"It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs."
Terrible words! more dreadful far than any he ever spoke besides! Surely
now she will depart in despair! But the Lord did not mean in them to
speak _his_ mind concerning the relation of Jew and Gentile; for
not only do the future of his church and the teaching of his Spirit
contradict it: but if he did mean what he said, then he acted as was
unmeet, for he did cast a child's bread to a dog. No. He spoke as a Jew
felt, that the elect Jews about him might begin to understand that in
him is neither Jew nor Gentile, but all are brethren.
And he has gained his point. The spirit in the woman has been divinely
goaded into utterance, and out come the glorious words of her love and
faith, casting aside even insult itself as if it had never been--all for
the sake of a daughter. Now, indeed, it is as he would have it.
"Yes, Lord; yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs."
Or, as St Matthew gives it:
"Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their
masters' table."
A retort quite Greek in its readiness, its symmetry, and its point! But
it was not the intellectual merit of the answer that pleased the Master.
Cleverness is cheap. It is the faith he praises, [Footnote 5: Far
more precious than any show of the intellect, even in regard of the
intellect itself. The quickness of her answer was the scintillation of
her intellect under the glow of her affection. Love is the quickening
nurse of the whole nature. Faith in God will do more for the intellect
at length than all the training of the schools. It will make the
best that can be made of the whole man.] which was precious as
rare--unspeakably precious even when it shall be the commonest thing
in the universe, but precious now as the first fruits of a world
redeemed--precious now as coming from the lips of a Gentile--more
precious as coming from the lips of a human mother pleading for her
daughter.
"O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt."
Or, as St Mark gives it, for we cannot afford to lose a varying word,
"For this saying, go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter."
The loving mother has conquered the tormenting devil. She has called in
the mighty aid of the original love. Through the channel of her love it
flows, new-creating, "and her daughter was made whole from that very
hour."
Where, O disciples, are your children and your dogs now? Is not the wall
of partition henceforth destroyed? No; you too have to be made whole
of a worse devil, that of personal and national pride, before you
understand. But the day of the Lord is coming for you, notwithstanding
ye are so incapable of knowing the signs and signals of its approach
that, although its banners are spread across the flaming sky, it must
come upon you as a thief in the night.
For the woman, we may well leave her to the embraces of her daughter.
They are enough for her now.
But endless more will follow, for God is exhaustless in giving where the
human receiving holds out. God be praised that there are such embraces
in the world! that there are mothers who are the salvation of their
children!
We now complete a little family group, as it were, with the story of
another foreigner, a Roman officer, who besought the Lord for his
servant. This captain was at Capernaum at the time, where I presume he
had heard of the cure which Jesus had granted to the nobleman for his
son. It seems almost clear from the quality of his faith, however, that
he must have heard much besides of Jesus--enough to give him matter of
pondering for some time, for I do not think such humble confidence
as his could be, like Jonah's gourd, the growth of a night. He was
evidently a man of noble and large nature. Instead of lording it over
the subject Jews of Capernaum, he had built them a synagogue; and his
behaviour to our Lord is marked by that respect which, shown to any
human being, but especially to a person of lower social condition, is
one of the surest marks of a finely wrought moral temperament. Such a
nature may be beautifully developed, by a military training, in which
obedience and command go together; and the excellence of faith and its
instant response in action, would be more readily understood by the
thoughtful officer of a well-disciplined army than by any one to whom
organization was unknown. Hence arose the parallel the centurion draws
between his own and the Master's position, which so pleased the Lord by
its direct simplicity. But humble as the man was, I doubt if anything
less than some spiritual perception of the nobility of the character
of Jesus, some perception of that which was altogether beyond even the
power of healing, could have generated such perfect reverence, such
childlike confidence as his. It is no wonder the Lord was pleased with
it, for that kind of thing must be just what his Father loves.
According to St Luke, the Roman captain considered himself so unworthy
of notice from the carpenter's son--they of Capernaum, which was "his
own city," knew his reputed parentage well enough--that he got the
elders of the Jews to go and beg for him that he would come and heal his
servant. They bore testimony to his worth, specifying that which would
always be first in the eyes of such as they, that he loved their nation,
and had built them a synagogue. Little they thought how the Lord was
about to honour him above all their nation and all its synagogues. He
went with them at once.
