In my last chapter I took the healing of Simon's wife's mother as a
type of all such miracles, viewed from the consciousness of the person
healed. In the multitude of cases--for it must not be forgotten that
there was a multitude of which we have no individual record--the
experience must have been very similar. The evil thing, the antagonist
of their life, departed; they knew in themselves that they were healed;
they beheld before them the face and form whence the healing power had
gone forth, and they believed in the man. What they believed _about_
him, farther than that he had healed them and was good, I cannot pretend
to say. Some said he was one thing, some another, but they believed in
the man himself. They felt henceforth the strongest of ties binding his
life to their life. He was now the central thought of their being. Their
minds lay open to all his influences, operating in time and by holy
gradations. The well of life was henceforth to them an unsealed
fountain, and endless currents of essential life began to flow from it
through their existence. High love urging gratitude awoke the conscience
to intenser life; and the healed began to recoil from evil deeds and
vile thoughts as jarring with the new friendship. Mere acquaintance with
a good man is a powerful antidote to evil; but the knowledge of _such_
a man, as those healed by him knew him, was the mightiest of divine
influences.
In these miracles of healing our Lord must have laid one of the largest
of the foundation-stones of his church. The healed knew him henceforth,
not by comprehension, but with their whole being. Their very life
acknowledged him. They returned to their homes to recall and love
afresh. I wonder what their talk about him was like. What an insight
it would give into our common nature, to know how these men and women
thought and spoke concerning him! But the time soon arrived when they
had to be public martyrs--that is, witnesses to what they knew, come of
it what might. After our Lord's departure came the necessity for those
who loved him to gather together, thus bearing their testimony at once.
Next to his immediate disciples, those whom he had cured must have been
the very heart of the young church. Imagine the living strength of such
a heart--personal love to the personal helper the very core of it. The
church had begun with the first gush of affection in the heart of the
mother Mary, and now "great was the company of those that published" the
good news to the world. The works of the Father had drawn the hearts of
the children, and they spake of the Elder Brother who had brought those
works to their doors. The thoughtful remembrances of those who had heard
him speak; the grateful convictions of those whom he had healed;
the tender memories of those whom he had taken in his arms and
blessed--these were the fine fibrous multitudinous roots which were to
the church existence, growth, and continuance, for these were they which
sucked in the dews and rains of that descending Spirit which was the
life of the tree. Individual life is the life of the church.
But one may say: Why then did he not cure all the sick in Judæa? Simply
because all were not ready to be cured. Many would not have believed in
him if he had cured them. Their illness had not yet wrought its work,
had not yet ripened them to the possibility of faith; his cure would
have left them deeper in evil than before. "He did not many mighty works
there because of their unbelief." God will cure a man, will give him a
fresh start of health and hope, and the man will be the better for it,
even without having _yet_ learned to thank him; but to behold the healer
and acknowledge the outstretched hand of help, yet not to believe in the
healer, is a terrible thing for the man; and I think the Lord kept his
personal healing for such as it would bring at once into some relation
of heart and will with himself; whence arose his frequent demand of
faith--a demand apparently always responded to: at the word, the
flickering belief, the smoking flax, burst into a flame. Evil, that is,
physical evil, is a moral good--a mighty means to a lofty end. Pain is
an evil; but a good as well, which it would be a great injury to take
from the man before it had wrought its end. Then it becomes all evil,
and must pass.
I now proceed to a group of individual cases in which, as far as we
can judge from the narratives, our Lord gave the gift of restoration
unsolicited. There are other instances of the same, but they fall into
other groups, gathered because of other features.
The first is that, recorded by St Luke alone, of the "woman which had a
spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in
no wise lift up herself." It may be that this belongs to the class of
demoniacal possession as well, but I prefer to take it here; for I am
very doubtful whether the expression in the narrative--"a spirit of
infirmity," even coupled with that of our Lord in defending her and
himself from the hypocritical attack of the ruler of the synagogue,
"this woman--whom Satan hath bound," renders it necessary to regard
it as one of the latter kind. This is, however, a matter of small
importance--at least from our present point of view.
