him, and nowhere felt safe but in immediate nearness to Him? or did he only desire, out of the depth of his gratitude, henceforth to be a follower of Him to whom he owed this mighty deliverance? Whatever was his motive, the Lord had other purposes with him. He was Himself quitting those who had shown themselves so unworthy of his presence; but He would not leave Himself without a witness among them. This man so wonderfully delivered from the worst bondage of the Evil One, should be to them a standing monument of his grace and power, an evidence that He would have healed them, and was willing to heal them still, of all the diseases of their souls: 'Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.' And the man did so, and not without effect: He departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him; and all men did marvel.' :

6

Yet this command that he should go and declare the great things done for him, may have found its further motive in the peculiar moral condition of the man. Only by a reference to this moral condition are we able to reconcile the apparently contradictory injunctions which the Lord laid on those whom He had healed:-some being forbidden to say anything of God's goodness to them (Matt. viii. 4; Luke viii. 56),-this one commanded to

Erasmus rightly connects a not alone with Troinker, but also with ¿λénσer—of course, in the second case, adverbially: Et quantopere misertus sit tui. It is true that we should rather expect in such a case to have the oa repeated; but there are abundant examples to justify the omis

sion.

2 Augustine (Quæst. Evang. ii. 13): Ut sic quisque intelligat post remissionem peccatorum redeundum sibi esse in conscientiam bonam, et serviendum Evangelio propter aliorum etiam salutem, ut deinde cum Christo requiescat; ne cum præpropere jam vult esse cum Christo, negligat ministerium prædicationis, fraternæ redemptioni accommodatum. makes in the same place this whole account an historico-prophetic delineation of the exorcizing, so to speak, of the heathen world of its foul superstitions and devilish idolatries.

He

publish everywhere the mercy which he had received. We may very well suppose that where there was danger of all deeper impressions being scattered and lost through a garrulous repetition of the outward circumstances of the healing, silence was enjoined, that so there might be an inward brooding over the gracious and wondrous dealings of the Lord. But where, on the contrary, there was a temperament over-inclined to melancholy, sunken and shut up in itself, a man needing to be drawn out from self, and into healthy communion with his fellow-men,— as was evidently the case with such a solitary melancholic person as is here before us,-there the command was, that the man should go and tell to others the great things which God had done for him, and by the very act of this telling maintain the healthy condition of his own soul.

6. THE RAISING OF JAIRUS DAUGHTER.

MATT. ix. 18, 19, 23-26; MARK V. 22, 24, 35-43; LUKE viii. 41, 42, 49-56.

THIS

6

THIS miracle is by St. Mark and St. Luke made immediately to follow our Lord's return from that eastern side of the lake, which He had quitted when the inhabitants, guiltily at strife with their own good, had besought Him to depart out of their coasts (Matt. viii. 34). By St. Matthew other events, the curing of the paralytic, his own calling, and some discourses with the Pharisees, are inserted between. Yet of these only the latter (ix. 10-17) the best harmonists find really to have here their proper place. While He spake these things unto them, behold, there came a certain ruler, and worshipped Him.' The two later Evangelists record his name, 'Jairus,' and more accurately define his office; he was one of the rulers of the synagogue," all which St. Matthew, who has his eye only on the main fact, and to whom all its accessories seem indifferent, passes over. The synagogue, we can hardly doubt, was that of Capernaum, where now Jesus was (Matt. ix. 1); the man therefore most probably made afterwards a part of that deputation which came to the Lord pleading for the heathen centurion (Luke vii. 3);

1 In Matthew simply άρχων, which is explained in Mark εἷς τῶν αρχισυναγώγων, in Luke ἄρχων τῆς συναγωγῆς. Many synagogues had but one of these (Luke xiii. 14), the name itself indicating as much; yet it is plain from this and other passages, as Acts xiii. 15, that a synagogue often had many of these 'rulers.' Probably those described as roÙÇ Övrag tõv 'Iovdaiwv zpórovę, whom St. Paul summoned at Rome (Acts xxviii. 17), were such 'chiefs of the synagogue' (see Vitringa, De Synagoga, pp. 584, 8qq.).

the elders of the Jews' there being identical with the 'rulers of the synagogue' here.