But before they reached the house, the centurion had a fresh inroad of
that divine disease, humility, [Footnote 6: In him it was almost
morbid, one might be tempted to say, were it not that it was own sister
to such mighty faith.] and had sent other friends to say, "Lord, trouble
not thyself, for I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my
roof. Wherefore, neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee; but
say in a word, and my servant shall be healed. For I also am a man set
under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say unto one, Go, and
he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do
this, and he doeth it."
This man was a philosopher: he ascended from that to which he was
accustomed to that to which he was not accustomed. Nor did his divine
logic fail him. He begins with acknowledging his own subjection, and
states his own authority; then leaves it to our Lord to understand that
he recognizes in him an authority beyond all, expecting the powers of
nature to obey their Master, just as his soldiers or his servants obey
him. How grandly he must have believed in him!
But beyond suspicion of flattery, he avoids the face of the man whom in
heart he worships. How unlike those who press into the presence of a
phantom-greatness! "A poor creature like me go and talk to him!" the
Roman captain would exclaim. "No, I will worship from afar off." And it
is to be well heeded that the Lord went no further--turned at once. With
the tax-gatherer Zacchaeus he would go home, if but to deliver him from
the hopelessness of his self-contempt; but what occasion was there here?
It was all right here. The centurion was one who needed but to go on. In
heart and soul he was nearer the Lord now than any of the disciples who
followed him. Surely some one among the elders of the Jews, his friends,
would carry him the report of what the Master said. It would not hurt
him. The praise of the truly great will do no harm, save it fall where
it ought not, on the heart of the little. The praise of God never falls
wrong, therefore never does any one harm. The Lord even implies we ought
to seek it. His praise would but glorify the humility and the faith of
this Roman by making both of them deeper and nobler still. There is
something very grand in the Lord's turning away from the house of the
man who had greater faith than any he had found in Israel; for such were
the words he spoke to those who followed him, of whom in all likelihood
the messenger elders were nearest. Having turned to say them, he turned
not again but went his way. St Luke, whose narrative is in other
respects much fuller than St Matthew's (who says that the centurion
himself came to Jesus, and makes no mention of the elders), does not
represent the Master as uttering a single word of cure, but implies
that he just went away marvelling at him; while "they that were sent,
returning to the house, found the servant whole that had been sick." If
any one ask how Jesus could marvel, I answer, Jesus could do more things
than we can well understand. The fact that he marvelled at the great
faith, shows that he is not surprised at the little, and therefore is
able to make all needful and just, yea, and tender allowance.
Here I cannot do better for my readers than give them four lines, dear
to me, but probably unknown to most of them, written, I must tell them,
for the sake of their loving catholicity, by an English Jesuit of the
seventeenth century. They touch the very heart of the relation between
Jesus and the centurion:--
Thy God was making haste into thy roof;
Thy humble faith and fear keeps Him aloof:
He'll be thy guest; because He may not be,
He'll come--into thy house? No, into thee.
As I said, we thus complete a kind of family group, for surely the true
servant is one of the family: we have the prayer of a father for a
son, of a mother for a daughter, of a master for a servant. Alas! the
dearness of this latter bond is not now known as once. There never was a
rooted institution in parting with which something good was not lost for
a time, however necessary its destruction might be for the welfare of
the race. There are fewer free servants that love their masters and
mistresses now, I fear, than there were Roman bondsmen and bondswomen
who loved theirs. And, on the other hand, very few masters and
mistresses regard the bond between them and their servants with half the
respect and tenderness with which many among the Romans regarded it.
Slavery is a bad thing and of the devil, yet mutual jealousy and
contempt are worse. But the time will yet come when a servant will serve
for love as more than wages; and when the master of such a servant will
honour him even to the making him sit down to meat, and coming forth and
serving him.
