ing no regard to their cries. It was only after they followed him into the house, and had thus shown that they were in earnest in seeking and expecting a boon from him, that he yielded to them the blessing which they sought.* But ere he does this, as he has tried them in deed by the delay of the blessing, he proves them also in word. He will have the confession of their faith from their own lips: "Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord." And then, when he found that they had this necessary condition for the receiving any one of his blessings, when he perceived that they had faith to be healed, “he touched their eyes." And this time it is by that simple touch that he opens those closed eyes; (Matt. xx. 34;) at other times he uses as the conductors of his power, and as helps to the faith of those who should be healed, some further instruments,—the clay mingled with spittle, (John ix. 6, 7,) or the moisture of his mouth alone. We do not, I think, anywhere read of his opening the blind eyes simply by his word, although of course that would have been equally easy to him. The words which accompany the act of healing are remarkable-" According to your faith be it unto you," remarkable for the insight which 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 every thing. It places the man in relation with the divine blessing; of no esteem in itself, but only in its relation to its object. It is the bucket let down into the fountain of God's grace, without which the man could not draw up out of that fountain; the purse, which though itself of the coarsest material, does yet enrich its owner by that which it contains.†

It is very characteristic, and rests on very deep differences, that of the Romish interpreters almost all, indeed I know not an exception, should excuse, or rather applaud, these men for not adhering strictly to Christ's command, his earnest, almost threatening, injunction to them, that they should let none know what he had done,-that the expositors of that Church of will-worship should see in their disobedience the over

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

Faith, the opyavov λŋπтiкóv, nothing in itself, yet every thing, because it places us in living connection with him in whom every good gift is stored. Thus on this passage Chemnitz (Harm. Evang., c. 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 Lalutare 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. † Ενεβριμήσατο αὐτοῖς. Suidas explains ἐμβριμᾶσθαι = μετὰ ἀπειλῆς ἐντέλλεσθαι,μετ' αὐστηρότητος ἐπιτιμαν.

flowings which could not be restrained of grateful hearts, and not there. fore a fault but a merit. Some indeed 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 preserve his precept about silence; but gave it out of humility, being best pleased when it was not observed.* But the Reformed, whose first principle is to take God's Word as absolute rule and law, and to worship God not with selfdevised services, but after the pattern that he has given them, stand fast to this, that obedience is better than sacrifice, even though that sacrifice may appear in honor of God himself; and see in this publishing of the miracle, after the prohibition given, a blemish in the perfectness of their faith who did it, a fault, though a fault into which they only, who were full of gratitude and thankfulness, could have fallen.

*Thus Aquinas (Summ. Theol., 2a 2, qu. 104, art. 4): Dominus cæcis dixit ut miraculum occultarent, non quasi intendens eos per virtutem divini præcepti obligare; sed sicut Gregorius dicit 19 Moral., servis suis se sequentibus exemplum dedit, ut ipsi quidem virtutes suas occultare desiderent, et tamen, ut alii ecrum exemplo proficiant, prodantur inviti. Cf. MALDONATUS in loc.

IX.

THE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC.

MATT. ix. 1-8; MARK ii. 1-12; LUKE v. 17-26.*

Ir was at Capernaum, while the Lord was teaching there, and on an occasion when there were present Pharisees and doctors of the law from many quarters, some of whom had come even as far as from Jerusalem, (Luke v. 17,) that this healing of the paralytic took place. It might have been a kind of conference, more or less friendly upon the part of these, which had brought together as listeners and spectators the great multitude of whom we read, a multitude so great that the avenues of approach to the house were blocked up; "there was no room to receive them, no not so much as about the door," and thus no opportunity, by any ordinary way, of access to the Lord. (Matt. xii. 46, 47.) And now some who arrived late with their sick, who brought with them a poor paralytic, "could not come nigh unto him for the press." Only the two later Evangelists record for us the extraordinary method to which the

* Chrysostom mentions, in a sermon upon this miracle, (v. 3, p. 37, 38, Bened. edit.,) that many in his day confounded this history with that of the impotent man at Bethesda,- -a supposition so wholly groundless as hardly to be worth the complete refutation which he gives it, showing that on no one point do the histories agree. In the apocryphal Evangelium Nicodemi, (see THILO's Cod. Apocryph., v. 1, p. 556,) there is a confusion of the two miracles.

