that these trivial differences do not in the slightest measure affect the miraculous element in this work of power.

1

At first it excites some surprise that the disciples, with that other miracle fresh in their memories, should on this second occasion have been as seriously perplexed how the multitude should be fed as they were on the first. Yet this surprise rises out of our ignorance of man's heart, of our own heart, and of the deep root of unbelief which is there. It is evermore thus in times of difficulty and distress. All former deliverances are in danger of being forgotten; the mighty interpositions of God's hand in former passages of men's lives fall out of their remembrance; each new difficulty appears as one from which there is no extrication; at each recurring necessity it seems as though the wonders of God's grace were exhausted and have come utterly to an end. He may have divided the Red Sea for his people, yet no sooner are they on the other side, than because there is no water to drink, they murmur against Moses, and count that they must perish for thirst, crying, 'Is the Lord among us, or not' (Exod. xvii. 1-7)? or, to adduce a still nearer parallel, He who opens his hand and fills all things living with plenteousness may have once already covered the camp with quails (Exod. xvi. 13), yet for all this even Moses himself cannot believe that He will provide flesh for all that multitude (Num. xi. 21, 22). It is only the man of a full-formed faith, of a faith which Apostles themselves at this time did not possess, who argues from the past to the future, and truly derives confidence from God's former dealings of faithfulness and love (cf. 1 Sam. xvii. 34-37; 2 Chron. xvi. 7, 8). Nothing then but a strange unacquaintance with the heart of man could have led any to argue that the disciples, with their previous experience of one miracle of this kind, could not

1 Calvin: Quia autem similis quotidie nobis obrepit torpor, eo magis cavendum est ne unquam distrahantur mentes nostræ a reputandis Dei beneficiis, ut præteriti temporis experientia in futurum idem nos sperare doceat, quod jam semel vel sæpius largitus est Deus.

a a second similar occasion have been perplexed how the wants of the multitude should be supplied; that we have therefore here an illustration of the general inaccuracy which prevails in the records of our Lord's life, of a loose tradition, which has told the same event twice over.

Moreover this perplexity of theirs is capable of another explanation. Could it not easily have happened that the disciples, perfectly remembering how their Master had once spread a table in the wilderness, and fully persuaded that He could do it again, might still doubt whether He would choose a second time to put forth his creative might; -whether there was in these present multitudes that spiritual hunger, which was worthy of being met and rewarded by such an interposition of divine power; whether they too were seeking the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and might thus claim to have all other things, those also which pertain to this lower life, added unto them ? But such earnest seekers, for the time at least, they were; and as others had faith to be healed, so these had faith to be fed; and the same bounteous hand which fed the five thousand before, fed the four thousand

now.

1 It is at least an ingenious allegory which Augustine proposes, namely that these two miracles severally set forth Christ's communication of Himself to the Jew and to the Gentile; that as the first is a parable of the Jewish people finding in Him the satisfaction of their spiritual need, so this second, in which the people came from far, even from the far country of idols, is a parable of the Gentile world. The details of his application may be of no very great value; but the perplexity of the Apostles here concerning the supply of the new needs, notwithstanding all that they had already witnessed, will then exactly answer to the slowness with which they, as the ministers of the new Kingdom, recognized that Christ was as freely given to, and was as truly the portion of, the Gentile as the Jew. This sermon the Benedictine Edd. relegate to the Appendix (Serm. lxxxi.), but the passage about Eutyches may easily be, indeed evidently is, an interpolation; and the rest is so entirely in Augustine's manner, that I have not hesitated to refer to it as his. Hilary had before him suggested the same: Sicut autem illa turba quam prius pavit, Judaicæ credentium convenit turbæ, ita hæc populo gentium comparatur.

26. THE OPENING THE EYES OF ONE BLIND AT

A

BETHSAIDA.

MARK viii. 22-26.