The next is the case of the palsied man, so graphically given both by
St Mark and St Luke, and with less of circumstance by St Matthew. This
miracle also was done in Capernaum, called his own city. Pharisees
and doctors of the law from every town in the country, hearing of
his arrival, had gathered to him, and were sitting listening to his
teaching. There was no possibility of getting near him, and the sick
man's friends had carried him up to the roof, taken off the tiles, and
let him down into the presence. It should not be their fault if the poor
fellow was not cured. "Jesus seeing their faith--When Jesus saw their
faith--And when he saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy,
Son, be of good cheer--Son--Man, thy sins are forgiven thee." The
forgiveness of the man's sins is by all of the narrators connected
with the faith of his friends. This is very remarkable. The only other
instance in which similar words are recorded, is that of the woman who
came to him in Simon's house, concerning whom he showed first, that her
love was a sign that her sins were already forgiven. What greater honour
could he honour their faith withal than grant in their name, unasked,
the one mighty boon? They had brought the man to him; to them he forgave
his sins. He looked into his heart, and probably saw, as in the case of
the man whom he cured by the pool of Bethesda, telling him to go and
sin no more, that his own sins had brought upon him this suffering,
a supposition which aids considerably to the understanding of the
consequent conversation; saw, at all events, that the assurance of
forgiveness was what he most needed, whether because his conscience was
oppressed with a sense of guilt, or that he must be brought to think
more of the sin than of the suffering; for it involved an awful rebuke
to the man, if he required it still--that the Lord should, when he came
for healing, present him with forgiveness. Nor did he follow it at once
with the cure of his body, but delayed that for a little, probably for
the man's sake, as probably for the sake of those present, whom he had
been teaching for some time, and in whose hearts he would now fix the
lesson concerning the divine forgiveness which he had preached to them
in bestowing it upon the sick man. For his words meant nothing, except
they meant that God forgave the man. The scribes were right when they
said that none could forgive sins but God--that is, in the full sense in
which forgiveness is still needed by every human being, should all his
fellows whom he has injured have forgiven him already.
They said in their hearts, "He is a blasphemer." This was what he had
expected.
"Why do you think evil in your hearts?" he said, that is, _evil of
me--that I am a blasphemer_.
He would now show them that he was no blasphemer; that he had the power
to forgive, that it was the will of God that he should preach the
remission of sins. How could he show it them? In one way only: by
dismissing the consequence, the punishment of those sins, sealing thus
in the individual case the general truth. He who could say to a man,
by the eternal law suffering the consequences of sin: "Be whole,
well, strong; suffer no more," must have the right to pronounce his
forgiveness; else there was another than God who had to cure with a word
the man whom his Maker had afflicted. If there were such another, the
kingdom of God must be trembling to its fall, for a stronger had invaded
and reversed its decrees. Power does not give the right to pardon, but
its possession may prove the right. "Whether is easier--to say, Thy
sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Rise up and walk?" If only God can do
either, he who can do the one must be able to do the other.
"That ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive
sins--Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house."
Up rose the man, took up that whereon he had lain, and went away,
knowing in himself that his sins _were_ forgiven him, for he was able
to glorify God. It seems to me against our Lord's usual custom with the
scribes and Pharisees to grant them such proof as this. Certainly, to
judge by those recorded, the whole miracle was in aspect and order
somewhat unusual. But I think the men here assembled were either better
than the most of their class, or in a better mood than common, for St
Luke says of them that the power of the Lord was present to heal them.
To such therefore proof might be accorded which was denied to others.
That he might heal these learned doctors around him, he forgave the sins
first and then cured the palsy of the man before him. For their sakes he
performed the miracle thus. Then, _like priests, like people_; for where
their leaders were listening, the people broke open the roof to get the
helpless into his presence.
"They marvelled and glorified God which had given such power unto
men"--"Saying, We never saw it on this fashion."--"They were filled with
fear, saying, We have seen strange things to-day."
And yet Capernaum had to be brought down to hell, and no man can tell
the place where it stood.
Two more cases remain, both related by St Mark alone.
They brought him a man partially deaf and dumb. He led him aside from
the people: he would be alone with him, that he might come the better
into relation with that individuality which, until molten from within,
is so hard to touch. Possibly had the man come of himself, this might
have been less necessary; but I repeat there must have been in every
case reason for the individual treatment in the character and condition
of the patient. These were patent only to the Healer. In this case the
closeness of the personal contact, as in those cases of the blind, is
likewise remarkable. "He put his fingers into his ears, he spit and
touched his tongue." Always in present disease, bodily contact--in
defects of the senses, sometimes of a closer kind. He would generate
assured faith in himself as the healer. But there is another remarkable
particular here, which, as far as I can remember, would be alone in its
kind but for a fuller development of it at the raising of Lazarus. "And
looking up to heaven, he sighed."
