'Maiden, arise!' All the circumstances of the miracle are marked by
the most lovely consideration, on Christ's part, of the timidity of
the little girl of twelve years of age. It is because of that that
He seeks to raise her in privacy, whereas the son of the widow of
Nain and Lazarus were raised amidst a crowd. It is because of that
that He selects as His companions in the room only the three chief
Apostles as witnesses, and the father and mother of the child. It is
because of that that He puts forth His hand and grasps hers, in
order that the child's eyes when they open should see only the
loving faces of parents, and the not less loving face of the
Master; and that her hand, when it began to move again, should
clasp, first, His own tender hand. It is for the same reason that
the remarkable appendix to the miracle is given--'He commanded that
they should give her food.' Surely that is an inimitable note of
truth. No legend-manufacturer would have dared to drop down to such
a homely word as that, after such a word as 'Maiden, arise!' An
economy of miraculous power is shown here, such as was shown when,
after Lazarus came forth, other hands had to untie the grave-clothes
which tripped him as he stumbled along. Christ will do by miracle
what is needful and not one hairs-breadth more. In His calm majesty
He bethinks Himself of the hungry child, and entrusts to others the
task of giving her food. That homely touch is, to me, indicative of
the simple veracity of the historian.
But the life-giving word itself; what can we say about it? Only this
one thing: here Jesus Christ exercises a manifest divine prerogative.
It was no more the syllables that He spoke than it was the touch of
His hand that raised the child. What was it? The forth-putting of
His will, which went away straight into the darkness; and if the
disembodied spirit was in a locality, went straight there; and somehow
or other, laid hold of the spirit, and somehow or other, reinstated it
in its home. Christ's will, like the king's writ, runs through all the
universe. 'He spake, and it was done';--whose prerogative is that?
God's; and God manifest in the flesh exercised it. The words of the
Incarnate Word have power over physical things.
Here, too, are the prelude and first-fruits of our resurrection. Not
that there are not wide differences between the raising of this
child, and that future resurrection to which Christian hope looks
forward, but that in this one little incident, little, compared with
the majestic scale of the latter, there come out these two things--the
demonstration that conscious life runs on, irrespective of the accident
of its being united with or separated from a bodily organisation; and
the other, that Jesus Christ has power over men's spirits, and can
fit them at His will to bodies appropriate to their condition. Time
is no element in the case. What befalls the particles of the human
frame is no element in the case. 'Thou sowest not the body that shall
be.' But if that Lord had the power which He showed in that one
chamber, with that one child, then, as a little window may show us
great matters, so we see through this single incident the time when
'they that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come
forth.'
Brethren! there is a higher lesson still; He that gives and gives
again, physical life, does so as a symbol of the highest gift which
He can bestow upon us all. If we 'only believe,' then, 'you hath He
quickened which were dead in trespasses and sins ... and for His
great love wherewith He loved us.... He hath raised us up together,
and made us sit together, in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.'