Bowed earthwards, the necessary blank of her eye the ground and not
the horizon, the form divine deformed towards that of the four-footed
animals, this woman had been in bondage eighteen years. Necessary as it
is to one's faith to believe every trouble fitted for the being who has
to bear it, every physical evil not merely the result of moral evil, but
antidotal thereto, no one ought to dare judge of the relation between
moral condition and physical suffering in individual cases. Our Lord has
warned us from that. But in proportion as love and truth prevail in
the hearts of men, physical evil will vanish from the earth. The
righteousness of his descendants will destroy the disease which the
unrighteousness of their ancestor has transmitted to them. But, I
repeat, to destroy this physical evil save by the destruction of its
cause, by the redemption of the human nature from moral evil, would be
to ruin the world. What in this woman it was that made it right she
should bear these bonds for eighteen years, who can tell? Certainly it
was not that God had forgotten her. What it may have preserved her
from, one may perhaps conjecture, but can hardly have a right to utter.
Neither can we tell how she had borne the sad affliction; whether in the
lovely patience common amongst the daughters of affliction, or with
the natural repining of one made to behold the sun, and doomed ever to
regard the ground upon which she trod. While patience would have its
glorious reward in the cure, it is possible that even the repinings
of prideful pain might be destroyed by the grand deliverance, that
gratitude might beget sorrow for vanished impatience. Anyhow the right
hour had come when the darkness must fly away.
Supported, I presume, by the staff which yet more assimilated her to the
lower animals, she had crept to the synagogue--a good sign surely, for
the synagogue was not its ruler. There is no appearance from the story,
that she had come there to seek Jesus, or even that when in his presence
she saw him before the word of her deliverance had gone forth. Most
likely, being bowed together, she heard him before she saw him.
But he saw her. Our translation says he called her to him. I do not
think this is correct. I think the word, although it might mean that,
does mean simply that he _addressed her_. Going to her, I think, and
saying, "Woman, thou art loosed from thy infirmity," "he laid his hands
on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God." What
an uplifting!--a type of all that God works in his human beings.
The head, down-bent with sin, care, sorrow, pain, is uplifted; the
grovelling will sends its gaze heavenward; the earth is no more the
one object of the aspiring spirit; we lift our eyes to God; we bend no
longer even to his will, but raise ourselves up towards his will, for
his will has become our will, and that will is our sanctification.
Although the woman did not beg the Son to cure her, she may have prayed
the Father much. Anyhow proof that she was ready for the miracle is not
wanting. She glorified God. It is enough. She not merely thanked the man
who had wrought the cure, for of this we cannot doubt; but she glorified
the known Saviour, God, from whom cometh down every good gift and every
perfect gift.
She had her share in the miracle I think too, as, in his perfect bounty,
God gives a share to every one in what work He does for him. I mean,
that, with the given power, _she_ had to _lift herself_ up. Such active
faith is the needful response in order that a man may be a child of God,
and not the mere instrument upon which his power plays a soulless tune.
In this preventing of prayer, in this answering before the call, in this
bringing of the blessing to the door, according to which I have grouped
this with the following miracles, Jesus did as his Father is doing
every day. He was doing the works of his Father. If men had no help, no
deliverance from the ills which come upon them, even those which they
bring upon themselves, except such as came at their cry; if no salvation
descended from God, except such as they prayed for, where would the
world be? in what case would the generations of men find themselves? But
the help of God is ever coming, ever setting them free whom Satan hath
bound; ever giving them a fresh occasion and a fresh impulse to glorify
the God of their salvation. For with every such recovery the child in
the man is new-born--for some precious moments at least; a gentleness of
spirit, a wonder at the world, a sense of the blessedness of being, an
openness to calm yet rousing influences, appear in the man. These are
the descending angels of God. The passion that had blotted out the child
will revive; the strife of the world will renew wrath and hate; ambition
and greed will blot out the beauty of the earth; envy of others will
blind the man to his own blessedness; and self-conceit will revive in
him all those prejudices whose very strength lies in his weakness; but
the man has had a glimpse of the peace to gain which he must fight with
himself; he has for one moment felt what he might be if he trusted in
God; and the memory of it may return in the hour of temptation. As
the commonest things in nature are the most lovely, so the commonest
agencies in humanity are the most powerful. Sickness and recovery
therefrom have a larger share in the divine order of things for the
deliverance of men than can show itself to the keenest eyes. Isolated
in individuals, the facts are unknown; or, slow and obscure in their
operation, are forgotten by the time their effects appear. Many things
combine to render an enlarged view of the moral influences of sickness
and recovery impossible. The kingdom cometh not with observation, and
the working of the leaven of its approach must be chiefly unseen. Like
the creative energy itself, it works "in secret shadow, far from all
men's sight."
