a man; compare Blunt, Undesigned
Coincidences, 1847, p. 211.

[4] Calvin: Quia autem similis quotidie nobis obrepit torpor, eo magis cavendum
est ne unquam distrahantur mentes nostrae a reputandis Dei beneficiis, ut
praeteriti temporis experientia in futurum idem nos sperare doceat, quod jam
semel vel saepius largitus est Deus.

[5] It is at least an ingenious allegory which Augustine proposes, namely that
these two miracles respectively set forth Christ’s communicating of Himself to
the Jew and to the Gentile; that as the first is a parable of the Jewish people
finding in Him the satisfaction of. their spiritual need, so this second, in
which the people came from far,. even from the far country of idols, is a
parable of the Gentile world. The details of his application may not be of any
very great value; but the perplexity of the Apostles here concerning the supply
of the new needs, notwithstanding all that they had. already witnessed, will
then exactly answer to the slowness with which they themselves, as the ministers
of the new Kingdom, did recognize that Christ was as freely given to, and was as
truly the portion of, the Gentile as the Jew. This sermon the Benedictine Edd.
relegate to the Appendix (Serm. lxxxi.), but the passage about Eutyches may
easily be, indeed bears witness of being, an interpolation; and the rest is so
entirely in Augustine’s manner, that I have not hesitated to quote it as his.
Hilary had before him suggested the same: Sicut autem ilia turba quam prius
pavit, Judaicae credentium convenit turbae, ita haec populo gentium comparatur.


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  CHAPTER 34: 34-26. THE OPENING THE EYES OF ONE BLIND AT BETHSAIDA
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26. The Opening the Eyes of One Blind at Bethsaida

Mark 8:22-26

We have here another miracle peculiar to St. Mark. Its most important features
have been treated of elsewhere. As the Lord took that other sufferer, of whom
also St. Mark alone keeps a record, “aside from the multitude” (vii. 33), even
so “He took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town;”[1] and in
the same way with the moisture from his own mouth He effects the cure. On both
these matters the reader is referred to what there has been already said. The
Lord, as was so often his custom, veiling more or less the miraculous in the
miracle, links on his power to forms already in use among men; working through
these forms something higher than they could have produced, and clothing the
supernatural in the forms of the natural. Thus did He, when He bade his
disciples to anoint the sick with oil,—one of the most esteemed helps for
healing in the East (Mark 6:13; Jas 5:14). Not the oil, but his word, was to
heal; yet without the oil the disciples might have found it too hard to believe
in the power which they were exerting,—those who through their faith should be
healed, to believe in the power which should heal them. So the figs laid on
Hezekiah’s boil were indeed the very remedy which a physician with only natural
appliances at command would have used (Isa 38:22; cf. 2Ki 2:20-21); yet now,
hiding itself behind this nature, clothing itself in the forms of this nature,
an effectual work of preternatural healing went forward. The only remaining
circumstance which distinguishes this miracle is the progressiveness of the
cure. This, it is true, is not itself without analogies in other cures, as in
that of the man blind from his birth, who only after he had been to wash in
Siloam, “came seeing” (John 9:7); yet the steps of the progress are marked more
plainly here than in any other instance. For, first, after the Lord “had spit on
his eyes, and put his hands upon him, He asked him if he saw aught. And he
looked up, and said, I see men, as trees, walking;” certain moving forms about
him, but without the power of discerning their shape or magnitude,—trees he
should have accounted them from their height, and men from their motion.[2] “
But the good Physician leaves not his work unfinished: “After that He put his
hands again upon his eyes, [3 and made him look up; and he was restored, and saw
every man clearly.”

Chrysostom and others find the reasons for this only gradual cure, in the
imperfection of this blind man’s faith. Evidence of this they see in the fact,
that while others in like case cried with their own voices to Jesus for the
opening of their eyes, this man was brought to Him by others, himself perhaps
scarcely expecting a benefit. The gracious Lord, then, who would not reject, but
who could as little cure him so long as there was on his part this desperation
of healing, gave to him a glimpse of the blessing, that He might kindle in him a
longing for the fulness of it, that He might present to him Himself as the
opener of the blind eyes. To the rest of the world, this gradual healing is a
testimony of the freeness of God’s grace, which is linked to no single way of
manifestation, but works in divers manners, sometimes accomplishing only little
by little what at other times it brings about in a moment.[4] And certainly no
symbol more suitable could be found of the steps by which He who is “the Light
of the world” makes oftentimes the souls that come to Him partakers of the
illumination of his grace. Not all at once are the old errors and the old
confusions put to flight; not all at once do they see clearly: for a while there
are many remains of their old blindness, much which for a season still hinders
their vision; they see men but as trees, walking. Yet in good time Christ
completes the work which He has begun; He who was “the author” is also “the
finisher of their faith; “He lays his hands on them anew, and they see every man
clearly.[5]

“And He sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell
it to any in the town.” The first of these commands seems to contain, and in
fact does contain, the second; for if he did not “go into the town,” it is
certain he could not “tell it to any in the town;” but St. Mark ever loves
emphatic statements of this kind, and by repetition to secure a strong
impression on the minds of his readers.

Footnotes

[1] Bengel gives this as the reason why the Lord led him out into the country:
Cæco visum recuperanti lætior erat aspectus cœli et operum divinorum in naturâ,
quam operum humanorum in pago.

[2] In the very interesting account which Cheselden has given (Anatomy, p. 301,
London, 1768) of the feelings of a child, who having been blind from his birth,
was enabled to see, a curious confirmation of the truthfulness of this narrative
occurs: “When he first saw, he knew not the shape of anything, nor any one thing
from another, however different in shape or magnitude; but being told what
things were, whose forms he before knew from feeling, he would carefully
observe, that he might know them again.

[3] ] Chemnitz (Harm. Evang. 84): Manus imponit ut ostendat carnem suam esse
instrumentum per quod et cum quo ipse ὁ Λόγος æternus omnia opera vivificationis
perficiat.

[4] Calvin: Paulatim cæco visum restituit: quod ideo factum esse probabile est,
ut documentum in hoc homine statueret liberæ sua dispensationis, nec se
astrictum esse ad certam normam, quin hoc vel illo modo virtutem suam proferret.
Oculos ergo cæci non statim ita illuminat ut officio suo fuugantur, sed obscurum
illis confusumque intuitum instillat: deinde alterâ manuum impositione integram
aciem illis reddit. Ita gratia Christi, quæ in alios repente effusa prius erat,
quasi guttatim defluxit in hunc hominem.

[5] Bede: Quern uno verbo totum simul curare poterat, paulatim curat, ut
magnitudinem humanæ cæcitatis ostendat, quæ vix et quasi per gradus ad lucem
redeat, et gratiam suam nobis indicet, per quam singula perfectionis incrementa
adjuvat.


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  CHAPTER 35: 35-27. THE HEALING OF THE LUNATIC CHILD
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27. The Healing of the Lunatic Child Mat 17:14-21; Mark 9:14-29; Luk 9:37-42 The
old adversaries of our Lord, the Scribes, had taken advantage of his absence on
the Mount of Transfiguration, to win a momentary triumph, or at least what
seemed such, over those of his disciples whom He had left behind Him. These had
undertaken to cast out an evil spirit of a peculiar malignity, and had proved
unequal to the” task; “they could not” —weakened as they were by the absence of
their Lord; and with Him, of three, the chiefest among themselves—the three in
whom, as habitually the nearest to Him, we may suppose his power most mightily
resided. It was here again, as it was once before during the absence of Moses
with his servant Joshua, on his mount of a fainter transfiguration (Exo 34:29).
Then, too, in like manner, the enemy profiting by his absence awhile prevailed
against the people (Exod, xxxii.). And now the Scribes were pressing to the
uttermost the advantage which they had gained by this miscarriage of the
disciples. A great multitude too were gathered round, spectators of the defeat
of Christ’s servants; and the strife was at the highest,—the Scribes, no doubt,
arguing from the impotence of the servants to the impotence of the Master,[1]
and they denying the conclusion; when suddenly He concerning whom the strife
was, appeared, returning from the holy Mount, his face and person yet
glistening, as there is reason to suppose, with traces of the glory which had
clothed Him there,—and which had not yet disappeared, nor faded into the light
of common day. But very different was the impression which that glory made from
the impression made by the countenance of Moses. When the multitude saw him, as
he came down from his mountain, the skin of his face shining, “they were afraid
to come nigh him” (Exo 34:30), for that glory upon his face was a threatening
glory, the awful and intolerable brightness of the law. But the glory of God
shining in the face of Christ Jesus, though awful too, is also an attractive
glory, full of grace and beauty; it draws men to Him, does not drive them from
Him; and thus, indeed, “all the people, when they beheld Him, were greatly
amazed,” such gleams of brightness arrayed Him still; yet did they not therefore
flee from Him, but rather, as the more allured by that brightness, “running to
Him, saluted Him”[2] (cf. 2Co 3:18).

Yet the sights and sounds which greeted Him on his return to our sinful world,
how different were they from those which He had just quitted upon the holy
Mount! There the highest harmonies of heaven; here some of the wildest and
harshest discords of earth.[3] There He had been receiving from the Father
honour and glory (2Pe 1:17); here his disciples, those to whom his work had been
intrusted in his absence, had been procuring for Him, as far as in them lay,
shame and dishonour. But as when some great captain, suddenly arriving upon a
battle-field, where his subordinate lieutenants have well nigh lost the day, and
brought all into a hopeless confusion, with his eye measures at once the
necessities of the moment, and with no more than his presence causes the tide of
victory to turn, and everything to right itself again, so was it now. The Lord
arrests the advancing and victorious foe: He addresses Himself to the Scribes;
with the words, “What question ye with them?” taking the baffled and
hard-pressed disciples under his own protection. What question there is more,
henceforth it must be with Him. These, who were so forward to dispute with the
servants, do not so readily accept the challenge to contend with the Master. Not
they, but “one of the multitude,” the father of the poor child on whom the
ineffectual attempt at healing had been made, is the first to speak; “kneeling
down to Him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son;” and with this declaring
the miserable case of his child, and the little help he had obtained from the
disciples.

St. Mark paints the whole scene with the hand of a master, and his account of
this miracle, compared with those of the other Evangelists, would alone suffice
to vindicate for him an original character, and to refute the notion of some,
that we have in his Gospel only an epitome, now of the first, and now of the
third.[4]All the symptoms, as put into the father’s mouth, or described by the
sacred historians, exactly agree with those of epilepsy;—not that we have here
only an epileptic; but this was the ground on which the deeper spiritual evils
of this child were superinduced. The fits were sudden and lasted remarkably
long; the evil spirit “hardly departeth from him;”—”a dumb spirit” St. Mark
calls it, a statement which does not contradict that of St. Luke, “he suddenly
crieth out;” this dumbness was only in respect of articulate sounds; he could
give no utterance to these. Nor was it a natural defect, as where the string of
the tongue has remained unloosed (Mark 8:32), or the needful organs for speech
are wanting; nor yet a defect under which he had always laboured; but the
consequence of this possession. When the spirit took him in its might, then in
these paroxysms of his disorder it tare him, till he foamed [5] and gnashed with
his teeth: and altogether he pined away like one the very springs of whose life
were dried up.[6] And while these accesses of his disorder might come upon him
at any moment and in any place, they often exposed him to the worst accidents:
“ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water.” In St. Mark the
father attributes these fits to the direct agency of the evil spirit: “ofttimes
it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him;” yet such
calamities might equally be looked at as the natural consequences of his unhappy
condition.[7] The father concludes his sad tale with an account of the defeated
efforts of the nine to aid him; and declares what impotent exorcists they had
proved: “I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out, and they could
not.” On this the Lord with a sorrowful indignation exclaimed, “0 faithless
generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?” We have
two applications of these words. Some, as Origen, apply them to the disciples,
and to them alone; they suppose that our Lord spake thus, grieved and indignant
at the weakness of their faith, and that even so brief a separation from Him
should have shorn them of their strength, and left them powerless against the
kingdom of darkness; and the after discourse (Mat 17:20) favours such an
application. Others, as Chrysostom, and generally the early interpreters,
pointedly exclude the disciples from the rebuke; which they consider addressed
to the surrounding multitude alone; and certainly the term “generation” suits
better for them,—in whom the Lord beholds specimens and representatives of the
whole Jewish people, the father himself representing, only too well, the
unbelieving temper of the whole generation to which he pertained (Mark 9:22),
and therefore sharing largely in the condemnation. This in St. Mark is directly
addressed to him, yet the language “shows that the rebuke is not restrained to
him, but intended to pass on to many more. And indeed the most satisfactory
explanation is one which reconciles both these views; the disciples are not
exclusively aimed at, nor chiefly, but rather the multitude and the father:
they, however, are included in the rebuke; their unfaithfulness and unbelief had
brought them, for the time, back to a level with their nation, and they must
share with it all in a common reproach. “How long shall I be with you?” are
words not so much of one longing to put off the coil of flesh,[8] as rather of a
master, complaining of the slowness and dulness of his scholars: “Have I abode
with you all this time, and have you profited so little by my teaching ?” at the
same time He feels that till their task is learned, He cannot leave them, but
must abide with them still.[9] We may compare his words to Philip, “Have I been
so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip ?” (John 14:9.)
And now, since the help which is done on earth, He must Himself do it, He
exclaims, “Bring him unto Me” As the staff in Gehazi’s hand could not arouse the
dead child, but the prophet himself must arrive and undertake the work, if it
were to be done at all, so is it now (2Ki 4:31). Yet the first bringing of the
child to Jesus causes another of the fearful paroxysms of his disorder, so that
“he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming” The kingdom of Satan in small and
in great is ever stirred into a fiercer activity by the coming near of the
kingdom of Christ. Satan has great wrath, when his time is short.[10] But as the
Lord on occasion of another difficult and perilous cure (Mark 5:9) began a
conversation with the sufferer Himself, seeking thus to inspire him with
confidence, to bring back something of calmness to his soul, so does He now with
the representative of the sufferer, the father, being precluded by his actual
condition from doing this with himself: “How long is it ago since this came unto
him?” The father answers, “Of a child” and, for the stirring of more pity,
describes again the miserable perils in which these fits involved his child; at
the same time ill content that anything should come before the healing, if a
healing were possible, having, also, present to his mind the recent failure of
the disciples, he adds, “If Thou, Thou more than those, canst do anything, have
compassion on us, and help us” In that “us,” we see how entirely his own life is
knit up with his child’s: as the woman of Canaan, pleading for her daughter, had
cried, “Have mercy on me” (Mat 15:22). At the same time he reveals by that “if”
that he has come with no unquestioning faith in Christ’s power to aid, but is
rendering the difficult cure more difficult still by his own doubts and
unbelief. Our Lord’s answer is not without its difficulty, especially as it
appears in the original, but the sense of it is plainly the following: “That
’if’ of thine, that uncertainty whether this can be done or not, is to be
resolved by thee and not by Me. There is a condition without which this thy
child cannot be healed; but the fulfilling of the condition lies with no other
than thyself. The absence of faith on thy part, and not any overmastering power
in this malignant spirit, is that which straitens Me; if this cure is hard, it
is thou that renderest it so. Thou hast said, ’If I can do anything:’ but the
question is, ’If thou canst believe;’ this is the hinge upon which all must
turn”—and then with a pause, and no merely suspended sense, as in our
Version,[11] follow those further words, “All things are possible to him that
believeth.” Thus faith is here, as in each other case, set as the condition of
healing; on other occasions it is the faith of the person; but here, that being
impossible, the father’s is accepted instead; even as the Syrophenician mother’s
in the room of her daughter’s (Mat 15:22). Thus the Lord appears, in Olshausen’s
words, in some sort a μαιευτὴς πίστεως, helping the birth of faith in that
travailing soul; even as at length, though with pain and sore travail, it comes
to the birth, so that the father exclaims, “Lord, I believe;” and then, the
little spark of faith which has been kindled in his soul revealing to him the
abysmal deeps of unbelief which are there, he adds this further: “Help Thou mine
unbelief.”[12] For thus it is ever: only in the light of the actual presence of
a grace in the soul does that soul perceive the strength and prevalence of the
opposing corruption. Till then it had no measure by which to measure its
deficiency. Only he who believes, guesses anything of the unbelief of his heart.

“When now this prime condition of healing is no longer wanting on his part, the
Lord, meeting and rewarding even the weak beginnings of his faith, accomplishes
the cure. Let us observe, in his address to the foul spirit, the majestic “I
charge thee; no longer one whom thou mayest hope to disobey, against whom thou
mayest venture to struggle, but I, the Prince of the kingdom of light, charge
thee, come out of him.” Nor is this all: he shall “enter no more into him;” bis
return is barred; he shall not take advantage of his long possession, presently
to come back (Mat 12:45), and reassert his dominion; the cure shall be at once
perfect and lasting. He must obey; but he does so most unwillingly; what he can
no longer retain he would, if he might, destroy; as Fuller, with a wit which is
“in season and out of season,” expresses it, “like an outgoing tenant, that
cares not what mischief he does. “[13] So fearful was this last paroxysm, so
entirely had it exhausted all the powers of the child, “that he was as one dead;
and many said, He is dead; but Jesus took him by the hand” and life from that
touch of the Lord of life flowed into him anew: even as we often elsewhere find
a revivifying power to be by the same channel conveyed (Dan 10:8-9; Rev 1:17;
Mat 17:6-8).

“Then”—”when He was come into the house,” as we learn from St. Mark—”came the
disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out?” Where was
the secret of their defeat, seeing that they were not exceeding their commission
(Mat 10:8), and had on former occasions found the devils, subject to them (Luk
10:17)? “And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief” because of their
lack of that to which, and to which only, all things are possible. They had made
but a languid use of the means for stirring up and increasing faith; while yet,
though the locks of their strength were shorn, they would “go out as at other
times before” against their enemies, being certain to be foiled whenever they
encountered an enemy of peculiar malignity. And such they encountered here; for
the phrase “this kind” marks that there are orders of evil spirits, that as
there is a hierarchy of heaven, so is there an inverted hierarchy of hell. The
same is intimated in the mention of the unclean spirit going and taking seven
other spirits more wicked than himself (Mat 12:45); and at Ephes. 6:12, there is
probably a climax, mounting up from one degree of spiritual power and malignity
to another. “This kind,” He declares, “goeth not out but by prayer and fasting”
The faith which shall be effectual against this must be a faith exercised in
prayer, that has not relaxed itself by an habitual compliance with the demands
of the lower nature, but has often girt itself up to an austerer rule, to rigour
and self-denial. But as the secret of all weakness is in unbelief, so of all
strength in faith: “For verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of
mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and
it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.” The image reappears
with some modifications, Luk 17:6; and St. Paul probably alludes to these words
of his Lord, 1Co 13:2. Many explain “faith as a grain of mustard-seed” to mean
lively faith, with allusion to the keen and biting powers of that grain.[14] But
it certainly is not on this side that the comparison should be urged; rather, it
is the smallest faith, with a tacit contrast between a grain of mustard-seed, a
very small thing (Mat 13:31-32), and a mountain, a very great. That smallest
shall be effectual to work on this largest. The least spiritual power, which is
really such, shall be strong to overthrow the mightiest powers which are merely
of this world.

Footnotes

[1] Calvin: Scribæ victores insultant, nec modo subsannant discipulos, sed
proterviunt adversus Christum, quasi, in illorum personâ exinanita esset ejus
virtus.

[2] Bengel with his usual beauty: Tangebantur a gloria, etiamsi nescirent quid
in monte actum esset; cf. Marc. x. 32; Luc. xix. 11; nec non Exo 4:14. Occultam
cum Deo conversationem facile sentias majorem hominum erga te proclivitatem
inseqúi. This is more likely than that it was the mere salutation, as
Theophylact proposes, of one that had been absent for awhile; though he too was
aware of the right explanation: τινὲς δὲ ϕασὶν ὅτι ἡ ὄψις αὐτοῦ ὡραιοτέρα
γινομένη ἀπὸ τοῦ ϕωτὸς τῆς μεταμορϕώσεως‚ ἐϕείλκετο τοὺς ὄχλους πρὸς τὸ
ἀσπάζεσθαι.

[3] These mighty and wondrous contrasts have been embodied by Christian Art. In
them lies the idea of Raphael’s great picture of the Transfiguration, and its
two parts, which so mightily sustain one another.

[4] Even Augustine falls in with this view (De Cons. Evang. i. 2): Divus Marcus
eum [Matthæum] subsequutus tanquam pedissequus et breviator ejus videtur.

[5] Lucian (Philopseudes, 16) has ironical allusions, as I must needs think, to
this and other cures of demoniacs by our Lord: Πάντες ἴσασιν τὸν Σύρον τὸν ἐκ
τῆς Παλαιστίνης‚ τὸν ἐπὶ τούτεν σοϕιστὴν‚ ὅσους παραλαβὼν καταπίπτοντας πρὸς τὴν
σελήνην καὶ τὼ ὀϕθαλμὼ διαστρέϕοντας καὶ ἀϕροῦ πιμπλαμένους τὸ στόμα ὅμως
ἀνίστησι καὶ ἀποπέμπει ἀρτίους ἐπὶ μισθῷ μεγάλῳ ἀπαλλάξας τῶν δεινῶν. There is
much of interest in the passage, besides what I have quoted.

[6] If indeed the word here used (ξηραίνεται) has not reference to the stiffness
and starkness, the unnatural rigescence of the limbs, in the accesses of the
disorder; cf. 2Ki 13:4, LXX. Such would not indeed be its first, but might well
be its secondary, meaning, since that which is dried up loses its pliability,
and the father is describing not the general pining away of his son, but his
symptoms when the paroxysm took him. The σεληνιαζόμενοι (in other Greek
σεληνιακοί‚ σεληνόβλητοι are mentioned once besides in the N. T. Mat 4:24),
where they are distinguished from the δαιμονιζόμενοι. The distinction, however,
whatever it was, in the popular language would continually disappear; and the
father here saying of his son σεληνιάζεται does but express the fact, or rather
the consequence, of his possession. Of course the word originally, like μανία
(from μήνη) and lunatieus, arose from the wide-spread belief, not altogether
unfounded, of the evil influence of the moon Psa 121:6) on the human frame (see
Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. ii. p. 571).

[7] These extracts will abundantly justify what was said above of the symptoms
of this child’s case being those of; one taken with epilepsy. Cælius Aurelianus
(Morb. Chron. i. 4): Alii [epileptici] publicis in locis cadendo fœdantur,
adjunctis etiam externis periculis loci causa præcipites dati, aut in flumina
vel mare cadentes. And Paulus Ægineta, the last of the great physicians of the
old world, describing epilepsy (iii. 13), might almost seem to have borrowed his
account from this history: Morbus comitialis est convulsio totius corporis cum
principalium actionum laesione,.... fit liaec affectio maxime pueris, postea
vevo etiam in adolescentibus et in vigore cousistentibus. Instante vero jam
symptomate collaptio ipsis derepente contigit et convulsio, et quandoque nihil
significans exclamatio (ἐξαίϕνης κράζει, Luk 9:39). Praecipuum vero ipsorum
signum eat oris spuma (μετὰ ἀϕροῦ) Luk 9:39).

[8] Jerome (Comm. in Matt, in loc.): Non quod tædio superatus sit, et mansuetus
ac mitis;... sed quod in similitudinem medici si ægrotum videat contra sua
præcepta se gerere dicat: Usquequo accedam ad domum tuam, quousque artis peidam
injuriam; me aliud jubente et te aliud perpetrante?

[9] Bengel: Festinabat ad Patrem: nec tamen abitum se facere posse sciebat,
priusquam discipulos ad fidem perduxisset. Molesta erat tarditas eorum.

[10] Calvin: Quo propior affulget Christi gratia, et efficacius agit, eo
irnpotentius furit Satan.

[11] The words, I imagine, should be pointed thus: τὸ‚ εἰ δύνασαι πιστεῦσαι
πάντα δυνατὰ τῷ πιστεύοντι and Bengel enters rightly into the construction of
the first clause, explaining it thus: Hoc, si potes credere, res est; hoc
agitur. Calvin: Tu me rogas ut subveniam quoad potero; atqui inexhaustum
virtutis fontem in me reperies, si modo afferas satis amplam fidei mensuram.

[12] Augustine, Serin, xliii. 6, 7.

[13] Gregory the Great (Moral, xxxii. 19): Ecce eum non discerpserat cum
tenebat, exiens discerpsit: quia nimirum tune pejus cogitationes mentis
dilaniat, cum jam egressui divinâ virtute compulsus appropinquat. Et quern mutus
possederat, cum clamoribus deserebat: quia plerumque cum possidet, minora
tentamenta irrogat: cum vero de corde pellitur, acriori infestatione perturbat.
Cf. Hom. xii. in Ezek.; and H. de Sto. Victore: Dum puer ad Dominum accedit,
eliditur: quia conversi ad Dominum plerumque a daemonio gravius pulsantur, ut
vel ad vitia reducantur, vel de suâ expulsione se vindicet diabolus.

[14] Augustine (Serm. ccxlvi.): Modicum videtur granum sinapis; nihil
contemtibilius adspectu, nihil fortius gustu. Quod quid est aliud, nisi maximus
ardor et intima vis fidei in Ecclesia?


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  CHAPTER 36: 36-28. THE STATER IN THE FISH'S MOUTH
========================================================================

28. The Stater in the Fish’s Mouth

Mat 17:24-27 No other Evangelist records this miracle but St. Matthew; and
before we have closed our examination of it, it will, I think, be abundantly
clear why we meet it, if in one only, then in that Gospel which is eminently the
Gospel of the kingdom, of the King, and of the King’s Son. But the. true depth
and significance of it have not been always seized. They are quite lost and let
go, and the entire transaction emptied of its higher meaning, robbed of all
deeper lessons, when it is assumed that the “tribute” which is here demanded of
the Lord was a civil impost, owing, like the penny of a later occasion (Mat
22:19), to the Roman emperor, instead of what it truly was, a national and
theocratic payment, due to the temple and the temple’s God. “Tribute”[1] in our
translation is in all respects an unhappy rendering, upholds, and indeed
suggests such an error. If many expositors, ancient and modern, and some of high
authority, have fallen into it, they have, done so oftener, I am persuaded, from
not having the right interpretation, which carries conviction with it, before
them, than from a deliberate preference of the wrong. Thus Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, and Jerome; who all understand a civil payment;
the two last finding here the same lesson as at Rom 13:1-7 : “Let every soul be
subject to the higher powers.... Render therefore to all their dues, tribute to
whom tribute is due, “—the lesson of a willing obedience on the part of the
faithful to the civil power.[2] But none of these reject, they seem rather
unaware of, the deeper interpretation of the miracle. Not so Maldonatus, here
for once at one with Calvin, the great object of his polemical hatred. The last,
however, has a glimpse of, though he does not grasp, the truth. He accounts the
money claimed to have been indeed due to the temple and the temple’s God; but to
have been already alienated by the Romans for the service of the Imperial
treasury.[3] This, however, as will be seen, is historically incorrect; such
alienation found place, but not till a later time.[4] The arguments for the
other interpretation, both external and internal, are quite overpowering. For,
in the first place, this “didrachm”[5] which the collectors here demand, was
exactly the ransom of souls, appointed (Exo 30:11-16) to be paid by every
Israelite above twenty years old to the service and current expenses of the
tabernacle, or, as it afterwards would be, of the temple.[6] It must be allowed
that it does not there appear as an annual payment, but only as payable on the
occasions, not frequently recurring, of the numbering of the people. But it
became annual, whether this had been the real intention of the ordinance from
the first, or out of a later custom which arose only after the Babylonian
Captivity. Some have thought that they found traces, indeed distinct notices, of
this payment before that time, at 2Ki 12:4; 2Ch 24:5-6; 2Ch 24:9; and all the
circumstances of what is there described as the collection which “Moses the
servant of God laid upon Israel in the wilderness,” make this probable.[7] At a
later day, it is the third part of a shekel, and not the half, which the Jews
impose upon themselves (Nehem. 10:32). This might suggest a doubt whether the
same contribution is there intended; as they would scarcely have ventured to
alter the amount of a divinely instituted payment. Yet the fact that it was
yearly, and expressly for the service of God’s house, will not allow us to
suppose it any other; and they may have found in their present poverty and
distress an excuse for the diminution of the charge. Josephus[8] mentions that
it was an annual payment in his time; Philo does the same, and attests the
conscientious and ungrudging accuracy with which it was paid by the Jews of the
Dispersion, so that in almost every city of the Empire, and in cities too beyond
its limits, there was a sacred chest for the collection of these dues: the sum
of which at stated times sacred messengers were selected from among the
worthiest to bear to Jerusalem.[9] It was Vespasian who diverted this capitation
tax into the imperial fisc, but only after the city and the temple had been
destroyed. Josephus is very distinct on this point; whose words it may be worth
while to quote, as the only argument in favour of a secular and not a theocratic
payment is, that before our Lord’s time, and as early as Pompeius, these moneys
were turned from their original destination, and made payable to the Roman
treasury. Of Vespasian he writes: “He imposed a tribute on the Jews wheresoever
they lived, requiring each to pay yearly two drachms to the Capitol, as before
they were wont to pay them to the temple at Jerusalem.”[10] But of Pompeius he
merely affirms, that “he made Jerusalem tributary to the Romans,”[11] with no
mention of this tax at all. We have already seen that abundant evidence exists
of its having continued long after his time to be rendered to the temple. Titus
alludes to this fact, when, upbraiding the Jews with the unprovoked character of
their revolt, he reminds the revolters that the Romans had permitted them to
collect their own sacred imposts.[12]

It may be noted further that it is not “publicans” who demand this tribute, as
the collectors would certainly have been called, had they been the ordinary
tax-gatherers, and this the ordinary tax. As little is the tone of the demand,
“Doth not your Master pay the didrachm?”[13] that of a rude Roman tax-gatherer,
who had detected one in the act of evading, as he supposed, the tax; but is
perfectly natural, when the duty of paying was one of imperfect obligation, one
which if any chose to decline, the payment could scarcely have been
compelled.[14] But the most prevailing argument of all, in proof that this
“tribute” was God’s money, which should be rendered to God, and not Caesar’s,
which should be rendered to Caesar, remains behind; this namely, that otherwise
there would be no force whatever in the Lord’s conclusion, “Then are the
children free,” as giving this immunity to Him. As a Son in his own house, He
affirmed his own exemption from payments due to God. How could He on this
ground, on the ground, that is, of being the Son of him on whose behalf the tax
was levied, have claimed immunity from a payment due to Caesar? He was no son of
Caesar. He might, indeed, have asserted his freedom on other grounds; though
that He would not, since He had come submitting Himself during his earthly life
to every ordinance of man. But this claim which He actually does put forward,
only holds good on the assumption that the payment is one made to God. They who
deny this are driven to say that it is his royal Davidical descent, in right of
which He asserts this immunity. But this cannot stand: for the conclusion then
would be, that Jesus being one King’s Son, He therefore is exempted from the
tribute owing to another king, and that other, one of a hostile dynasty,—in
itself an argument most futile, and certainly not that of the sacred text.[15]

We may presume, then, that our Lord, with Peter and other of his disciples, was
now returning to “his city,” that is, Capernaum, after one of his usual
absences.[16] He may have passed without question; the collectors not venturing
to address Him. But they detain Peter, who had lingered perhaps a little behind
his Lord; and of him they ask, “Doth not your Master pay tribute?” or “pay the
didrachm?” This question sounds to Chrysostom a rude one: “Does your Master
count Himself exempt from the payment of the ordinary dues? we know the freedom
which He claims; does He propose to exercise it here?” It may be so; but it may
be, as Theophylact suggests, the reverse. Having seen or heard of the wonderful
works which Christ did, they may have been really uncertain in what light to
regard Him, whether to claim from Him the money or not, and this doubt may utter
itself in their question. But after all, we want what the history has not given,
the tone and manner in which the question was put, to determine this.

