He is above the law, and lord of the law, by right of that higher nature which is joined with his human. He therefore may pronounce when the shadow shall give place to the substance, when his people have so made one their own that they may forego the other. Christ is the end of the law,' and that in more ways than one. To Him it pointed; in Him it is swallowed up; being Himself living law; yet not therefore in any true sense the destroyer of the law, as the adversaries charged Him with being, but its transformer and glorifier, changing it from a bondage to a liberty, from a shadow to a substance, from a letter to a spirit (Matt. v. 17, 18).

To this our Lord's clearing of his disciples, or rather of Himself in his disciples (for it was at Him that the shafts of their malice were indeed aimed), the healing of the man with a withered hand is by St. Matthew immediately attached, although from St. Luke we learn that it was on 'another Sabbath' that it actually found place. Like the very similar healing of the woman with a spirit of infirmity (Luke xiii. 11), like that of the demoniac at Capernaum (Mark i. 2, 3), it was wrought in a synagogue. There, in 'their synagogue,' the synagogue of those with whom He had thus disputed, He encountered a man who had his hand withered;' his right hand,' as St. Luke tells us. His disease, which probably extended through the arm, had its origin in a deficient absorption of nutriment; was a partial atrophy, showing itself in a gradual wasting of the size of the limb, with a loss of its powers of motion, and ending with the total cessation in it of all vital action. When once thoroughly established, it is incurable by any

art of man.2

1 Augustine (Serm. cxxxvi. 3): Dominus sabbatum solvebat: sed non ideo reus. Quid est quod dixi, sabbatum solvebat? Lux ipse venerat, umbras removebat. Sabbatum enim a Domino Deo præceptum est, ab ipso Christo præceptum, qui cum Patre erat, quando lex illa dabatur: ab ipso præceptum est, sed in umbrâ futuri.

2 See Winer, Realwörterbuch, s. v. Krankheiten. In the apocryphai

The apparent variation in the different records of this miracle, that in St. Matthew the question proceeds from the Pharisees, in the other Gospels from the Lord, is no real one; the reconciliation of the two accounts is easy. The Pharisees first ask Him, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?' He answers question with question, as was so often his custom (see Matt. xxi. 24): 'I will ask you one thing. Is it lawful on the Sabbath days to do good or to do evil? to save life or destroy it?' With the same infinite wisdom which we admire in his answer to the lawyer's question, 'Who is my neighbour?' (Luke x. 29), He shifts the whole argument, lifts it up altogether into a higher region; and then at once it is evident on which side the right lies. They had put the alternative of doing or not doing; there might be a question here. But He shows that the alternative is, the doing good or the failing to do good,-which last He puts as identical with doing evil, the neglecting to save as equivalent to destroying (Prov. xxiv. 11, 12). Here there could be no question; this under no circumstances could be right; it could never be good to sin. Therefore it is not merely allowable, but a duty, to do some things on the Sabbath.' 'Yea,' He Gospel according to the Hebrews, in use among the Nazarenes and Ebionites, which was probably our St. Matthew, with some extraneous additions, this man is a mason, who thus pleads for his own healing: Cæmentarius eram, manibus victum quæritans: precor te, Jesu, ut mihi restituas sanitatem, ne turpiter mendicem cibos. The xtipa ixwv Eŋpáv ¡s=rýv xrìpa áðpavic or of Philostratus (Vita Apollon. iii. 30), whom the Indian sages heal.

1 Danzius (in Meuschen, Nov. Test. ex Talm. illustr. p. 585): Immutat ergo beneficus Servator omnem controversia statum, ac longe eundem ractius, quam fraudis isti artifices, proponit. In his interesting and learned Essay, Christi Curatio Sabbathica vindicata ex legibus Judaicis, Danzius seeks to prove by extracts from their own books that the Jews were not at all so strict, as now, when they would accuse the Lord, they professed to be, in their own observance of the Sabbath. He finds proof of this (p. 607) in the words, Thou hypocrite,' addressed on one such occasion to the ruler of the synagogue (Luke xiii. 15). It is hard to judge how far he has made out his point, without knowing how far the extracts in proof, confessedly from works of a later, often a far later, date, fairly represent the earlier Jewish canons. In the apocryphal gospels

goes on, and works much less important and urgent than that which I am about to do, you would not yourselves leave undone. What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? You have asked Me, Is I reply, It is lawful to

it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?

do well on that day, and therefore to heal.' their peace,' having nothing to answer more.

