He looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the
hardness of their hearts.'--Mark iii. 5.
Our Lord goes into the synagogue at Capernaum, where He had already
wrought more than one miracle, and there He finds an object for His
healing power, in a poor man with a withered hand; and also a little
knot of His enemies. The scribes and Pharisees expect Christ to heal
the man. So much had they learned of His tenderness and of His power.
But their belief that He could work a miracle did not carry them one
step towards a recognition of Him as sent by God. They have no eye for
the miracle, because they expect that He is going to break the
Sabbath. There is nothing so blind as formal religionism. This poor
man's infirmity did not touch their hearts with one little throb of
compassion. They had rather that he had gone crippled all his days
than that one of their Rabbinical Sabbatarian restrictions should be
violated. There is nothing so cruel as formal religionism. They only
think that there is a trap laid--and perhaps they had laid it--into
which Christ is sure to go.
So, as our Evangelist tells us, they sat there stealthily watching Him
out of their cold eyes, whether He would heal on the Sabbath day, that
they might accuse Him. Our Lord bids the man stand out into the middle
of the little congregation. He obeys, perhaps, with some feeble
glimmer of hope playing round his heart. There is a quickened
attention in the audience; the enemies are watching Him with
gratification, because they hope He is going to do what they think to
be a sin.
And then He reduces them all to silence and perplexity by His
question--sharp, penetrating, unexpected: 'Is it lawful to do good on
the Sabbath day, or to do evil? You are ready to blame Me as breaking
your Sabbatarian regulations if I heal this man. What if I do not heal
him? Will that be doing nothing? Will not that be a worse breach of
the Sabbath day than if I heal him?'
He takes the question altogether out of the region of pedantic
Rabbinism, and bases His vindication upon the two great principles
that mercy and help hallow any day, and that not to do good when we
can is to do harm, and not to save life is to kill.
They are silenced. His arrow touches them; they do not speak because
they cannot answer; and they will not yield. There is a struggle going
on in them, which Christ sees, and He fixes them with that steadfast
look of His; of which our Evangelist is the only one who tells us what
it expressed, and by what it was occasioned. 'He looked round about on
them _with anger_, being _grieved_.' Mark the combination of emotions,
anger and grief. And mark the reason for both; 'the hardness,' or as
you will see, if you use the Revised Version, 'the _hardening_' of
their hearts--a process which He saw going on before Him as He looked
at them.
Now I do not need to follow the rest of the story, how He turns away
from them because He will not waste any more words on them, else He
had done more harm than good. He heals the man. They hurry from the
synagogue to prove their zeal for the sanctifying of the Sabbath day
by hatching a plot on it for murdering Him. I leave all that, and turn
to the thoughts suggested by this look of Christ as explained by the
Evangelist.