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' (Matt. xv. 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, which our Version has rather evaded than met; but its sense is plainly the following: That "if" of thine, that uncertainty whether anything can be done for thy child or not, is to be resolved by thee, and not by Me. There is a condition without which he cannot be healed; but the fulfilling of the condition lies with thyself and no other. 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 not merely completing the sentence, as in our Version,' All things are possible to him that believeth.' Thus faith is here, as in every other case, set as the condition of healing;

1 The words, I imagine, should be pointed thus: rò, ei dúvanai mioreñoaι 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.

on other occasions it is the faith of the person; but here, that being impossible, the father's is accepted instead; even as the Syrophoenician mother's in the room of her daughter's (Matt. XV. 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 with tears, Lord, I believe;'1 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. 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 ought 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. How majestic, in his address to the foul spirit, is that 'I charge thee. No longer those whom thou mayest hope to disobey, against whom thou mayest venture to struggle, but I, having all power in heaven and on earth, charge thee, come out of him.'. Nor is this all: he shall enter no more into him;' his return is barred; he shall not take advantage of his long possession, presently to come back (Matt. xii. 45), and reassert his dominion; the cure shall be at once perfect and lasting. The wicked spirit 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

6

1 That great divine, Thomas Jackson, says well: 'This word, belief, is not a term indivisible, but admits of many degrees, as well for the certainty of the assent or apprehension, as for the radication of the truth, rightly apprehended, in men's hearts or centre of their affections.'

2 Augustine, Serm. xliii. 6, 7.

3 Bengel: 'Ey ooi inirάonw. Ego, antitheton ad discipulos, qui non valuerant.

1

out of season,' expresses it, like an outgoing tenant, that cares not what mischief he does.' 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. x. 8, 9; Rev. i. 17; Matt. xvii. 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 (Matt. x. 8), and had on former occasions found the devils subject to them (Luke x. 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' (Matt. xii. 45); and at Ephes. vi. 12, there is probably a climax, mounting up from one degree of spiritual power and malignity to another. This kind,' He declares, 'goeth

1 Gregory the Great (Moral. xxxii. 19): Ecce eum non discerpserat cum tenebat, exiens discerpsit: quia nimirum tunc pejus cogitationes mentis dilaniat, cum jam egressui divinâ virtute compulsus appropinquat. Et quem 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 dæmonio gravius pulsantur, ut vel ad vitia reducantur, vel de suâ expulsione se vindicet diabolus.

378 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.

THE HEALING OF THE LUNATIC CHILD.

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 re-appears with some modifications, Luke xvii. 6; and St. Paul probably alludes to these words of his Lord, I Cor. xiii. 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. But it 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 (Matt. xiii. 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.

1 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 ?

N°

28. THE STATER IN THE FISH'S MOUTH.

MATT. xvii. 24-27.

other Evangelist records this miracle but St. Matthew;

and before we close our examination of it, it will be abundantly clear why, if we meet it in one Gospel only, then in that which is eminently the Gospel of the kingdom, of the King and the King's Son. It is a miracle full of the profoundest teaching; though its true depth and significance have not always been seized; have been sometimes lost and let go altogether; for indeed the entire transaction is emptied of all higher meaning when it is assumed that the tribute' here demanded of the Lord was a civil impost, owing, like the penny of a later occasion (Matt. xxii. 19), to the Roman emperor, and not a national and theocratic payment, due to the temple and the temple's God. But this is a matter which we must not anticipate.

Our Lord, we may presume, with Peter and other of his disciples, was returning, after one of his usual absences, to Capernaum, his own city. The collectors of the temple-dues may have been withheld by a certain awe from addressing Him, and He may have thus passed without question; but they detain Peter, who perhaps had lingered a little behind his Lord, and of him they ask, 'Doth not your Master pay tribute?' or, as I should much prefer to see it rendered, Doth not your Master pay the didrachms?' Tribute' is

1 See Greswell, Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 374, seq.

2 Tà didpaxpa, with the article, as something perfectly well known: in the plural on the first occasion, to mark the number of didrachms that