The teaching of our Lord which immediately follows concerning the small
beginnings of his kingdom, symbolized in the grain of mustard seed and
the leaven, may, I think, have immediate reference to the cure of this
woman, and show that he regarded her glorifying of God for her recovery
as one of those beginnings of a mighty growth. We do find the same
similes in a different connection in St Matthew and St Mark; but even if
we had no instances of fact, it would be rational to suppose that the
Lord, in the varieties of place, audience, and occasion, in the dullness
likewise of his disciples, and the perfection of the similes he chose,
would again and again make use of the same.
I now come to the second miracle of the group, namely that, recorded
by all the Evangelists except St John, of the cure of the man with the
withered hand. This, like the preceding, was done in the synagogue. And
I may remark, in passing, that all of this group, with the exception of
the last--one of very peculiar circumstance--were performed upon the
Sabbath, and each gave rise to discussion concerning the lawfulness of
the deed. St Mark says they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal
the man on the Sabbath-day; St Luke adds that he knew their thoughts,
and therefore met them with the question of its lawfulness; St Matthew
says they challenged him to the deed Joy asking him whether it was
lawful. The mere watching could hardly have taken place without the
man's perceiving something in motion which had to do with him. But there
is no indication of a request.
There cannot surely be many who have reached half the average life of
man without at some time having felt the body a burden in some way, and
regarded a possible deliverance from it as an enfranchisement. If the
spirit of man were fulfilled of the Spirit of God, the body would simply
be a living house, an obedient servant--yes, a humble mediator, by the
senses, between his thoughts and God's thoughts; but when every breath
has, as it were, to be sent for and brought hither with much labour
and small consolation--when pain turns faith into a mere shadow of
hope--when the withered limb hangs irresponsive, lost and cumbersome, an
inert simulacrum of power, swinging lifeless to and fro;--then even the
physical man understands his share in the groaning of the creation after
the sonship. When, at a word issuing from such a mouth as that of Jesus
of Nazareth, the poor, withered, distorted, contemptible hand obeyed
and, responsive to the spirit within, spread forth its fingers, filled
with its old human might, became capable once more of the grasp of
friendship, of the caress of love, of the labour for the bread that
sustains the life, little would the man care that other men--even rulers
of synagogues, even Scribes and Pharisees, should question the rectitude
of him who had healed him. The power which restored the gift of God and
completed humanity, must be of God. Argument upon argument might follow
from old books and old customs and learned interpretations, wherein man
set forth the will of God as different from the laws of his world, but
the man whose hand was restored whole as the other, knew it fitting that
his hands should match. They might talk; he would thank God for the
crooked made straight. Bewilder his judgment they might with their
glosses upon commandment and observance; but they could not keep his
heart from gladness; and, being glad, whom should he praise but God? If
there was another giver of good things he knew nothing of him. The hand
was now as God had meant it to be. Nor could he behold the face of
Jesus, and doubt that such a man would do only that which was right. It
was not Satan, but God that had set him free.
Here, plainly by the record, our Lord gave the man his share, not of
mere acquiescence, but of active will, in the miracle. If man is the
child of God, he must have a share in the works of the Father. Without
such share in the work as faith gives, cure will be of little avail.
"Stretch forth thine hand," said the Healer; and the man made the
effort; and the withered hand obeyed, and was no more withered. _In_ the
act came the cure, without which the act had been confined to the will,
and had never taken form in the outstretching. It is the same in all
spiritual redemption.