Peter at once replies in the affirmative; “He saith, Yes.” Zealous for his
Master’s honour, sure’ that his piety will make Him prompt in whatever God’s
ordinance required, he pledges Him without hesitation to the payment. He was
over-hasty in this. It was not in this spirit that he exclaimed a little while
before: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mat 16:16). For the
time at least he had lost sight of his Lord’s true position and prerogative,
that He was a Son over his own house,. and not a servant in another’s; the Head
of the theocracy, not one of its subordinate members,—so that it was to Him in
his Father that offerings were to be made, not from Him to be received.[17] It
was not for Him who was “greater than the temple,” and Himself the true temple
(John 2:21), identical with it according to its spiritual significance, and in
whom the Shechinah glory dwelt, to pay dues for the support of that other temple
built with hands, whose glory was vanishing away, now that in his flesh the true
tabernacle was set up, which the Lord had pitched and not man.

He who was to give Himself a ransom for all other souls could not properly pay a
ransom for his own; and it disturbed the true relation between Him and all other
men that He should seem to pay it. Willing therefore to bring back Peter, and in
him the other disciples, to the true recognition of Himself, from which they had
in part fallen, the Lord puts to him the question which follows; even as with
the same intention, being engaged, through Peter’s hasty imprudence, to the
rendering of the didrachm, which now He could scarcely recede from, He yet does
it in the remarkable way of this present miracle—a miracle which should testify
that all things served Him, from the greatest to the least, even to the fishes
that wandered through the paths of the sea,—that He was Lord over nature, and,
having nothing, yet, in his Father’s care for Him, was truly possessed of all
things.[18] For here, as so often in the life of our Lord, the depth of his
poverty and humiliation is lighted up by a gleam of his glory; while, by the
manner of the payment, He reasserts the true dignity of his person, which else
by the payment itself was in danger of being obscured and compromised in the
eyes of some. The miracle, then, was to supply a real need,—slight, indeed, as
an outward need, for the money could assuredly have been in some other and more
ordinary way procured; but as an inner need, most real: in this, then, differing
in its essence from the apocryphal miracles, which are so often mere sports and
freaks of power, having no ethical motive or meaning whatever.

We may trace this purpose in all which follows. The Lord does not wait for Peter
to inform Him what he had answered, and to what engaged Him; but “when he was
come into the house, Jesus prevented him,” anticipated his communication, showed
Himself a discerner of the thoughts of the heart, and, though He had not been
present, perfectly aware of all which had passed.[19] “What thinkest thou,
Simon? Of whom do the kings of the earth” (with an emphasis on these last words,
for there is a silent contrasting of these with the King of heaven, as at Psa
2:2) “take custom or tribute?[20] of their own children, or of strangers?” On
what principle has he been promising this? is not all the analogy of things
earthly against it? These earthly things, it is true, cannot prove the heavenly,
yet are they shadows of the true, and divinely appointed helps for the better
understanding of them. When Peter confesses that not of their own children, but
“of strangers,”[21] then at once He brings him to the conclusion whither He was
leading him, that “the children,” or as it would be better, “the sons,” were
“free.”[22] But this plural, ”the sons” rather than a singular, “the son,” has
perplexed some, who have asked, How could the Lord thus speak, if indeed He had
Himself alone, as the only-begotten Son of God, in his eye? The explanation is
easy. In making a general statement of the worldly relations from which He
borrows his analogy, and by which He assists the understanding of his disciples,
as there are many “kings of the earth” or as any one king might have many sons,
He naturally throws his speech into a plural form; and it is just as natural,
when we come to the heavenly order of things which is there shadowed forth, to
restrain it to the singular, to the one Son; seeing that to the King of heaven
there is but One, the only-begotten of the Father.[23] But if the plural here
need cause us no misgiving, as little can there be drawn from it the conclusion,
that the Lord intended to include in this liberty not Himself only, but all his
people, all that in this secondary sense are the “sons of God.” This plainly is
not true concerning dues owing to God; there are none so bound to render them as
his “sons;” were the payment in question a civil one, it would be equally
untrue; however such an interpretation might be welcome to Anabaptists;[24]
however some extreme Romish canonists draw hence an argument for the exemption
of the clergy from payments to the state, although others among themselves
justly remark that the words, if ’they include any of the faithful, include
all.[25] Not thus, not as one of many, not as the first among many sons, but as
the true and only Son of God, He challenges this liberty for Himself; and we may
observe, by the way, that the reasoning itself is a strong and convincing
testimony to the proper Sonship, and in the capacity of Son to the proper
relationship of Jesus Christ to the Father, which those who deny that
relationship will not easily evade or impugn. “[26] There is in these words the
same implicit assertion that Christ’s relation to God is a different one from
that of other men, which runs through the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, in
the distinction which is so markedly drawn between the son of the householder
and his servants (Mark 12:6): nor are there any testimonies to the dignity and
the prerogatives of the Son more convincing than these, which, not contained in
single isolated expressions, not lying on the surface of Scripture, are bedded
deeply in it, and rather assume his preëminence than declare it. It is true that
for those determined not to be convinced, there is always a loophole of escape,
as from other declarations, so also from these; in the present instance, the
plural “sons” affords, for those who seek it, the desired opportunity of
evasion.

Under this protest Christ will pay the money; “notwithstanding, lest we should
offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that
first cometh up;[27] and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a
piece of money: that take, and give unto them for Me and thee.” He will put no
stumbling-block in the way of any. Were He now to refuse this payment, it might
seem to those who knew not the transcendant secret of his birth that He was
using a false liberty,[28] was come not to fulfil the law, but to destroy it. He
will provide things honest in the sight of all. There was no need, only a
becomingness, in the payment; as there was no necessity for his baptism; it was
that whereto of his own choice He willingly submitted; nor yet for the
circumcision which He received in his flesh; but He took on Him the humiliations
of the law, that He might in due time deliver from under the law. And here comes
out the deeper meaning of the Lord not paying for Himself only, but also for
Peter, the representative of all the faithful. He came under the same yoke with
men, that they might enter into the same freedom with Him.[29] “That take, and
give unto them for Me and thee.”[30] He says not “for us” but “for Me and thee;”
just as elsewhere, “I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and
your God” (John 20:17); for, while He makes common part with his brethren, yet
He does this by an act of condescension, not by a necessity of nature; and for
them it greatly imports that they should understand this; nor at anytime lose
sight of the fact that here is a delivered and a Deliverer, a ransomed and a
Ransomer, however to the natural eye there might seem two who are ransomed
alike. And, as on other occasions, at his presentation in the temple (Luk
2:22-24), and again at his baptism, there was something more than common which
should hinder the misunderstanding of that which was done; at the presentation,
in Simeon’s song and Anna’s thanksgiving; at the baptism, first in John’s
reluctance to baptize Him, and then in the opened heaven and the voice from
thence;—so also is there here a protest of Christ’s immunity from the present
payment, first in his own declaration, ”Then are the children free;” and next in
the novel method by which He supplies the necessity which Peter has made for
Him.[31] It is remarkable, and is a solitary instance of the kind, that the
issue of this bidding is not told us: but we are, of course, meant to understand
that at his Lord’s command Peter went to the neighbouring lake, cast in his
hook, and in the mouth of the first fish that rose to it, found, according to
his Lord’s word, the money that was needed.

Here, as little as on a former occasion (Luk 5:4; Luk 5:6), does the miraculous
in the miracle consist in a mere foreknowledge on the Lord’s part that the first
fish which came up should bear this coin in its mouth; but He Himself, by the
mysterious potency of his will which ran through all nature, drew such a fish to
that spot at that moment, and ordained that it should swallow the hook. We may
compare Jon 1:17, “The Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. “We
see thus the sphere of animal life unconsciously obedient to his will; that also
is not out of God, but moves in Him, as does every other creature (1Ki 13:24;
1Ki 20:36; Amo 9:3).

All attempts to exhaust this miracle of its miraculous element, to make the
Evangelist to be telling, and meaning to tell, an ordinary transaction,—as that
of the rationalist Paulus, who will have it that the Lord bade Peter go and
catch as many fish as would sell for the required sum, and maintains that this
actually lies in the words,[32]—are hopelessly absurd. Yet, on the other hand,
we multiply miracles without a warrant when we assume that the stater was
created for the occasion;[33] nay more, we step altogether out of the region of
miracle into that of absolute creation; for in the miracle, as distinguished
from the act of pure creation, there is always a nature-basis to which the
divine power which works the wonder more or less closely links itself. That
divine power which dwelt in Christ, restored, as in the case of the sick, the
halt, the blind; it multiplied, as the bread in the wilderness; it changed into
a nobler substance, as the water at Cana; it quickened and revived, as Lazarus
and the daughter of Jairus; it brought together, as here, by wonderful
coincidences, the already existing; but, as far as our records reach, it formed
no new limbs; it made no bread, no wine, out of nothing; it created no new men:
never passed over on any one occasion into the region of absolute creation.[34]
The allegorical interpretations, or rather uses, of this miracle, for they are
seldom intended for more, have not in them much to attract, neither that of
Clement of Alexandria[35] that each skilful “fisher of men” will, like Peter,
remove the coin of pride and avarice and luxury, from the mouth of them whom he
has drawn up by the hook of the Gospel from the waste waters of the world; nor
yet that which St. Ambrose brings forward, wherein the stater plays altogether a
different, indeed an opposite, part;[36] nor has Augustine’s[37] more to draw
forth our assent. It is superfluous to press further a miracle already so rich
in meaning as this approves itself to be.

Footnotes [1] In the original, τὰ δίδραχμα.

[2] De Catechiz. Bud. 21: Ipse Dominus ut nobis hujus sanae doctrinae praeberet
exemplum, pro capite hominis, quo erat indutus, tributum solvere non dedignatus
est; and Clement (Paedag. 2, Potter’s ed. vol. i. p. 172): Τὸν στατῆρα τοῖς
τελώναις δοὺς‚ τὰ Καίσαρος ἀποδοὺς τῷ Καίσαρι.

[3] Ita quasi alienati essent Judæi a Dei imperio, profanis tyrannis solvebant
sacrum censum in lege indictum.

[4] Add to these Wolf (Curae, in loc), who has the wrong interpretation; and
Petitus (Crit. Sac. ix. 2566); Corn, a Lapide; and recentty, after any further
mistake seemed impossible, Wieseler (Chronol. Synopse, p. 265, seq.) has
returned to the old error. The true meaning has been perfectly seized by Hilary
(Comm. in Matt, in loc.); by Ambrose (Up. vii. Ad Justum, 12); in the main by
Chrysostom (In Matt. Horn, liv.) and Theophylact, who have yet both gone astray
upon Num 3:40-51; and in later times by Cameron (Crit. Sac. in loc.); by Freher
(Crit. Sac. in loc. vol. ix. p. 3633); by Hammond, who has altogether a true
insight into the matter; Grotius, Lightfoot, Bengel, Michaëlis; and last of all
by Olshausen, Stier, Greswell (Dissert, vol. ii. p. 376), and Alford.

[5] It is true that in the Septuagint (Exo 30:13) it is ἥμισυ τοῦ διδράχμου. But
this arises from their expressing themselves, as naturally they would, according
to the Alexandrian drachm, which was twice the value of the Attic (see Hammond,
in loc).

[6] The sum there named is a half shekel. Before the Babylonian exile, the
shekel was only a certain weight of silver, not a coined money: in the time,
however, of the Maccabees (1Ma 15:6) the Jews received the privilege, or won the
right, from the kings of Syria of coining their own money; and the shekels, half
shekels, and quarter shekels now found in the cabinets of collectors are to be
referred to this period. These growing scarce, and not being coined any more, it
became the custom to estimate the temple-dues as two drachms (the δίδραχμον here
required), a sum actually somewhat larger than the half shekel, as those that
have compared together the weights of the existing specimens of each have found;
thus Josephus (Antt. iii. 8, 2): Ὁ δὲ σίκλος‚ νόμισμα Ἐβραίων ὢν‚ Ἀττικὰς
δέχεται δραχμὰς τέσσαρας. As the produce of the miracle was to pay for two
persons, the sum required was four drachms, or a whole shekel, and the στατήρ
found in the mouth of the fish is just that sum. It indeed often bore the name
of τετράδραχμος. Jerome: Siclus autem, id est stater, habet drachmas quatuor. It
is almost needless to say that this stater is not the gold coin that more
accurately bears that name, which would have, been equal not to four, but to
twenty, drachms; but the silver tetradrachm, which in later times of Greece came
to be called a stater. That other stater, equal to the Persian daric, would have
been worth something more than sixteen shillings of our money, this three
shillings and three pence (see the Diet, of Or. and Rom. Antt. s. vv. Drachma
and Stater; and Winer, Realwörterbuch, s. v. Sekel). It is curious that
Theophylact should be ignorant of what this stater is. Some think it, he says, a
precious stone which is found in Syria.

[7] So Dathe; Michaelis (Mos. Recht, vol. iii. p. 202) questions or denies it.

[8] Antt. xviii. 9, 1. The time appointed for the payment was between the 15th
and 25th of the month Adar (March), that is, about the feast of the passover.
Yet no secure chronological conclusions in regard to our Lord’s ministry can be
Avon from this; as, through his absence from Capernaum, the money might have
been for some time due. Indeed, in all probability, the feast of tabernacles was
now at hand.

[9] De Monarch, 2:3: Ἱεροπομποὶ τῶν χρημάτων ἀριστίνδην ἐπικριθέντες. The whole
passage reminds one much of the collection, and the manner of the transmission,
of the gifts of the faithful in Achaia to Jerusalem by the hands of Paul; cf.
his Leg. ad Cai. 4:31. We find from Cicero’s oration, Pro Flacco (28), that one
accusation made against Flaccus was that he prevented the transmission of these
temple-dues to Jerusalem; incidentally he bears witness to the wide extent of
the practice: Cum aurum, Judæorum nomine, quotannis ex Italia et ex omnibus
vestris provinciis Hierosolymam exportari soleret, Flaccus sanxit edicto, ne ex
Asia exportari liceret.

[10] Bell Jud. vii. 6, 6.

[11] Antt. xiv. 4, 4: Τὰ μὲν Ἱεροσόλυμαὑποτελῆ ϕόρου Ῥωμαίοις ἐποίησεν.

[12] Δασμολογεῖν ὑμῖν ἐπὶ τῷ Θεῷ ἐπιτρέψαμεν.

[13] Τὰ δίδραχμα, with the article, as something perfectly well known: in the
plural the first time, to mark the number of didrachms that were received, being
one from each person; on the second, to mark the yearly repetition of the
payment from each.

[14] Kuinoel (in loc), who may be numbered among the right interpreters of this
passage, observes this: Exactores Romani acerbius haud dubie exegissent tributum
Cæsari solvendum. And in the Rabbinical treatise especially relating to the
manner of collecting these dues, it is said: Placide a quovis semisiclum
expetierunt. Grotius: Credibile est multos, quia non cogebantur, id onus
detrectâsse.

[15] Augustine (Quaest. Evang. i. qu. 23) helps it out in another way: In omni
regno terreno intelligendum est liberos esse regni filios.... Multo ergo magis
liberi esse debent in quolibet regno terreno filii regni illius, sub quo sunt
omnia regna terrena.

[16] See Greswell, Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 374 sq.

[17] Ambrose (Ep. vii. 12, Ad Justum): Hoc est igitur didrachma, quod exigebatur
secundum legem: sed non debebat illud filius regis, sed alienus. Quid enim se
Christus redimeret ab hoc mundo, qui venerat ut tolleret peccatum mundi? Quid se
a peccato redimeret, qui descenderat, ut omnibus peccatum dimitteret?.... Quid
se redimeret a morte, qui carnem susceperat, ut morte suâ, omnibus
resurrectionem adquireret? Cf. Enarr. in Psa 48:14.

[18] Djeleladdin’s grand poem, winch Tholuck has translated (Blüthensainm. aus
der Morgenl. Myst. p. 148), tells exactly the same story, namely, that all
nature waits on him who is the friend. of God, so that all things are his, and
his seeming poverty is but another side of his true riches; only that what there
is but in idea, is here clothed in the flesh and blood of an actual fact. I can
give but a most inadequate extract: Adham Ibrahim sass einst am Meeresstrand,
Nahte dort als Bettler sich sein Mönchgewand. Plötzlich tritt ein Emir mit
Gefolg’ ihn an, Der vormals dem Seelenkönig unterthan, Küsst den Fuss ihm, und
wird alsobald verwirrt, Da den Scheich er in der Kutt’ ansichtig wird. Den, dem
einst gehorcht’ ein weites Landgebiet, Staunend er jetzt seine Kutte nahen
sieht. * * * Drauf der Scheich die Nadel plötzlich wirft in’s Meer, Ruft dann
laut: Ihr Fische, bringt die Nadel her! Alsbald ragen hunderttausend Köpf’
hervor, Jeder Fisch bringt eine goldne Nadel vor. Nun der Scheich mit Ernst sich
zu dem Emir kehrt: Wunderst du dich noch, dass ich die Kutt’ begehrt ?

[19] Jerome: Antequam Petrus suggeret, Dominus interrogate ne
scandalizenturdiscipuli ad postulationem tributi, quum videant eum nosse quse
absente se gesta sunt.

[20] Κῆνσος, the capitation tax; τέλη, customs or tolls on goods.

[21] There is no doubt a difficulty in finding exactly the right translation for
ἀλλοτρίων. For it is not so strong as our “strangers,” or the alieni of the
Vulgate, or Luther’s, von Fremden. It means to express no more than those that
are not the υἱοί, that stand not in this nearest and most immediate relation to
the king (qui non pertinent ad familiarn regis: Kuinoel). So Hammond, “other
folk,” and De Wette, von ihren Söhnen [which is better than Luther’s, von ihren
Kindern], oder von den andern Leuten: compare for this use of ἀλλότριος; Sir
40:29. Gfrörer (Die heil. Sage, vol. ii. p. 56), stumbling at the whole account,
finds fault with this interpretation, because, forsooth, the Jews were not
ἀλλότριοι,—as though they were not so in comparison with Christ; and, again,
because they too were υἱοὶ Θεοῦ,—as though they were so in any such sense as He
was. It is most true that for him and for all like him, to whom there is nothing
in Christ different from another man, the narrative does, in his own words,
“suffer under incurable difficulties.”

[22] With a play on the words, which is probably much more than a mere play, and
rests upon a true etymology, so witnessing for the very truth which Christ is
asserting here, we might say in Latin, Liberi sunt liberi (liberi, the children,
so called in opposition to the household, the send: Freund, Lat. Worterbuch, s.
v. liber). Those very words do occur in the noble Easter hymn beginning, Cedant
justi signi luctus.

[23] Grotius observes rightly that it is the locus communis, which is to account
for the plural: Plurali numero utitur, non quod ad alios earn extendat
libertatem, sed quod comparatio id exigebat, sumta non ab unius sed ab omnium
Regum more ac consuetudine. The best defence of the cleaving to the plural in
the application of the words is that made by Cocceius: Christus ostendit nec se,
qui Filius Dei est, obligari ad didrachma solvenduin, tanquam λύτρον animæ suæ,
nec suos discipulos, qui ab ipso hæreditant libertatem, et non argento
redimuntur (Es. 52:3), sed pretioso ipsius sanguine (1Pe 1:18-19), et facti sunt
filii Dei vivi (Hos 1:10), amplius teneri ad servitutem figurae. Olshausen
follows him in this.

[24] The Anabaptist conclusions which might be drawn from an abuse of the
passage are met on right general grounds by Aquinas (Sum. Theol. 2a 2ae, 104,
art. 6), though he has not any very precise insight into the meaning of this
history. Milton (Defence of the People of England, 3) makes exceedingly unfair
use of this passage.

[25] Tirinus: Nam pari jure omnes justi, immo omnes Christiani exempti essent.
Michaelis affirms that others have pushed these words to the asserting of the
same liberty; for he tells a story (Mos. Recht, vol. iii. p. 210) of having
himself,, in travelling, seen a Pietist cheat the revenue before his eyes: on
asking him how he could find conscience to do so, the other defended himself
with these words, “Then are the children free.” The story is, unhappily, only
too welcome to him.

[26] Greswell, Dissert, vol. ii. p. 736. Chrysostom uses the same argument. I
know not whether any use was made of this passage in the Arian controversy by
those who were upholding the Catholic faith; but Hilary, a confessor and
standard-bearer for the truth in that great conflict, does distinctly bring out
how the Godhead of Christ is involved in this argument (Comm. in Matt, in loc.):
Didrachma tamquam ab homine poscebatur a Christo. Sed ut ostenderet legi se non
esse subjectum, ut in se paterae dignitatis gloriam contestaretur, terreni
privilegii posuit exemplum: censu aut tributis regum filios non teneri,
potiusque se Redemtorem animae nostrae corporisque esse quam in redemptionem sui
aliquid postulandum; quia Regis Filium extra communionem oporteret esse
reliquorum.

[27] This does not mean, the first that he drew up with his line, but the first
that ascended from the deeper waters to his hook.

[28] Chrysostom (Horn, lxiv. in Joh.) understands in a remarkably different way
these words, “Lest we should offend them;” lest, when this secret of our
heavenly birth, and our consequent exemption from tribute, is told them, they
should be unable to receive it; lest we should thus put a stumbling block in
their way, revealing to them something which they were altogether unable to
receive.

[29] Ambrose (Ep. 7:18, Ad Justum): Ideo didrachmum solvi jubet pro se et Petro,
quia uterque sub lege generati. Jubet ergo secundum legem solvi, ut eos qui sub
lege erant redimeret. And Augustine, on the words which he found Psa 137:8 :
Domine, retribues pro me, adduces this. history, saying, Nihil debebat: pro se
non reddidit, sed pro nobis reddidit; and again (Serm. civ. 7): Mysterium
latebat: Christus tamen tributum non debitum persolvebat. Sic persolvit et
mortem; non debebat, et persolvebat. Ille nisi inde-bitum solveret, nunquam nos
a debito liberaret. Jerome (Comm. in Matt, in loc.): Ut ostenderetur similitudo
carnis, dum eodein et servus et Dominus pretio liberatur.

[30] Moule (Heraldry of Fish) gives the natural mythology connected with this
miracle: “A popular idea assigns the dark marks on the shoulders of the haddock
to the impression left by St. Peter with his finger and thumb, when he took the
tribute-money out of the fish’s mouth at Capernaum; but the haddock certainly
does not now exist in the seas of the country where the miracle was
performed.... The dory, called St. Peter’s fish in several countries of Europe,
contends with the haddock the honour of bearing the marks of the Apostle’s
fingers, an impression transmitted to posterity as a perpetual memorial of the
miracle. The name of the dory. is hence asserted to be derived from the French
adore, worshipped. “—Let us observe here the ἀντὶ ἐμοῦ καὶ σοῦ (cf. Mat 20:28;
and Winer, Gramm. § 51, 5. a.)—another proof that we have here to do with the
ransom for persons, a price given in their stead, with a reference to the
original institution of this payment, and so another argument, if that were
needed, for the correctness of the interpretation maintained at the outset.

[31] Bengel: In medio actu submissionis emicat majestas. And Clarius: Reddit
ergo censum, sed ex ore piscis acceptum, ut agnoscatur majestas. So too Origen
(Comm. in Matt, in loc.) recognizes a saving of the Lord’s dignity in the mode
of the payment. Of course, when we speak of this saving of his dignity, it is of
a saving, not for his own sake, but for men’s, since it is most important for
them that they think not unworthily of Him. In other cases, where
misapprehension was possible, we find a like care for this (John 11:41-42).

[32] His honesty and his Greek keep admirable company. Πρῶτον ἰχθῦν he takes
collectively, primum quemque piscem, ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ solvens earn ab
hamo, εὑρήσεις στατῆρα vendendo piscem statera tibi comparabis. This has not
even the merit of novelty; for see Kocher, Analeota, in loc, 1766: Piscem capies
quern pro statere vendere poteris. In a later work, however, Paulus desires to
amend his plea, and ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα is no longer opening the fish’s mouth to
take out the hook, but, opening thine own mouth, i. e. crying the fish for sale,
αὐτοὐ there, εὑρήσεις στατῆρα thou wilt earn a stater. Another of the same
school (see Kuinoel, in loc.) will have the whole speech a playful irony on the
Lord’s part, who would show Peter the impossible payment to which he has pledged
Him, when money they had none in hand; as though He had said, “The next thing
which you had better do is to go and catch us a fish, and find in it the piece
of money which is to pay this tax. for which you have engaged, “—not that he
should actually do this, but as a slight and kindly rebuke. It was reserved for
the more modern or mythic school of interpreters to find other difficulties
here, besides the general one of there being a miracle at all. “How,” exclaims
Strauss (Leben Jesu, vol. ii. p. 195), “could the fish retain the stater in its
mouth? the coin must needs have dropt out while it was opening its jaws to
swallow the hook; and, moreover, it is not in the mouths, but in the bellies, of
fishes that precious things are found. “He might have urged that a Christian
poet, Juvencus, conscious of this difficulty, attempts to evade it, giving the
ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα with this variation: Hujus pandantur scissi penetralia ventris.
Such is the objection against which this history is to prove too weak to stand!
It can only be matched with the objection which another makes to the historic
truth of Daniel in the lions’ den; namely, that if a stone was laid at the mouth
of the den (Dan 6:17), the lions must needs have been suffocated,—so that
nothing will satisfy him but that the den’s mouth must have been by this stone
hermetically sealed!

[33] So does Seb. Schmidt (Fascic. Diss. p. 796). Chrysostom (Horn. lxxxvii. in
Joh.) accounts in like manner for the fish which the disciples find ready upon
the shore (John 21:9); and some will have that Christ not merely gave sight to,
but made organs of vision for, the man who was born blind (John ix.).

[34] The accounts are numerous of precious things found in the bellies of
fishes. The story of Polycrates’ ring is well known (Herodotus, iii. 42); and in
Jewish legend Solomon, having lost his ring of power, recovered it in the same
unexpected way (Eisenmenger, Entdeckt. Judenth. vol. i. p. 360). Augustine (De
Civ. Dei, xxii. 8) records a like incident in his own day, in which he sees a
providential dealing of God to answer the prayer, and supply the need, of one of
his servants.