The words of St. Luke, "The power of the Lord was present to heal them," are difficult, auroùs having no antecedent to which it refers; for clearly it cannot refer to the Pharisees and doctors just before named. There was nothing in them which made them receptive either of a bodily or a spiritual healing. Most likely it is proleptic; the Evangelist, in writing thus, has already in his mind him, though yet un named, on whom that power was put forth. We must take v as pregnant, supply. ing ἐργαζομένη, or some such word,

† Τὰ πρὸς τὴν θύραν, scil. μέρη = πρόθυρον, vestibulum, atrium.

bearers of the suffering man (St. Mark tells us they were four) were compelled to have recourse, for bringing him before the notice of the great healer of bodies and of souls. They first ascended to the roof: this was not so difficult, because commonly there was a flight of steps on the outside of the house, reaching to the roof, as well as, or sometimes instead of, an internal communication of the same kind. Such are to be seen (I have myself seen them) in those parts of the south of Spain which bear a permanent impress of Eastern habits. Our Lord assumes the existence of such, when he says, "Let him that is on the house-top not come down to take any thing out of his house," (Matt. xxiv. 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.* Some will have it, that, on the present occasion, the bearers having thus reached the roof, did no more than let down their sick through the grating or trap-door, which already existed therein, (cf. 2 Kin. i. 2;) or, at most, that they might have widened such an aperture, already existing, to enable them to let down the sick man's bed. Others, that Jesus was sitting in the open court, round which the houses in the East are commonly built, and that to this they got access by the roof, and breaking through the breastwork or battlement (Deut. xxii. 8) made of tiles, which guarded the roof, and removing the linen awning which was stretched over the court, let him down in the midst before the Lord. But there seems no sufficient reason for departing from the obvious meaning of the words. In St. Mark, at least, they are so plain and clear, that we can suppose nothing else than that a part of the actual covering of the roof was removed, that so the bed on which the palsied man lay might be let down before the Lord.t The whole circumstance will be much more easily conceived, and present fewer difficulties, when we keep in mind that it was probably the upper chamber, (repov,) where were assembled those that were

* The same must have existed in a Roman house, from a notice we have in Livy, 1. 39, c. 14. A witness, whom it is most important to preserve from being tampered with, is shut up in the chamber adjoining the roof, (coenaculum super ædes,)—and, to make all sure, scalis ferentibus in publicam obseratis, aditu in ædes verso. (See BECKER'S Gallus, v. 1, p. 94.)

Shaw, for instance, quoted in Rosenmuller, (Alte und Neue Morgenland, v. 5, p. 129.) He makes rò μéoov to signify the central court, impluvium, cava ædium. But against this use of els rò μéσov, or rather for the common one, see Luke iv. 35; Mark iii. 3; xiv. 60. And so, too, Titus Bostrensis (in CRAMER'S Catena): Eiñoι & úv rıç ὕπαιθρον εἶναι τόπον, εἰς ὃν διὰ τῶν κεράμων κατεβίβασαν τὴν κλίνην τοῦ παραλύτου, μηδὲν παντελῶς τῆς στέγης ἀνατρέψαντες.

Winer, (Real Wörterbuch, s. v. Dach,) who weighs the other explanations, has ome to exactly the same conclusion. Cf. DE WETTE's Archæologie, p. 118, seq.

drawn together to hear the Lord. This, as the most retired, (2 Kin. iv. 10, LXX.; Acts ix. 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.* (Acts i. 13; xx. 8.)

The merciful Son of man, condescending to every need of man, and never taking ill that which witnessed for an earnest faith in him, even though, as here, it manifested itself in a way so novel,-in one, too, which must have altogether disturbed the quiet of his teaching, saw with an eye well-pleased their faith. Had we only the account of St. Matthew, we should hardly understand wherein their special faith consisted, -why here, more than in many similar instances, i should have been noted; but the other Evangelists admirably complete that which he would have left obscure. They tell us how it was a faith which pressed through hinderances, and was not to be turned aside by difficulties. By "their faith," many, as Jerome and Ambrose, understand the faith of the bearers only, but there is no need so to confine the words. To them the praise justly was due,‡ but no doubt the sick man was approving 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 and rewarded. And this faith, as in the case of all whom he healed, was not as yet the reception of any certain doctrines, but a deep inward sense of need, and of Christ as the one, who only could meet that need.

Beholding this faith, the Lord addressed him, "Son,§ be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee:"—a striking example this of the way in which the Lord gives before men ask, and better than men aşk: for this man had not asked any thing, save, indeed, in the dumb asking of that earnest effort to come near to Jesus; and all that he dared to ask even in that, or at least all that his friends and bearers hoped for him, was that his body might be healed. Yet there was no doubt in himself

* As Vitringa too (De Synag., p. 145, seq.) proves by abundant examples.

Bengel: Per omnia fides ad Christum penetrat. Gerhard (Harm. Evang., c. 43): Pictura est quomodo in tentationibus et calamitatibus ad Christum nobis conentur intercludere hominum judicia, quales fuerunt amici Jobi, et qui Ps. iii. 3, dicunt: Non est salus ipsi in Deo ejus. Item: Legis judicium et propriæ conscientia accusationes. Et quomodo per illa omnia fides perrumpere debeat, ut in conspectum Christi Mediatoris se demittat.

TIVES LOTÓTATO, as in the apocryphal Evangelium Nicodemi they are called. § In St. Luke, "Man, thy sins are forgiven thee." But as he addresses another down-smitten soul, “Daughter, be of good comfort," (Matt. ix. 22,) it is probable that the tenderer appellation here also found place.