Think for a moment with what delight the man would employ his new hand.
This right hand would henceforth be God's hand. But was not the other
hand God's too?--God's as much as this? Had not the power of God been
always present in that left hand, whose unwithered life had ministered
to him all these years? Was it not the life of God that inspired
his whole frame? By the loss and restoration in one part, he would
understand possession in the whole.
But as the withered and restored limb to the man, so is the maimed and
healed man to his brethren. In every man the power by which he does the
commonest things is the power of God. The power is not _of us_. Our
power does it; but we do not make the power. This, plain as it is,
remains, however, the hardest lesson for a man to learn with conviction
and thanksgiving. For God has, as it were, put us just so far away
from Him that we can exercise the divine thing in us, our own will, in
returning towards our source. Then we shall learn the fact that we are
infinitely more great and blessed in being the outcome of a perfect
self-constituting will, than we could be by the conversion of any
imagined independence of origin into fact for us--a truth no man _can_
understand, feel, or truly acknowledge, save in proportion as he has
become one with his perfect origin, the will of God. While opposition
exists between the thing made and the maker, there can be but discord
and confusion in the judgment of the creature. No true felicitous vision
of the facts of the relation between his God and him; no perception of
the mighty liberty constituted by the holy dependence wherein the will
of God is the absolutely free choice of the man; no perception of a
unity such as cannot exist between independent wills, but only in
unspeakable love and tenderness between the causing Will and the caused
will, can yet have place. Those who cannot see how the human will should
be free in dependence upon the will of God, have not realized that the
will of God made the will of man; that, when most it pants for freedom,
the will of man is the child of the will of God, and therefore that
there can be no natural opposition or strife between them. Nay, more,
the whole labour of God is that the will of man should be free as his
will is free--in the same way that his will is free--by the perfect love
of the man for that which is true, harmonious, lawful, creative. If a
man say, "But might not the will of God make my will with the intent of
over-riding and enslaving it?" I answer, such a Will could not create,
could not be God, for it involves the false and contrarious. That would
be to make a will in order that it might be no will. To create in order
to uncreate is something else than divine. But a free will is not the
liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one
sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming
impulse. There lies freedom indeed.
I come now to the case of the man who had been paralysed for
eight-and-thirty years. There is great pathos in the story. For many,
at least, of these years, the man had haunted the borders of legendary
magic, for I regard the statement about the angel troubling the pool as
only the expression of a current superstition. Oh, how different from
the healing of our Lord! What he had to bestow was free to all. The cure
of no man by his hand weakened that hand for the cure of the rest. None
were poorer that one was made rich. But this legend of the troubling
of the pool fostered the evil passion of emulation, and that in a most
selfish kind. Nowhere in the divine arrangements is my gain another's
loss. If it be said that this was the mode in which God determined which
was to be healed, I answer that the effort necessary was contrary to all
we admire most in humanity. According to this rule, Sir Philip Sidney
ought to have drunk the water which he handed to the soldier instead.
Does the doctrine of Christ, and by that I insist we must interpret the
ways of God, countenance a man's hurrying to be before the rest, and
gain the boon in virtue t of having the least need of it, inasmuch as
he was the ablest to run and plunge first into the eddies left by the
fantastic angel? Or if the triumph were to be gained by the help of
friends, surely he was in most need of the cure who like this man--a man
such as we hope there are few--had no friends either to plunge him
in the waters of fabled hope, or to comfort him in the seasons of
disappointment which alone divided the weary months of a life passed in
empty expectation.
But the Master comes near. In him the power of life rests as in "its own
calm home, its crystal shrine," and he that believeth in him shall not
need to make haste. He knew it was time this man should be healed, and
did not wait to be asked. Indeed the man did not know him; did not even
know his name. "Wilt thou be made whole?" "Sir, I have no man, when
the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming,
another steppeth down before me." "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk."
Our Lord delays the cure in this case with no further speech. The man
knows nothing about him, and he makes no demand upon his faith, except
that of obedience. He gives him something to do at once. He will find
him again by and by. The man obeys, takes up his bed, and walks.
