one Son, the only-begotten of the Father, whom he has in his eye.* He, the great Master and Lord, spreads a table, and all that depend on him, in their place and order are satisfied from it,-the children at the table, the dogs beneath the table. There is 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, are satisfied from his hands.

And now she has conquered. She who before heard only those words of a seeming contempt, now hears words of a most gracious commendation,-words of which the like are recorded as spoken but to one other in all the Gospel history: "O woman, great is thy faith!" He who at first seemed 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, like Joseph 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: in the words of St. Mark, "For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter."

Like the centurion at Capernaum; like the nobleman at Cana, she made proof that his word was potent, whether spoken far off or near. Her child, indeed, was at a distance; but she offered in her faith a channel of communication between it and Christ. With one hand of that faith she had held on to that Lord in whom all healing grace was stored, with the other to her suffering child,—thus herself a living conductor by which the power of Christ might run like an electric flash from him to her beloved. "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 it would appear from the paroxysms of the spirit's going out; or, the circumstance which last is mentioned may indicate only that she was now taking that quiet rest, which hitherto the evil spirit had not allowed. It will answer so to the "clothed and in his right mind," (Luke viii. 30,) of another who had been tormented in the

same way.

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 an

* Maldonatus: Loquitur pluraliter propter canes, quorum suum quisque dominum habet.

ticipated their needs, "Wilt thou be made whole?" (John v. 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, higher, purer faith than if she had borne away her blessing at once. Now she has learned, as then she never could have learned, that men ought always to pray and not to faint; that, with God, to delay a boon is not therefore to deny it. She had learned the lesson which Moses must have learned, when "the Lord met him, and sought to kill him," (Exod. vi. 24;) she won the strength which Jacob had won before, from his night-long struggle with the Angel. There is, indeed, a remarkable analogy between this history and that last. (Gen. xxxii. 24-32.) There as here, there is the same persevering struggle on the one side, and 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. xii. 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,* «blest" this woman at last, as he had blest at length Jacob at Peniel,-in each case rewarding thus 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, 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. i. 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, that is, with God in prayer, (see iv.

* This has been doubted by some; but see the younger VITRINGA's Diss. De Lacta Jacobi, p. 18, seq., in his Diss. Sac., and DEYLING's Obss. Sac., p. 827, seq.

'Aywvisóuevos. Cf. Col. ii. 1, where Grotius says rightly: Per dyova intelligit non sollicitudinem tantùm, sed preces assiduas.

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 of hinderances which would keep from Christ, in the paralytic, (Mark ii. 4;) the blind man at Jericho, (Mark x. 48;) and this woman of Canaan. The paralytic broke through the outward hinderances, the obstacles of things external; blind Bartimæus through the hinderances opposed by his fellow-men; but this woman, more heroically than all, through apparent hinderances even from Christ himself. These, in their seeming weakness, were the three mighty ones, not of David, but of David's Son, that broke through opposing hosts, until they could draw living water from wells of salvation. (2 Sam. xxiii. 16.)

XXIV.

THE HEALING OF ONE DEAF AND DUMB.

MARK Vii. 31-37.

ST. MATTHEW tells us in general terms how 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,* and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet, and he healed them;" (xv. 30;) but out of this multitude 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. It was that of a man deaf and having an impediment in his speech, one who, if he was not altogether dumb, was yet probably incapable of making any articulate sounds. His case differs, apparently,

* Kvλλós, properly, crippled or maimed in the hand, as Jerome (in loc.) observes: Quomodo claudus dicitur, qui uno claudicat pede, sic kʊ22òç appellatur, qui unam manum debilem habet. Nos proprietatem hujus verbi non habemus. We are equally without a single word which is its equivalent. At Matthew xviii. 8, it is evidently maimed of the hand. Yet here there may well be a question whether it means so much, for though, of course, it lay in the power of Christ to supply a lost limb, yet we nowhere read in detail of any miracle of this kind, and such a one seems contrary to the analogy of his whole work of healing: for he was come now, a Redeemer, that is, a setter free of man in his body and in his soul from the alien power 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 It is no limitation of this divine power of Christ, to suppose that it had thus its law, according to which it wrought, and beyond which it did not extend. For this law is only the law of infinite fitness, which is received from itself.

same.

Some make poyiháλos here to signify mute, chiefly on account of the ¿húhovç of ver. 37; and they refer to Isai. xxxv. 6, (LXX.,) тpavì dè čoтai yhŵoca poyíλahwv, in proof; as also to Exod. iv. 11, where, though not the Septuagint, yet the three other

from that of the dumb man mentioned Matt. ix. 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." It is not, however, exactly in this way that he is willing to heal him.

It has been already observed, that there is no doubt 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 these the process of restoration was instantaneous, while again another saw at first "men as trees walking." At all events we are not for an instant to suppose in these gradually accomplished cures any restraint on the power of the Lord, save such as was willingly imposed by 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; though our ignorance of this prevents us from at once seeing the manifold wisdom which ordered each of his proceedings, and how it was conducted so as best to make the bodily healing a passage to the spiritual, which the Lord had ever in his eye.*

On the present occasion him that he would heal he first "took aside from the multitude," with which notice we may compare Mark viii. 23: "He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town." But for what reason does he isolate him thus? The Greek Fathers say generally, for the avoiding of all show and ostentation; but it cannot be

Greek translations use this word in the sense of dumb. Yet the 2áheι ¿p0ws 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 ẞpaðúyλwoσoç,úуkvλóyλwoooç, balbutiens, that is, he could make no intelligible sounds; but was not absolutely dumb. Cf. Isai. xxxii. 4, (LXX.) al yλwooaι ai peλhíšovoaı.

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