But he who may have pleaded then for another, presents himself now pleading for his own; for he comes saying, 'My daughter is even now dead; but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live.' Thus St. Matthew; but the other Evangelists with an important variation: My little daughter lieth at the point of death" (Mark v. 23): ‘He had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a dying' (Luke viii. 42). This, which the after history shows to have been more exactly the fact, is not hard to reconcile with the statement in St. Matthew. When the father left his child, she was at the last gasp; he knew not whether to regard her now as alive or dead; he only knew that life was ebbing so fast when he quitted her side, that she could scarcely be living still; and yet, having no certain notices of her death, he was perplexed whether to speak of her as departed or not, and thus at one moment would express himself in one language, at the next in another. Strange that a circumstance like this, so drawn from the life, so testifying to the reality of the things recorded, should be urged by some as a contradiction between one Gospel and another.

That Lord upon whose ear the tidings of woe might never fall in vain, at once arose and followed him, and so did his disciples.' The crowd which had been listening to

1

'Eaxáros Exew in extremis esse; one of the frequent Latinisms of St. Mark; which do something to corroborate the old tradition that this Gospel was written originally at Rome, and for Roman readers. So ikavov ποιῆσαι=satisfacere (xv. 15), σπεκουλάτωρ (Vi. 27), φραγελλόω (ΧV. 15), λεγεών (ν. 9, 15), πραιτώριον (xv. 16), κήνσος (xii. 14), κεντυρίων (ΧV. 39), koôpávτns (xii. 42), dnváptov (vi. 37; xiv. 5), giorne (vii. 4, 8), and others. The use of diminutives, such as the Gvyárptov here, is also characteristic of this Evangelist; thus κοράσιον (ν. 41), κυνάρια (vii. 27), ιχθύδια (iii. 7), ὠτάριον (xiv. 47).

* Bengel: Ita dixit ex conjecturâ. Augustine (De Cons. Evang. ii. 28): Ita enim desperaverat, ut potius eam vellet reviviscere, non credens vivam posso inveniri, quam morientem reliquerat. But Theophylact, not, I think, rightly: 'Ην αὐξάνων τὴν συμφορὰν, ὡς εἰς ἔλεον ἑλκύσαι τὸν Χριστόν.

his teaching, followed also, curious and eager to see what the Lord would do or would fail to do. The miracle of the healing of the woman with the issue of blood found place upon the way, but will naturally be better treated apart; being, as it is, entirely separable from this history, though not altogether without its bearing upon it; for the delay, the words which passed between the Lord and his disciples, and then between Him and the woman, must all have been a sore trial to the agonized father, now when every moment was precious, when death was shaking the last few sands in the hour-glass of his daughter's life,-a trial in its kind similar to that with which the sisters of Lazarus were tried, when they beheld their beloved brother drawing ever nigher to the grave, and the Lord tarried notwithstanding. But sore as the trial must have been, we detect no signs of impatience on his part, and this no doubt was laid to his account. While the Lord was yet speaking to the woman, there came from the ruler of the synagogue's house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest1 thou the Master any further?' St. Luke mentions but one, probably the especial bearer of the message, whom others went along with, as it is common for men in their thirst for excitement to have a kind of pleasure in being the bearers even of evil tidings. What hope of effectual help from Christ they may before have entertained, had now perished. They who, perhaps, had faith enough to believe that He could fan the last expiring spark of life into a flame, yet had not the stronger faith to anticipate the harder thing, that He could rekindle that spark of life, after it had been quenched altogether. Perhaps the father's hope would have perished too, and no

1 EKUA, properly to flay, as okiλa are originally the spoils, dress, or armour, stripped from the bodies of the slain; afterwards more generally, fatigare, vexare, and often with a special reference to fatiguing through the length of a journey (we should read ἐσκυλμένοι, not ἐκλελυμένοι, Matt. xix. 36); as is the meaning here: 'Why dost thou weary the Master with this tedious way?' (see Suicer, Thes. s. v.).