MIRACLE peculiar to St. Mark, and in many of its circumstances closely resembling another, which he has recorded a little while before (vii. 31-37), and which also is exclusively his. It thus in its most important features has been treated of already. As the Lord took that other sufferer, of whom the same Evangelist alone keeps a record, aside from the multitude' (vii. 33), even so 'He took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town;' and with the same moisture from his own mouth wrought his cure. The Lord, as was so often his custom, veiling more or less the miraculous in the miracle, links on his power to means already in use among men; working through these means something higher than they could themselves have produced, and clothing the supernatural in the forms of the natural. Thus did He, for example, when He bade his disciples to anoint the sick with oil,-one of the most esteemed helps for healing in the East (Mark vi. 13; cf. Jam. v. 14). Not the oil, but his word, should heal; yet without the oil the disciples might have found it too hard to believe in the power which they were exerting,—those who could only be healed through their faith, to believe in the power which should heal them. So the figs laid on Hezekiah's boil were indeed

1 Bengel: Cæco visum recuperanti latior erat aspectus cæli et operum divinorum in naturâ, quam operum humanorum in pago.

the very remedy which a physician with only natural appliances at command would have used (Isai. xxxviii. 22; cf. 2 Kin. ii. 20, 21); yet now, hiding itself behind this nature, clothing itself in the forms of this nature, an effectual work of preternatural healing went forward.

The feature which most distinguishes this miracle is the progressive character of the cure. This, it is true, is not itself without analogies in other cases, as in that of the man blind from his birth, who only after he had washed in Siloam, 'came seeing' (John ix. 7); yet the steps of the progress are marked with greater emphasis here than in any other instance. For, first, after the Lord 'had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, He asked him if he saw aught. And he looked up, and said, I see men, as trees, walking.' Certain moving forms he saw about him, but without the power of discerning their shape or magnitude,-trees he should have accounted them from their height, and men from their motion. But the good Physician leaves not his work unfinished: After that He put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up; and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.'

Chrysostom and others find the explanation of this gradual cure, in the imperfection of this blind man's faith. Proof of this imperfection they see in the fact, that, while others in a like calamity did themselves beseech the Lord that He would open their eyes, this man was brought to Him by others, as one who himself scarcely expected a benefit. The gracious Lord, who would not reject, but

1 In Cheselden's interesting account (Anatomy, p. 301, London, 1768) of the experience of one who, having been blind from his birth, was enabled to see, a curious confirmation of the truthfulness of this narrative occurs: 'When he first saw, he knew not the shape of any thing, nor any one thing from another, however different in shape or magnitude; but being told what things were, whose forms he before knew from feeling, he would carefully observe, that he might know them again.'

2 Chemnitz (Harm. Evang. 84): Manus imponit ut ostendat carnem suam esse instrumentum per quod et cum quo ipse ỏ Aóyoç æternus omnia opera vivificationis perficiat.

who could as little cure, so long as there was on his part this desperation of healing, vouchsafed to him a glimpse of the blessing, that He might awaken in him a longing for its fulness, and, this longing once awakened, presently satisfied him with that fulness. To the rest of the world, this healing step by step is a testimony of the freeness of God's grace, which is linked to no single way of manifestation, but works in divers manners, sometimes accomplishing only little by little what at other times it brings about in a moment.' And certainly no symbol more suitable could be found of the progressive steps by which He who is the Light of the world' makes sometimes the souls that come to Him partakers of the illumination of his grace. Not all at once are the old errors and the old confusions put to flight; not all at once do they see clearly: for a while there is much of their old blindness remaining, much for a season impairing their vision; they see men but as trees, walking. Yet in good time Christ completes the work which He has begun. The author,' He is also the finisher of their faith; ' He lays his hands on them anew, and they see every man clearly.2

'And He sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town' (cf. Matt. ix. 30; Mark i. 44; vii. 36). The first of these commands seems to contain, and in fact does contain, the second;

1 Calvin: Paulatim cæco visum restituit: quod ideo factum esse probabile est, ut documentum in hoc homine statueret liberæ suæ dispensationis, nec se astrictum esse ad certam normam, quin hoc vel illo modo virtutem suam proferret. Oculos ergo cæci non statim ita illuminat ut officio suo fungantur, sed obscurum illis confusumque intuitum instillat : deinde alterâ manuum impositione integram aciem illis reddit. Ita gratia Christi, quæ in alios repente effusa prius erat, quasi guttatim defluxit in hunc hominem.

2 Bede: Quem uno verbo totum simul curare poterat, paulatim curat, ut magnitudinem humanæ cæcitatis ostendat, quæ vix et quasi per gradus ad lucem redeat, et gratiam suam nobis indicet, per quam singula perfectionis incrementa adjuvat. Quod autem eum in domum ire præcepit, mystice admonet omnes qui cognitione veritatis illustrantur, ut ad cor suum redeant, et quantum sibi donatum sit sollicitâ mente perpendant.