[35] Paedag,. ii. vol. i. p. 172, Potter’s ed.; cf. Origen, Comm. in Matt. for
the same.

[36] Hexaëm. v. 6: Ideo misit retia, et complexus est Stephanum, qui de
Evangelio primus ascendit [τὸν ἀναβάντα πρῶτον] habens in ore suo staterem
justitiae. Unde confessione constanti clamavit, dicens: Ecce video coelos
apertos, et Filium hominis stantem ad dexteram Dei. So Hilary, Comm. in Matt, in
loc.

[37] Enarr. in Ps. 87:8: Primum surgentem de mari, primogenitum a mortuis; for
by Him, he says, with the error which runs through his whole interpretation, ab
exactione hujus seculi liberamur.


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  CHAPTER 37: 37-29. THE RAISING OF LAZARUS
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29. The Raising of Lazarus

John 11:1-54

It must always remain a mystery why this miracle, so memorable in itself,
transcending as it does all other miracles which the Lord wrought, so weighty in
its consequences (John 11:33), should have been past over by the three earlier
Evangelists, and left for the latest to record. The utmost that can be hoped is
to suggest some probable solution. Thus, it has been urged by some, by Grotius
and by Olshausen, that the three earlier Evangelists, writing in Palestine, and
while either Lazarus or some of his family yet survived, would not willingly
draw attention, and, it might be, persecution, upon them (see John 12:10); but
that no such causes hindered St. John, who wrote at a much later period, and not
in Palestine, but in Asia Minor, from bringing forward this miracle. The
omission on their part, and the mention upon his, will then be a parallel to a
like omission and mention of the name of the disciple who smote off the ear of
the High Priest’s servant, only St. John mentioning that it was Peter who struck
the blow (John 18:10). But how far-fetched an explanation is this! At the utmost
it would account only for the silence of St. Matthew; not for St. Mark’s, whose
Gospel was probably written at Rome; for St. Luke’s as little, who wrote for his
friend Theophilus, whom many intimations make us conclude. to have lived in
Italy. Moreover, the existence of danger to Lazarus or his family, while the
miracle and the impression of the miracle were yet fresh, is of itself not the
slightest evidence that such existed long years after. The tide of events had
swept onward; new objects of hostility had arisen: not to say that if there was
danger, and such danger as the mention of the great work wrought on him would
have enhanced, yet Lazarus was now a Christian, and would as little have himself
shrunk, as those who loved him would have desired to withdraw him, from the post
of honourable peril, tor what else would it have been, but to shrink from
confessing Christ, to have desired that a work which revealed so much of the
glory of the Lord should remain untold, lest some persecution or danger might
from the telling accrue to himself, or to those dear to him? Others, as Neander,
feeling the insufficiency of this explanation, have observed how the three
earlier Evangelists report few save the miracles that the Lord wrought in
Galilee, leaving those wrought in Jerusalem and its neighbourhood nearly
untouched, and that so they omitted this.[1] This is perfectly true; but is no
explanation, only a re-stating in other words of the fact which needs to be
explained; and the question still remains, Why they should have done so? and to
this it is difficult to find now the satisfactory answer. This much we may
freely say, while, at the same time, we feel the objections against the historic
worth either of St. John, or of the three first Evangelists, drawn from Ms
insertion, and their omission, of this miracle, to have little seriousness in
them. In the house of Martha at Bethany,[2] “ for St. Luke (Luk 10:38) speaks of
her as if alone the mistress of the house, the Lord had often found a hospitable
reception; and not in the house only, He had found too a place in the hearts of
the united and happy family which abode under that roof; and He loved with a
distinguishing human affection “Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.”[3] To
Bethany, after the day’s task was over in the unfriendly city, He was often wont
to retire for the night (Mark 11:11-19); its immediate nearness to the city
allowing Him to return thither betimes in the morning. And in the circle of this
family, with Mary, who “sat at his feet and heard his word,” with Martha, only
hindered from the same assiduous hearing by her desire to pay as much outward
observance as she could to her divine guest, with Lazarus his “friend” we may
contemplate Him as often wont to find rest and refreshment, after a day spent
amid the contradiction of sinners, and among the men who daily mistook and
wrested his words. But they whom Christ loves are no more exempt than others
from their share of earthly trouble and anguish; rather are they bound over to
it the more surely. There is sorrow and a fearful looking for of a still greater
sorrow in that household; Lazarus is sick; and the sisters in their need turn to
Him whom they may have themselves already proved to be a helper in every time of
trouble, whom at any rate they have beheld to be such in the extremest need of
others. He is at a distance, beyond Jordan, probably at Bethabara, having
withdrawn thither from the malice of his adversaries (John 10:39-40; cf. John
1:28); but the place of his concealment, or retirement rather, is known to the
friendly family, and they send a messenger with these tidings, “Lord, behold, he
whom Thou lovest is sick.” Very beautiful is it to observe their confidence in
Him; they do not urge Him to come, but only tell their need; this, they take for
granted, will be sufficient; for He does not love, and forsake them whom He
loves.[4] It is but a day’s journey from Bethabara to Bethany; they may securely
count that help will not tarry long.

“When Jesus heard that, He said, This sickness is not unto death.”[5] The words
are purposely enigmatical, and must greatly have tried the faith of the sisters.
For by the time that the messenger brought them back, it is probable that
Lazarus was already dead. Sorely therefore must this confident assurance of
quite another issue have perplexed them. Could it be that their divine Friend
had deceived them, or had been Himself deceived? Why had He not made the issue
certain by Himself coming; or, if aught had hindered this, by speaking that word
which even at a distance was effectual to heal, which He had spoken for others,
for those that were well nigh strangers to Him, and had saved them? But, as with
so many other of the divine promises, which seem to us for the moment to come to
nothing and utterly to fail, and this because we so little dream of the
resources of the Divine love, and are ever limiting them by our knowledge of
them, so was it with this word,—a perplexing riddle, till the event had made it
plain. Even now, in the eyes of Him who saw the end from the beginning, that
sickness was “not unto death;” as they too should acknowledge, when they should
find that through the grave and gate of death their brother had past at once to
a restored and higher life than any which he yet had lived. For this, I think,
we may confidently assume, that it was a higher life to which Lazarus was
recalled. That sickness of his was “for the glory of God, that the Son of God
might be glorified thereby, -” but in this “glory of God” was included the
perfecting for Lazarus of his own spiritual being, as we cannot doubt that it
was perfected through these wondrous events of his existence. In them was his
hard yet blessed passage into life; while at the same time that which was the
decisive crisis in his spiritual development was also a signal moment in the
gradual revelation of the glory of Christ unto the world. The Son of God was
first glorified in Lazarus, and then on and through him to the world (compare
the exact parallel, John 9:2-3).

Some would connect ver. 5, “Now Jesus loved[6] Martha, and her sister, and
Lazarus,” with what goes before, making it to contain an explanation of the
message, and of the ready confidence which the sisters entertain in the Lord’s
help; some with the verse following; and then St. John will be bringing out into
the strongest contrast the Lord’s love to the distressed family at Bethany, and
his tarrying notwithstanding for two days where He was, even after the message
claiming his help had reached Him. The Evangelist will in this latter case be
suggesting to the thoughtful reader all that is involved in this love, which
waited so long, ere it would step into save. But Maldonatus, as it. seems to me,
has caught a truer view of the sequence of thought, connecting this verse not
with the one, but “with the two which follow. He understands St. John to say:
Jesus loved Martha and the others; when therefore He heard that Lazarus was
sick, He abode indeed two days where He was, but “then after that saith He to
his disciples, Let us go into Judaea again” To conceive any other reason for his
tarrying where He was during those two days, than that He might have scope for
that great miracle, as, for example, that He had in hand some signal work for
the kingdom of God where He was, such as would not endure interruption, which
therefore He could not quit for the most urgent calls of private friendship, is
extremely unnatural (see 10:41, 42). Had He only been so determined, He, who
could heal with his word at a distance as easily as by his actual presence,
would not have failed so to do. This tarrying was rather a part of the severe
yet gracious discipline of divine love. The need must attain to the highest,
before He interferes. It is often thus. He intervenes with mighty help, but not
till every other help, not until, to the weak faith of man, even his own promise
has seemed utterly to have failed. But now, when all things are ready for Him,
“He saith to his disciples, Let us go into Judaea again.” The wondering and
trembling disciples remonstrate; “Master, the Jews of late sought to stone Thee,
and goest Thou thither again?” The necessity of hiding from their active malice
had brought Him to those safer haunts beyond Jordan, and will He now affront
that danger anew? In these remonstrances of theirs there spake out truest love
to Him; but mingled with this love apprehensions for their own safety, as is
revealed in the words of Thomas (ver. 16), who takes it for granted that to
return with Him is to die with Him. To keep this in mind, will best help us to
understand the answer of the Lord: “Are there not twelve hours in the day?” or,
rather, “Are not the hours of the day twelve? If any man walk in the day, he
stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world”—in other words, “Is
there not a time which is not cut short or abridged by premature darkness, but
consists of twelve full hours, [7] during any part of which a man may walk and
work without stumbling, being enlightened by the light of this world, by the
natural sun in the heavens?” Such an unconcluded day there is now for Me, a day
during any part of which I can safely accomplish the work given Me by my Father,
whose light I, in like manner, behold. So long as the day, the time appointed by
my Father for my earthly walk, endures, so long as there is any work for Me yet
to do, I am safe, and you are safe in my company, “We may profitably compare the
very similar words spoken under similar circumstances of danger, John 9:4. And
then, at ver. 10, leaving all allusion to Himself, and contemplating his
disciples alone, He links another thought to this, and warns them that they
never walk otherwise than as seeing Him who is the Light of men,—they never walk
as in the night,—they undertake no task, they affront no danger, unless looking
to Him, unless they can say, “The Lord is my Light;” for so to do were to
involve themselves in sure peril and temptation. The final words which explain
why such a walker in the night should stumble, “because there is no light in
him,” are a forsaking of the figure, which would have required something of this
kind, “there is no light above him;” but in the spiritual world it is one and
the same thing not to see the light above us, and not to have it in us; for they
only have it in them who see it above them (cf. 1Jn 2:8-11).

“These things said He: and after that He saith unto them, Our friend [8] Lazarus
sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.” We are not to suppose
that the Lord receives new and later tidings from the house of sickness,
announcing that it is now the house of death, nor thus to explain the new
communication which He makes to his disciples. By the inner power of his spirit
He knows how it has fared with his friend. In language how simple does He speak
of the mighty work which He is about to accomplish; language which shall rather
extenuate than enhance its greatness: it is but as a sleep and an awaking. The
disciples, however, misunderstood his words, and thought that He spake of
natural sleep, an indication often of a favourable crisis in a disorder. Eagerly
seizing upon any excuse for not returning as into the lion’s jaws, they assume
it such here: “Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well.”[9] What need then that
their beloved Lord should expose Himself, and with Himself them, to peril, when
his presence was not required, when all was going favourably forward without
Him? “Then saith Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.” The image of death
as a sleep is so common, belongs so to the natural symbolism of all nations,
that it was no difficulty in the image itself which occasioned the
misunderstanding upon their part; but, while it was equally possible for them to
take his words in a figurative or in a literal sense, they erroneously took them
in the latter.[10] They make an exactly similar mistake, though one involving a
greater lack of spiritual insight, Mat 16:5-12. “And I am glad for your sakes
that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe.” He anticipates what could
hardly not have risen up in their minds, namely, why He had not been there to
save. Through that absence of his there should be a higher revelation of the
glory of God than could have been from his earlier presence; a revelation that
should lead them, and in them all the Church, to higher stages of faith, to a
deeper recognition of Himself, as the Lord of life and of death. He is glad, for
his disciples’ sake, that it thus had befallen; for had He been upon the spot,
He could not have suffered the distress of those so dear to Him to reach the
highest point, but must have interfered at an earlier moment. When He summons
them now to go, “nevertheless, let us go unto him,” it is plain that for one
disciple at least the anticipation of death, as the certain consequence of this
perilous journey, is not overcome. In the words of Thomas to his
fellow-disciples,[11] “Let us also go, that we may die with Him,” there is a
remarkable mixture of faith and unfaithfulness,—faith, since he counted it
better to die with his Lord than to live forsaking Him,—unfaithfulness, since he
conceived it possible that so long as his Lord had a work to accomplish, He or
any under the shield of his presence could be overtaken by any peril which
should require them to die together. Thomas was, most probably, of a melancholic
desponding character; most true to his Master, yet ever inclined to look at
things on their darkest side, finding it most hard to raise himself to the
loftier elevations of faith,—to believe other and more than he saw (John 14:5;
John 20:25), or to anticipate more favourable issues than those which the
earthly probabilities of an event promised.[12] Men of all temperaments and all
characters were within that first and nearest circle of disciples, that they
might be the representatives and helpers of all that hereafter, through one
difficulty and another, should attain at last to the full assurance of faith.
Very beautifully Chrysostom[13] says of this disciple, that he who now would
hardly venture to go with Jesus as far as to the neighbouring Bethany,
afterwards without Him travelled to the ends of the world, to the furthest
India, daring all the perils of remote and hostile nations.

Martha and Mary would have scarcely ventured to claim help from the Lord, till
the sickness of their brother had assumed an alarming character; he probably had
died upon the same day that the messenger announcing his illness had reached the
Lord; scarcely otherwise would He have found when He came, “that he had lain in
the grave four days already.” The day of the messenger’s arrival on this
calculation would be one day; two our Lord abode in Peraea after He had
dismissed him; and one more,—for it was not more than the journey of a single
day,—He would have employed in the journey from thence to Bethany. Dying upon
that day, Lazarus, according to the custom of the Jews, that burial should
immediately follow on death (Acts 5:6-10), had been buried upon the same, as a
comparison of this verse with ver. 39 clearly shows. But before the arrival of
Him, the true Comforter, other comforters, some formal, all weak, had arrived.
The nearness of Bethany to Jerusalem, which is therefore noticed here, will have
made these the more numerous. “Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about
fifteen furlongs off,” that is, about two miles; “and many of the Jews came to
Martha and Mary,[14] to comfort them concerning their brother,” gathered at the
house of mourning by the providence of God, who would have many witnesses and
heralds of this mightiest of the wondrous works of his Son. It was part of the
Jewish ceremonial of grief, which was all most accurately defined,[15] that
there should be numerous visits of condolence, a large gathering of friends and
acquaintance, not less than ten, as in the case of a marriage company, round
those that were mourning for their dead (1Ch 7:22); sometimes, and on the part
of some, a reality; yet oftentimes a dry and heartless formality on the one
side, as a burden most heavy to bear, an aggravation of grief, on the other.
Job’s comforters give witness how little true sympathy sometimes existed with
the sufferer. At times, too, it was a bitter mockery, when the very authors of
the grief professed to be the comforters in it (Gen 37:35). But now He comes,
who could indeed comfort the mourners, and wipe away tears from their eyes. Yet
He comes not to the house; that had been already filled by “the Jews,” by those
who were for the most part alien, if not hostile, to Him; for almost as often as
this term “the Jews” occurs in St. John, hostility to Christ is implied in it.
Not amid the disturbing influences of that uncongenial circle shall his first
interview with the sorrowing sisters find place. Probably He tarried outside the
town, and not very far from the spot where Lazarus was buried, else when Mary
went to meet Him, the Jews could scarcely have said, “She goeth unto the grave
to weep there” (ver. 31). From thence He may have suffered the tidings to go
before Him that He was at hand. When we read that “Martha, as soon as she heard
that Jesus was coming, went and met Him; but Mary sat still in the house,” we
are not, in this hastening of the one and tarrying of the other, to trace, as
many have done, the different characteristics of the two sisters, or to find a
parallel here to Luk 10:39. For on that former occasion, when Mary chose to sit
still, she did so because it was at “Jesus’ feet” that she was sitting; this
nearness to Him, and not the sitting still, was then the attraction. The same
motives which then kept her in stillness there, would now have brought her on
swiftest wings of love to the place where the Master was. Moreover, so soon as
ever she did hear that her Lord was come and called for her, “she arose quickly,
and came unto Him” (ver. 29). “It was not,” to use Chrysostom’s words, “that
Martha was now more zealous; but Mary had not heard.” This much characteristic
of the two sisters there may very probably be in the narrative, namely, that
Martha, engaged in active employments even in the midst of her grief, may have
been more in the way of hearing what was happening in the outer world, while
Mary, in her deeper and stiller anguish, was sitting retired in the house, and
less within the reach of such rumours.[16]

I know, not whether it is an accident of the narrative, fuller at one place than
at the other, or whether it belongs to the characteristic touches which escape
us at the first glance, but of which Scripture is so full, that nothing should
be said of Martha falling at the Lord’s feet, while this is noted of her sister
(ver. 32). Martha too is ready to change words with Christ; but the deeper
anguish of Mary finds utterance in that one phrase, the one thought which was
uppermost in the heart of both: “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had
not died;” and then she is silent. For it is the bitterest drop in their cup of
anguish, that all this might have been otherwise. Had this sickness befallen at
another moment, when Christ was nearer, had He been able to hasten to their aid
as soon as He was summoned, all might have been averted; they might have been
rejoicing in a living, instead of mourning over a dead, brother. Yet even now
Martha has not altogether renounced every hope, though she ventures only at a
distance to allude to this hope which she is cherishing still. “But I know that
even now” now when the grave has closed upon him, “whatsoever Thou wilt ask[17]
of God, God will give it Thee.” High thoughts and poor thoughts of Christ mingle
here together;—high thoughts, in that she sees Him as one whose effectual
fervent prayers will greatly prevail;—poor thoughts, in that she thinks of Him
as obtaining by prayer that which indeed He has by the oneness of his nature
with God.[18] With words purposely ambiguous, being meant for the trying of her
faith, Jesus assures her that the deep, though unuttered, longing of her heart
shall indeed be granted: “Thy brother shall rise again.” But though her heart
could take in the desire for so great a boon, it cannot take in its actual
granting (cf. Acts 12:5; Acts 12:15); it shrinks back half in unbelief from the
receiving of it. She cannot believe that these words mean more than that he,
with all other faithful Israelites, will stand in his lot at the last day; and
with a slight movement of impatience at such cold comfort, comfort that so
little met the present longings of her heart, which were to have her brother
now, she answers, “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the
last day” Her love was as yet earthly, clinging passionately to the earthly
objects of its affection, but needing to be infinitely exalted and purified.
Unless the Lord had lifted her into a higher region of life, it would have
profited her little that He had granted her heart’s desire,[19] What would it
have helped her to receive back her brother, if again she were presently to lose
him, if once more they were to be parted asunder by his death or her own? This
lower boon would only prove a boon at all, if he and she were both made
partakers of a higher life in Christ; then, indeed, death would have no more
power over them, then they would truly possess one another, and for ever: and to
this the wondrously deep and loving words of Christ would lead her. They are no
unseasonable preaching of truths remote from her present needs, but the answer
to the very deepest need of her soul; they would lead her from a lost brother to
a present Saviour, a Saviour in whom alone that brother could be truly and for
ever found. “Jesus said unto her, I am the Resurrection, and the Life; the true
Life, the true Resurrection; the everlasting triumphs over death, they are in
Me—no remote benefits, as thou speakest of now, to find place at the last day;.
no powers separate or separable from Me, as thou spakest of lately, when thou
desiredst that I should ask of Another that which I possess evermore in Myself.
In Me is victory over the grave, in Me is life eternal: by faith in Me that
becomes yours which makes death not to be death, but only the transition to a
better life.”

Such, I cannot doubt, is the general meaning and scope of these glorious words.
When we ask ourselves what the title “The Resurrection” which Christ ascribes to
Himself, involves, we perceive that in one aspect it is something more, in
another something less, than that other title of” The Life” which He also
challenges for his own. It is more, for it is life in conflict with and
overcoming death; it is life being the death of death, meeting it in its highest
manifestation, that of physical dissolution and decay, and vanquishing it there.
It is less, for so long as that title belongs to Him, it implies something still
undone, a mortality not yet wholly swallowed up in life, a last enemy not yet
wholly destroyed and put under his feet (1Co 15:25-26). As He is “the
Resurrection” of the dead, so is He “the Life” of the living—absolute life,
having life in Himself, for so it has been given Him of the Father (John 5:26),
the one fountain of life;[20] so that all who receive not life from Him pass
into the state of death, first the death of the spirit, and then, as the
completion of their death, the death also of the body. The words following, “He
that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever
liveth and believeth in Me shall never die,” are not obscure in the sum total of
their meaning; yet so to interpret them, as to prevent the two clauses of the
sentence from appearing to contain a repetition, and to find progress in them,
is not easy. If we compare this passage with John 6:32-59, and observe the
repeated stress which is there laid on the raising up at the last day, as the
great quickening work of the Son of God (ver. 39, 40, 44, 54), we shall not
hesitate to make the declaration, “yet shall he live,” in the first clause here,
to be equivalent to the words, “I will raise him up at the last day,” there, and
this whole first clause will then be the unfolding of the words, “I am the
Resurrection;” as such He will rescue every one that believeth on Him from death
and the grave. In like manner, the second clause answers to, and is the
expansion of, the more general declaration, “I am the Life;” that is, “Whosoever
liveth, every one that draweth the breath of life and believeth upon Me, shall
know the power of an everlasting life, shall never truly die. “Here, as so often
in our Lord’s words, the temporal death is taken no account of, but quite
overlooked, and the believer in Him is contemplated as already lifted above
death, and made partaker of everlasting life (John 6:47).[21]

Having claimed all this for Himself, He demands of Martha whether she can
receive it: “Believest thou this, —that I am this Lord of life and of death?
Doth thy faith in the divine verities of the resurrection and eternal life after
death centre in Me?” Her answer, “Yea, Lord, I believe that Thou art the Christ,
the Son of God, which should come into the world,” is perhaps more direct than
at first sight it appears. For one of the offices of Christ the Messiah was,
according to the Jewish expectations, to raise the dead; and thus, confessing
Him to be the Christ, she implicitly confessed Him also to be the quickener of
the dead. Or she may mean,—”I believe all glorious things concerning Thee; there
is nought which I do not believe concerning Thee, since I believe Thee to be Him
in whom every glorious gift for the world is centred, “—speaking like one whose
faith, as that of most persons at all times must be, was implicit rather than
explicit: she did not know all which that name, “the Christ, the Son of God,”
involved, but all which it did involve she was ready to believe.

She says no more; for now she will make her sister partaker of the joyful
tidings that He, the long waited for, long desired, is arrived at last. Some
good thing too, it may be, she expects from his high and mysterious words,
though she knows not precisely what: a ray of comfort has found its way into her
heart, and she would fain make her sister a sharer in this. Yet she told not her
tidings openly, suspecting, and having good cause to suspect (ver. 46), that
some of their visitors from Jerusalem might be of unfriendly disposition towards
the Lord. “She called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and
calleth for thee.” This, that He had asked for Mary, we had not learned from the
previous account. “As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto
Him.” The Jews take it for granted that she is hastening in a paroxysm of her
grief to the grave, that she may weep there; as it was the custom of Jewish
women often to visit the graves of their kindred,[22] and this especially during
the first days of their mourning;—and they follow; for thus was it provided of
God that this miracle should have many witnesses. “Then when Mary was come where
Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at his feet,[23] saying, Lord, if Thou
hadst been here, my brother had not died” The words with which her sister had
greeted the Lord thus repeating themselves a second time from her lips, give us
a glimpse of all that had passed in that mournful house, since the beloved was
laid in earth: often during that four days’ interval the sisters had said one to
the other, how different the issues might have been, if the divine friend had
been with them. Such had been the one thought in the hearts, the one word upon
the lips, of both, and therefore was so naturally the first spoken by each, and
that altogether independently of the other. This is indeed one of the finer
traits of the narrative. At the spectacle of all this grief, the sisters
weeping, and even the more indifferent visitors from Jerusalem weeping likewise,
the Lord also “groaned in the spirit, and was troubled”[24] The word which we
translate “groaned’[25] does indeed far rather express the feelings of
indignation and displeasure than of grief, which, save as a certain amount of it
is contained in all displeasure, it means not at all. But at what and with whom
was Jesus thus indignant? The notion of some Greek expositors,[26] that He was
indignant with Himself for these stirrings of pity, these human tears,—that the
word expresses the inward struggle to repress, as something weak and unworthy,
these rising utterances of grief,—is not to be accepted for an instant.
Christianity knows of no such dead Stoicism; it demands a regulating, but no
such repressing, of the natural affections; on the contrary, it bids us to “weep
with them that weep” (Rom 12:15); and, in the beautiful words of Leighton, that
we “seek not altogether to dry the stream of sorrow, but to bound it, and keep
it within its banks.” Some, as Theodore of Mopsuestia and Lampe, suppose Him
indignant in spirit at the hostile dispositions which He already traced and
detected among the Jews that were present, the unbelief on their part with which
He foresaw that great work of his would be received. Others, that his
indignation was excited by the unbelief of Martha and Mary and the others, which
they manifested in their weeping, whereby they showed clearly that they did not
believe that He would raise their dead. But He Himself wept presently, and there
was nothing in these their natural tears to have roused a feeling of the kind.

Much better is it to take this as the indignation which the Lord of life felt at
all which sin had wrought: He beheld death in all its fearfulness, as the wages
of sin; the woes of a whole world, of which this was but a little sample, rose
up before his eye; all its mourners and all its graves were present to Him. For
that He was about to wipe away the tears of those present did not truly alter
the case. Lazarus rose again, but only to taste a second time the bitterness of
death; these mourners He might comfort, but only for a little while; these tears
He might stanch, only again hereafter to flow; and how many had flowed and must
flow with no such Comforter to wipe them, even for a season, away. Contemplating
all this, a mighty indignation at the author of all this woe possessed his
heart. And now He will delay no longer, but will do battle with him, and show in
a present, though as yet an incomplete, triumph over him, some preludes of his
future victory.[27] With this feeling He demands, “Where have ye laid him? They
said unto Him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept;”[28] or perhaps it would have
been more accurately rendered, ”shed tears,”[29] Himself borne along with, and
not seeking to resist, this great tide of sorrow.

Some of the Jews present, moved to good will by this lively sympathy of the Lord
with the sorrows of those around Him, exclaimed, “Behold how He loved him! And
some” or rather, “But some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the
eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?” It is
an invidious question. He weeps over this calamity now, but could He not have
hindered it? He who could open the eyes of the blind (they refer to the case
which, through the judicial investigation that followed, had made so great a
stir at Jerusalem, John ix.), could He not (by his prayer to God) have hindered
that this man should have died? There was indeed in this accusation, as so often
in similar cases, something contradictory; for their very assumption that He
possessed such power and favour with God as would have enabled Him to stay the
stroke of death, rested on the assumption of so eminent a goodness upon his
part, as would have secured that his power should not have been grudgingly
restrained in any case, where it would have been suitably exerted. It is
characteristic of the exact truth of this narrative (although it has been
brought as an argument against it), that they, dwellers in Jerusalem, should
refer to this miracle which had lately occurred there (John ix.), rather than to
the previous raisings from the dead, which might at first sight appear more to
the point. But those, occurring at an earlier period, and in the remoter
Galilee, they may very likely have only heard of by obscure report. At all
events, they would not have been present to them with at all the same liveliness
as was this miracle, brought into prominence by the contradiction which it had
roused, and the futile attempts which had been made to prove it an imposture.
Yet a maker-up of the narrative from later and insecure traditions would
inevitably have fallen upon those miracles of a like kind, as arguments of the
power of Jesus to have accomplished this.

Meanwhile they reach the tomb, though not without another access of that
indignant horror, another of those mighty shudderings, that shook the frame of
the Lord of life,—so dreadful did death seem to Him who, looking through all its
natural causes, at which we often stop short, saw it purely as the seal and
token of sin; so unnatural did its usurpation appear over a race made for
immortality (Wisd. 1:13, 14). “Jesus therefore, again groaning in Himself,
cometh to the grave.” This, as the whole course of the narrative shows, was
without the town (ver. 30), according to the universal custom of the East (Luk
7:12), which did not suffer a placing of the dead among the living.[30] “It was
a cave,” as were commonly the family vaults of the Jews; sometimes natural (Gen
23:9; Jdt 16:23), sometimes artificial and hollowed out by man’s labour from the
rock (Isa 22:16; Mat 27:60), in a garden (John 19:41), or in some field the
possession of the family (Gen 23:9; Gen 23:17-20; Gen 35:18; 2Ki 21:13); with
recesses in the sides, wherein the bodies were laid, occasionally with chambers
one beyond another. “And a stone lay upon it.” Sometimes the entrance to these
tombs was on a level; sometimes there was a descent to them by steps, as on the
present occasion seems probably to have been the case. This stone, blocking up
the entrance, kept aloof the beasts of prey, above all the numerous jackals,
which else might have found their way into these receptacles of the dead, and
torn the bodies. It was naturally of sufficient size and weight not easily to be
moved away (Mark xvi. 3). The tomb of our blessed Lord Himself, with its “door,”
appears rather to have had a horizontal entrance.[31]

Among other slighter indications which we have that Mary and Martha were not at
all among the poorest of their people, this is one, that they should possess
such a family vault as this. The poor had not, and it lay not within their power
to purchase in fee, portions of land to set apart for these purposes of family
interment. The possession of such was a privilege of the wealthier orders; only
such were thus laid in the sepulchres of their fathers.[32] We have another
indication of the same in the large concourse of mourners, and those of the
higher ranks, which assembled from Jerusalem to console the sisters in their
bereavement; for even in grief that word is too often true, that “wealth maketh
many friends; but the poor is separated from his neighbour” (Pro 19:4). The
pound of ointment of spikenard, “very costly,” with which Mary anointed the feet
of the Saviour (John 12:3), points the same way; and the language of the
original at ver. 19, however it may mean Martha and Mary, and not those around
them,[33] yet means them as the centre of an assemblage. Chrysostom assumes the
sisters to have been highborn,[34] Εὐγενέστεραι. as generally did the early
interpreters; probably with right; although they lay a mistaken emphasis upon
“the town of Mary and her sister Martha” (ver. 1), who conclude from these words
that Bethany belonged to them. The Levitical law rendered, and was intended to
render, any such concentration of landed property in the hands of one or two
persons impossible; not to say that, by as good a right, Bethsaida might be
concluded to have belonged to Andrew and Peter, for the language is exactly
similar (John 1:45).