He sets an open path before us; _we_ must walk in it. More, we must be
willing to believe that the path is open, that we have strength to walk
in it. God's gift glides into man's choice. It is needful that we should
follow with our effort in the track of his foregoing power. To refuse is
to destroy the gift. His cure is not for such as choose to be invalids.
They must be willing to be made whole, even if it should involve the
carrying of their beds and walking. Some keep in bed who have strength
enough to get up and walk. There is a self-care and a self-pity, a
laziness and conceit of incapacity, which are as unhealing for the body
as they are unhealthy in the mind, corrupting all dignity and destroying
all sympathy. Who but invalids need like miracles wrought in them? Yet
some invalids are not cured because they will not be healed. They will
not stretch out the hand; they will not rise; they will not walk; above
all things, they will not work. Yet for their illness it may be that
the work so detested is the only cure, or if no cure yet the best
amelioration. Labour is not in itself an evil like the sickness, but
often a divine, a blissful remedy. Nor is the duty or the advantage
confined to those who ought to labour for their own support. No amount
of wealth sets one free from the obligation to work--in a world the God
of which is ever working. He who works not has not yet discovered what
God made him for, and is a false note in the orchestra of the universe.
The possession of wealth is as it were pre-payment, and involves an
obligation of honour to the doing of correspondent work. He who does not
know what to do has never seriously asked himself what he ought to do.
But there is a class of persons, the very opposite of these, who, as
extremes meet, fall into a similar fault. They will not be healed
either. They will not take the repose in which God giveth to his
beloved. Some sicknesses are to be cured with rest, others with labour.
The right way is all--to meet the sickness as God would have it met, to
submit or to resist according to the conditions of cure. Whatsoever is
not of faith is sin; and she who will not go to her couch and rest in
the Lord, is to blame even as she who will not rise and go to her work.
There is reason to suppose that this man had brought his infirmity upon
himself--I do not mean by the mere neglect of physical laws, but by the
doing of what he knew to be wrong. For the Lord, although he allowed
the gladness of the deliverance full sway at first, when he found him
afterwards did not leave him without the lesson that all health and
well-being depend upon purity of life: "Behold, thou art made whole:
sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee." It is the only case of
recorded cure in which Jesus gives a warning of the kind. Therefore I
think the probability is as I have stated it. Hence, the fact that we
may be ourselves to blame for our sufferings is no reason why we should
not go to God to deliver us from them. David the king knew this, and set
it forth in that grand poem, the 107th Psalm.
In the very next case we find that Jesus will not admit the cause of the
man's condition, blindness from his birth, to be the sin either of the
man himself, or of his parents. The probability seems, to judge from
their behaviour in the persecution that followed, that both the man and
his parents were people of character, thought, and honourable prudence.
He was born blind, Jesus said, "that the works of God should be made
manifest in him." What works, then? The work of creation for one, rather
than the work of healing. The man had suffered nothing in being born
blind. God had made him only not so blessed as his fellows, with
the intent of giving him equal faculty and even greater enjoyment
afterwards, with the honour of being employed for the revelation of his
works to men. In him Jesus created sight before men's eyes. For, as at
the first God said, "Let there be light," so the work of God is still
to give light to the world, and Jesus must work his work, and _be_ the
light of the world--light in all its degrees and kinds, reaching into
every corner where work may be done, arousing sleepy hearts, and opening
blind eyes.
Jesus saw the man, the disciples asked their question, and he had no
sooner answered it, than "he spat on the ground, made clay of the
spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay."--Why
this mediating clay? Why the spittle and the touch?--Because the man
who could not see him must yet be brought into sensible contact with
him--must know that the healing came from the man who touched him. Our
Lord took pains about it because the man was blind. And for the man's
share in the miracle, having blinded him a second time as it were with
clay, he sends him to the pool to wash it away: clay and blindness
should depart together by the act of the man's faith. It was as if the
Lord said, "I blinded thee: now, go and see." Here, then, are the links
of the chain by which the Lord bound the man to himself. The voice, if
heard by the man, which defended him and his parents from the judgment
of his disciples; the assertion that he was the light of the world--a
something which others had and the blind man only knew as not possessed
by him; the sound of the spitting on the ground; the touch of the
speaker's fingers; the clay on his eyes; the command to wash; the
journey to the pool; the laving water; the astonished sight. "He went
his way, therefore, and washed, and came seeing."
