sorrows," or even, according to the Septuagint version, "bears our sins, and is afflicted in our behalf."

In its primary meaning, the expression, "be thou clean," or "his leprosy was cleansed," refers to the law. He was clean who was pronounced to be so by the priest. There was therefore a special propriety in using the word cleanse in connection with the command to go to a priest. But in its secondary meaning, which was undoubtedly uppermost in the mind both of Jesus and of the sufferer, it referred to the removal, not of a legal restraint, but of the disease itself. Whether Jesus at the same time had reference to the moral cleansing from sin, the renovation of soul as well as of body, cannot with certainty be inferred from anything that is related by either of the Evangelists, though, if the view above given of leprosy being set apart in the Mosaic law as a visible type and expression of sin and its consequences be true, it is probable that this idea was also included in the words of Jesus.

This passing from things sensible to things spiritual and the reverse, without changing the language, or changing the language without a corresponding change in the thought, is very common with Jesus, and is often the occasion of perplexity to those commentators who would determine in each case precisely what was his meaning. Familiar instances will occur to every diligent student of the Gospels. Indeed it is characteristic of all figurative language, especially when that language, suggested by immediate objects or events, is charged with a new meaning, and made to contain and perpetuate thoughts of wide application and extent. "The light of the body is the eye." "Whosever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." 66 Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." "Lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest." Here are examples in which familiar images stand before us as representatives of an outward and material, or of an inward and spiritual fact.

5-13. HEALING THE CENTURION'S SERVANT.

Jesus had now come into Capernaum, which might be regarded as his home, though, as he says, v. 20, he had He only accepted the hospitality The centurion who met him as

no home of his own. that was offered him. he entered the city was not (Luke vii. 1-10) a Jew, though from his kindness in helping the Jews to build a synagogue he probably was a believer in their religion. From his acquaintance with heathen forms of worship and of faith, in which he had doubtless been educated, and which could hardly have been effaced from his mind, the idea of spiritual beings occupying different subordinate positions, and ready, as the inferior heathen gods were supposed to be, to do the bidding of their superiors, must have been familiar to him. It is difficult to determine precisely what idea he, from his peculiar religious associations and habits of thought, may have had of Jesus. He evidently regarded him as one endowed with more than human attributes, whom he felt himself unworthy to have under his roof, but who might command his agents, as inferior spirits, to remove the disease from his servant. All that he asks is that Jesus will only say the word, for then he is sure that his servant will be healed. Since even he, in his subordinate position as a man under authority, had soldiers under him who would go and come and do as he commanded them, it must be that Jesus could by a word send his unseen agents to do whatever he might command. It was this perfect confidence, connected as it was with his sense of personal unworthiness, that called out from Jesus the strong language of commendation which he used. Such faith, such a readiness to believe and trust in him, he had not found, no, not in all Israel.

And in this humble-minded believer, who is not of the seed of Abraham, he sees a type of the thousands, from

the Gentile nations, who shall crowd into his kingdom, and be accepted as his friends. From the east and the west, from the north and the south (Luke xiii. 29), they shall come to the feast, and recline at the table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, in the kingdom of Heaven, while the sons of the kingdom who reject his offers will be cast out into the outer darkness.

The allusion is to a great feast held in the evening, where the worthy guests are admitted to partake of its joys, while they who come without the fitting qualifications are turned out from the pleasant light and festivity within the banqueting-hall, into the darkness of night, which prevails without.

The image, viewed in the light of Oriental usage, is an exceedingly striking one, and is often repeated by our Saviour under different forms. They who believed themselves the exclusive sons of the kingdom, entitled above all others to its honors and its joys, in the day of its festal triumph and rejoicing, when their king, the longexpected Messiah, should be seated on his throne and invite the faithful to partake of his feast, should see him whom they had rejected exalted over all, and those whom they had despised as outcasts called in to take their honored places with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, while they themselves should be thrust out from the light and splendor and festivity of the banquet-hall to the outside darkness that was pressing upon them, and the shame, sorrow, indignation, and contempt which awaited them there. No image could be more full of meaning or of terror to the Jews, than to be not only excluded from the great company of illustrious men,- patriarchs and prophets and kings,whom they professed to reverence; but to be cast out into darkness and despair at the very hour when those whom they had despised as outcasts from the kingdom should be brought in to the royal banquet.

Jesus then spoke the word, and the centurion's servant,

whom he had never seen, was healed at that very hour. Here, again, we see how intimately the exercise of his miraculous power was connected with the high religious purposes of his mission. Not merely was that power

put forth to relieve the sufferings of a painful disease and to reward the kind-hearted master by restoring to him the dying servant to whom he was fondly attached, but it was so put forth as to confirm his religious faith, and give the weight of his authority to the sublime instructions by which it was accompanied, and which reached through temporal disease and death to the festive light of spiritual joy and the outer darkness, which lie in realms beyond.

14-17.- BEARING OUR INFIRMITIES.

After healing the leper and the centurion's servant, Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law, at the house (Mark i. 29) which was owned by Simon [Peter] and Andrew. Jesus evidently (Mark i. 33, 35) spent the night there, and it may have been his usual place of abode while in Capernaum. He probably arrived there in the morning, and according to the custom of the place had remained unoccupied through the hottest part of the day. Towards night, when the heat had so far abated that the sick could be taken abroad without exposure to its severity, many feeble and suffering persons, especially those who were called demoniacs, were brought to him, and the whole city was gathered together in the court by the door, to witness the cures that he wrought. As the evening shadows began to fall, and those afflicted with various fevers and violent madness were borne to him, he took away their diseases, and thus, in the view of the writer, fulfilled in himself the remarkable words of the prophet (Isaiah liii. 4). Matthew translates the words literally from the Hebrew, "Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sick

nesses."

66

But in our translation of Isaiah liii. 4, it reads, 'Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." In the Septuagint it is rendered, "He bears our sins and is pained in our behalf," from which undoubtedly is borrowed (Heb. ix. 28), "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many," and (1 Pet. ii. 24), "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree."

But which of these meanings is the true one, or may we accept them all? Throughout the Scriptures, as indeed in all the writings (particularly those of an imaginative character) which affect us most deeply, words primarily expressing ideas connected with matter and our physical condition or sensations, extend their influence into the region of mental or moral and religious ideas. The different shades of meaning melt insensibly into one another, or the words are placed in such relations that we may with almost equal propriety regard them as standing for ideas belonging to any one, or to all, of these classes. The passage just quoted is an instance of this. In its primary and literal signification (Lowth, Noyes, Barnes, &c.) it undoubtedly applies to bodily sufferings (infirmities and sicknesses), and therefore furnishes Matthew from the Messianic prophecies with a striking illustration of the cures which he had just described as performed by Jesus. But these same words (infirmities and sicknesses), in their secondary meaning, pass over into the region of mental affections, and, as expressing the disorders and sufferings of the mind, are properly translated, as in our common version, griefs and sorrows. Again, the same words may with equal propriety be taken in their relation to the moral nature, and then, as expressing moral disorders and the sufferings consequent upon them, they may be rendered, as in the Septuagint, by words which mean sins and sorrows: "He bears our sins, and endures sorrows in our behalf."

The interpretation given by Matthew, which is un