“Jesus said, Take ye away the stone” Why, it may be asked, does St. John
designate Martha in the next words as “the sister of him that was dead,” when
this was abundantly plain before? Probably to account for the remonstrance of
hers, which follows. She, as the sister of the dead, would naturally be more
shocked than another at the thought of the exposure of that countenance, upon
which corruption had already set its seal; she would most shudderingly
contemplate that beloved form made a spectacle to strangers, now when it was
become an abhorring even to them that had loved it best. Yet the words of her
remonstrance, “Lord, by this time he stinketh; for he hath been dead four days”
are scarcely, as by so many they are interpreted, an experience which she now
makes, but rather a conclusion which she draws from the length of time during
which the body had already lain in the grave. With the rapid decomposition that
goes forward in a hot country, necessitating as it does an almost immediate
burial, the “four days” might well have brought this about, which she fears. At
the same time, it gives to this miracle almost a monstrous character, if we
suppose it was actually the re-animating of a body which had already undergone
the process of corruption. Rather He who sees the end from the beginning, and
who had intended that Lazarus should live again, had watched over that body in
his providence, that it should not hasten to corruption. If the poet could
imagine a divine power guarding from all defeature and wrong the body which was
thus preserved only for an honourable burial;[35] by how much more may we assume
a like preservation for that body which, not in the world of fiction, but of
reality, was to become again so soon the tabernacle for the soul of one of
Christ’s servants. No conclusion of an opposite kind can be drawn from these
words of Martha, being spoken, as plainly they are, before the stone has been
removed.[36] This much, however, her words do reveal—that her faith in the Lord
as able even then to quicken her dead brother had already failed. There is
nothing strange in this. A weak faith, such as hers, would inevitably have these
alternating ebbs and flows. All which this command to remove the stone implies
for her now is a desire on the Lord’s part to look once more on the countenance
of him whom He loved; from this intention she would fain recal Him, by urging
how death and corruption must have been busy in the tomb where Lazarus had
already slept his four days’ sleep. The Lord checks and rebukes her unbelief:
“Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the
glory of God?” When had He said this, and to what former conversation does He
refer? No doubt to that which He held with her when first they met. It is true
that these precise words do no. t occur there; but that conversation was on the
power of faith, as the means to make our own the fulness of the powers that
dwelt in Christ. There is no need, therefore, to suppose that He alludes to
something in that prior discourse, unrecorded by the Evangelist. And now Martha
acquiesces: she does believe, and no longer opposes the hindrance of her
unbelief to the work which the Lord would accomplish.

“Then,” when those nearest of kin were thus consenting, “they took away the
stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and
said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me.” But any thanksgiving upon
his part to God, and thanksgiving on account of being heard, might easily have
been misinterpreted by the disciples then, and by the Church afterwards; as
though it would have been possible for the Father not to have heard Him,—as
though He had first obtained this power to call Lazarus from his grave, after
supplication,—had, like Elisha (2Ki 4:33-35), by dint of prayer (cf. Acts 9:40)
painfully won back the life which had departed; whereas the power was most truly
his own, not indeed in disconnexion from the Father, for what He saw the Father
do, that also He did; but in this, his oneness with the Father, there lay the
uninterrupted power of doing these mighty acts.[37] Therefore He explains,
evidently not any more in that loud voice which should be heard by the whole
surrounding multitude, but yet so that his disciples might hear Him, what this
his “Father, I thank Thee” meant, and why it was spoken: “And I knew that Thou
hearest Me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they
may believe that Thou hast sent Me.” For them it was wholesome: they should thus
understand that He claimed his power from above, and not from beneath; that
there was no magic, no necromancy here. The thanks to God were an acknowledgment
that the power was from God. Chrysostom supposes that when this thanksgiving
prayer was uttered, Lazarus was already re-animated; but this assuredly is a
mistake. Christ is so sure that the effect will follow his word, that He renders
as by anticipation thanks to his Father; but this cry “with a loud voice,”[38]
calling the things that are not as though they were, this “Lazarus, come
forth,”[39] is itself the quickening word, at which first the life returns to
the dead.[40] For it is ever to the voice of the Son of God that the power of
quickening the dead and calling them from their graves is attributed; thus John
5:28-29 : “The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear
his voice, and shall come forth;” so 1Th 4:16, it is the Lord’s descending “with
a shout,” which is followed by the resurrection of the dead in Him, Nor,
probably, is “the last trump” of 1Co 15:52, anything else but this voice of God
which shall sound through all the kingdom of death. Many, in their zeal for
multiplying miracles, make it a new miracle, a wonder in a wonder,[41] as St.
Basil calls it, that Lazarus was able to obey the summons, while yet he was
“bound hand and foot with grave-clothes.”[42] But if so, to what end the further
word, “Loose him, and let him go”?[43] Probably he was loosely involved in these
grave-clothes, which hindering all free action, yet did not hinder motion
altogether; or, it may be that, in accordance with the Egyptian fashion, every
limb was wrapped round with these stripes by itself, just as in the mummies each
separate finger has sometimes its own wrapping.

St. John here breaks off the narrative of the miracle itself, leaving us to
imagine their joy, who thus beyond all expectation received back their dead from
the grave; a joy which was well nigh theirs alone, among all the mourners of all
times—

“Who to the verge have followed that they love, And on the insuperable threshold
stand, With cherished names its speechless calm reprove, And stretch in the
abyss their ungrasped hand.”

He leaves this, and passes on to show us the historic significance of this
miracle in the development of the Lord’s earthly history, the permitted link
which it formed in the chain of those events, which should be crowned, according
to the determinate decree and counsel of God, by the atoning death of the Son of
God upon the cross.

What the purpose was of these Jews that “went their ways to the Pharisees, and
told them what, things Jesus had done,” has been diversely conceived. By some,
as by Origen, it has been supposed that they went with a good intention,
thinking to tell them that which even they could no longer resist, which would
make them also acknowledge that this was the Christ. Yet the place which this
intimation occupies in the narrative seems decisively to contradict this more
favourable construction of their purpose. “Many,” St. John declares, “of the
Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on
Him; but some of them,” not of those that believed, but of the Jews, “went their
way to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.” These were
persons who did not believe; who on one plea or another refused to be convinced
by this miracle (Luk 16:31), and reported to the professed enemies of the Lord
what He had done, to irritate them yet more against the doer,[44] to warn them
of the instant need of more earnestly counter-working Him who had done, or
seemed to do, so great a sign; and it is observable that St. John joins
immediately with this report to the Pharisees an increased activity in their
hostile machinations against the Lord. And they are indeed now seriously
alarmed. They anticipate the effects which this, the mightiest work that Christ
wrought, would have upon the people, which historically we know that it actually
had (John 12:10-11; John 12:17-19); and they gather in council together against
the Lord and against his Anointed. They stop not to inquire whether “this man,”
as they contemptuously call Him,—who, even according to their own confession,
“doeth many miracles” (cf. Acts 4:16), may not be doing them in the power of
God, may not be indeed the promised King of Israel. The question of the truth or
falsehood of his claims seems never to enter into their minds, but only how the
acknowledgment of these claims will bear on the worldly fortunes of their order,
and this they contemplate under somewhat a novel aspect: “If we let Him thus
alone, all men will believe on Him: and the Romans shall come and take away both
our place and nation.” But what necessary connexion did they trace between the
recognition of Jesus as the Christ, and a conflict with the Roman power?
Probably this. The people will acknowledge Him for the Messiah; He will set
Himself at their head, or they by compulsion will make Him their king (John
6:15); hereupon will follow an attempt to throw off the foreign yoke, an attempt
to be crushed presently by the superior power of the Roman legions; and then
these will not distinguish the innocent from the guilty, but will make a general
sweep, taking away from us wholly whatsoever survives of our power and
independence, “our place[45] and nation.” Or, without anticipating an actual
insurrection, they may have supposed that the mere fact of acknowledging a
Messiah would arouse the jealousy of the Romans, would by them be accounted as
an act of rebellion, to be visited with these extremest penalties.[46] How
sensitive that jealousy was, how easily alarmed, we have a thousand proofs. The
Roman governor comes at once to this point; “Art Thou the King of the Jews?”
(John 18:33); and compare Acts 16:21; Acts 17:7-8. Augustine stands alone in a
somewhat different interpretation of the words—namely, that the Jews were
already meditating, as no doubt they were, the great revolt of a later time, and
saw plainly that the very nerves of it would be cut by the spread of the
doctrines of this Prince of peace. Where should they find instruments for their
purpose? all resistance to the Roman domination would become impossible; and
these whensoever they chose, would come and rob them of whatever remained of
their national existence.[47] We shall do best, however, in adhering to the more
usual interpretation. The question will still remain, Did they who said this,,
feel truly the dread which they professed; or only pretend to fear these
consequences from the ministry of Christ, if suffered to remain uninterrupted;
and that, on account of a party in the Sanhedrim (see John 9:16), who could only
by such pleas as these be won over to the extreme measures now meditated against
Him? Chrysostom, and most of the Greek expositors, suppose they did but feign
this fear; I must needs think that they were sincere in the alarm which they
professed.

Probably many half-measures had been proposed by one member and another of the
Sanhedrim for arresting the growing inclination of the people to recognize Jesus
as the Christ, and had been debated backward and forward, such as hindering them
from hearing Him; proclaiming anew, as had been done before, that any should be
excommunicated who should confess Him to be Christ (John 9:22). But these
measures had been already tried, and had proved insufficient; and in that “Ye
know nothing at all” of Caiaphas, we hear the voice of the bold bad man,
silencing, with ill-suppressed contempt, his weak and vacillating colleagues,
who could see the danger, while they yet shrunk, though not for the truth’s
sake,. from the step which promised to remove it. “Ye know nothing at all, nor
consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and
that the whole nation perish not.” Guilty or not guilty, this man, who threatens
to imperil the whole nation, and, whether He Himself means it or no to
compromise it with the Roman power, must be taken put of the way.

Caiaphas, who dares thus to come to the point, and to speak the unuttered
thought of many in that assembly, was a Sadducee (Acts 5:17), and held, as we
know from other sources, the office of the high priesthood for ten successive
years. This may not seem quite to agree with St. John’s description of him here,
as “being the High Priest that same year;” nor are these words otherwise without
their difficulty, implying, as they seem to do, that St. John accounted the High
Priesthood a yearly office.[48] This, as we well know, was not the fact. The
High Priesthood at this time was by the Romans as vilely prostituted as, under
very similar circumstances, the Patriarch’s throne at Constantinople is now by
the Turks; it was shifted so rapidly from one to another, as sometimes to remain
with one holder even for less than a year; but according to its institution was
a lifelong office, and this very Caiaphas retained the dignity, if not for life,
yet at all events much more than for a year. The language of St. John has
sometimes been explained as though he would say that Caiaphas was High Priest
for that ever-memorable year “when vision and prophecy should be sealed,”[49]
and the Son of God die upon the cross. Yet why suppose him to mean more than
that Caiaphas was High Priest then ? whether he had been so before, or should be
after, was nothing to his present purpose. He lays an emphasis on the fact that
such he was at the moment when these words were uttered, because this gave them
a weight and significance, which else they would not have possessed. They were
not the words of Caiaphas; they were the words of the High Priest. “This spake
he not of himself; but being High Priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus
should die for that nation.” The fact that he who uttered these words was, when
he uttered them, clothed with the highest office in the theocracy gives them an
oracular, even a prophetic character in the eyes of St. John.[50] This requires
some explanation. That a bad man should have uttered words which were so
overruled by God as to become prophetic, would of itself be no difficulty. He
who used a Balaam to declare how there should come a Star out of Jacob and a
Sceptre out of Israel (Num 24:17), might have used Caiaphas to fore-announce
other truths of his kingdom.[51] Nor is there any difficulty in such unconscious
prophecies as this evidently is.[52] How many prophecies of the like kind,—most
of them, it is true, rather in act than in word, meet us in the whole history of
the crucifixion! What was the title over our blessed Lord, “Jesus of Nazareth,
the King of the Jews,” but another such a scornful and contemptuous, yet most
veritable, prophecy? Or what again the purple robe and the homage, the sceptre,
and the crown? And in the typical rehearsals of the crowning catastrophe in the
drama of God’s providence, how many a Nimrod and Pharaoh, antichrists that do
not quite come to the birth, have prophetic parts allotted to them, which they
play out, unknowing what they do; for such is the divine irony; so, in a very
deep sense of the words, Ludit in humanis divina potentia rebus.[53] But the
perplexing circumstance is the attributing to Caiaphas, because he was High
Priest, these prophetic words—for prophetic the Evangelist plainly pronounces
them to be, and all attempts to rid his words of this intention, and to destroy
the antithesis between “speaking of himself and “prophesying” are idle.[54]
There is no need, however, to suppose (and this greatly diminishes the
embarrassment) that he meant to affirm this to have been a power inherent in the
High Priesthood; that the High Priest, as such, must prophesy; but only that
God, the extorter of those unwilling, or even unconscious, prophecies from
wicked men, ordained this further, that he in whom the whole theocracy
culminated, who was “the Prince of the people” (Acts 23:5), for such, till
another High Priest had sanctified Himself,—and his moral character was nothing
to the point,—Caiaphas truly was,—should, because he bore this office, be the
organ of this memorable prophecy concerning Christ, and the meaning and end of
his death,[55]

What follows, “And not for that nation only, but that also He should gather
together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad” is not a meaning
legitimately involved in the words of Caiaphas, but is added by the care of St.
John, to hinder that limitation of the benefits of Christ’s death, which
otherwise might seem to lie in them.; So grave a misinterpretation, now that the
words had been adopted as more than man’s, it was well worth while to avert.
Caiaphas indeed prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation, and (St. John
himself adds) He indeed died not for it only, but also for the gathering in one
of all the children of God scattered abroad through the whole world. Elsewhere
he has declared the same truth: “He is the propitiation for our sins; and not
for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole “world” (1Jn 2:2). Not the
law, as the Jews supposed, but the atoning death of Christ was that which should
bind together all men into one fellowship: “I, if I be lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men unto Me.” The law was rather a wall of separation. It was only
that death, and the life which sprung out of that death, which could knit
together. We may compare Ephes. 2:13-22, as St. Paul’s commentary on these words
of St. John. “The children of God” have this name by anticipation here; they are
those predestinated to this; who, not being disobedient to the heavenly calling,
should hereafter become his children by adoption and grace.[56] Not otherwise,
in a parallel passage, Christ says, “Other sheep I have, which are not of this
fold” (John 10:16); others that should be hereafter his sheep. In a subordinate
sense they might perhaps be termed “children of God” already; they were the
nobler natures, although now run wild, among the heathen, the “sons of peace,”
that should receive the message of peace (Luk 10:6); in a sense, “of the truth,”
even while they were sharing much of the falsehood round them; so far “of the
truth,” that, when the King of truth came and lifted up his banner in the world,
they gladly ranged themselves under it (John 18:37; cf. Luk 8:15; John 3:19-21).
In pursuance of this advice of Caiaphas it came now to a solemn resolution on
the part of the Sanhedrim, that Jesus should be put to death, and “from that day
forth they took counsel together for to put Him to death.” His death was
resolved; the how to bring it about was all which they debated now. “Jesus,
therefore,” whose hour was not yet come, “walked no more openly among the Jews,
but went thence unto a country near to the wilderness, into a city called
Ephraim, and there continued with his disciples,”—not indeed for long, for “the
Jews’ Passover was nigh at hand” and He, the very Paschal Lamb of that Passover,
must not be wanting at the feast. In the ancient Church there was ever found,
besides the literal, an allegorical interpretation of this and the two other
miracles of the like kind. As Christ raises those that are naturally dead, so
also He quickens them that are spiritually dead; and the history of this
miracle, as it abounds the most in details, so was it the most fruitful field on
which the allegorists exercised their skill. Here they found the whole process
of the sinner’s restoration from the death of sin to a perfect spiritual life
shadowed forth; and these allegories are often rich in manifold adaptations of
the history, as beautiful as they are ingenious, to that which it is made to
declare.[57] Nor was this all; for these three raisings from the dead were often
contemplated not apart, not as each portraying exactly the same truth; but in
their connexion with one another, as setting forth one and the same truth under
different and successive aspects. It was observed how we have the record of
three persons that were restored to life,—one, the daughter of Jairus, being
raised from the bed; another the son of the widow, from the bier; and lastly,
Lazarus, from the grave. Even thus, it was urged, Christ raises to newness of
life sinners of all degrees; not only those who have just fallen away from truth
and holiness, like the maiden who had just expired, and in whom, as with a taper
newly extinguished; it was by comparison easy to kindle a vital flame anew; but
He raises also them who, like the young man borne out to his burial, have been
some little while dead in their trespasses. Nor has He even yet exhausted his
power; for He quickens them also who, like Lazarus, have lain long festering in
their sins, as in the corruption of the grave, who were not merely dead, but
buried,—with the stone of evil customs and evil habits laid to the entrance of
their tomb, and seeming to forbid all egress thence.[58] Even this stone He
rolls away, and bids them to come forth, loosing the bands of their sins;[59] so
that presently they are sitting down with the Lord at that table, there where
there is not the foul odour of the grave, but where the whole house is full of
the sweet fragrance of the ointment of Christ (John 12:1-3). All this Donne has
well exprest: “If I be dead within doors (if I have sinned in my heart), why
suscitavit in domo, Christ gave a resurrection to the ruler’s daughter within
doors, in the house. If I be dead in the gate (if I have sinned in the gates of
my soul), in my eyes, or ears, or hands, in actual sins, why suscitavit in
portâ, Christ gave a resurrection to the young man at the gate of Nain. If I be
dead in the grave (in customary and habitual sins), why suscitavit in sepulcro,
Christ gave a resurrection to Lazarus in the grave too.”[60]

Footnotes [1] Leben Jesu, p. 357.

[2] Stanley (Sinai and Palestine, p. 186): “Bethany, a wild mountain hamlet,
screened by an intervening ridge from the view of the top of Olivet, perched on
its broken plateau of rock, the last collection of human habitations before the
desert hills which reach to Jericho,—this is the modern village of El-Lazarieh,
which derives its name from its clustering round the traditional site of the one
house and grave which give it an undying interest. High in the distance are the
Perean mountains; the foreground is the deep descent to the Jordan valley. On
the further side of that dark abyss Martha and Mary knew that Christ was abiding
when they sent their messengers; up that long ascent they had often watched His
approach; up that long ascent He came when, outside the village, Martha and Mary
met Him, and the Jews stood round weeping.

[3] Here, as throughout the Evangelical history, there is an exceeding
scantiness in all the circumstantial notices concerning the persons mentioned;
that only being related which was absolutely necessary to make the history
intelligible; and all attention being directed to the portraying of the
spiritual life and what bore upon this. Whether Martha may have been an early
widow, with whom her sister and Lazarus, a younger brother, resided, or what may
have been the constitution of the household, it is impossible to determine.—I
cannot at all consent with Mr. Greswell’s ingenious Essay, On the village of
Martha and Mary (Dissert, vol. ii. p. 545), of which the aim is to prove that in
St. John’s designation of Lazarus, ἀπὸ βηθανίας means one thing, the present
place of his residence, and ἐκ τῆς κώμης Μαρίας καὶ Μάρθας another, the village
of his birth, which he accounts to have been some Galilaean village, where the
Lord had before been entertained by the sisters Luk 10:38), and from whence they
had migrated to Bethany, during the later period of his ministry. Such a change
of preposition without a change of

[4] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, xl.): Non dixerunt, Veni. Amanti enim
tantummodo nuntiandum fuit.....Sufficit ut noveris; non enim amas et deseris.

[5] Πρὸς θάνατον. So 1Jn 5:16; cf. 1Ki 17:17; and 2Ki 20:1 (LXX), where of
Hezekiah it is said, ἠῤῥώστησεν εἰς θάνατον.

[6] Ἠγάπα here; but ϕιλεῖς, ver. 3. This last word might well be used in regard
of Christ’s love to the brother; but it would have been contrary to the fine
decorum of language to use it now that the sisters are included in his love.

[7] Maldonatus: Certum esse atque statum spatium diei, quod minui non possit;
duodecim enim constare horis; intra id spatium si quis ambulat, sine periculo
ambulare. Calvin: Vocatio Dei instar lucis diurnae est, quae nos errare vel
impingere non patitur. Quisquis ergo Dei verbo obtemperat, nec quidquam
aggreditur nisi ejus jussu, ilium quoque habere coelo ducem et directorem, et
hâc fiduciâ, secure et intrepide viam ampere potest. Cf. Psa 40:11. Grotius:
Quanto ergo magis tuto ambulo, qui praelucentem mini habeo lucem supracoelestem,
ac divinam cognitionem Paterni propositi?

[8] Bengel, on the words ὁ ϕίλος ἡμῶν: Quanta humanitate Jesus amicitiam suam
cum discipulis communicat.

[9] So Chrysostom, and Grotius: Discipuli omnimodo quærunt Dominum ab isto
itinere avocare. Ideo omnibus utuntur argumentis.

[10] The use of the term κοιμᾶσθαι in this sense is abundantly frequent in the
Old T., and not less in the New, as Mat 27:52; Acts 7:60; Acts 13:36; 1Co 7:39;
1Co 11:30; 1Co 15:6; 1Co 15:18; 1Co 15:20; 1Co 15:51; 1Th 4:13-15; 2Pe 3:4. So
we have κοίμησις for the sleep of death, Sir 46:19. There is but one example of
a use of ἐξυπνίζειν, similar to the present, namely, in the remarkable passage,
Job 14:12 : Ἄνθρωπος δὲ κοιμηθεὶς οὐ μὴν ἀναστῇ ἕως ἂν ὁ οὐρανὸς οὐ μὴ συῤῥαϕῇ‚
καὶ οὐκ ἐξυπνισθήσονται ἐξ ὕπνου αὐτῶν. The nearest motive to this image may
probably have been the likeness of a dead body to one sleeping. Yet there may
well lie in it a deeper thought, of the state of the dead being that of a
sleep—not indeed a dreamless sleep; but the separation of the soul from the
body, as the appointed and indeed necessary organ of its activity, may and must
bring about, not a suspension, but a depression, of the consciousness. Wherefore
the state of the soul apart from the body is never considered in the Scripture
as itself desirable, nor as other than a state of transition, the Scripture
acknowledging no true immortality apart from the resurrection of the body (see
Olshausen, in loc).

[11] Συμμαθητής‚ a ἅπαξ λεγόμενον in the N. T., occurs once in Plato, Euthyd.
272 c. Grotius makes μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ, with Lazarus; but ἀποθάνωμεν μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ, as
Maldonatus well brings out, indicates fellowship not merely in death, but in
dying, which, was impossible in the case of Lazarus, who was already dead. I
know no other interpreter who shares this error.

[12] Maldonatus: Theodor. Mopsuest., Chrys., et Euthymius recte fortasse
indicant haec verba, quamvis maguam audaciae speciem prae se ferant, non audacis
sed timidi esse hominis, amantis tamen Christum, a quo eum certum mortis, ut
putabat, periculum avellere non posset. Bengel: Erat quasi medius inter hanc
vitam et mortem, sine tristitiâ et sine laetitia paratus ad moriendum; non tamen
sine fide.

[13] In Joh. Hom. Ixii.

[14] Αἱ περὶ Μάρθαν καὶ Μάρίαν, to signify Martha and Mary themselves and no
other, is a Grecism of the finer sort, familiar to all. Olshausen and others,
not denying this, yet find in the phrase here, that before the mourners from the
remoter Jerusalem had arrived, there had already assembled some such, of their
own sex, probably of their own kin, from Bethany itself, to whom, the later
coming joined themselves; cf. Acts 13:13 : οἱ περὶ τὸν Παῦλον, “Paul and his
company.”

[15] The days of mourning were thirty: of these the three first were days of
weeping (fletus); then followed seven of lamentation (planctus); the remaining
twenty of mourning (mœror).

[16] Maldonatus: Quia enim dixerat Martham obviam Christo processisse, ne quis
miraretur, aut Mariana accusaret quod non et ipsa processisset, excusat earn
tacite, dicens sedisse domi, ideoque nihil de Christi adventu cognovisse. Martha
enim cognovit, quia credibile est domo aliquâ causa fuisse progressam, et solent
qui foris in publico versantur,. multos colligere rumores, quos ignorant, qui
domi delitescunt.

[17] She uses the word αἰτεῖν (ὅσα ἂν αἰτήσῃ), a word never used by our Lord to
express his own asking of the Father, but always ἐρωτᾶν: for there is a certain
familiarity, nay authority, in his askings, which ἐρωτᾶν expresses, but αἰτεῖν
would hot; see my Synonyms of the N. T., §40.

[18] Grotius: Et hic infirmitas apparet. Putat ilium gratiosum esse apud Deum,
non autem in illo esse plenitudinem Divinæ potestatis.

[19] This is the great thought of Wordsworth’s Laodamia. She who gives her name
to that sublime poem does not lift herself, she has none to lift her, into those
higher regions in which the return of the beloved would be a blessing and a
boon; and thus it proves to her a joyless, disappointing gift, presently again
to be snatched away.

[20] Ὁ ζῶν (Rev 1:8); ὁ ζωοποιῶν (Rom 4:17); ἡ ζωὴ ἡμῶν (Col 3:4); πηγὴ ζωῆς
(Psa 35:9); ὁ μόνος ἔχων τὴν ἀθανασίαν (1Ti 6:16).

[21] Bengel: Mors Christi mortem enervavit. Post mortem Christi mors credentium
non est mors.

[22] Rosenmüller, Alte und Neue Morgenland, vol. iv. p. 281; Geier, De Luctu
Hebraeorum, vii. § 26

[23] Compare Cicero’s account of his first interview with a Sicilian mother whom
the lust and cruelty of Verres had made desolate (In Verr. v. 39): Mihi obviam
venit, et ita me suam salutem appellans, filii nomen implorans, mihi ad pedes
misera jacuit, quasi ego excitare filium ejus ab inferis possem.

[24] An emphasis has been laid on the ἐτάραξεν ἑαυτόν, turbavit seipsum; thus by
Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, xlix.): Quis enim eum posset nisi se ipse turbare?
(cf. Be Civ. Dei, xiv. 9, 3); and by Bengel: Affectus Jesu non fuere passiones,
sed voluntariæ commotiones, quas plane in suâ potestate habebat; et hæc turbatio
fuit plena ordinis et rationis summæ. It would then express something of the
μετριοπάθεια of the Academy, as opposed on the one side to frantic outbreaks of
grief, on the other to the ἀπάθεια of the Stoics. His grief no doubt did keep
this mean; but this active ἐτάραξεν ἑαυτόν must not be pressed; since elsewhere,
on similar occasions, we have the passive, ἐταράχθη τῷ πνεύματι (John 13:21):
cf. 12:27, with which this is in fact identical.