But who can imagine, save in a conception only less dim than the man's
blindness, the glory which burst upon him when, as the restoring clay
left his eyes, the light of the world invaded his astonished soul? The
very idea may well make one tremble. Blackness of darkness--not an
invading stranger, but the home-companion always there--the negation
never understood because the assertion was unknown--creation not erased
and treasured in the memory, but to his eyes uncreated!--Blackness of
darkness!.... The glory of the celestial blue! The towers of the
great Jerusalem dwelling in the awful space! The room! The life! The
tenfold-glorified being! Any wonder might follow on such a wonder. And
the whole vision was as fresh as if he had that moment been created, the
first of men.
But the best remained behind. A man had said, "I am the light of the
world," and lo! here was the light of the world. The words had been
vague as a dark form in darkness, but now the thing itself had invaded
his innermost soul. But the face of the man who was this light of the
world he had not seen. The creator of his vision he had not yet beheld.
But he believed in him, for he defended him from the same charge of
wickedness from which Jesus had defended him. "Give God the praise,"
they said; "we know that this man is a sinner." "God heareth not
sinners," he replied; "and this man hath opened my eyes." It is no
wonder that when Jesus found him and asked him, "Dost thou believe on
the Son of God?" he should reply, "Who is he, Lord, that I might believe
on him?" He was ready. He had only to know which was he, that he might
worship him. Here at length was the Light of the world before him--the
man who had said, "I am the light of the world," and straightway the
world burst upon him in light! Would this man ever need further proof
that there was indeed a God of men? I suspect he had a grander idea
of the Son of God than any of his disciples as yet. The would-be
refutations of experience, for "since the world began was it not heard
that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind;" the objections
of the religious authorities, "This man is not of God, because he
keepeth not the Sabbath day;" endless possible perplexities of the
understanding, and questions of the _how_ and the _why_, could never
touch that man to the shaking of his confidence: "One thing I know, that
whereas I was blind, now I see." The man could not convince the Jews
that Jesus must be a good man; neither could he doubt it himself, whose
very being, body and soul and spirit, had been enlightened and glorified
by him. With light in the eyes, in the brain, in the heart, light
permeating and unifying his physical and moral nature, asserting itself
in showing the man to himself one whole--how could he doubt!
The miracles were for the persons on whom they passed. To the spectators
they were something, it is true; but they were of unspeakable value to,
and of endless influence upon their subjects. The true mode in which
they reached others was through the healed themselves. And the testimony
of their lives would go far beyond the testimony of their tongues. Their
tongues could but witness to a fact; their lives could witness to a
truth.
In this miracle as in all the rest, Jesus did in little the great work
of the Father; for how many more are they to whom God has given the
marvel of vision than those blind whom the Lord enlightened! The remark
will sound feeble and far-fetched to the man whose familiar spirit is
that Mephistopheles of the commonplace. He who uses his vision only
for the care of his body or the indulgence of his mind--how should he
understand the gift of God in its marvel? But the man upon whose soul
the grandeur and glory of the heavens and the earth and the sea and
the fountains of waters have once arisen will understand what a divine
_invention_, what a mighty gift of God is this very common thing--these
eyes to see with--that light which enlightens the world, this sight
which is the result of both. He will understand what a believer the man
born blind must have become, yea, how the mighty inburst of splendour
might render him so capable of believing that nothing should be too
grand and good for him to believe thereafter--not even the doctrine
hardest to commonplace humanity, though the most natural and reasonable
to those who have beheld it--that the God of the light is a faithful,
loving, upright, honest, and self-denying being, yea utterly devoted to
the uttermost good of those whom he has made.
Such is the Father of lights who enlightens the world and every man that
cometh into it. Every pulsation of light on every brain is from him.