6

They held

'Then,'-that is, when He had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts (Mark iii. 5),—saith He to the man, Stretch forth thy hand.' The presence of grief and anger in the same heart at the same time is no contradiction. Indeed, with Him who was at once perfect love and perfect holiness, grief for the sinner must ever go hand in hand with anger against the sin; and this anger, which with us is in danger of becoming a turbid thing, of passing into anger against the man, who is God's creature, instead of being anger against the sin, which is the devil's corruption of God's creature,with Him was perfectly pure; for it is not the agitation of the waters, but the sediment at the bottom, which troubles and defiles them; and where no sediment is, no impurity will follow on their agitation. This important notice of the anger with which the Lord looked round on these evil men we owe to St. Mark, who has so often preserved for us a record of the passing lights and shadows which swept over the countenance of the Lord (vii. 34; x. 21). The man obeyed the word, which was a word of power; he stretched forth his hand, and it was restored1 whole like as the other.'

very

(see Thilo, Codex Apocryphus, pp. 502, 558), it is observable how prominent a place among the charges brought against Christ on his trial, are the healings wrought upon the Sabbath.

1 'Amokategtálŋ. Josephus (Antt. viii. 8. 5) uses the remarkable word ȧraZwπvptiv (cf. 2 Tim. i. 6) in relating the restoration of Jeroboam's withered arm (1 Kin. xi. 6).

Hereupon the exasperation of Christ's enemies rises to the highest pitch. He has broken their traditions; He has put them to silence and to shame before all the people. They were filled with madness,' as St. Luke tells us; or, in the words of St. Matthew, 'went out and held a council against Him, how they might destroy Him' (cf. John xi. 53). In their blind hate they snatch at the nearest weapon in their reach; do not even shrink from joining league with the Herodians, the Romanizing party in the land,attached to Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, who was only kept on his throne by Roman influence,-if between them they may bring to nothing this new power which equally menaces both. So, on a later occasion (Matt. xxii. 16), the same parties are leagued together to ensnare Him. For thus it is ever with the sinful world. Its factions, divided against one another, can yet lay aside for the moment their mutual jealousies and enmities, to join in a common conspiracy against the truth. The kingdom of lies is no longer a kingdom divided against itself, when the kingdom of the truth is to be opposed. Between lie and lie, however seemingly antagonistic, there are always points of contact, so that they can act together for a while; it is only between a lie and the truth that there is absolute opposition, and no compromise possible. Herod and Pilate can be friends together, if it be for the destroying of the Christ (Luke xxiii. 12). The Lord, aware of the machinations of his enemies, withdraws from their malice to his safer retirements in the immediate neighbourhood of the sea of Galilee (Mark iii. 7; John xi. 53, 54).

20. THE RESTORING OF THE WOMAN WITH A SPIRIT

WE

OF INFIRMITY.

LUKE xiii. 10-17.

E have here another of those cures, which, as having been accomplished on the Sabbath, awoke the indignation of the rulers of the Jewish Church; cures, of which some, though not all, are recorded chiefly for the sake of showing how the Lord dealt with these cavillers; and what He Himself contemplated as the true hallowing of that day. This being the main point which the Evangelist has in his eye, everything else falls into the background. We are not told where this healing took place; but only that He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath.' While there was but one temple in the land, and indeed for all Jews in all the world,- for that on Mount Gerizim and that in Egypt were alike impostures (John iv. 22), shells without a kernel, fanes empty of all presence of God, there were synagogues in every place; and in these, on every Sabbath, prayer was wont to be made, and the Scriptures of the Old Testament read and expounded (Luke iv. 16, 17; Acts xiii. 14, 15; XV. 21). 'And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself! Had we only this account of what ailed her, namely that she had a spirit of infirmity,' we might doubt whether St. Luke meant to trace up her complaint to any other than the natural causes, whence flow the weaknesses and sufferings which afflict our race. But the Lord's later commentary on these words,—‘whom