[25] Ἐμβριμάομαι (from βρίμη‚ Bριμώ, a name of Persephone of Hecate, and
signifying The Angered, so called διὰ τὸ ϕοβερὸν καὶ καταπληκτικὸν τοῦ δαίμονος,
Lucian; and cognate with fremo, βρῖθος‚ ϕριμάω) does “not mean to be moved with
any strong passion, as grief or fear, but always implies something of anger and
indignation. See Passow, s. v., who knows no other signification; and in like
manner all the Greek interpreters upon this passage, however they might differ
concerning the cause of the indignation, yet found indignation here expressed.
The Vulgate rightly: infremuit; and Luther: Er ergrimmete im Geiste. Storr then
has right when he says (Opuse. Acad. vol. iii. p. 254): Quern vulgo sumunt
tristitiae significatum, is plane incertus esse videtur, cum nullo, quod
sciamus, exemplo confirmari possit, Græcisque patribus tarn valde ignotus
fuerit, ut materiam ad succensendum, quamvis non repertam in Mariæ et comitum
ejus ploratu, quærerent certe in humanæ naturæ (τῆς σαρκός) Jesu propensione ad
tristitiam, quam Jesus.... increpaverit (see Suicer, Thes. s. v.). The other
passages in the N. T. where this word is used bear out this meaning. Twice it is
used of our Lord commanding, under the threat of his earnest displeasure, those
whom He had healed to keep silence (Mat 9:30; Mark 1:43); and once of those who
were indignant at what Mary had done in the matter of the ointment (καὶ
ἐνεβριμῶντο αὐτῇ, Mark 14:5). Compare the use of ἐμβριμᾶσθαι, Isa 17:13
(Symmachus) and Psa 38:4 (Symm. and Aquila), and ἐμβρίμημα ὀργῆς, Jer 2:8 (LXX).
It is nothing but the difficulty of finding a satisfactory object for the
indignation of the Lord, which has caused so many modern commentators to desert
this explanation, and make the word simply and merely an expression of grief and
anguish of spirit. Lampe and Kuinoel defend the right explanation; and Lange
(Theol. Stud, und Erit. 1836, p. 714, seq.) has many beautiful remarks in an
essay wherein he seeks to unite both meanings; but by far the completest
discussion on the word ἐμβριμᾶσθαι. and its exact meaning here, is to be found
in a later number of these same Studien, 1862, pp. 260-268 [26] See Suicer,
Thes. s. v. ἐμβριμάομαι.

[27] Apollinarius: Ὡσεί τις γενναῖος ἀριστεὺς τοὺς πολεμίους ἰδὼν‚ ἑαυτὸν
παρώξυνε κατὰ τῶν ἀντιπάλων.

[28] We may compare, for purposes of contrast, the words of Artemis in that
majestic concluding “scene in the Hippolytus of Euripides, where, in the midst
of his misery, Hippolytus asks, Ὁρᾷς με‚ δέσποιν᾿‚ ὡς ἔχω‚ τὸν ἄθλιον; and she
answers, Ὁρῶ‚ κατ᾿ ὄσσων δ᾿ οὐ θέμις βαλεῖν δάκρυ. Full as is that scene of
soothing and elevating power, and even of a divine sympathy, yet a God of tears
was a higher conception than the heathen world could reach to. After indeed the
Son of God had come, and in that strange and inexplicable way had begun to
modify the whole feeling of the heathen world, long before men had even heard of
his name, the Roman poet could sing in words exquisitely beautiful in
themselves, and belonging to a passage among the noblest which antiquity
supplies— ...mollissima corda Humano generi dare se natura fatetur, Quæ lacrymas
dedit: hæc nostri pars optima sensûs. Juv. Sat. xv. On the sinlessness of these
natural affections, or rather on their necessity for a full humanity, see
Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xiv. 9, 3.

[29] For thus the distinction between the κλαίοντες of the others and his
ἐδάκρυσεν, which can scarcely have been accidental, would be preserved.
Elsewhere (Luk 19:41) the κλαίειν is itself ascribed to Him. Here, however, as
Bengel puts it well, Lacrymatus est, non ploravit.

[30] Rosenmüller, Alte und Neue Morgenland, vol. iv. p. 281. In like manner the
Greeks buried for the most part, and with only rare exceptions, without the
walls of their cities (Becker, Charikles, vol. ii. p. 188).

[31] See Winer, Realwörterbuch, s. v. Gräber.

[32] Becker (Charikles, vol. ii. p. 190) observes the same of the μνήματα among
the Greeks. For the poorer and more numerous classes there were common
burial-places, as with the Romans also. See his Gallus, vol. ii. p. 293; and the
Diet, of Or. and Roman Antt. s. v. Funus, p. 436.

[33] Τὰς περὶ Μάρθαν καὶ Μαρίαν. Lampe: Nec facile occurret phrasis nisi de
personis illustribus, qui amicorum aut ministrorum grege cincti erant. Colligi
ergo ex eâ quoque hie potest quod Marth a et Maria lautioris fortunæ fuerint.

[34] Εὐγενέστεραι.

[35] Iliad, xxiv. 18-21.

[36] It is singular how generally this ἤδη ὄζει has been taken in proof of that,
whereof it is only a conjecture, and, I am persuaded, an erroneous one. Indeed
the following τεταρταῖος γάρ ἐστι is decisive that Martha only guess. es from
the common order of things that corruption had begun. Yet Augustine (In Ev. Joh.
tract, xlix.): Resuscitavit putentem. Tertullian (De Resur. Cam. 53) speaks of
the soul of Lazarus, quam nemo jam foetere senserat. Hilary (Be Trin. vi. § 33):
Foetens Lazarus. Ambrose says of the bystanders (Be Fide Resurr. ii. 80):
Foetorem sentiunt. Bernard (In Assum. Serm. iv.): Foetere jam coeperat.
Sedulius: Corruptum tabo exhalabat odorem. And a most offensive description in
Prudentius (Apotheosis, 759-766), Chrysostom (Horn. lii. in Joh.), and Calvin:
Alios Christus suscitavit, sed nunc in putrido cadavere potentiam suam exserit.
In the Letter of Pontius Pilate to the Emperor Tiberius (Thilo, Codex
Apocryphus, p. 807) this circumstance, as enhancing the wonder of the miracle,
is urged with characteristic exaggerations: Νεκρόν τινα Λάζαρον τετραήμερον ἐκ
νεκρῶν ἀνέστησε‚ διεϕθαρμένον ἤδη ἔχοντα τὸ σῶμα ὑπὸ τῶν ἐλκογενήτων σκωλήκων‚
καὶ τὸ δυσῶδες ἐκεῖνο σῶμα τὸ κείμενον ἐν τῷ τάϕῳ ἐκέλευσε τρέχειν· καὶ ὡς ἐκ
παστοῦ νυμϕίος‚ οὗτος ἐκ τοῦ τάϕρου ἐξῆλθεν‚ εὐωδίας πλείστης πεπληρωμένος.

[37] Chrysostom (Horn. lxiv. in Joh.) enters at large upon this point.
Maldonatus observes: Nihil enim aliud his verbis quam essentiae voluntatisque
unitatem significari. Cf. Ambrose, Be Fide, iii. 4.

[38] This κραυγάζειν is nowhere else attributed to the Lord: cf. Mat 12:19 :
οὐδὲ κραυγάσει.

[39] Cyril calls it θεοπρεπὲς καὶ βασιλικὸν κέλευσμα.

[40] Hilary (Be Trin. vi. § 33): Nullo intervallo vocis et vitae.

[41] Θαῦμα ἐν θαύματι: cf. Ambrose, Be Fid. Res. ii. 78; and so Augustine
(Enarr. in Ps. 51:21): Processit ille vinctus: non ergo pedibus propriis, sed
virtute producentis.

[42] Κειρίαι=τὰ σχοινία τὰ ἐντάϕια=ὀθόνια (John 19:40)=vincula linea
(Tertullian).

[43] Of Lazarus himself we have but one further notice (John 12:2), but that,
like the command to give meat to the revived maiden (Mark 5:43), like the Lord’s
own participation of food after the resurrection (Luk 24:42; John 21:13), a
witness against anything merely phantastic in his rising again. He is generally
assumed to have been much younger than his sisters; one tradition mentioned by
Epiphanius makes him thirty years old at this time, and to have survived for
thirty years more. The traditions of his later life, as that he became bishop of
Marseilles, rest upon no good authority: yet. there is one circumstance of these
traditions worthy of record, although not for its historic worth,—that the first
question he asked the Lord after he was come back from the grave, was whether he
should have to die again; and, learning that it must needs be so, that he never
smiled any more. Lazarus, as a revenant, is often used by the religious
romance-writers of the Middle Ages as a vehicle for their conceptions of the
lower world. He is made to relate what he has seen and known, just as the
Pamphylian that revived is used by Plato in the Republic for the same purposes
(Wright, St. Patrick’s Purgatory, pp. 167-169)

[44] Euthymius: Oὐχ ὡς θαυμάζοντες‚ ἀλλὰ διαβάλλοντες ὡς γόητα.

[45] Τὸν τόπον. Does this signify their city or their temple? A comparison with
2Ma 5:19 makes one certainly incline to the latter view; and cf. Acts 6:13-14;
Acts 21:28. The temple, round which all their hopes gathered, would naturally be
uppermost in the minds of these members of the Sanhedrim; while to the city we
nowhere find the same exaggerated importance ascribed. Yet many make τὸν τόπον =
τὴν πόλιν ἡμῶν, as Chrysostom, who in quoting the passage substitutes,
apparently unconsciously, πόλιν for τόπον. So likewise Theophylact, Olshausen. ’

[46] Corn, a Lapide: Si omnes credant Jesum esse Messiam, regem Judaeorum,
irritabuntur contra nos Romani Judaeae domini, quod no’bis novum regem et
Messiam, puta Jesum, creaverimus, ac a Caesare Tiberio ad eum defecerimus; quare
armati venient et vastabunt et perdent Hierosolymam et Judaeam, cum totâ
Judaeorum gente et republicâ.

[47] In Ev. Joh. tract, xlix.: Hoc autem timuerunt, ne si omnes in Christum
crederent, nemo remaneret, qui adversus Komanos civitatem Dei templumque
defenderet.

[48] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract. xlix.) notes the difficulty, though he has a
singular accumulation of mistakes in his explanation. Among others, that
Zacharias, the father of the Baptist, was High Priest; a mistake continually
re-appearing in the Middle Ages. It grew out of an inaccurate understanding of
Luk 1:9.

[49] Lightfoot, Serm. on Judg xx. 27 (Pitman’s edit. vol. vi. p. 280).

[50] Bengel: Ubique occurrit Johannes interpretationi sinistrae.

[51] Augustine, adducing this prophecy, exclaims (Semi, cccxv. 1): Magna vis est
veritatis. Oderunt veritatem homines, et veritatem prophetant nescientes. Non
agunt, sed agituv de illis.

[52] It exactly answers as such to the omina of Roman superstition, in which
words spoken by one person in a lower meaning are taken up by another in a
higher, and by him claimed to be prophetic of that. Cicero (Be Divin. i. 46)
gives examples; these, too, resting on the faith that men’s words are ruled by a
higher power than their own.

[53] We have an example of this in the very name Caiaphas, which is only another
form of Cephas, being derived from the same Hebrew word. He was meant to be what
Eusebius, with reference to the peace-making activity of Irenaeus (εἰρηναῖος) in
the Church, calls him, ϕερώνυμος: he should have been “the Rock;” here too, as
in names like Stephen’s (στέϕανος, the first winner of the martyr’s crown), the
nomen et omen was to. have held good. And such, had he been true to his
position, had the Jewish economy past easily and without a struggle into that
for which it was the preparation, he would naturally have been; the first in the
one would have been first in the other. But as it was, he bore this name but in
mockery; he was the rock indeed, but the rock on which, not the Church of
Christ, but the synagogue of Satan, was built.—In the Syrian Church there are
curious legends of the after life of Caiaphas, and his conversion to the faith
(Thilo, God. Apocryphus, p. xxix.).

[54] Wolf, Cures (in loc), gives some of these. It has likewise been proposed to
put a stop after προεϕήτευσεν, and to find here a device on the part of Caiaphas
for silencing opposition, and causing his own opinion to carry the day: “This he
spake, not as though he was giving his own opinion (οὐκ ἀϕ᾿ ἑαυτοῦ, but taking
advantage of the old belief, that on great emergent occasions the High Priest
would be endowed with oracular power, he professed now to be uttering words
directly given him by the inspiration of God.” And then on ὅτι ἔμελλεν κ.τ.λ.
are words of the Evangelist: He did this, and succeeded in so getting the decree
of death to be passed, for Jesus was about to die for the people.

[55] Vitringa (Obss. Sac. vi. 11): Visus est Caiaphas Joanni fatidicum et
ominosum quid proferre. Et vere sententia ejus hujusmodi est, ut altiorem
aliquem sensum condat.....Supponit igitur Apostolus non fuisse alienum a
Pontifice Hebraeorum illo tempore προϕητεύειν, oracula fundere, et nescium etiam
mandata Numinis profari. A Pontifice, inquam, hoc solum respectu Deo
commendabili, quod Pontifex esset; cum caeteroquin personae ejus nulla essent
merita, quae facere poterant, ut Deus illius rationem haberet. Sed cum Deus
Pontifices constituisset in ilia gente, publicos. suae legis voluntatisque
interpretes, etianisi eos in universum propterea neutiquam exemisset omni errore
judicii in re religionis; placuit illi Caiaphas Pontificis potius quam ullius
alterius Assessoris linguam in dicenda sententia” ita moderari, ut, praeter
animi sui consilium, de necessitate et vero fine mortis Christi sapienter
loqueretur, veramque ederet confessionem, ac si non tanquam Caiaphas sententiam
pronunciasset! On the special illumination vouchsafed to the High Priest as
bearer of the ephod, see Bahr, Symbolik, vol. ii. p. 136.

[56] Augustine, Ep. 187:12.

[57] See, for instance, Augustine, Quaest. lxxxiii. qu. 65; Bernard, Be Assum.
Serm. iv.

[58] Gregory the Great (Moral, xxii. 15): Veni foras; ut nimirum homo in peccato
suo mortuus, et per molem malae consuetudinis jam sepultus, quia intra
conscientiam suam absconsus jacet per nequitiam, a semetipso foras exeat per
confessionem. Mortuo enim, Veni foras, dicitur, ut ab excusatione atque
occultatione peccati ad accusationem suam ore proprio exire provocetur (2Sa
12:13). Thus too Hildebert, in his poem, De Ss. Trinitate, one of the noblest in
the Christian hymnology— Extra portam jam delatum, Jam foetentem, tumulatum,
Vitta ligat, lapis urget; Sed si jubes, hic resurget. Jube, lapis revolvetur,
Jube, vitta dirumpetur. Exiturus nescit moras, Postquam clamas; Exi foras.

[59] Sometimes Augustine makes the stone to be the law; thus In Ev. Joh. tract,
xlix.: Quid est ergo, Lapidem removete? Littera occidens, quasi lapis est
premens. Removete, inquit, lapidem. Removete legis pondus, gratiam predicate.
“Loose him, and let him go,” he refers to release from Church censures; it was
Christ’s word which quickened, the dead, who yet afterwards used, the
ministration of men to restore entire freedom of action to him whom He had
quickened (Enarr. in Ps. 101:21; Serm. xcviii. 6): Ille suscitavit mortuum, illi
solverunt ligatum.

[60] The other raisings from the dead nowhere afford subjects to early Christian
Art; but this continually, and in all its stages. Sometimes it is Martha
kneeling at the feet of Jesus; sometimes the Lord is touching with his
wonder-staff the head of Lazarus, who is placed upright (which is a mistake, and
a transfer of Egyptian customs to Judaea), and rolled up as a mummy (which was
nearly correct), in a niche of the grotto; sometimes he is coming forth from
thence at the word of the Lord (Münster, Sinnbilden d. Alt. Christ, vol. ii. p.
98).—From a sermon of Asterius we learn that it was a custom in his time, and
Chrysostom tells us it was the same among the wealthy Byzantines, to have this
and other miracles of our Lord woven on their garments. “Here mayest thou see,”
says Asterius, “the marriage in Galilee and the waterpots, the impotent man that
carried his bed on his shoulders, the blind man that was healed with clay, the
woman that had. an issue of blood and touched the hem of his garment, the
awakened Lazarus; and with this they count themselves pious, and to wear
garments well-pleasing to God.”


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  CHAPTER 38: 38-30. THE OPENING OF THE EYES OF TWO BLIND MEN NEAR JERICHO
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30. The Opening of the Eyes of Two Blind Men Near Jericho Mat 20:29-34; Mark
10:40-52; Luk 18:35-43 The adjusting of the several records of this miracle has
put the ingenuity of Scripture harmonists to the stretch. St. Matthew commences
his report of it as follows: “And as they departed from Jericho, a great
multitude followed Him. And behold, two blind men, sitting by the wayside, when
they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord,
Thou Son of David.” Thus, according to him, the Lord is departing from Jericho,
and the petitioners are two. St. Luke appears at first sight to contradict both
these facts, for he makes the cure to have taken place at his coming nigh to the
city, and the healed to have been but one; while St. Mark occupies a middle
place, holding in part by one of his fellow Evangelists, in part by the other.
He, with St. Luke, names but one whose eyes were opened; but consents with St.
Matthew in placing the miracle, not at the entering into, but the going out
from, Jericho; so that the three narratives curiously cross and interlace one
another. To escape all difficulties of this kind there is of course the ready
expedient always at hand, that the sacred historians are recording different
events, and that therefore there is nothing to reconcile. But in fact we do not
thus evade, we only exchange, our embarrassment. Accepting this solution, we
must believe that twice, or rather thrice, in the immediate neighbourhood of
Jericho, our Lord was besought in almost the same words by blind beggars on the
wayside for mercy;—that on all three occasions there was a multitude
accompanying Him, who sought to silence the vociferations of the claimants, but
only caused them to cry the more;—that in each case Jesus stood still and
demanded what they wanted;—that in each case they made the same reply in very
nearly the same words;—and a great deal more.[1] All this is so unnatural, so
improbable, so unlike anything in actual life, so unlike the infinite variety
which the Gospel incidents present, that for myself I should prefer almost any
explanation to this. The three apparently discordant accounts of this miracle,
no one of them entirely agreeing with any other, can at once be reduced to two
by that rule, which in all reconciliations of parallel histories must be
applied, namely, that the silence of one narrator is in itself no contradiction
of the statement of another; thus St. Mark[2] and St. Luke, making mention of
one blind man, do not contradict St. Matthew, who mentions two. There remains
only the difficulty that by one Evangelist the healing is placed at the Lord’s
entering into the city, by the others at his going out. This is no sufficient
ground to justify a duplication of the fact; and Bengel, as I must needs
believe, with his usual happy tact, has selected the right reconciliation of the
difficulty;[3] namely, that one cried to Him as He drew near to the city,[4]
whom yet He cured not then, but on the morrow at his going out of the city cured
him together with the other, to whom in the mean while he had joined himself.
St. Matthew will then relate by prolepsis, as is not uncommon with all
historians, the whole of the event where he first introduces it, rather than, by
cutting it in two halves, and deferring the conclusion, preserve a more painful
accuracy, yet lose the effect which the complete narrative related at a breath
would possess. In the cry with which these blind men sought to attract the pity
of Christ there lay on their part a recognition of his dignity as the Messiah;
for this name, “Son of David,” was the popular designation of the great expected
Prophet. There was therefore upon their part a double confession of faith; a
confession first that He could heal them, and secondly, not merely as a prophet
from God, but as the Prophet, as the one at whose coming the eyes of the blind
should be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped (Isa 35:5; Isa 29:18). In
the case of the man blind from his birth (John 9) we have the same confessions,
but following, and not preceding, the cure, and with intervals between; so that
first he acknowledges Him as a prophet (ver. 17), and only later as the Christ
(ver. 38). Here the explanation has been sometimes found of what follows: “The
multitude rebuked them, because they would not hold their peace” It grudged to
hear given to Jesus titles of honour, which it was not itself prepared to accord
Him.[5] We should then have here a parallel to Luk 19:39; only that there the
Pharisees would have Christ Himself to rebuke those that were glorifying Him,
while here the multitude take the rebuking into their own hands. Yet this
explanation will hardly stand. It was quite in the spirit of the envious
malignant Pharisees to be vexed with those Messianic salutations: “Blessed be
the King, that cometh in the name of the Lord;” but these well-meaning
multitudes, rude and for the most part spiritually undeveloped as no doubt they
were, were exempt from such spiritual malignities. We meet rather among them a
sympathy in the main with the Lord and with his work. While others said that his
miracles were wrought in the power of Beelzebub, they glorified God because of
them. And here, too, I cannot doubt but that out of an intention of honouring
Christ they sought to silence these suppliants. He may have been teaching as He
went, and they would not have Him interrupted by ill-timed and unmannerly
clamours. But the voices of these suppliants are not to be stifled so. On the
contrary, “they cried the more, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord, Thou Son of
David.” Many admirable homiletic applications of this portion of the history
have been made. Is there not here, it has been often asked, the story of
innumerable souls? When any is first in earnest about his salvation, and begins
to cry that his eyes may be opened, that he may walk in his light who has the
light of life, begins to despise the world and the objects which other men
desire, he will find infinite hindrances, and these not from professed enemies
of the Gospel of Christ, but from such as seem, like this multitude, to be with
Jesus and on his side. Even they will endeavour to stop his mouth, and to hinder
any earnest crying to the Lord.[6] And then, with a picture from the life,
Augustine makes further application in the same line, of what follows, when
Jesus, arrested as ever by the cry of need, “stood still, and commanded him to
be called. And they called the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort,
arise; He calleth thee.” This too, he observes, repeats itself continually in
the life of God’s saints. If a man will only despise these obstacles from a
world which calls itself Christian, and overcome them; if, despite of all
opposers, he will go on, until Christ is evidently and plainly with him, then
the very same who at the first reprehended, will in the end applaud; they who at
first exclaimed, “He is mad,” will end with exclaiming, “He is a saint.”[7]

“And he, casting away his garment,” to the end that he might obey with the
greater expedition,[8] and without incumbrance, “rose and came to Jesus.” In
this his ridding himself of all which would have been in his way, he has been
used often as an example for every soul which Jesus has called, that it should
in like manner lay aside every weight and every besetting sin (Mat 13:44; Mat
13:46; Php 3:7). The Lord’s question, “What wilt thou that I should do unto
thee?” is, in part, an expression of his readiness to aid, a comment in act upon
his own words, spoken but a little while before, “The Son of man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister” (Mat 20:28); is in part intended to evoke into
livelier exercise the faith and expectation of the petitioner (Mat 9:28). The
man, whose cry has been hitherto a vague indeterminate cry for mercy, now
singles out the blessing which he craves, designates the channel in which he
desires that this mercy may flow,[9]and makes answer, “Lord, that I might
receive my sight.” Only St. Matthew mentions the touching of the eyes which were
to be restored to vision (cf. 9:29), and only St. Luke the word of power, the
“Receive thy sight,” by which the cure was effected; while he and St. Mark
record nearly similar words, passed over by St. Matthew: “Thy faith hath made
thee whole”—”Thy faith hath saved thee.” The man, who had hitherto been tied to
one place, now used aright his restored eyesight; for he used it to follow Jesus
in the way, and this with the free outbreaks of a thankful heart, himself
“glorifying God” and being the occasion also that “all the people, when they saw
it, gave praise unto God” as well (Acts 3:8-10).

Footnotes

[1] Some in old times and new have seen themselves bound in to such a
conclusion:—thus Augustine (De Cons. Evang. ii. 65), who expresses himself
strongly on the matter; Lightfoot (Harmony of the N. T. sect. 69); and Greswell.
On the other hand, Theophylact, Chrysostom, Maldonatus, Grotius, have with more
or less confidence maintained that we have here but one and the same event.

[2] Augustine (De Cons. Evang. ii. 65): Procul dubio itaque Bartimseus iste
Timaei films ex aliqua, magna felicitate dejectus, notissimae et famosissimae
miserise fuit, quod non solum caecus, verum etiam mendicus sedebat. Hinc est
ergo quod ipsum solum voluit commemorare Marcus, cujus illuminatio tarn claram
famam huic miraculo comparavit, quam erat illius nota calamitas. Cf. Quaest.
Evang. ii. 48.

[3] Bengel: Marcus unum commemorat Bartimaeum, insigniorem (x. 46), eundemque
Lucas (xviii. 35) innuit, qui transponendae historise occasionem exinde habuit,
quod caecorum alter, Jesu Hierichuntem intrante, in viâ, notitiam divini hujus
medici acquisivit. Salvator dum apud Zacchaeum pranderet, vel pernoctaret
potius, Bartimaeo caecorum alter, quern Matthaeus adjungit, interim associatus
est. I observe Maldonatus had already fallen upon the same reconciliation.

[4] Grotius will have it that St. Luke’s ἐν τῷ ἐγγίζειν here does not
necessarily mean, and does not here mean, When He was drawing near to, but, When
He was in the neighbourhood of, —and that this nearness to the city might be,
and in this case was, that of one who had just departed/raw, not of one who was
now approaching to, it. But, to set aside whether the Avoids can mean this, the
narrative, which fallows’, of the conversion of Zaccheus (introduced with a καὶ
εἰσελθών, is wholly against the supposition that St. Luke means to signif)’ by
those words that the Lord was now leaving Jericho.

[5] Hilary (Comm. in Matt, in loc.): Denique eos turba objurgat, quia acerbe a
caecis audiunt quod negabant, Dominum esse David Filium.

[6] Augustine (Serm. cccxlix. 5): Reprehensuri sunt nos.. quasi dilectores
nostri, homines saeculares, amantes terrain, sapientes pulverem, nihil de coelo
ducentes, auras liberas corde, nare carpentes: reprehensuri sunt nos procul
dubio, atque dicturi, si viderint nos ista humana, ista terrena contemnere: Quid
pateris ? quid insanis ? Turba ilia est contradicens, ne caecus clamet. Et
aliquanti Christiani sunt, qui prohibent vivere Christiane, quia et ilia turba
cum Christo ambulabat, et vociferantem hominem ad Christum ac lucem
desiderantem,. ab ipsius Christi beneficio prohibebat. Sunt tales Christiani,
sed vincamus illos, vivamus bene, et ipsa vita sit vox nostra ad Christum. And
again, Serm. lxxxviii. 13, 14: Incipiat mundum contemnere, inopi sua
distribuere, pro, nihilo habere quae homines amant, contemnat injurias,.....si
quis ei abstulerit sua, non repetat; si quid alieni abstulerit, reddat
quadruplum. Cum ista facere coeperit, omnes sui cognati, affines, amici
commoventur. Quid insanis ? Nimius es: numquid alii non sunt Christiani ? Ista
stultitia est, ista dementia est. Et caetera talia turba clamat, ne caeci
clament.... Bonos Christianos, vere studiosos, volentes facere praecepta Dei,
Christiani mali et tepidi prohibent. Turba ipsa quae cum Domino est prohibet
clamantes, id est, prohibet bene operantes. ne perseverando sanentur. Gregory
the Great gives it another turn, saying (Hom. ii. in Evang): Saepe namque dum
converti ad Dominum post perpetrata vitia volumus, dum contra haec eadem exorare
vitia quae perpetravimus, conamur, occurrunt cordi phantasmata peccatoruin quae
fecimus, mentis nostrae aciem reverberant, confundunt anmum, et vocem nostrae
deprecationis premunt.: Quae praeibant ergo, increpabant eum, ut taceret.... In
se, ut suspicor, recognoscit unusqu’isque quod dicimus: quia dum ab hoc mundo
animum ad Deum mutamus, dum ad orationis opus convertimur, ipsa quae prius
delectabiliter gessimus, importuna postea atque gravia in oratione nostrâ
toleramus. Vix eorum cogitatio manu sancti desiderii ab oculis cordis abigitur;
vix eorum phantasmata per poenitentiae lamenta superantur.

[7] Augustine (Serm. lxxxviii. 17): Cum quisque Christianus coeperit bene
vivere, fervere bonis operibus, mundumque contemnere, in ipsa novitate operum
suorum patitur reprehensores et contradictores frigidos Christianos. Si autem
perseveraverit, et eos superaverit perdurando, et non defecerit a bonis
operibus; iidem ipsi jam obsequentur, qui ante prohibebant. Tamdiu enim
corripiunt et perturbant et vetant, quamdiu sibi cedi posse praesumunt. Si autem
victi fuerint perseverantiâ proficientium, convertunt se et dicere incipiunt,
Magnus homo, sanctus homo, felix cui Deus concessit. Honorant, gratulantur,
benedicunt, laudant; quomodo ilia turba quae cum Domino erant. Ipsa prohibebat
ne caeci clamarent; sed postquam illi ita clamaverunt, ut mererentur audiri, et
impetrare misericordiam Domini, ipsa turba rursum dicit, Vocat vos Jesus. Jam et
hortatores fiunt, qui paulo ante corripiebant ut tacerent. How exactly this was
the story of St. Francis of Assisi.

[8] Thus Il. ii. 185: Βῆ δὲ θέειν‚ ἀπὸ δὲ χλαῖναν βάλε: and in Phaedrus, v. fab.
2: Stringitque gladium, dein rejectâ penula; cf. Suetonius, August. 26.

[9] Gregory the Great (Horn. ii. in Evang), commenting on this request of
theirs, bids us, in like manner, to concentrate our petitions on the chief thing
of all: Non falsas divitias, non terrena dona, non fugitivos honores a Domino,
sed lucem quaeramus: nec lucem quae loco clauditur, quae tempore finitur, quae
noctium interruptione variatur, quae a nobis communiter cum pecoribus cernitur:
sed lucem quaeramus, quam videre cum solis Angelis possimus, quam nec initium
inchoat, nec finis angustat.