What did it mean? What first of all _was_ it?
That look, was it not a look up to his own Father? That sigh, was it not
the unarticulated prayer to the Father of the man who stood beside him?
But did _he_ need to look up as if God was in the sky, seeing that God
was in _him_, in his very deepest, inmost being, in fulness of presence,
and receiving conscious response, such as he could not find anywhere
else--not from the whole gathered universe? Why should he send a sigh,
like a David's dove, to carry the thought of his heart to his Father?
True, if all the words of human language had been blended into one
glorious majesty of speech, and the Lord had sought therein to utter the
love he bore his Father, his voice must needs have sunk into the last
inarticulate resource--the poor sigh, in which evermore speech dies
helplessly triumphant--appealing to the Hearer to supply the lack,
saying _I cannot, but thou knowest_--confessing defeat, but claiming
victory. But the Lord could talk to his Father evermore in the forms of
which words are but the shadows, nay, infinitely more, without forms at
all, in the thoughts which are the souls of the forms. Why then needs he
look up and sigh?--That the man, whose faith was in the merest nascent
condition, might believe that whatever cure came to him from the hand of
the healer, came from the hand of God. Jesus did not care to be believed
in as the doer of the deed, save the deed itself were recognized as
given him of the Father. If they saw him only, and not the Father
through him, there was little gained indeed. The upward look and the
sigh were surely the outward expression of the infrangible link which
bound both the Lord and the man to the Father of all. He would lift the
man's heart up to the source of every gift. No cure would be worthy gift
without that: it might be an injury.
The last case is that of the blind man of Bethsaida, whom likewise he
led apart, out of the town, and whose dull organs he likewise touched
with his spittle. Then comes a difference. The deaf man was at once
cured; when he had laid his hands on the blind man, his vision was but
half-restored. "He asked him if he saw ought? And he looked up and said,
I see the men: for like trees [Footnote 7: Could it be translated,
"_As well as_ (that is besides) trees, I see walkers about"?] I see them
walking about." He could tell they were men and not trees, only by their
motion. The Master laid his hands once more upon his eyes, and when he
looked up again, he saw every man clearly.
In thus graduating the process, our Lord, I think, drew forth,
encouraged, enticed into strength the feeble faith of the man. He
brooded over him with his holy presence of love. He gave the faith time
to grow. He cared more for his faith than his sight. He let him, as it
were, watch him, feel him doing it, that he might know and believe.
There is in this a peculiar resemblance to the ordinary modes God takes
in healing men.
These last miracles are especially full of symbolism and analogy. But in
considering any of the miracles, I do not care to dwell upon this aspect
of them, for in this they are only like all the rest of the doings of
God. Nature is brimful of symbolic and analogical parallels to the
goings and comings, the growth and the changes of the highest nature in
man. It could not be otherwise. For not only did they issue from the
same thought, but the one is made for the other. Nature as an outer
garment for man, or a living house, rather, for man to live in. So
likewise must all the works of him who did the works of the Father bear
the same mark of the original of all.
The one practical lesson contained in this group is nearer the human
fact and the human need than any symbolic meaning, grand as it must be,
which they may likewise contain; nearer also to the constitution of
things, inasmuch as what a man must _do_ is more to the man and to his
Maker than what he can only _think_; inasmuch, also, as the commonest
things are the best, and any man can do right, although he may be unable
to tell the difference between a symbol and a sign:--it is that if ever
there was a Man such as we read about here, then he who prays for his
friends shall be heard of God. I do not say he shall have whatever he
asks for. God forbid. But he shall be heard. And the man who does not
see the good of that, knows nothing of the good of prayer; can, I fear,
as yet, only pray for himself, when most he fancies he is praying for
his friend. Often, indeed, when men suppose they are concerned for the
well-beloved, they are only concerned about what they shall do without
them. Let them pray for themselves instead, for that will be the truer
prayer. I repeat, all prayer is assuredly heard:--what evil matter is
it that it should be answered only in the right time and right way? The
prayer argues a need--that need will be supplied. One day is with the
Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. All who
have prayed shall one day justify God and say--Thy answer is beyond my
prayer, as thy thoughts and thy ways are beyond my thoughts and my ways.