But although the Evangelists fall in so far with the current of her thoughts as to use language that would be appropriate to it, and to say, "Jesus immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him," yet we cannot for an instant suppose that this healing power went forth without the full consent of his will,*-that we have here, on his part, an unconscious 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." (Luke vi. 19.) For we should lose the ethical, which is ever the most important, element of the miracle, if we could suppose that power went forth from him to heal, without reference, on his part, to the spiritual condition of the person upon whom it went forth. He who with the eye of his spirit saw Nathanael under the fig-tree, who needed not that any should testify, for he knew what was in man, must have known of this woman both her bodily and spiritual state,―how sorely as to the one she needed his help, and how as regarded the other she possessed that faith which was the one necessary condition of healing, the one channel of communication between him and any human need.

The only argument which could at all be adduced to favor the notion of an unconscious going forth of his power, would be that drawn from the question which he asked, when he "turned about him in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?" This might be construed as implying that he was ignorant of the person who had done it, and only uncertainly apprehended that something had taken place. If he knew, it might be argued, to what purpose the question? But, as the sequel of the history will abundantly prove, there was a purpose; since if she had 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, that it now was, when she was obliged by this repeated question of the Lord, to own that she had come to seek, and had found, health from him. And the other objection is easily dissolved, namely, that it would not have been perfectly consistent with truth to have asked as not knowing, when indeed he knew all the while, who had done that, concerning which he inquired. But a father when he comes among his children, and says, 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

of God, not always of the individual's sin, but ever of the sin which the individual has in common with the race. Cf. 2 Macc. ix. 11, 0ɛía μáoтığ, and Sirac. xl. 9. So Eschylus, (Sept. adv. Theb.,) πλnyeìç Ocov μáoriyi.

* Chrysostom: Παρ' ἑκόντος ἔλαβε τὴν σωτηρίαν, καὶ οὐ παρ' ἔκοντος, ᾔδει γὰρ τὴν ἁψαμένην.

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?" (2 Kin. v. 25,) when his heart went with him all the way that he had gone; and even in the question of God himself to Adam, "Where art thou?" In each of those cases, as here, there is a moral purpose in the question, an opportunity given even at the latest moment for undoing at least a part of the fault by its unreserved confession, an opportunity which they whose examples have been here adduced, suffered to escape; but which she, who it needs not to say had a fault of infinitely a slighter nature to acknowledge, had ultimately grace given her

to use.

But this question itself, "Who touched me?" when indeed the whole multitude was rudely pressing upon and crowding round him, has often suggested many profitable reflections. Thus it has often been observed how she only touched with the touch of faith; the others, though as dear or nearer in body, yet lacked that faith which is the connecting link between Christ's power and our need; and thus they crowded upon Christ, but did not touch him in any way that he should take note of. And thus it is ever in the Church; many press upon 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.*

When the disciples, and Peter at their head, wonder at the question, and in their reply dare almost to find fault with a question which to them seems so out of place, "Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me?" the Lord replies, re-affirming the fact, "Somebody hath touched me; for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me." Whereupon the woman, finding that concealment was useless,

....

* Augustine (Serm. 62, c. 4): Quasi enim sic ambularet, ut à nullo prorsus corpore tangeretur, ita dicit, Quis me tetigit? Et illi, Turbæ te comprimunt. Et tanquam diceret Dominus, Tangentem quæro, non prementem. Sic etiam nunc est corpus ejus, id est, Ecclesia ejus. Tangit eam fides paucorum, premit turba multorum. . Caro enim premit, fides tangit. And again he says (Serm. 77, c. 4): Corpus ergo Christi multi molestè premunt, pauci salubriter tangunt. And elsewhere he makes her the symbol of the Church (Serm. 245, c. 3): Illi premunt, ista tetigit.... Judæi affligunt, Ecclesia credidit. Chrysostom has with reference to this saying the same antithesis: Ὁ πιστεύων εἰς τὸν Σωτήρα ἅπτεται αὐτοῦ· ὁ δὲ ἀπιστῶν θλίβει αὐτὸν kal væεl. Cf. Gregory the Great, Moral., 1. 3, c. 20, and 1. 20, c. 17. Chemnitz (Harm. Evang., c. 67): Ita quoque in Ecclesiâ 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 illum peccatorum suorum sisti et exsiccari. Unde illud? Quia destituuntur verâ fide, quæ sola ex hoc fonte haurit gratiam pro gratiâ.

that the denial, which probably she had made with the rest, for it is said, "all denied," (Luke viii. 45,) would profit her nothing; unable, too, to escape his searching glance, for "he looked round about to see her," (Mark v. 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 brings out here, with much beauty, how in all this the loving and gracious dealings of the Son of man, who always sought to make through the healing of the body a way for the healing of the soul, are to be traced. She 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 here 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 it; yet 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.*

And now he dismisses her with words of gracious encouragement, "Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole." Her faith had made her whole, and Christ's virtue had made her whole. It is as when we say that faith justifies: our faith is not itself a blessing; but it is the organ by which the blessing is received; it is the right

* Sedulius then has exactly missed the point of the narrative, when of the Lord he says,

furtumque fidele

Laudat, et ingenuæ tribuit sua vota rapinæ ;

for it was precisely this which was deficient in her, that she sought it as a furtum, when she should have claimed it openly: and no less Bernard, (De Divers., Serm. 99,) when he makes her the figure of all those who would do good hiddenly, avoiding all human applause: Sunt alii qui nonnulla bona occultè faciunt,.... sed tamen furari [regnum cœlorum] dicuntur, quia laudem humanam vitantes, solo divino testimonio contenti sunt. Horum figuram tenuit mulier in Evangelio, &c. 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 not this alone, but that also is required, (Rom. x. 9.) + TERTULLIAN, Adv. Marc., 1. 4, c. 20.

Her faith, opyavıkāç, Christ's virtue, éveрyntıkās. This, as the causa efficiens; that, as the conditio sine quâ non.

hand of the soul, which lays hold upon it. "Go in peace," this is not 'merely, Go with a blessing, but, Go into the element of peace as the future element in which thy life shall move;-"and be whole of thy plague."

Theophylact brings out a mystical meaning in this miracle. This woman's complaint represents the ever-flowing fountain of sin; the physicians, the philosophers and wise men of this world, that 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 touched us, enabling us to touch him: whereupon 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 expelled, dismissed with the word of an abiding peace resting upon him.

VIII.

THE OPENING THE EYES OF TWO BLIND IN THE HOUSE.

MATT. ix. 27-81.

WE have here the first of those healings of the blind whereof so many are recorded (Matt. xii. 22; xx. 30; xxi. 14; John ix.) or alluded to in the Gospel narrative.* Nor is this little history without one or two features distinguishing it from others of a like kind. These two blind men appear to have followed Jesus in the way; it may have been, and Jerome supposes it was, as he was returning from the house of Jairus. Yet one would not lay too much stress on the connection in which St. Matthew sets the miracle, or necessarily conclude that he intended to place it in such immediate relation of time and place with the raising of the ruler's daughter. There was the same trial of the faith of these blind men, although in a more mitigated form, as found place in the case of the Syrophenician woman. Not all at once did they receive the boon which they sought; but the Lord seemed at first rather to withdraw himself from them, suffering them to cry after him, and for a while pay

* 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. It is true that in Syria the proportion of those afflicted with blindness is not at all so great, yet there also the calamity is of far more frequent occurrence than in western lands, so that we find humane regulations concerning the blind as concerning a class in the old Law. (Lev. xix. 14; Deut. xxvii. 18.)