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gate" of the village, the bier was stopped, and the long procession of mourners stayed, and "the young man delivered back" to his mother.' And many of his disciples went with Him, and much people. Now when He came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and much people of the city was with her.' It was thus ordained in the providence of God that the witnesses of this miracle should be many; the much people' that were with the Lord, in addition to the much people' which accompanied the funeral procession. That He should thus meet this at the gate of the city,' while it belonged to the wonder-works of God's grace, being one of those 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 mournful procession to arouse even their compassion who were touched with no such lively sense of human sorrows as belonged to our compassionate Lord. Indeed, it would be hard to render 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 compare Jer. vi. 26: 'Make thee mourning as for an only son, most bitter lamentation;' Zech. xii. 10: They shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son;' and Amos viii. 10: 'I will

1 'EZEKOμiZETO. The technical word is inpiper, and the carrying out, ἐκφορά.

2 Gregory of Nyssa, himself a great master, but in a more artificial and elaborate style, of narration, has called attention to this (De Hom. Opific. c. 25): Πολλὰ δι ̓ ὀλίγων διηγεῖται ἡ ἱστορία· θρῆνος ἀντικρός ἐστι τὸ διήγημα... ὁρᾷς τὸ βάρος τῆς συμφορᾶς, πῶς ἐν ὀλίγῳ τὸ πάθος ὁ λόγος ἐξετραγώτησε.

make it as the mourning of an only son.' And not otherwise the desolation of a widow (Ruth i. 20, 21; 1 Tim. v. 5; Job xxiv. 3).

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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 thus speak, give no reason why the mourner should cease from weeping. But He who came down from heaven, one day to 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. xxi. 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. At the same time, as Olshausen has observed, we must not suppose that compassion for the mother was the determining motive for this mighty spiritual act on the part of Christ : for then, had the joy of the mother been the only object which He intended, the young man who was raised would have been used merely as a means, which 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 could become true and abiding.

And He came and touched the bier.' The intimation was 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, who am the Prince of life, who have the keys of death and the grave, quickening the dead, and calling those things which are not, as though they were, say unto thee, Arise. And that word of his was at once heard and obeyed; he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. Christ rouses from the bier as easily as another would

rouse from the bed,'-differing in this even from his own. messengers and ministers in the Old Covenant; for they, only with prayer and effort (1 Kin. xvii. 20–22; cf. Acts ix. 40), or after a long and patient exercise of love (2 Kin. iv. 34), won back his prey from the jaws of death; and this, because there dwelt not the absolute fulness of power in them, who were but as servants in the house of another, not as a Son in his own. 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.'3

And He delivered him to his mother' (cf. 1 Kin. xvii. 23; 2 Kin. iv. 36). So shall He once, when his great 'Arise' shall have awakened not one, but all the dead, deliver all those who have fallen asleep in Him to their beloved, for mutual 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 i. 27; v. 15; Luke v. 9), and they glorified God' (cf. Mark ii. 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 chiefest in the olden times, an Elijah or an Elisha, had

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

2 See what has been said already, p. 34. Massillon, in his sermon, Sur la Divinité de Jésus-Christ, has these eloquent words: Élie ressuscite des morts, il est vrai; mais il est obligé de se coucher plusieurs fois sur le corps de l'enfant qu'il ressuscite : il souffle, il se rétrécit, il s'agite: on voit bien qu'il invoque une puissance étrangère: qu'il rappelle de l'empire de la mort une âme qui n'est pas soumise à sa voix: et qu'il n'est pas luimême le maître de la mort et de la vie. Jésus-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 opère les plus grandes choses.

3 See the Alcestis of Euripides, 849-861.

revived the dead. They glorified God, that with the raising up of so great a prophet, the prophet that should come, as no doubt they accounted (Deut. xviii. 15; John i. 21, 46; iv. 25; vi. 14; Acts iii. 22; vii. 37), He had brought the long and dreary period to a close, during which all prophecy had been silent. It was now more than four hundred years since the last of the Old Testament prophets had spoken, and the faithful in Israel may well have feared that there should now be no open vision more; that instead of living words and words with power from prophets in direct communication with God, there should be henceforward nothing for them but the dead words of Rabbis and doctors of the law. We may a little understand their delight, when they foun that God had still his ambassadors to men, that perhaps the greatest of all these ambassadors was actually among them.'

1 Philostratus (Vita Apollonii, iv. 45) ascribes a miracle to Apollonius, evidently framed in imitation and rivalry of this (on this rivalry see p. 64, and Baur, Apollonius und Christus, p. 40). Apollonius met one day in the streets of Rome a damsel carried 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 more, probably, than an awakening from the deep swoon of an apparent death (αφύπνισε τὴν κόρην τοῦ δοκοῦντος θανάτου), and suggests an explanation which reminds of the modern ones of Paulus and his school,-that Apollonius perceived in her a spark of life which had escaped the notice of physicians and attendants; but whether this, or that he did indeed kindle in her anew the extinguished spark of life, he owns it impossible for him, as it was for the bystanders, to say.

15. THE HEALING OF THE IMPOTENT MAN AT

BETHESDA.

JOHN V. 1-16.

HE ablest commentator of the Romish communion begins

THE

his observations on this miracle with the utterance of his hearty wish that St. John had added one word, and told us at what 'feast of the Jews' it was wrought;' seems indeed wellnigh inclined to fall out with him, that he has not so done. 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 ministry 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, ii. 13; vi. 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). But if this be a feast of

1 Maldonatus: Magnâ nos Joannes molestiâ contentioneque liberâsset, si vel unum adjecisset verbum, quo quis ille Judæorum dies fuisset festus declarâsset.