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  CHAPTER 39: 39-31. THE CURSING OF THE BARREN FIG-TREE
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31. The Cursing of the Barren Fig-Tree Mat 21:17-22; Mark 11:12-14; Mark
11:20-24 This miracle was wrought upon the Monday of the week of Passion. On the
Sunday of Palms our blessed Lord had made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem,
and in the evening,—since even now his hour, though close at hand, was not
altogether come,—He retired from the snares and perils of the city to the safer
Bethany, to the house, probably, of those sisters whom He had so lately made
rich with a restored brother, and there passed the night. On the Monday morning,
as He was returning from Bethany to his ministry in the city very early, indeed
before sunrise, the word against the fig-tree was spoken. That same evening He
with his disciples went back to Bethany to lodge there, but probably at so late
an hour that the darkness prevented these from marking the effects which had
followed upon that word. It was not till the morning of Tuesday that “they saw
the fig-tree dried up from the roots.” Such is the exact order of the
circumstances, in the telling of which St. Mark shows himself a more accurate
observer of times than the first Evangelist;—not, indeed, that this gives him
any superiority: our advantage is that we have both records:—St. Matthew’s, who
was concerned for the inner idea, and hastened on to that, omitting
circumstances which came between, that he might present the whole event as one,
at a single glance, in a single picture, without the historical perspective,—of
which he at no time takes any especial note, his gifts and his aim being
different;—and also St. Mark’s, who was concerned likewise for the picturesque
setting forth of the truth in its external details, as it was linked with times
and with places, as it gradually unfolded itself before the eyes of men. But
while such differences as these are easily set at one, and they who magnify them
into difficulties are the true Pharisees of history, straining at gnats and
swallowing camels, there are other and undoubted difficulties in this narrative,
such as we are bound to meet, and not to attempt to evade. Take the facts as
recorded by St. Matthew: “Now in the morning, as He returned into the city, He
hungered. And when He saw a fig-tree in the way, He came to it, and found
nothing thereon but leaves only, and said to it, Let no fruit grow on thee
henceforward for ever. And presently the fig-tree withered away.” We first ask
ourselves here, how should our Lord, knowing, as by his divine power He must,
that there were no figs upon that tree, have yet gone to seek them there, made
to his disciples as though He had expected to find them? Was this consistent
with the perfectness of sincerity and truth? Slight as would have been the
deceit, yet, if it was such, it would trouble the clearness of our image of Him,
whom we conceive as the absolute Lord of truth. It is again perplexing, that He
should have treated the tree as a moral agent, punishing it as though
unfruitfulness had been any guilt upon its part. This, in itself perplexing,
becomes infinitely more so through a notice of St. Mark’s; which indeed the
order of the natural year would, without this notice, have suggested, that “the
time of figs was not yet:” so that at the time when they could not seasonably be
expected, He sought, and was displeased at failing to find, them. For, whatever
the undermeaning might have been in treating the tree as a moral agent, and
granting such treatment to have been entirely justified, yet all seems again
lost and obscured, if it thus lay not in the power of the tree to be otherwise
than it was, namely, without fruit. For the symbol must needs be carried
through; if by a figure we attribute guilt to the tree for not having fruit, we
must be consistent, and show that it might have had such, and that there was no
just and sufficient reason why then it should have had none.

Upon the first point, that the Lord approached the tree, appearing to expect
fruit upon it, and yet knowing that He should find none, deceiving thereby those
who were with Him, who no doubt believed that what He professed to look for, He
expected to find, it is sufficient to observe that a similar charge might be
made against all figurative teaching, whether by word or by deed: for in all
such there is a worshipping of truth in the spirit and not in the letter; often
a forsaking of it in the letter, for the better honouring and establishing of it
in the spirit. A parable is told as true, and though the facts are feigned, yet
is true, because of the deeper truth which sustains the outward fabric of the
story; it is true, because it is the shrine of truth, and because the truth
which it enshrines looks through and through it. Even so a symbolic action is
done as real, as meaning something; and yet, although not meaning the thing
which it professes to mean, is no deception, since it means something infinitely
higher and deeper, of which the lower action is a type, and in which that lower
is lost and swallowed up; transfigured and transformed by the higher, whereof it
is made the vehicle. What was it, for instance, here, if Christ did not mean
really to look for fruit on that tree, being aware that it had none? yet He did
mean to show how it would fare with a man or with a nation, when God came
looking from it for the fruits of righteousness, and found nothing but the
abundant leaves of a boastful yet empty profession.[1] As regards the second
objection, that He should have put forth his anger on a tree, the real objection
lying at the root of this in many minds oftentimes is, that He should have put
forth his anger at all; that God should ever show Himself as a punishing God;
that there should be any such thing as “the wrath of the Lamb,” as the having to
give account of advantages, as a day of doom. But seeing that such things are,
how needful that men should not forget it: yet they might have forgot it, as far
as the teaching of the miracles went, but for this one—all the others being
miracles of help and of healing. And even the severity of this, with what mercy
was it tempered! Christ did not, like Moses and Elijah, make the assertion of
God’s holiness and his hatred of evil at the cost of many lives, but only at the
cost of a single unfeeling tree. His miracles of mercy were unnumbered, and on
men; his miracle of judgment was but one, and on a tree.[2] But then, say some,
it was unjust to deal thus with a tree at all, which, being incapable of good or
of evil, was as little a fit object of blame as of praise, of punishment as
reward. But this very objection does, in truth, imply that it was not unjust,
that the tree was “a thing, which might therefore lawfully be used merely as a
means for ends lying beyond itself. Man is the prince of. creation, and all
things else are to serve him, and then rightly fulfil their subordinate uses
when they do serve him,—in their life or in their death,—yielding unto him
fruit, or warning him in a figure what shall be the curse and penalty of
unfruitfulness. Christ did not attribute moral responsibilities to the tree,
when He smote it because of its unfruitfulness, but He did attribute to it a
fitness for representing moral qualities.[3] All our language concerning trees,
a good tree, a bad tree, a tree which ought to bear, is the same continual
transfer to them of moral qualities, and a witness for the natural fitness of
the Lord’s language,—the language indeed of an act, rather than of words. By his
word, however (Luk 13:6-9),[4] He had already in some sort prepared his
disciples for understanding and interpreting his act; and the not unfrequent use
of this very symbol in the O. T., as at Hos 9:10; Joe 1:7, must have likewise
assisted them here.

But, conceding all this, it may still be objected, Do not those words of St.
Mark, “for the time of figs was not yet” acquit the tree even of this figurative
guilt? Does not the fact thus mentioned defeat the symbol, and put it, so to
speak, in contradistinction with itself? does it not perplex us in Him, of whom
we claim above all things that highest reason should guide his every action,
that He should have looked for figs, when they could not have been found;—that
He should have been as though indignant, when He did not find them? The
simplest, and as it appears to me, the entirely satisfying, explanation of this
difficulty is the following. At that early period of the year, March or April,
neither leaves nor fruit were naturally to be looked for on a fig-tree (the
passages often quoted to the contrary not making out, as I think, their
point[5], nor in ordinary circumstances would any one have sought them there.
But that tree, by putting forth leaves, made pretension to be something more
than others, to have fruit upon it, seeing that in the fig-tree the fruit
appears before the leaves.[6] It, so to speak, vaunted itself to be in advance
of all the other trees, challenged the passer-by that he should come and refresh
himself from it. Yet when the Lord accepted its challenge, and drew near, it
proved to be but as the others, without fruit as they; for indeed, as the
Evangelist observes, the time of figs had not yet arrived,—its fault, if one may
use the word, lying in its pretension, in its making a show to run before the
rest, when it did not so indeed. It was condemned, not so much for having no
fruit, as that, not having fruit, it clothed itself abundantly with leaves, with
the foliage which, according to the natural order of the tree’s development,
gave pledge and promise that fruit should be found on it, if sought. And this
will then exactly answer to the sin of Israel, which under this tree was
symbolized,—that sin being, not so much that they were without fruit, as that
they boasted of so much. Their true fruit, as of any people before the
Incarnation, would have been to own that they had no fruit, that without Christ,
without the incarnate Son of God, they could do nothing; to have presented
themselves before God bare and naked and empty altogether. But this was exactly
what Israel refused to do. Other nations might have nothing to boast of, but
they by their own showing had much.[7] And yet on closer inspection, the
substance of righteousness was as much wanting on their part as anywhere among
the nations (Rom. ii.). And how should it have been otherwise ? “for the time of
figs was not yet;”—the time for the bare stock and stem of humanity to array
itself in bud and blossom, with leaf and fruit, had not come, till its
engrafting on the nobler stock of the true Man. All which anticipated this,
which seemed to say that it could be anything, or do anything, otherwise than in
Him and by Him, was deceptive and premature. The other trees had nothing, but
they did not pretend to have anything; this tree had nothing, but it gave out
that it had much. So was it severally with Gentile and with Jew. The Gentiles
were empty of all fruits of righteousness, but they owned it; the Jews were
empty, but they vaunted that they were full. The Gentiles were sinners, but they
hypocrites and pretenders to boot, and by so much farther from the kingdom of
God, and more nigh unto a curse.[8] Their guilt was not that they had not the
perfect fruits of faith, for the time of such was not yet; but that, not having,
they so boastfully gave out that they had: their condemnation was, not that they
were not healed, but that, being unhealed, they counted themselves whole. The
law would have done its work, the very work for which God ordained it, if it had
stripped them of these boastful leaves, or rather had hindered them from ever
putting them forth.

Here then, according to this explanation, there is no difficulty either in the
Lord’s going to the tree at that unseasonable time,—He would not have gone, but
for those deceitful leaves which announced that fruit was there,—nor in the
(symbolic) punishment of the unfruitful tree at a season of the year when,
according to the natural order, it could not have had any. It was punished not
for being without fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those leaves that
it had such; not for being barren, but for being false. And this was the guilt
of Israel, a guilt so much deeper than the guilt of the nations. The attentive
study of the Epistle to the Romans supplies the key to the right understanding
of this miracle; such passages especially as 2:3, 17-27; 10:3, 4, 21; 11:7, 10.
Nor should that remarkable parallel, “And all the trees of the field shall know
that I the Lord have dried up the green tree, and made the dry tree to flourish”
(Eze 17:24), be left out of account.[9] And then the sentence, “No man eat fruit
of thee hereafter for ever,” will be just the reversal of the promise that in
them all nations of the earth should be blessed—the symbolic counterstroke to
the ratification of the Levitical priesthood through the putting forth, by
Aaron’s rod, of bud and blossom and fruit in a night (Num 17:8). Henceforth the
Jewish synagogue is stricken with a perpetual barrenness;[10] it once was
everything, but now it is nothing, to the world; it stands apart, like “a thing
forbid;” what little it has, it communicates to none; the curse has come upon
it, that no man henceforward shall eat fruit of it for ever.[11] And yet this
“for ever” has its merciful limitation, when we come to transfer the curse from
the tree to that of which the tree was as a living parable; a limitation which
the word itself favours and allows; which lies hidden in it, to be revealed in
due time. None shall eat fruit of that tree to the end of the present aeon, not
until these “times of the Gentiles” are fulfilled. A day indeed will come when
Israel, which now says, “I am a dry tree,” shall consent to that word of its
true Lord, which of old it denied. “From Me is thy fruit found” (Hos 14:8), and
shall be arrayed with the richest foliage and fruit of all the trees of the
field. The Lord, in his great discourse upon the last things (Matthew 24),
implies this, when He gives this commencing conversion of the Jews under the
image of the re-clothing of the bare and “withered fig-tree with leaf and bud,
as the sign of the breaking in of the new aeon, which He does, saying, “Now
learn a parable of the fig-tree. When his branch is yet tender, and putteth
forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: so likewise ye, when ye shall see all
these things, know that it is near, even at the doors” (ver. 32, 33).

It would appear from St. Matthew that some beginnings of the threatened
withering began to show themselves, almost as soon as the word of the Lord was
spoken; a shuddering fear may have run through all the leaves of the tree, which
was thus stricken at its heart. But it was not till the next morning, as the
disciples returned, that they took note of the utter perishing of the tree,
which had followed upon that word spoken, so that it was “dried up from the
roots,” and they then called their Lord’s attention to the same: “Master,
behold, the fig-tree which Thou cursedst is withered away” He will not let the
occasion go by without its further lesson. What He had done, they might do the
same and more. Faith in God would place them in relation with the same power
which He wielded, so that they might do mightier things even than this at which
they marvelled so much.

Footnotes

[1] Augustine (Quaest. Evang. ii. 51): Non enim omne quod fingimus mendacium
est: sed quando id fingimus, quod nihil significat, tunc est mendacium. Cum
autem fictio nostra refertur ad aliquam significationem, non est mendacium, sed
aliqua figura veritatis. Alioquin omnia quae a sapientibus et sanctis viris, vel
etiam ab ipso Domino figurate dicta sunt, mendacia deputabuntur, quia secundum
usitatum intellectum non subsistit veritas talibus dictis.... Sicut autem dicta,
ita etiam facta finguntur sine mendacio ad aliquam rem significandam; unde est
etiam illud Domini quod in fici arbore quaesivit fructum eo tempore, quo ilia
poma nondum essent. Non enim dubium est illam inquisitionem non fuisse veram;
quivis enim hominum sciret, si non divinitate, vel tempore, poma illam arborem
non habere. Fictio igitur quae ad aliquam veritatem refertur, figura est; quae
non refertur, mendacium est. Cf. Serm. lxxxix. 4-6: Quaerit intelligentem, non
facit errantem.

[2] Hilary (Comm. in Matt, in loc.): In eo quidem bonitatis Dominicae argumentum
reperiemus. Nam ubi offerre voluit procuratae a se salutis exemplum, virtutis
suae potestatem in humanis corporibus exercuit: spem futurorum et animae salutem
curis praesentium segritudinum commendans:... nunc vero, ubi in contumaces
formam severitatis constituebat, futuri speciem damno arboris indicavit, ut
infidelitatis periculum, sine detrimento eorum in quorum redemptionem venerat,
doceretur. Thus, too, Grotius: Clementissimus Dominus, quum innumeris miraculis
sua in nos aeterna beneficia figurasset, severitatem judicii, quod infrugiferos
homines manet, uno duntaxat signo, idque non in homine, sed in non sensurâ,
arbore, adumbravit; ut certi essemus bonorum operum sterilitatem gratiae
foecundantis ademptione puniri. Theophylact brings out in the same way the
ϕιλανθρωπία of this miracle: ξηραίνει oὖν τὸ δένδρον‚ ἵνα σωϕρονίσῃ ἀνθρώπους

[3] Witsius (Meletem. Leiden, p. 414) expresses this excellently well: At quid
tandem commisit infelix arbor, ob quam rem tarn inopinato mulctaretur exitio? Si
verborum proprietatem sectemur, omnino nihil. Creaturae enim rationis expertes,
uti virtutis ac vitii, ita et praemii ac poenae, proprie et stricte loquentes,
incapaces sunt. Potest tamen in creaturis istis aliquid existere, quod,
analogicâ, et symbolicâ quâdam ratione, et vitio et poenae respondeat. Defectus
fructuum in arbore cseteroquin generosa, succulentâ, bene plantatâ, frondosâ,
multa pollicente, symbolice respondet vitio animi degenerantis, luxuriosi,
ingrati, simulati, superbi, verâ, tamen virtute destituti; subitanea arboris ex
imprecatione Christi arefactio, quâ tollitur quidquid in arbore videbatur esse
boni, analogiam quandam habet cum justissimâ Christi vindictâ, qua, in eos
animadvertit, qui benignitate sua, abutuntur. Quemadmodum igitur peccata ista
hominum vere merentur poenam, ita κατ᾿ ἀναλογίαν dici potest, arborem, ita uti
descripsimus comparatam, mereri exitium.

[4] It is very noticeable that the only times that the fig-tree appears
prominently in the N. T., it appears as the symbol of evil; here and at Luk
13:6. Isidore of Pelusium (in Cramer, Catena, in loc.) refers to the old
tradition, that it was the tree of temptation in Paradise. For traditions of
impurity connected with it, see Tertullian, De Pudicit. 6. Buffon calls it arbre
indecent; for explanation of which see a learned note in Sepp, Leben Jesu, vol.
iii. p. 225, seq. Bernard (In Cant. Serm. lx. 3): Maledicit ficulneae pro eo
quod non invenit in eâ fructum. Bene ficus, quae bonâ licet Patriarcharum radice
prodierit, numquam tamen in altum proficere, numquam se humo attollere voluit,
numquam respondere radici proceritate ramorum, generositate florum, foecunditate
fructuum. Male prorsus tibi cum tua radice convenit, arbor pusilla, tortuosa,
nodosa. Radix enim sancta. Quid ea dignum tuis apparet in ramis? The Greek
proverbial expressions, σύκινος ἀνήρ, a poor strengthless man, συκίνη ἐπικουρία,
unhelpful help, supply further parallels.

[5] Moreover all explanations which go to prove that, according to the natural
order of things, there might have been in Palestine, even at this early time of
the year, figs on that tree, either winter figs which had survived till spring,
or the early figs of spring themselves,—all these, ingenious as they often are,
yet seem to me beside the point. For, whether they prove this point or not, they
shatter upon that οὐ γὰρ ἦν καιρὸς σύκων of St. Mark; from which it is plain
that no such calculation of probabilities brought the Lord thither, but those
abnormal leaves, which He had a right to count would have been accompanied with
abnormal fruit. In four or five ingenious ways it has been sought to make these
words not to mean that which they bear upon their front that they do mean, and
so to disencumber the passage of difficulties with which it seems laden. The
worst is that which places a note of interrogation after ούκων, and makes the
sacred historian to burst out in an exclamation of wonder at the barrenness of
the fig-tree,—” For was it not the time of figs?” But this sort of passionate
narration—supplying the reader with his feelings ready-made, his wonder, his
abhorrence, his admiration—is that the uniform absence of which is one of the
very most striking features of the Gospel story. Scarcely better, though
certainly more ingenious, is Daniel Heinsius’ suggestion, which has found favour
with Knatchbull, Gataker, and others. His help is in a different pointing and
accenting of the passage, as thus, οὗ γὰρ ἦν‚ καιρὸς σύκων, “For where He was,
it was the season of Jigs”—in the mild climate of Judaea, where, as we know, the
fruits of the earth ripened nearly a month earlier than in Galilee. But MSS. and
ancient Versions give not the least support; and to express ibi loci by οὗ γὰρ
ἦν is as awkward and forced as well can be. Deyling (Obss. Sac. vol. iii. p.
277) is better. He makes οὐ = οὔπω), and καιρός = tempus colligendi fructus, the
time for the gathering the figs. The harvest had not yet swept away the crop;
therefore the Lord could reasonably have looked for fruit upon the tree; and the
“words will be an explanation, not of the words “He found nothing but leaves,”
immediately going before, but of his earlier-mentioned going to the tree,
expecting to find fruit thereon. This explanation has Kuinoel, Wetstein, and
others upon its side. The remoteness of the words to which this clause will
refer is not a fatal objection, for similar instances might be adduced from St.
Mark, as 16:3, 4, and 12:12, where the words, “for they knew that He had spoken
against them,” are an explanation of the fact that they sought to lay hold on
Him, not of their fearing the people. But καιρὸς τῶν καρπῶν (Mat 21:34; cf. Luk
20:10), on which the upholders of this scheme greatly rely, means the time of
the ripe fruits, not the time of the ingathered. That, however, which has found
more favour than any of these, and which Hammond, D’Outrein, and many more have
embraced, would make καιρός = καιρὸς εὔϕορος, and would understand St. Mark to
be saying, It was an unfavourable season for figs. A very old, although almost
unnoticed, reading, ὁ γὰρ καιρὸς οὐκ ἦν σύκων, would be still more favourable to
this explanation. But we want some example of καιρός alone being used as =
καιρὸς εὔϕορος, for Mat 13:30, Luk 20:10, which are sometimes adduced, do not
satisfy. Conscious of this, Olshausen and a writer in the Theol. Stud, und Krit.
1843, p. 131, seq., have slightly modified this view. These do not make καιρός
exactly “season,” since the season for the chief crop, whether good or bad, had
not yet arrived, and therefore there would be no room for expressing a judgment
about it; but they take it in the sense of weather, temperature; καιρός= tempus
opportunum. If there had been favourable weather, at once moist and warm, there
would have been figs on the tree; not indeed the general crop, but the ficus
praecox (see Pliny, H. N. xv. 19), the early spring fig, which was counted an
especial delicacy (“the figs that are first ripe,” Jer 24:2), and of which
Isaiah speaks (xxviii. 4) as “the hasty fruit before the summer, which when he
that looketh upon it seeth, while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up” (cf.
Hos 9:10); or if not these, the late winter fig, which Shaw mentions (Winer,
Realwörterbuch, s. v. Feigenbaum) as first ripening after the tree has lost its
leaves, and hanging on the tree, in a mild season, into the spring. For this use
of καιρός as favourable weather a passage much to the point has been cited from
the Hecuba of Euripides— Οὔκουν δεινὸν‚ εἰ γῆ μὲν κακὴ‚ Τυχοῦσα καιροῦ θεόθεν‚
εὖ στάχυν ϕέρει‚ Χρηστὴ δ᾿‚ ἁμαρτοῦσ᾿ ὧν χρεὼν αὐτὴν τυχεῖν‚ Κακὸν δίδωσι
καρπόν. Upon this Matthise says: Quum καιρός ornnia complectatur, quae alicui
rei opportuna et consentanea sunt, hoc loco proprie significat omnia ea, quae
agris, ut fructus ferant, accommodata sunt, ut pluviam, coeli commodam
temperiem, quo sensu accepisse Euripidem ex adjecto θεόθεν patet. Yet allowing,
all this, there is a long step between it and proving καιρὸς σύκων to be =
tempus opportunum ficis. The great advantage of the exposition given in the text
is, that it requires, no violence to be done to the words, but takes them in
that sense in which every one, but for difficulties which seem to follow, would
take them. See Sir T. Browne, Obss. upon Plants mentioned in Scripture, —Works,
vol. iv. pp. 162-167.) [6] Pliny (H. N. xvi. 49): Ei demum serius folium
nascitur quam pomum.

[7] It is not a little remarkable that it was with the fig-leaves that in
Paradise Adam attempted to deny his nakedness, and to present himself as. other
than a sinner before God (Gen 3:7).

[8] Witsius (Meletem. Leiden, p. 415): Folia sunt jactatio legis, templi,
cultus, caerimoniarum, pietatis denique et sanctimoniae, quarum se specie valde
efferebant. Fructus sunt resipiscentia, fides, sanctitas, quibus carebant.

[9] It is possible, and some have thought, that our Lord has another allusion to
what here He had done in those words of his, “If they do these things in a green
tree, what shall be done in the dry?” (Luk 23:31); if God so dealt with Him, “a
green tree,” full of sap, full of life, if He thus bruised and put Him to grief,
how should He deal with Israel after the flesh, “the dry” tree, withered and
dried up under the power of that curse which had been spoken against it?

[10] Witsius (Meletem. Leiden, p. 415): Parabolica ficus maledictio
“significavit, futurum esse ut populus Israeliticus, justâ Dei indigo natione,
omni vigore et succo spiritualis foecunditatis privetur, et quia fructus bonorum
operum proferre isthoc tempore noluit, dein nec possit. Ac yeluti maledictionis
sententiam ficus arefactio protinus excepit, sic et Judaeorum natio, mox post
spretum proterve Messiam, exaruit.

[11] Augustine brings out often and very strikingly the figurative character of
this miracle;—though, with most other expositors, he misses what seems to me the
chief stress of this tree’s (symbolic) guilt, and that which drew on it the
curse, namely, its running before its time, and by its leaves proclaiming it had
fruit, when its true part and that which the season would have justified, would
have been to present itself with neither. He, in the following quotations,
otherwise so admirable, makes its real barrenness, contrasted with its pomp of
leaves, to be the stress of its fault, putting out of sight the untimeliness of
those leaves and of that pretence of fruit, which is the most important element
in the whole. Thus Serm. lxxvii. 5: Etiam ipsa quae a Domino facta sunt, aliquid
significantia erant, quasi verba, si dici potest, visibilia et aliquid
significantia. Quod maxime apparet in eo quod praeter tempus poma quaesivit in
arbore, et quia non invenit, arbori maledicens aridam fecit. Hoc factum nisi
figuratum accipiatur, stultum invenitur; primo quaesisse poma in ilia, arbore,
quando tempus non erat ut essent in ullâ arbore: deinde si pomorum. jam tempus
esset, non habere poma quae culpa arboris esset ? Sed quia significabat,
quaerere se non solum folia, sed et fructum, id est, non solum verba, sed et
facta hominum, arefaciendo ubi sola folia invenit, significavit eorum poenam,
qui loqui bona possunt, facere bona nolunt. Cf. Serm. xcviii. 3: Christus
nesciebat, quod rusticus sciebat? quod noverat arboris cultor, non noverat
arboris creator? Cum ergo esuriens poma quaesivit in arbore, significavit se
aliquid esurire, et aliquid aliud quaerere; et arborem illam sine fructu foliis
plenam reperit, et maledixit; et aruit. Quid arbor fecerat fructum non
afferendo? Quae culpa arboris infecunditas? Sed sunt qui fructum voluntate dare
non possunt. Illorum est culpa sterilitas, quorum fecunditas est voluntas. Cf.
Con. Faust, xxii. 25.


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  CHAPTER 40: 40-32. THE HEALING OF MALCHUS' EAR
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32. The Healing of Malchus’ Ear Luk 22:49; Luk 22:51 The blow struck by a
disciple, who would fain have fought for his Master, that He should not be
delivered to the Jews, is recorded by all four Evangelists (Mat 26:51; Mark
14:47; Luk 22:50; John 18:10); but the miracle belongs only to St. Luke, for he
only tells how the Lord made good the injury which his disciple had inflicted,
touched and restored the ear which he had cut off. It is possible that a double
interest may have specially moved this Evangelist to include in his narrative
this work of grace and power. As a physician, this cure, the only one of its
kind which we know of our Lord’s performing, the only miraculous healing of a
wound inflicted by external violence, would attract his special attention. And
then, further, nothing lay nearer to his heart, or cohered more intimately with
the purpose of his Gospel, than the portraying of the Lord on the side of his
gentleness, his mercy, his benignity; and of all these there was an eminent
manifestation in this gracious work wrought on behalf of one who was in arms
against his life. The sacred historian, no doubt, knew very well, though he did
not think good to set it down in his narrative, whose hand it was that struck
this blow;—whether that the deed might still have brought him into trouble,
though this appears an exceedingly improbable explanation, or from some other
cause. The earlier Evangelists preserve a like silence on this head, and are
content with generally designating him,—St. Matthew as “one of them who were
with Jesus,” St. Mark as “one of them which stood by.” And it is only from St.
John that we learn, what perhaps otherwise we might have guessed, but could not
certainly have known, that it was Peter who struck this only blow stricken in
defence of the Lord. He also alone gives us the name of the High Priest’s
servant who was wounded; “the servant’s name was Malchus.” It is in entire
consistency with all else which we read, that this fact, though unknown to the
other Evangelists, should have come within the circle of St. John’s knowledge,
who had, in some way that is not explained to us, acquaintance with the High
Priest (John 18:15), and so accurate a knowledge of the constitution of his
household as that he was aware that one of those, who later in the night
provoked Peter to his denial of Christ, was kinsman of him whose ear Peter had
cut off (ver. 26). The whole incident is singularly characteristic; the
word-bearer for the rest of the Apostles proves, when occasion requires, the
sword-bearer also—not indeed in this altogether of a different temper from the
others, but showing himself prompter and more daring in action than them all.
While they are inquiring, “Lord, shall we smite with the sword?” perplexed
between the natural instinct of defence and love to their perilled Lord, on the
one side, and his precepts that they should not resist the evil, on the
other,—he waits not for the answer; but impelled by the natural courage of his
heart,[1] and taking no heed of the odds against him, aims a blow at one,
probably the foremost of the band, the first that was daring to lay profane
hands on the sacred person of his Lord. This was “a servant of the High Priest”
one therefore who, according to the proverb, “like master like man,” may very
probably have been especially forward in this bad work,—himself a Caiaphas of a
meaner stamp. Peter was not likely to strike with other than a right goodwill;
and no doubt the blow was intended to cleave down the aggressor; though by God’s
good providence the stroke was turned aside, and grazing the head at which it
was aimed, but still coming down with sheer descent, cut off the ear,—the “right
ear” as St. Luke and St. John tell us,—of the assailant, who thus hardly escaped
with his life. The words with which our Lord rebuked the untimely zeal[2] of his
disciple are differently given by different Evangelists, or rather they have
each given a different portion, each one enough to indicate the spirit in which
all was spoken. St. Matthew records them most at length (xxvi. 52-54); while St.
Luke passes them over altogether. That moment of uttermost confusion might seem
unsuitable for so long a discourse, indeed hardly to have given room for it. We
shall best suppose that while the healing of Malchus was proceeding, and all
were watching and wondering, the Lord spoke these quieting words to his
disciples. Possibly too his captors, who had feared resistance or attempts at
rescue on the part of his followers, now that they found his words to be words
prohibiting aught of the kind, may have been most willing to suffer Him to speak
unhindered. To Peter, and in him to all the other disciples, He says: “Put up
again thy sword into his place; for all they that take the sword shall perish by
the sword.” Christ, joining together the taking of the sword and the perishing
by the sword, refers, no doubt, to the primal law, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood,
by man shall his blood be shed” (Gen 9:6; cf. Rev 13:10). The words have been
sometimes wrongly understood, as though the Lord were pacifying Peter with
considerations such as these, “There is no need for thee to assume the task of
punishing these violent men: they have taken the sword, and by the just judgment
of God they will perish by the sword.”[3] But the warning against taking the
sword connects itself so closely with the command, “Put up again thy sword into
his place,” and the meaning of the verse following (Mat 26:53) is so plainly,
“Thinkest thou that I need a feeble help like thine, when, instead of you,
twelve weak trembling men, inexpert in war, I might even now at this latest
moment pray to my Father, and He will presently give Me[4] more than twelve
legions[5] of Angels to fight on my behalf?”[6]—that all the ingenuity which
Grotius and others use, and it is much, to recommend the other interpretation,
cannot persuade to its acceptance. This mention of the “twelve legions of
Angels,” whom it was free to Him to summon to his aid, brings the passage into
striking relation with 2Ki 6:17. A greater than Elisha is here, and thus
speaking would open the spiritual eye of his troubled disciple, and show him the
mount of God, full of chariots and. horses of fire, armies of heaven which are
camping round his Lord, and whom a beck from Him would bring forth, to the utter
discomfiture of his enemies. “But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled,
that thus it must be?” The temptation to claim the assistance, of that heavenly
host,—supposing Him to have felt the temptation,—is quelled in an instant; for
how then should that eternal purpose, that will of God, of which Scripture was
the outward expression, “that thus it must be,” have then been fulfilled? (cf.
Zec 13:7). In St. John the same entire subordination of his own will to his
Father’s, which must hinder Him from claiming this unsesonable help, finds its
utterance under another image; “The cup which my Father hath given Me, shall I
not drink it?” This language is frequent in Scripture, resting on the image of
some potion which, however bitter, must yet be drained. Besides Mat 20:22-23;
Mat 26:39, where the cup is one of holy suffering, there is often, especially in
the O. T., mention of the cup of God’s anger (Isa 51:17; Isa 51:22; Psa 11:6;
Psa 75:8; Jer 25:15; Jer 25:17; Jer 49:12; Lam 4:21; Rev 14:10; Rev 16:19); in
every case the cup being one from which flesh and blood shrinks back, which a
man would fain put away from his lips, though a moral necessity in the case of
the godly, and a physical in that of the ungodly, will not suffer it to be thus
put aside. The words that follow, “Suffer ye thus far,” are to be accepted as
addressed still to the disciples: “Hold now;[7] thus far ye have gone in
resistance, but let it be no further; no more of this.” The other explanation,
which makes them to have been spoken by the Lord to those into whose hands He
had come, that they should bear with Him till He had accomplished the cure, has
nothing to recommend it. Having thus checked the too forward zeal of his
disciples, and now carrying out into act his own precept, “Love your enemies, do
good to them that hate you,” He touched the ear of the wounded man, “and healed
him.” Peter and the rest meanwhile, after this brief flash of a carnal courage,
forsook their divine Master, and, leaving Him in the hands of his enemies,
fled,—the wonder of the crowd at that gracious work of the Lord, or the tumult,
with the darkness of the night, or these both together, favouring their escape;

Footnotes [1] Josephus characterizes the Galilaeans as μαχίμους.