Every feeling of law and order is from him. Every hint of right, every
desire after the true, whatever we call aspiration, all longing for the
light, every perception that this is true, that that ought to be done,
is from the Father of lights. His infinite and varied light gathered
into one point--for how shall we speak at all of these things if we do
not speak in figures?--concentrated and embodied in Jesus, became _the_
light of the world. For the light is no longer only diffused, but in him
man "beholds the light _and whence it flows_." Not merely is our chamber
enlightened, but we see the lamp. And so we turn again to God, the
Father of lights, yea even of The Light of the World. Henceforth we know
that all the light wherever diffused has its centre in God, as the light
that enlightened the blind man flowed from its centre in Jesus. In other
words, we have a glimmering, faint, human perception of the absolute
glory. We know what God is in recognizing him as our God.
Jesus did the works of the Father.
The next miracle--recorded by St Luke alone--is the cure of the man with
the dropsy, wrought also upon the Sabbath, but in the house of one
of the chief of the Pharisees. Thither our Lord had gone to an
entertainment, apparently large, for the following parable is spoken "to
those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief
rooms."
[Footnote: 1. Not _rooms_, but _reclining places_ at the table.] Hence
the possibility at least is suggested, that the man was one of the
guests. No doubt their houses were more accessible than ours, and it
was not difficult for one uninvited to make his way in, especially upon
occasion of such a gathering. But I think the word translated _before
him_ means _opposite to him_ at the table; and that the man was not too
ill to appear as a guest. The "took him and healed him and let him go,"
of our translation, is against the notion rather, but merely from its
indefiniteness being capable of meaning that he sent him away; but such
is not the meaning of the original. That merely implies that he _took
him_, went to him and laid his hands upon him, thus connecting the cure
with himself, and then released him, set him free, took his hands off
him, turning at once to the other guests and justifying himself by
appealing to their own righteous conduct towards the ass and the ox. I
think the man remained reclining at the table, to enjoy the appetite of
health at a good meal; if, indeed, the gladness of the relieved breath,
the sense of lightness and strength, the consciousness of a restored
obedience of body, not to speak of the presence of him who had cured
him, did not make him too happy to care about his dinner. I come now to
the last of the group, exceptional in its nature, inasmuch as it was
not the curing of a disease or natural defect, but the reparation of an
injury, or hurt at least, inflicted by one of his own followers. This
miracle also is recorded by St Luke alone. The other evangelists relate
the occasion of the miracle, but not the miracle itself; they record the
blow, but not the touch. I shall not, therefore, compare their accounts,
which have considerable variety, but no inconsistency. I shall confine
myself to the story as told by St Luke. Peter, intending, doubtless, to
cleave the head of a servant of the high priest who had come out to take
Jesus, with unaccustomed hand, probably trembling with rage and perhaps
with fear, missed his well-meant aim, and only cut off the man's ear.
Jesus said, "Suffer ye thus far." I think the words should have a point
of interrogation after them, to mean, "Is it thus far ye suffer?" "Is
this the limit of your patience?" but I do not know. With the words, "he
touched his ear and healed him." Hardly had the wound reached the true
sting of its pain, before the gentle hand of him whom the servant had
come to drag to the torture, dismissed the agony as if it had never
been. Whether he restored the ear, or left the loss of it for a reminder
to the man of the part he had taken against his Lord, and the return the
Lord had made him, we do not know. Neither do we know whether he turned
back ashamed and contrite, now that in his own person he had felt the
life that dwelt in Jesus, or followed out the capture to the end.
Possibly the blow of Peter was the form which the favour of God took,
preparing the way, like the blindness from the birth, for the glory that
was to be manifested in him. But the Lord would countenance no violence
done in his defence. They might do to him as they would. If his Father
would not defend him, neither would he defend himself.
Within sight of the fearful death that awaited him, his heart was no
whit hardened to the pain of another. Neither did it make any difference
that it was the pain of an enemy--even an enemy who was taking him to
the cross. There was suffering; here was healing. He came to do the
works of him that sent him. He did good to them that hated him, for his
Father is the Saviour of men, saving "them out of their distresses."