[2] Modern expositors are sometimes much too hard upon this deed of Peter’s;
Calvin, for instance: Stulto suo zelo Petrus gravem infamiam magistro suo
ejusque doctrinae inusserat, —with much more in this tone. The wisest word upon
the matter (and on its O. T. parallel, Exo 2:1-2) is to be found in Augustine,
Con. Faust, xxii. 70. He keeps as far from this unmeasured rebuke as from the
extravagance of Romish expositors, who exalt and magnify this act as one of a
holy and righteous indignation; liken it to the act of Phinehas (Num 25:7) by
which he won the high priesthood for his family for ever. Leo the Great (Serm.
l. 4) had here already led the way: Nam et beatus Petrus, qui animosiore
constantiâ Domino cohaerebat, et contra violentorum impetus fervore sanctae
caritatis exarserat, in servum principis sacerdotum usus est gladio, et aurem
viri ferocius instantis abscidit. Another finds in the words of the Lord, “Put
up thy sword into his place,” a sanction for the wielding of the civil sword by
the Church; for, as he bids us note, Christ does not say, “Put away thy sword;”
but “Put up thy sword into his place,”—that is, “Keep it in readiness to draw
forth again, when the right occasion shall arrive.” Tertullian, in an opposite
extreme, concludes from these words that the military service is always unlawful
for the Christian (Be Idolol. 19); Omnem militem Dominus in Petro exarmando
discinxit.

[3] Thus Grotius: Noli, Petre, considerations ejus quæ mihi infertur injuriæ
concitatior, Deo præripere ultionem. Levia enim sunt vulnera quæ a te pati
possunt. Stat enim rata sententia, crudeles istos et sanguinarios, etiam te
quiescente, gravissimas Deo daturas pœnas suo sanguine. This interpretation is a
good deal older than Grotius. It is, I think, Chrysostom’s; and Euthymius sees,
in these words a προϕητεία τῆς διαϕθορᾶς τῶν ἐπελθόντων αὐτῷ Ἰουδαίων.

[4] Καὶ παραστήσει μοι = et servitio meo sistet (Rom 6:19; Rom 12:1).

[5] The phrase is remarkable, when connected with the expression πλῆθος στρατιᾶς
οὐρανίου (Luk 2:13), and some other similar language. Without falling in with
the dreams of the Areopagite, we may see here intimations of a hierarchy in
heaven. Bengel: Angeli in suos numeros et ordines divisi sunt.

[6] Jerome: Non indigeo duodecim Apostolorum auxilio, qui possum habere duodecim
legiones angelici exercitûs. Maldonatus: Mihi quidem verosimile videtur Christum
angelos non militibus, sed discipulis opponere, qui duodecim erant, ac propterea
duodecim non plures nec pauciores legiones nominâsse, ut indicaret posse se pro
duodecim hominibus duodecim legiones habere. The fact that the number of
Apostles who were even tempted to draw sword in Christ’s behalf was, by the
apostasy of Judas, reduced now to eleven, need not remove us from this
interpretation. The Lord contemplates them in their ideal completeness; for it
was no accident, but rested on a deep fitness, that they were twelve, and
neither fewer nor more. He does the same, saying in another place, "Ye shall sit
upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel" Mat 19:28; cf. Luk
22:30)—when, in like manner, it was not Judas, but his. successor, that should
occupy a throne [7] A comma should find place after ἐᾶτε.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 41: 41-33. THE SECOND MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES
========================================================================

33. The Second Miraculous Draught of Fishes

John 21:1-23

It almost seemed as though St. John’s Gospel had found its solemn completion in
the words (ver. 30, 31) with which the preceding chapter ended; so that this
chapter appears, and probably is, in the exactest sense of the word, a
postscript, —something which the beloved Apostle, after he had made an end,
thought it important not to leave untold; which he may have added, perhaps, at
the request of his disciples, who, having often heard delightedly the narrative
from his own lips, desired that before his departure he should set it down, that
the Church might be enriched with it for ever.[1] Or, if we call John 1:1-14 the
prologue, this we might style the epilogue, of his Gospel. As that set forth
what the Son of God was before He came from the Father, even so this, in
mystical and prophetic guise, how He should rule in the world after He had
returned to the Father.

It was upon the sea of Galilee that this appearance of Christ to his disciples,
with the miracle which accompanied it, took place. There “Jesus showed [2]
Himself again to the disciples.” Doubtless there is a significance in the words,
“showed Himself,” or “manifested Himself,” which many long ago observed,—no
other than this, that his body after the resurrection was only visible by a
distinct act of his will. From that time the disciples did not, as before, see
Jesus, but Jesus appeared unto, or was seen by, them. It is not for nothing that
the language is changed, or that in language of this kind all his appearances
after the resurrection are related (Luk 24:34; Acts 13:31; 1Co 15:5-8). It is
the same with Angels and all heavenly manifestations. Men do not see them; such
language would be inappropriate; but they appear to men (Jdg 6:12; Jdg 13:3; Jdg
13:10; Jdg 13:21; Mat 17:3; Luk 1:11; Luk 22:43; Acts 2:3; Acts 7:2; Acts 16:9;
Acts 26:16); are only visible to those for whose sakes they are vouchsafed, and
to whom they are willing to show themselves. [3] Those to whom this
manifestation was vouchsafed were Simon Peter, Thomas, and Nathanael, James and
John, and two other disciples that are not named. It makes something for the
current opinion that the Nathanael of St. John is the Bartholomew of the other
Evangelists, thus to find him named not after, but in the midst of, some of the
very chiefest Apostles. Who were the two unnamed disciples cannot, of course, be
known. They too were not improbably Apostles, “disciples” in the most eminent
sense of the word;[4] Lightfoot supposes that they were Andrew and Philip. The
announcement of Peter, “I go a-fishing” is not, as has been strangely supposed,
a declaration that he has lost his hope in Jesus as the Messiah, has renounced
his apostleship, and now returns to his old occupations, there being no nobler
work for him in store. A teacher in that new kingdom which his Lord had set up,
he is acting now in the wise manner of the Jewish Rabbis, who were wont to have
a manual trade, on which to fall back in the time of need. What good service St.
Paul’s skill in making tents did him is well known (2Th 3:8). Probably also they
found it healthful to their own minds, to have some outward occupation for which
to exchange at times their spiritual employments. In these words of St. Peter
there lay a challenge to the old companions of his toil, which is alone accepted
by them: “They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered
into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing.” It was with them
now, as it had been with the chiefest among them on a prior occasion (Luk 5:5).
Already a dim feeling may have risen, up in their minds that this night was a
spiritual counterpart of that other; and as that was followed by a glorious day,
and by their first installation in their great work as “fishers of men,” this
present ill-success of theirs may have had its part in preparing their spirits
for that wondrous glimpse which should now be given them, of what that work, and
what its reward, should be. Had it been, however, more than the -obscurest
presentiment, they would have been more quick to recognize their Lord, when with
the early dawn He “stood, on the shore.” But their eyes were holden; “the
disciples knew not that it was Jesus;” He was to them but as a stranger, an
early traveller, it might be, upon the shores of the lake. And in the language
of such He addressed them; “Children, have ye any meat?” Chrysostom singularly
enough supposes that He puts this question as one that would purchase from them
of the fruit of their night’s toil, if such they had to dispose of: but rather,
I should imagine, as with that natural and friendly interest, not unmixed with
curiosity, which almost all take in the results of toils which are proverbially
uncertain in their issue; which are now utterly without result, now crowned with
largest success. “They answered Him, No.” The purpose of the question was to
draw forth this acknowledgment from their lips; for in small things as well as
great, in natural as well as spiritual, it is well that there should go first
the confessions of man’s poverty before there come, in the riches of God’s
bounty and grace.

“And He said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall
find” And they, not accepting it for more than the counsel of a kind and, it
might be, a skilful stranger, were obedient to his word: “They cast therefore,
and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes.” But this is
enough; there is one disciple at least, “that disciple whom Jesus loved,” who
can no longer doubt with whom they have to do. That other occasion, when at the
bidding of their future Lord they enclosed so great a multitude of fishes that
their net brake, rose clear before his eyes. It is the same Lord, in whose
presence now they stand. And he says, not yet to all, but to Peter, to him with
whom he stood in nearest fellowship, who had best right to be first made
partaker of the discovery, “It is the Lord.” Each Apostle comes wonderfully put
in his proper character:[5] he of the eagle eye first detects the presence of
the Beloved; and then Peter, the foremost ever in act, as John is profoundest in
speculation, unable to wait till the ship shall touch the land, throws himself
into the sea, that he may find himself the sooner at his Saviour’s feet (Mat
14:28). He was before “naked,” stripped, that is, for labour, wearing only the
tunic, or garment close to the skin, and having put off his upper and
superfluous garments;[6] for “naked” means no more, and is continually used in
this sense; but now he girded himself with his fisher’s coat,[7] as counting it
unseemly to appear without it in the presence of his Lord.[8] Some have supposed
that he walked on the sea; but we have no right to multiply miracles, and the
words, “cast himself into the sea,” do not warrant this. Rather, he swam and
waded to the shore,[9] which was not distant more than about “two hundred
cubits,” [10] that is, about one hundred yards. The other disciples followed
more slowly; for they were encumbered with the net and its weight of fishes.
This, having renounced the hope of lifting it into the boat, they dragged[11]
after them in the water, toward the land. “As soon then as they were come to
land, they saw a fire of coals, and fish laid thereon, and bread”—by what
ministry, natural or miraculous, has been often inquired; but we can only leave
this undetermined as we find it. “Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which
ye have now caught” These shall be added to those already preparing. [12] Peter,
again the foremost, drew up the net, which was fastened, no doubt, to the ship,
oh the beach. The very number of the fish it contained, “an hundred and fifty
and three” is mentioned, with also the remarkable circumstance, that although
they were so many and so large,—”great fishes,”—yet, differently from that
former occasion (Luk 5:6), the net was not broken by their weight, nor by their
struggles to escape.

It is well nigh incredible that all this should have happened, or should have
been recorded for us at once with this emphasis and this minuteness of detail,
had the meaning which is ostensible and on the surface been the only one which
it contained. There must be more here than meets the eye—an allegorical, or more
truly a symbolic, meaning underlying the literal. Nor is this very hard to
discover. Without pledging myself for every detail of Augustine’s
interpretation,[13] it yet commends itself to me as in the main worthy of all
acceptance. He puts this miraculous draught of fishes in relation of likeness
and unlikeness with the other before the resurrection, and sees in that earlier,
the figure of the Church as it now is, and as it now gathers its members from
the world; in this later the figure of the Church as it shall be in the end of
the world, with the great incoming, the great sea-harvest of souls, which then
shall find place.[14] On that first occasion the future fishers of men were not
particularly bidden to cast the net on the right hand or on the left; for, had
Christ said to the right, it would have implied that none should be taken but
the good,—if to the left, that only the bad; while yet in the present mixed
condition of the Church, both bad and good are enclosed in the nets; but now He
says, “Cast the net on the right side of the ship,” implying that now all who
are taken should be good.[15] Then the nets were broken with the multitude of
fishes, so that all were not secured which once were within them;—and what are
the schisms and divisions of the present condition of the Church, but rents and
holes through which numbers, that impatiently bear the restraints of the net,
break away from it?—but now, in the end of time, “for all there were so many,
yet was not the net broken.” On that first occasion the fish were brought into
the ship, itself still tossed on the unquiet sea, even as men in the present
time who are taken for Christ are brought into the Church, still itself exposed
to the world’s tempests; but here the nets are drawn up to land, to the safe and
quiet shore of eternity.[16] Then the ships were well nigh sunken with their
burden, for so is it with the ship of the Church,—encumbered with evil-livers
till it well nigh makes shipwreck altogether; but nothing of this is mentioned
here.[17] There it is merely mentioned that a great multitude were enclosed; but
here a definite number, even as the number of the elect is fixed and
preordained.[18] and there small fishes and great, for nothing to the contrary
is said; but here they are all “great,” for such shall all be that attain to
that kingdom, being equal to the Angels.[19] That which follows is obscure, and
without the key which the symbolical explanation supplies, would be obscurer
yet. What is the meaning of this meal which they found ready prepared for them
on the shore, with the Lord’s invitation that they should “come and dine”? For
Him, with his risen body, it was superfluous, and not needed by them, whose
dwellings were near at hand. But we must continue to see an undermeaning, and a
rich and deep one, in all this. As that large capture of fish was to them the
pledge and promise of a labour that should not be in vain,[20] so the meal, when
the labour was done, a meal of the Lord’s own preparing, and “upon the shore,”
was the symbol of the great festival in heaven with which, after their earthly
toil was over, He would refresh his servants, when He should cause them to sit
down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom. And as they were bidden
to. bring of their fish to that meal, so should the souls which they had taken
for life be their crown and rejoicing in that day, should help and contribute to
their gladness then.[21]

“And none of the disciples durst ask Him, Who art Thou? knowing that it was the
Lord” But if they knew, why should they have desired to make this inquiry, being
only hindered from that by the solemn fear and awe which was shed on them by his
presence? The words, as I take it, mean that none dared show so much of unbelief
and uncertainty as would have been involved in the question, “Who art Thou?”
There was shed over them such a mysterious awe, such a sense of the presence of
their beloved Master, witnessing for itself in the inmost depths of their
spirits, that, unusual and unlike as was his outward appearance to that
whereunto their eyes were accustomed, none of them, for all this, durst ask for
a clearer evidence that it was He, even though it would have been a satisfaction
to them to hear from his own lips that it was indeed Himself and no other.[22]
The most interesting conversation which follows hangs too closely upon this
miracle to be omitted. Christ has opened the eyes of his servants to the
greatness of their future work, given to them a prophetic glimpse of their
successful labour and their abundant reward; and He now declares to them the
sole conditions under which this work may be accomplished, and this reward
inherited. Love to Christ, and the unreserved yielding up of self to God—these
are the sole conditions, and all which follows is to teach this: so that the two
portions of the chapter are intimately connected, and together form a complete
whole. “So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas,
lovest thou Me more than these?’’ In that compellation, “Simon, son of Jonas,”
there was already that which must have wrung the Apostle’s heart. It was as
though his Lord would say to him, “Where is that name Peter, which I gave thee
(Mat 16:18; John 1:42)? where is the Rock, and the rock-like strength, which,
when most needed, I looked for in vain (Mat 26:69-75)? not therefore by that
name can I address thee now, but as flesh and blood, and the child of man; for
all that was higher in thee has disappeared. “We read of one of the Caliphs[23]
that “he used to give his principal officers an honourable sirname suited to
their qualities; when he wished to show his dissatisfaction, he used to drop it,
calling them by their own names; this caused them great alarm. When he resumed
the employment of the sirname, it was a sign of their return to favour.” This
passage helps us, I think, to enter into the significance of that “Simon, son of
Jonas” here. The question, “Lovest thou Me more than these?”[24] is a plain
allusion to Peter’s boasting speech, “Though all men shall be offended because
of Thee, yet will I never be offended” (Mat 26:33); as is evident from Peter’s
answer, wherein appealing to the Lord, the Searcher of hearts, that indeed he
loves Him, he no longer casts any slight by comparison on the love of his
fellow-disciples.[25] The main object of the Lord in his rejoinder, “Feed my
sheep,” “Feed my lambs,” is not to say, “Show then thy love in act.” but rather,
“I restore to thee thy apostolic function; this grace is thine, that thou shalt
yet be a chief shepherd of my flock.”[26] It implies, therefore, the fullest
forgiveness of the past, since none but the forgiven could rightly declare the
forgiveness of God. The question, “Lovest thou Me?”[27] is thrice repeated, that
by three solemn affirmations he may efface his three denials of his Lord.[28] At
last, upon the third repetition of the question, “Peter was grieved;” and with
yet more emphasis than before appeals to the omniscience of his Lord, whether it
was not true that indeed he loved Him: “Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou
knowest that I love Thee.”[29]

Many have denied that there is any ground for the distinction often drawn
between the two commissions, “Feed my sheep,” and “Feed my lambs.”[30] But to me
nothing seems more natural than that by “lambs” the Lord intended the more
imperfect Christians, the little children in Him; by the “sheep” the more
advanced, the “young men” and “fathers.”[31] The interpretation indeed is
groundless and trifling, made in the interests of Rome, as though the “lambs”
were the laity, and the “sheep” the clergy; and that here to Peter, and in him
to the Roman pontiffs, was given dominion over both. The commission should at
least have run, “Feed my sheep” “Feed my shepherds” if any such conclusions were
to be drawn from it, though an infinite deal would still require to be
assumed.[32] But “Feed my sheep” is not all. This life of labour is to be
crowned with a death of painfulness; such is the way, with its narrow and strait
gate, which even for a chief Apostle is the only one which leads to eternal
life. The Lord would show him beforehand what great things he must suffer for
his sake; for this is often his manner with his elect servants, with an Ezekiel
(iii. 25), with a Paul (Acts 21:11), and now with a Peter. “When thou wast
young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou
shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee,
and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.” A prophetic allusion is here made to
the crucifixion of Peter, St. John himself declaring that Jesus spake thus,
“signifying by what death he should glorify God;” and no reasonable grounds
exist for calling in question the tradition of the Church, that such was the
manner of Peter’s martyrdom.[33] Doubtless it is here obscurely intimated; but
this is of the very nature of prophecy, and there is quite enough in the
description to show that the Lord had this and no other manner of death in his
eye. The stretched-forth hands are the hands extended upon either side on the
transverse bar of the cross.[34] The girding by another is the binding to the
cross, the sufferer being not only fastened to the instrument of punishment with
nails, but also bound to it with cords.[35] It cannot be meant by the bearing
“whither thou wouldest not” that there should be any reluctancy on the part of
Peter to glorify God by his death, except indeed the reluctancy which there
always is in the flesh to suffering and pain; a reluctancy in his case,, as in
his Lord’s (cf. Mat 26:39), overruled by the higher willingness to do and to
suffer the perfect will of God. In this sense, as it was a violent death,—a
death which others chose for him,—a death from which flesh and blood would
naturally shrink, it was a carrying “whither he would not;”[36] though, in a
higher sense, as it was the way to a nearer vision of God, it was that toward
which he had all his life been striving; and then he was borne whither most he
would; and no word here implies that the exulting exclamation of another
Apostle, at the near approach of his martyrdom (2Ti 4:6-8), would not have
suited his lips just as well. The symbolical meaning which we have found in the
earlier portions of the chapter must not be excluded from this. To “gird
oneself” is ever in Scripture the sign and figure of promptness and an outward
activity (Exo 12:11; Luk 12:35; 1Pe 1:13; Ephes. 6:14); so that, in fact, Christ
is saying to Peter, “When thou wert young, thou actedst for Me; walking whither
thou wouldest, thou wert free to work for Me, and to choose thy field of work;
but when thou art old, thou shalt learn another, a higher and a harder lesson;
thou shalt suffer for Me; thou shalt no more choose thy work, but others shall
choose it for thee, and that work shall be the work of passion rather than of
action. “Such is the history of the Christian life, and not in Peter’s case
only, but such is its course and order in almost all of God’s servants. It is
begun in action, it is perfected in suffering. In the last, lessons are learned
which the first could never teach; graces exercised, which else would not at
all, or would only have very weakly, existed. Thus was it, for instance, with a
John Baptist. He begins with Jerusalem and all Judea flowing to him to listen to
his preaching; he ends with lying long, a seemingly forgotten captive, in the
dungeon of Machaerus. So was it with a St. Chrysostom. The chief cities of Asia
and Europe, Antioch and Constantinople, wait upon him with reverence and homage
while he is young, and he goes whither he would; but when he is old, he is borne
whither he would not, up and down, a sick and suffering exile. Thus should it be
also with this great Apostle. It was only in this manner that whatever of
self-will and self-choosing survived in him still, should be broken and
abolished, that he should be brought into an entire emptiness of self, a perfect
submission to the will of God.

He who has shown him the end, will also show him the way; for “when He had
spoken this, He saith unto him, Follow Me.” These words do more than merely
signify in a general way, “Be thou an imitator of Me.” Such an explanation would
show that we had altogether failed in realizing to ourselves this solemn scene,
as it was on this day enacted on the shores of Gennesaret. That scene was quite
as much in deed as in word; and here, at the very moment that the Lord spake the
words, it would seem that He took some paces along the rough and rocky shore,
bidding Peter to follow; thus setting forth to him in a figure his future life,
which should be a following of his divine Master in the rude and rugged path of
Christian action. All this was not so much spoken as done; for Peter, “turning
about,”—looking, that is, behind him,—”seeth the disciple whom Jesus
loved”—words not introduced idly, and as little so the allusion to his
familiarity at the Paschal supper, but to explain the boldness of John in
following unbidden[37] him he sees “following” and thereupon inquires, “Lord,
and what shall this man do?” He would know what his lot shall be, and what the
issue of his earthly conversation. Shall he, too, follow by the same rugged
path?

It is not very easy to determine the motive which moved this question, or the
spirit in which it was asked: it was certainly something more than a mere
natural curiosity. Augustine takes it as the question of one concerned that his
friend should be left out, and not summoned to the honour of the same close
following of his Lord with himself.[38] Others find nothing so noble in it; that
it is a question put more in the temper of Martha, when she asked the Lord,
concerning Mary, “Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve
alone ?” (Luk 10:40), ill satisfied that Mary should remain quietly sitting at
Jesus’ feet, while she was engaged in laborious service for Him.[39] It is
certainly possible that Peter, understanding well what that “Follow Me”
addressed to himself implied, may have felt a moment’s jealousy at the easier
lot assigned to John. But let it have been this jealousy, or that anxiety
concerning the way in which the Lord would lead his fellow Apostle (and
oftentimes we find it harder to commit those whom we love to his guiding than
ourselves, and to cut off in regard of them all distrustful fears), it is plain
that the source out of which the question proceeded was not altogether a pure
one. There lies something of a check in the reply. These “times and seasons” it
is not for him to know, nor to intermeddle with things which are the Lord’s
alone. He claims to be the allotter of the several portions of his servants, and
gives account of none of his matters: “If I will that he tarry till I come, what
is that to thee? follow thou Me” At the same time this, like so many of our
Lord’s repulses, is not a mere repulse. Refusing to comply with an untimely
request, it is yet never with a blank negation; and not seldom He gives even in
the very act of seeming to deny; his Nay proving indeed a veiled Yea. So it was
here. For assuredly the error of those brethren who drew from these words the
conclusion, “that that disciple should not die” did not ground itself in the
mistaking what was intended as a mere hypothetical “If I will” for a prophetical
announcement. That “If I will” is no hypothetical case; Christ does not mean:
“If I should choose that the laws of natural decay and death should be suspended
in his case, and that thus he should live on till my return to judgment, this
were nothing to thee.” Rather, even while He rebukes Peter for having asked the
question, He does declare his pleasure that John should “tarry” till his coming;
and this “tarry” we must not empty of its deeper meaning, which many, with the
view of making all things easy here, have done—as though if meant, “tarry” in
Galilee, or “tarry” in Jerusalem, while Peter was laboriously preaching the
Gospel over all the world. To tarry can be taken in no other sense than that of
to remain alive (cf. Php 1:25; 1Co 15:6; John 12:34). But how could Christ thus
announce that John should “tarry” till He came? Two answers have been given.
Augustine, whom Grotius, Lampe,[40] and many moderns follow, understands “till I
come” to signify, “till I take him away—till I summon him by an easy and natural
death to myself.” But where then is the antithesis between his lot and Peter’s?
However violent and painful the death of Peter may have been, yet did not the
Lord in this sense “come” to him ? does He not come to every faithful believer
at the hour of his departure, be his death of what kind it may? Resolve this
into common language, and it is in fact, “If I will that he live till he die,
what is that to thee?” Some of our Lord’s sayings may appear slight, which yet
are most deep; none seem deep, and yet on nearer inspection prove utterly slight
and trivial, as this so interpreted would do. Rather let us explain these words
by the help and in the light of Mat 16:28. John should “tarry.” Among the twelve
he was the only one who, according to that other and earlier announcement of his
Lord, “should not taste of death, till he had seen the Son of man coming in his
kingdom.” That great shaking, not of the earth only, but also of the heaven,
that passing away of the old Jewish economy with a great noise, to make room for
a new heaven and a new earth, this he should overlive, and see the Son of man,
invisibly, yet most truly, coming to execute judgment on his foes. He only of
the Twelve should overlive that mightiest catastrophe which the world has seen;
and “tarry” far on into the glorious age which should succeed. Nor was it this
only; but his whole life and ministry in the Church should be in agreement with
that its peaceful end. His should be a still work throughout; to deepen the
inner life of the Church rather than to extend outwardly its borders. The
rougher paths were not appointed for his treading; he should be perfected by
another discipline. Martyr in will, but not in deed, he should crown a calm and
honoured old age by a natural death. This, which Augustine and others made the
primary meaning of the words, we may accept as a secondary and subordinate. It
was not, indeed, that he, or any other saint, should escape his share of
tribulation, or that the way for him, or for any, should be other than a strait
and a narrow one (Rev 1:9). Yet we see daily how the sufferings of different
members of the kingdom are allotted in very different proportions; with some,
they are comparatively few and far between, while for others, their whole life
seems a constant falling from one trial to another.[41]

He who records these words about himself notes, but notes only to refute, an
expectation which had gotten abroad among the brethren, drawn from this saying
inaccurately reported or wrongly understood, that he should never die; for, of
course, if he had indeed “tarried” to the end. of all, then mortality would in
him have been swallowed up in life, and he would have passed into the heavenly
kingdom without tasting death (1Co 15:51; 1Th 4:17). And is there not something
more than humility in the anxious earnestness with which he repels any such
interpretation? No such mournful prerogative shall be his; not so long shall he
be absent from his Lord: there lies no such sentence upon him of weary exclusion
from that presence in which is fulness of joy. The Synagogue may have its
“wandering Jew,” who should never die; but this, not because there rests on him
a peculiar blessing, but a peculiar curse. Yet this explicit declaration from
the lips of John himself, that Jesus had said no such thing as that he should
not die, did not effectually extinguish such a belief or superstition in the
Church. We find traces of it surviving long; even his death and burial, which
men were compelled to acknowledge, were not sufficient to abolish it. For his
death, some said, was only the appearance of death, and he yet breathed in his
grave; so that even an Augustine was unable wholly to resist the reports which
had reached him, that the earth yet heaved, and the dust was lightly stirred by
the regular pulses of his breath[42] The fable of his still living, Augustine at
once rejects; but is more patient with this report than one might have expected,
counting it possible that a permanent miracle might be wrought at the Apostle’s
grave.[43]

Footnotes

[1] Doubts concerning the authenticity of this chapter were first stirred by
Grotius; not that he esteemed it altogether spurious, but added, probably after
St. John’s death, by the Ephesian elders, who had often heard the history from
his lips. Very unlike the other suspicious passage in St. John’s Gospel (John
8:1-11), there is no outward evidence of any kind against it. Every MS. and
every early Version possesses it, and there was never a doubt expressed about it
in antiquity. He therefore, and those who have followed him here, Clericus,
Semler, Lücke, Schott (Comm. de Indole Cap. ult. Ev. Joh. Jen. 1825), can have
none but internal evidences, drawn from alleged differences in style, in
language, in manner of expression, from St. John’s confessed writings, on which
to build an argument,—evidences frequently deceptive and always inconclusive,
but here even weaker than usual. Everywhere we mark the hand of the beloved
disciple. Not merely do we feel the tone of the narration to be his; for that
might be explained by supposing others to be reporting what he had often told
them; but single phrases and turns of language, unobserved by us at first, and
till we have such motives for observing them, bear witness for him. It is he
alone who uses Τιβεριάς‚ θάλασσα τῆς Τιβεριάδος (6:1, 23) for the lake of
Galilee; or παιδία as a word of address from the teacher to the taught (cf. ver.
5 with 1Jn 2:13; 1Jn 2:18); πιάζειν, which occurs twice in this chapter (ver. 3,
10), is met with only three times, save in St. John’s writings, in the whole N.
T.; but is so much a favourite with him, that besides these, there are six
instances of its use in his Gospel alone (7:30, 32, 44; 8:20; 10:39; 11:57), to
which may be added Rev 19:20. Again, ἑλκύω (ver. 6, 11) is one of his words
(6:44; 12:32; 18:20), being found else but once. The double ἀμήν at the
beginning of a sentence (ver. 18) is exclusively St. John’s, occurring
twenty-five times in his Gospel, never elsewhere. The appellation of Thomas,
Θωμᾶς ὁ λεγόμενος Δίδυμος (ver. 2; cf. 11:16; 20:24), is also exclusively his:
compare too ver. 19 with 12:23 and 18:32; the use also of ὁμοίως (ver. 13) with
the parallel use at 6:11. Ὀψάριον too (ver. 9, 10, 13; cf. 6:9, 11), and πάλιν
δεύτερον (ver. 16; cf. 4:54), belong only to him; and the narrator interposing
words of his own, as a comment on and explanation of the Lord’s words (ver. 19),
is quite after the favourite manner of St. John (2:21; 6:6; 7:39). And of these
peculiarities many more might be adduced.

[2] This ἐϕανέρωσεν ἑαυτόν of his last miracle the Evangelist intends us, I
cannot doubt, to bring into relation with the ἐϕανέρωσε τὴν δόξαν of his first
(2:11); which being so, our Version should have preserved, as a hint of this to
the English reader, the “manifested” which it there employs.

[3] Thus Ambrose on the appearing of the Angel to Zacharias (Exp. in Luc. i.
24): Bene apparuisse dicitur ei, qui eum repente conspexit. Et hoc specialiter
aut de Angelis aut de Deo Scriptura divina tenere consuevit; ut quod non potest
praevideri, apparere dicatur.....Non enim similiter sensibilia videntur, et is
in cujus voluntate situm est videri, et cujus naturae est non videri, voluntatis
videri. Nam si non vult, non videtur: si vult, videtur. And Chrysostom here: Ἐν
τῷ εἰπεῖν‚ ἐϕανέρωσεν ἑαυτὸν‚ τοῦτο δηλοῖ‚ ὅτι εἰ μὴ ἤθελε‚ καὶ αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν διὰ
συγκατάβασιν ἐϕανέρωσεν‚ οὐχ ὡρᾶτο‚ τοῦ σώματος ὄντος ἀϕθάρτου.

[4] St. John nowhere employs ἀπόστολος to distinguish one of the Twelve. He uses
it but once (13:16), and then generally for one outsent.

[5] Chrysostom: Ὡς δὲ ἐπέγνωσαν αὐτὸν‚ πάλιν τὰ ἰδιώματα τῶν οἰκείων
ἐπιδείκνυνται τρόπων οἱ μαθηταὶ Πέτρος καὶ Ἰωάννης· ὁ μὲν γὰρ θερμότερος‚ ὁ δὲ
ὑψηλότερος ἦν· καὶ ὁ μὲν ὀξύτερος ἦν‚ ὁ δὲ διορατικώτερος.

[6] The word is of continual use in this sense. Thus Virgil: Nudus ara (cf. Mat
24:18), which he has borrowed from Hesiod, who will have the husbandman γυμνὸν
σπείρειν‚ γυμνόν τε βοωτεῖν. So, too, Cincinnatus was found “naked” at the
plough, when he was called to be Dictator, and sent for his toga that he might
present himself before the Senate (Pliny, H. N. xviii. 4); and Plutarch says of
Phocion, that, in the country and with the army, he went always without sandals
and “naked” (ἀνυπόδητος ἀεὶ καὶ γυμνὸς ἐβάδιζεν): and Grotius quotes from
Eusebius a yet apter passage than any of these, in which one says, ἤμην γυμνὸς
ἐν τῷ λινῷ ἐσθήματι. The Athenian jest that the Spartans showed to foreigners
their virgins “naked” is to be taken with these limitations—with only the chiton
or himation (Müller, Dorians, iv. 2, 3). Cf. 1Sa 19:24; Isa 20:3; at the last of
which passages the Deist Tindal, in his ignorance, scoffs, as though God had
commanded an indecency, but which both are to be explained in the same manner
(see Deyling, Obss. Sac. vol. iv. p. 888, seq., and the Diet, of Or. and Rom.
Antt. s. v. Nudus.

[7] This seems to me the meaning; in Deyling’s words (Obss. Sac. vol. iv. p.
890): Ἐπενδύτην ad Christum iturus sibi circumjiciebat, ne minus honestus et
modestus in conspectum Domini veniret. Others, however, as Euthymius and Lampe,
suppose that this ἐπενδύτης was the only garment which he had on; but, as
regarded even that, he was ἄζωστος, and so, in a manner, γυμνός. But going to
the Lord, he girt it up; whether for comeliness, or that it might not, being
left loose, hinder him in swimming. The matter would be clear, if we knew
certainly what the ἐπενδύτης was;—plainly no under garment or vest, worn close
to the skin, which is rather ὑποδύτης (see Passow, s. vv.); but rather that worn
over all, as the robe which Jonathan gives to David is called τὸν ἐπενδύτην τὸν
ἐπάνω (1Sa 18:4). This is certainly the simplest explanation-; that Peter, being
stripped before, now hastily threw his upper garment over him, which yet he girt
up, that it might not prove an impediment in swimming.

[8] Ambrose: Immemor periculi, non tamen immemor reverentiæ.

[9] Id.: Periculoso compendio religiosum maturavit obsequium.

[10] Ovid’s advice to the fisher is to keep this moderate distance: Nec tamen in
medias pelagi te pergere sedes Admoneam, vastique maris tentare profundum. Inter
utrumque loci melius moderabere finem, &c.

[11] Observe St. John’s fine and accurate distinction in the use of σύρειν here,
and ἑλκύειν at ver. 6, 11; this being to draw to you (ziehen, De Wette); that,
to drag after you (nachschleppen): see my Synonyms of the N. T. § 21.

[12] To the abundance and the excellency of the fish in this lake many bear
testimony. Thus Robinson (Biblical Researches, vol. ii. p. 261): “The lake is
full of fishes of various kinds,” and he instances sturgeon, chub, and bream;
adding, “we had no difficulty in procuring and abundant supply for our evening
and morning meal; and found them delicate and well-flavoured.”

[13] Augustine (Serm. ccxlviii. 1): Nunquam hoc Dominus juberet, nisi aliquid
significare vellet, quod nobis nosse expediret. Quid ergo pro magno potuit ad
Jesum Christum pertinere, si pisces caperentur aut si non caperentur? Sed ilia
piscatio, nostra erat significatio.

[14] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, cxxii.): Sicut hoc loco qualiter in seculi
fine futura sit [Ecclesia], ita Dominus alia piscatione significavit Ecclesiam
qualiter nunc sit. Quod autem illud fecit in initio praedicationis suae, hoc
vero post resurrectionem suam, hinc ostendit illam capturam piscium, bonos et
malos significare, quos nunc habet Ecclesia; istam vero tantummodo bonos quos
habebit in aeternum, complete, in fine hujus seculi resurrectione mortuorum.
Denique ibi Jesus, non sicut hic in littore stabat, quando jussit pisces capi,
sed ascendens in unam navim.... dixit ad Simonem, Due in altum, et laxate retia
vestra in capturam.... Ibi retia non mittuntur in dexteram, ne solos significant
bonos, nec in sinistram, ne solos malos; sed indifferenter, Laxate, inquit,
retia vestra in capturam, ut permixtos intelligamus bonos et malos: hie autem
inquit, Mittite in dextram navigii rete, ut significaret eos qui stabant ad
dexteram, solos bonos. Ibi rete propter significanda schismata rumpebatur: hîc
vero, quoniam tune jam in ilia summa pace sanctorum nulla erunt schismata,
pertinuit ad Evangelistam dicere, Et cum tanti essent, id est, tarn magni, non
est scissum rete; tanquam illud respiceret ubi scissum est,,, et. in illius mali
comparatione commendaret hoc bonum. Cf. Serin. ccxlviii.: cclii.; and also the
Brev. Coll. con. Donat. 3; Quaest. 83, qu. 8; and Gregory the Great (Horn, in
Evang. 24), who altogether follows the exposition of Augustine, making indeed
far more of Peter’s part, especially of his bringing of the net to land, which
is easily to be accounted for, the idea of the Papacy having in his time
developed itself further.

[15] This, because the. right hand is ever the hand of value; thus the sheep are
placed at the right hand (Mat 25:33). Even the right eye, if needs is, shall be
plucked out,—the right hand cut off (Mat 5:29-30). Again, it is threatened that
even the right eye of the idol shepherd, the eye of spiritual understanding,
shall be utterly darkened (Zec 11:17). Ezekiel lies on his left side for Israel,
but on his right for Judah (Eze 4:4; Eze 4:6); and this because Judah, with all
its sins, was not yet an apostate Church (Hos 11:12 : cf. Gen 48:17; 1Ki 2:19;
Acts 7:55).

[16] Augustine (Serm. ccli. 3): In ilia piscatione non ad littus adtracta sunt
retia: sed ipsi pisces qui capti sunt, in naviculas fusi sunt. Hie autem
traxerunt ad littus. Spera finem seculi. Grotius has a glimpse of the same
thought, when upon the words, “Jesus stood on the shore” (ver. 4), he adds:
Significans se per resurrectionem jam esse in vado, ipsos in salo versari. Cf.
Gregory the Great, Horn. xxiv. in Evang.

[17] Augustine (Serm. ccxlix.): Implentur navigia duo propter populos duos de
circumcisione et praeputio: et sic implentur, ut premantur et poene mergantur.
Hoc quod significat gemendum est. Turba turbavit Ecclesiam. Quam magnum numerum
fecerunt male viventes, prementes et gementes [poene mergentes?]. Sed propter
pisces bonos non sunt mersa navigia.

[18] Augustine and others have laborious calculations to show why the fishes
were exactly one hundred and fifty-three, and the mystery of this number. But
the significance is not in that particular number, for the number seems chosen
to exclude this, herein unlike the hundred and forty-four thousand (12 X 12) of
the Apocalypse (vii. 4); but in its being a fixed and definite number at all:
just as in Ezekiel’s temple (ch. xl. seq.) each measurement is not, and cannot
be made, significant; but that all is by measurement is most significant; for
thus we are taught that in the rearing of the spiritual temple no caprice or
wilfulness of men may find room, but that all is laid down according to a
preordained purpose and will of God. To number, as to measure and to weigh, is a
Divine attribute: cf. Job 28:25; Job 38:5; Isa 40:12; and the noble debate in
St. Augustine (De Lib. Arbit. ii. 11-16) on all the works of wisdom being by
number.

[19] Augustine (Serm. ccxlviii. 3): Quis est enim ibi tune parvus, quando erunt
aequales Angelis Dei?

[20] Maldonatus: Missurus erat paulo post Christus discipulos suos in omnem
terrarum orbem, quasi in altum ac latum mare, ut homines piscarentur. Poterant
inscitiam, poterant imbecillitatem suam excusare, se homines esse litteram
rudes, id est, piscandi imperitos, paucos praeterea et infirmos, quî posse se
tot tamque grandes pisces capere, tot oratores, tot tantosque philosophos
irretire et a sententiâ dimovere? Voluit ergo Christus exemplo artis proprise
docere id ipsos suis viribus suâque industriâ facere nullo modo posse, idque
significat quod totam laborantes noctem nihil ceperant; ipsius vero ope atque
auxilio facillime facturos.

[21] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, cxxiii.): Piscis assus, Christus est passus.
Ipse est et panis qui de coelo descendit. Hinc incorporatur Ecclesia ad
participandam beatitudinem sempiternam. Ammonius: Τὸ‚ Δεῦτε ἀριστεύσατε‚ αἴνιγμα
ἔχει ὁ λόγος‚ ὅτι μετὰ τοὺς πόνους διαδέξεται τοὺς ἁγίους ἀνάπαυσις καὶ τρυϕὴ
καὶ ἀπόλαυσις. Gregory the Great (Horn. xxiv. in Evang.) notes how the number
who here feast with the Lord are seven, the number of perfection and completion.

[22] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, cxxiii.): Si ergo sciebant, quid opus erat ut
interrogarent? Si autem non opus erat, quare dictum est, non audebant; quasi
opus esset, sed timore aliquo non auderent? Sensus ergo hic est: Tanta erat
evidentia veritatis, qua Jesus illis discipulis apparebat, ut eorum non solum
negare, sed nec dubitare quidem ullus auderet: quoniam si quisquam dubitaret,
utique interrogare deberet. Sic ergo dictum est, Nemo audebat eum interrogare,
Tu quis es: ac si diceretur, Nemo audebat dubitare quod ipse esset. Cf.
Chrysostom’s striking words, In Joh. Horn, lxxxvii.

[23] In The Modern Syrians, p. 304.

[24] Πλεῖον τούτων. This might, mean—”more than thou lovest these things,” i. e.
“more than thou lovest these thy nets and thy boat and other worldly gear;” plus
his, as the Vulgate. But the words, so understood, yield a sense which is, at
least to my mind, so utterly trivial and unworthy, as to render it not unlikely
only, but impossible, that this can be the Lord’s meaning. Whitby supports this
interpretation.

[25] Augustine (Semi, cxlvii. 2): Non potuit dicere nisi, Amo te: non ausus est
dicere, plus his. Noluit iterum esse mendax. Suffecerat ei testimonium perhibere
cordi suo: non debuit esse judex cord is alieni.

[26] The other, doubtless, is the way in which the words are more commonly
understood; thus by Augustine a hundred times, as Serm. cxlvi. 1: Tamquam ei
diceret, Amas me? In hoc ostende quia amas me, Pasce oves meas. But Cyril,
Chrysostom, Euthymius, are with me. Thus, too, Calvin: Nunc illi tam libertas
docendi quam auctoritas restituitur, quarum utramque amiserat suâ culpâ.

[27] It will be observed that when the Lord first puts the question to Peter, it
is ἀγαπᾷς με; that Peter changes the word, and replies, ϕιλῶ σε (ver. 15); again
the second time ἀγαπᾷς appears in the Lord’s question, and ϕιλῶ in Peter’s reply
(ver. 16); till on the third time Jesus leaves the ἀγαπᾷς which He has twice
used, and asks the question in Peter’s own word, ϕιλεῖς με; in which Peter again
for the third time replies (ver. 17). There is nothing accidental here, as will
be plain from a short consideration of the relation in which ἀγαπᾶν and ϕιλεῖν
stand to one another. There exists in them nearly the same difference as in the
diligere and amare of the Latin (see Döderlein, Lat. Synon. vol. iv. p. 89,
seq.; and my Synonyms of the N. T. § 12); the Vulgate marking by help of these
Latin equivalents the alternation of the words. Ἀγαπᾶν = diligere (=deligere)
has more of judgment and deliberate choice; ϕιλεῖν = amare, of attachment and
peculiar personal affection. Thus the ἀγαπᾷς on the lips of the Lord seems to
Peter at this moment too cold a word; as though his Lord were keeping him at a
distance; or at least not inviting him to draw as near as in the passionate
yearning of his heart he desired now to do. Therefore he puts it by, and
substitutes his own stronger ϕιλῶ in its room. A second time he does the same.
And now he has conquered; for when the Lord demands a third time whether he
loves Him, He does it with the word which alone will satisfy Peter, which alone
claims from him that personal attachment and affection, with which indeed he
knows that his heart is full. Ambrose, though he does not express himself very
happily, has a right insight into the matter (Exp. in Luc. x. 176): Illud quod
diligentius intuendum, cur cum Dominus dixerit, Diligis me? ille respondent: Tu
scis, Domine, quia amo te. In quo videtur mihi dilectio habere animi caritatem,
amor quendam aestum conceptum corporis ac mentis ardore, et Petrum opinor non
solum animi, sed etiam corporis sui signare flagrantiam.

[28] Augustine (In Ev. Joh. tract, cxxiii.): Redditur negationi trinae trina
confessio; ne minus amori lingua serviat quam timori: et plus vocis elicuisse
videatur mors imminens, quam vita praesens. Enarr. in Psa 37:13 : Donec trinâ
voce amoris solveret trinam vocem negationis. Serm. cclxxxv.: Odit Deus
praesumtores de viribus suis; et tumorem istum in eis, quos diligit, tamquam
medicus secat. Secando quidem infert dolorem; sed firmat postea sanitatem.
Itaque resurgens Dominus commendat Petro oves suas illi negatori; sed negatori
quia praesumtori, postea pastori quia amatori. Nam quare ter interrogat amantem,
nisi ut compungat ter negantem? Serm. ccxcv. 4: Ter vincat in amore confessio,
quia ter victa est in timore praesumtio. Cf. Enarr. ii. in Ps. xe. 12. So Cyril,
Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Apollinaris, and Ammonius: Διὰ τριῶν τῶν ἐρωτήσεων καὶ
καταθέσεων ἐξαλείϕει τὰς τρεῖς ϕωνὰς τῆς ἀρνήσεως‚ καὶ διὰ λόγων ἐπανορθοῖ τὰ ἐν
λόγοις γενόμενα πταίσματα. Not otherwise the Church hymn— Ter confessus ter
negatum, Gregem pascis ter donatum, Vitâ, verbo, precibus.

[29] Augustine (Serm. ccliii. 1): Contristatus est Petrus. Quid contristaris,
Petre, quia ter respondes amorem? Oblitus es trinum timorem? Sine interroget te
Dominus: medicus est qui te interrogat, ad sanitatem pertinet, quod interrogat.
Noli tædio affici. Expecta, impleatur numerus dilectionis, ut deleat numerum
negationis.

[30] The lectio recepta makes the order in Christ’s threefold commission to
Peter that he should feed the flock, to “be the following: ἀρνία (ver. 15),
πρόβατα (ver. 16), and again πρόβατα (ver. 17), Tischendorf, on the authority of
A C, for the last πρόβατα reads προβάτια, which word, never else occurring in
the N. T., would scarcely have found its way here into the text unless it had
belonged to it of right. Yet at the same time the three words in the order in
which they thus appear, ἀρνία‚ πρόβατα‚ προβάτια, fail altogether to make a
climax; and one is tempted to suspect that προβάτια and πρόβατα have changed
places; for if this could be admitted, all then would follow excellently well.
Remarkably confirming this conjecture, first made, I believe, by Bellarmine, St.
Ambrose (Exp. in Luc. x. 176), expounding Christ’s words here, uses the Latin
equivalents exactly in this order; first agnos=ἀρνία, then oviculas=προβάτια,
and lastly oves =πρόβατα; nor is this an accident, but he makes a point of this
ascending scale, saying on that third injunction, “Feed my sheep:” Et jam non
agnos, nec oviculas, sed oves pascere jubetur. It is further noticeable that the
Vulgate has not one agnos and two oves, which would be the equivalent to our
received reading, but two agnos and one oves, which is much nearer that which is
conjectured. In the Peschito, justly celebrated for its verbal accuracy, there
is a difference made, exactly answering to Ambrose’s agnos, oviculas, and oves.

[31] Wetstein: Oves istae quo tempore Petro committebantur, erant adhuc teneri
agni, novitii discipuli a Petro ex Judaeis et gentibus adducendi, Quando vero
etiam oves committit, significat eum ad senectutem victurum, et ecclesiam
constitutam et ordinatam visurum esse.

[32] See Bernard, Be Consid. ii. 8; and a curious letter of Pope Innocent (Epp.
ii. Ep. 209) on the whole series of passages in Scripture, and this among the
number, on which the claims of Romish supremacy rest: the series begins very
early, namely with Gen 1:16.

[33] Eusebius, Hist. Ecc 2:25; Ecc 3:1.

[34] Theophylact: Τὴν ἐπὶ τοῦ σταυροῦ ἔκτασιν καὶ τὰ δεσμὰ δηλοῖ. The passages
most to the point in showing that this would naturally, be one of the images
which one who, without naming, yet wished to indicate, crucifixion, would use,
are this from Seneca. (Consol. ad Marciam, 20): Video istic cruces non unius
quidem generis;.....alii brachia patibulo explicuerunt; and Tertullian (Be
Pudic. 22): In patibulo jam corpore expanso; who says again, with allusion to
the stretching out of the hands in prayer: Paratus est ad omne supplicium ipse
habitus orantis Christiani. And the following phrase occurs in Arrian,
Epictetus, iii. 26: ἐκτείνας σεαυτὸν‚ ὡς οἱ ἐσταυρωμένοι. The passage adduced by
some from Plautus— Credo ego tibi esse eundum extra portam, Dispessis manibus
patibulum quum habebis— is not quite satisfying; since this is most probably an
allusion to the marching the criminal along, with his arms attached to the fork
upon his neck, before he was himself fastened to the cross; or perhaps not to be
followed up by actual execution at all, but only as itself anignominious
punishment (see Becker, Gallus, vol. i. p. 131; and. Wetstein, in loc).

[35] So Tertullian (Scorp. 15): Tune Petrus ab altero cingitur, cum. cruci
astringitur; or perhaps it may be, as Lücke suggests, the girding the sufferer
round the middle, who otherwise would be wholly naked on the cross. He quotes
from the Evany. Nibod. 10: Ἐξέδυσαν οἱ στρατιῶται τὸν Ἰησοῦν τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτοῦ‚
καὶ περιέζωσαν αὐτὸν λεντίῳ.

[36] Chrysostom (In Joh, Horn,: 88): Ὅπου οὐ θέλεις· τῆς ϕύσεως λέλει τὸ
συμπαθὲς καὶ τῆς σαρκὸς τὴν ἀνάγκην‚ καὶ ὅτι ἄκουσα ἀποῤῥήγνυται τοῦ σώματος ἡ
ψυχή. Cf. Augustine’s beautiful words, Serm. ccxcix., and Serm. clxxiii. 2: Quis
enim vult mori? Prorsus nemo: et ita nemo ut beato Petro diceretur, Alter te
cinget, et feret quo tu non vis.

[37] Bengel: Ut autem in coenâ ilia ita nunc quoque locum quaerebat, et se
familiariter insinuabat, propemodum magis, quam Petrus libenter perferret.

[38] Serm. ccliii. 3: Quomodo ego sequor, et ipse non sequitur? This, too, is
Chrysostom’s explanation. Jerome’s (Adv. Jovin. i. 26) is slightly different:
Nolens deserere Johannem, cum quo semper fuerat copulatus. In later times it was
often understood, as that in Peter’s words spoke out the jealousy of the
practical life for the contemplative. The first thinks hardly of the other,
counts it to be a shunning of the cross, a shrinking from earnest labour in the
Lord’s cause,—would fain have it also to be a martyr not merely in will, but in
deed (see the very interesting extracts from the writings of the Abbot Joachim,
in Neander, Kirch. Gesch. vol. v. p. 440).

[39] It is partly no doubt their general character, as developed through the
Gospel history, but mainly this passage, which has caused the two Apostles, St.
Peter and St. John, to be accepted in the Church as the types, one of Christian
action, the other of Christian contemplation; one, like the servants, working
for its absent Lord; the other, like the virgins, waiting for Him: the office of
the first, the active labouring for Christ, to cease and pass away, because the
time would arrive when there should be no more need for it; but of the other,
the contemplation of God, to remain (μένειν) till the Lord came, and not then to
cease, but to continue for evermore. Thus Augustine in a noble passage, of which
I can only give a fragment or two (In Ev. Joh. tract, cxxiv.): Duas itaque vitas
sibi divinitus praedicatas et commendatas novit Ecclesia, quarum est una in
fide, altera in specie; una in tempore peregrinationis, altera in aeternitate
mansionis; una in labore, altera in requie; una in via, altera in patriâ; una in
opere actionis, altera in mercede contemplationis;.... una bona et mala
discernit, altera quae sola bona sunt, cernit: ergo una bona est, sed adhuc
misera, altera melior et beata. Ista significata est per Apostolum Petrum, ilia
per Johannem. Tota hîc agitur ista usque in hujus seculi finem, et illic invenit
finem: differtur ilia complenda post hujus seculi finem, sed in futuro seculo
non habet finem. Ideo dicitur huic, Sequere me: de illo autem, Sic eum volo
manere donec veniam, quid ad te ? Tu me sequere.....Quod apertius ita dici
potest, Perfecta me sequatur actio, informata meae passionis exemplo; inchoata
vero contemplatio maneat donec venio, perficienda cum venero. All this
remarkably came up again in the twelfth century in connexion with the Evangelium
aeternum (see the passage of Neander referred to in the note preceding).

[40] Si nolo eum morte violentâ tolli quasi ante diem, sed manere in placidâ
senectute superstitem usque dum veniam et morte naturali ilium ad me recipiam,
quid istud ad te?

[41] See a sermon by St. Bernard (In Nativ. 8S. Innocent. 1): Et bibit ergo
Johannes calicem salutaris, et secutus est Dominum, sicut Petrus, etsi non omni
modo sicut Petrus. Quod enim sic mansit ut non etiam passione corporeâ Dominum
sequeretur, divini fecit consilii; sicut ipse ait, Sic eum volo manere, veniam.
Ac si dicat: Vult quidem et ipse sequi, sed ego sic eum volo manere.

[42] In Ev. Joh. tract, cxxiv.: Cum mortuus putaretur, sepultum fuisse
dormientem, et donec Christus veniat sic manere, suamque vitam scaturigine
pulveris indicare: qui pulvis creditur, ut ab imo ad superficiem tumuli
ascendat, flatu quiescentis impelli. Huic opinioni supervacaneum existimo
reluctari. Viderint enim qui locum sciunt, utrum hoc ibi faciat vel patiatur
terra, quod dicitur; quia et revera non a levibus hominibus id audivimus..

[43] See Tertullian, De Animâ, 50; Hilary, Be Trinit. vi. 39; Ambrose, Exp. in
Ps. cxviii. Serm. xviii. 12; Jerome, Adv. Jovin. i. 26; Neander, Kirch. Gesch.
vol. v. p. 1117. This superstition aided much the wide-spread faith of the
Middle Ages in the existence of Prester John in further Asia. Even as late as
the sixteenth century an impostor was burnt at Toulouse, who gave himself out as
St. John; and in England some of the fanatical sects of the Commonwealth were
looking for his return to revive and reform the Church.—The erroneous reading
Sic [for Si] eum volo manere, which early found its way into the Latin copies,
and which the Vulgate, with the obstinate persistence of the Romish Church in a
once-admitted error, still retains, may have helped on the mistake concerning
the meaning of Christ’s words.


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