throughout, and especially in the account of the casting out of the demon, such un-Jewish simplicity, with entire absence of what would have been characteristic in a Jewish exorcist; such want of all that one would have expected, if the event had been invented, or coloured for a purpose, or tinged by contemporary notions; and, withal, such sublimity and majesty, that it is difficult to understand how any one can resist the impression of its reality, or that He Who so spake and did was in truth the Son of God. From the Synagogue we follow the Saviour, in company with His called disciples, to Peter's wedded home. But no festive meal, as was Jewish wont, awaited them there. A sudden access of violent 'burning fever,' [3 Such is the meaning of the Greek word. I cannot understand, why the corresponding term in St. Luke should have been interpreted in 'The Speaker's Commentary as 'typhoid fever.'] such as is even now common in that district, hadlaid Peter's mother-in-law prostrate. If we had still any lingering thought of Jewish magical cures as connected with those of Jesus, what is now related must dispel it. The Talmud gives this disease precisely the same name Eshatha Tsemirta), 'burning fever,' and prescribes for it a magical remedy, of which the principal part is to tie a knife wholly of iron by a braid of hair to a thornbush, and to repeat on successive days Exod. iii. 2,3, then ver. 4, and finally ver. 5, after which the bush is to be cut down, while a certain magical formula is pronounced, [a Shabb. 37 a.] How different from this, alike in its sublime simplicity and in the majestic bearing of Him Who healed, is the Evangelic narrative of the cure of Peter's mother-in-law. To ignore, in our estimate of the trustworthiness of the Gospels, this essential contrast, would be a grave historical mistake. Jesus is 'told' of the sickness; He is besought for her who is stricken down. In His Presence disease and misery cannot continue. Bending over the sufferer, He 'rebuked the fever,' just as He had rebuked [1 The word is the same in both cases.] 'the demon' in the Synagogue, and for the same reason, since all disease, in the view of the Divine Healer, is the outcome of sin. Then lifting her by the hand, she rose up, healed, to 'minister' unto them. It was the first Diaconate [2 The term is the same. See the remarks of Volkmar (Marcus, pp. 99, 100).] of woman in the Church, might we not almost say, in the world? a Diaconate to Christ, and to those that were His; the Diaconate of one healed by Christ; a Diaconate immediately following such healing. The first, this, of a long course of woman's Diaconate to Christ, in which, for the first time, woman attained her true position. And what a Sabbath-meal it must have been, after that scene in the Synagogue and after that healing in the house, when Jesus was the Guest, they who had witnessed it all sat at meat with Him, and she who had been healed was the Deaconess. Would that such were ever our Christian festive meals!
It was evening. The sun was setting, and the Sabbath past. All that day it had been told from home to home what had been done in the Synagogue; it had been whispered what had taken place in the house of their neighbour Simon. This one conviction had been borne in upon them all, that 'with authority' He spake, with authority and power He commanded even the unclean spirits, and they obeyed. No scene more characteristic of the Christ than that on this autumn evening at Capernaum. One by one the stars had shone out over the tranquil Lake and the festive city, lighting up earth's darkness with heaven's soft brilliancy, as if they stood there witnesses, that God had fulfilled His good promise to Abraham, [a Gen. xxii. 17, 18.] On that evening no one in Capernaum thought of business, pleasure, or rest. There must have been many homes of sorrow, care, and sickness there, and in the populous neighbourhood around. To them, to all, had the door of hope now been opened. Truly, a new Sun had risen on them, with healing in His wings. No disease too desperate, when even the demons owned the authority of His mere rebuke. From all parts they bring them: mothers, widows, wives, fathers, children, husbands, their loved ones, the treasures they had almost lost; and the whole city throngs, a hushed, solemnised, overawed multitude, expectant, waiting at the door of Simon's dwelling. There they laid them, along the street up to the market-place, on their beds; or brought them, with beseeching look and word. What a symbol of this world's misery, need, and hope; what a symbol, also, of what the Christ really is as the Consoler in the world's manifold woe! Never, surely, was He more truly the Christ; nor is He in symbol more truly such to us and to all time, than when, in the stillness of that evening, under the starlit sky, He went through that suffering throng, laying His hands in the blessing of healing on every one of them, and casting out many devils. No picture of the Christ more dear to us, than this of the unlimited healing of whatever disease of body or soul. In its blessed indefiniteness it conveys the infinite potentiality of relief, whatever misery have fallen on us, or whatever care or sorrow oppress us. He must be blind, indeed, who sees not in this Physician the Divine Healer; in this Christ the Light of the World; the Restoror of what sin had blighted; the Joy in our world's deep sorrow. Never was prophecy more truly fulfilled than, on that evening, this of Isaiah: 'Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.' [b Is. liii.] By His Incarnation and Coming, by His takingour infirmities, and bearing our sicknesses, for this in the truest and widest sense is the meaning of the Incarnation of the Christ, did He become the Healer, the Consoler of humanity, its Saviour in all ills of time, and from all ills of eternity. The most real fulfilment this, that can be conceived, of Isaiah's rapt vision of Who and what the Messiah was to be, and to do; not, indeed, what is sometimes called fulfilment, or expected as such, in a literal and verbal correspondence with the prediction. An utterly mechanical, external, and unspiritual view this of prophecy, in which, in quite Jewish literalism, the spirit is crushed by the letter. But, viewed in its real bearing on mankind with its wants, Christ, on that evening, was the real, though as yet only initial, fulfilment of the world's great hope, to which, centuries before, the God-directed hand of the prophet had pointed. [1 I can scarcely find words strong enough to express my dissent from those who would limit Is. liii. 4, either on the one hand to spiritual, or on the other to physical 'sicknesses.' The promise is one of future deliverance from both, of a Restorer from all the woe which sin had brought. In the same way the expression 'taking upon Himself,' and 'bearing' refers to the Christ as our Deliverer, because our Substitute. Because He took upon Himself our infirmities, therefore He bore our sicknesses. That the view here given is that of the N.T., appears from a comparison of the application of the passage in St. Matt. viii. 17 with that in St. John i. 29 and 1 Pet. ii. 24. The words, as given by St. Matthew, are most truly a N.T. 'Targum' of the original. The LXX. renders, 'This man carries our sins and is pained for us;' Symmachus, 'Surely He took up our
sins, and endured our labors;' the Targum Jon., 'Thus for our sins He will pray, and our iniquities will for His sake be forgiven.' (Comp. Driver and Neubauer, The Jewish Interpreters on Isaiah liii., vol. ii.) Lastly, it is with reference to this passage that the Messiah bears in the Talmud the designation, 'The Leprous One,' and 'the Sick One' (Sanh. 98 b).]
So ended that Sabbath in Capernaum: a Sabbath of healing, joy, and true rest. But far and wide, into every place of the country around, throughout all the region of Galilee, spread the tidings, and with them the fame of Him Whom demons must obey, though they dare not pronounce Him the Son of God. And on men's ears fell His Name with sweet softness of infinite promise, 'like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth.'
THE ASCENT: FROM THE RIVER JORDAN TO THE MOUNT OF TRANSFIGURATION. SECOND JOURNEY THROUGH GALILEE, THE HEALING OF THE LEPER. CHAPTER XV.
(St. Matt. iv. 23; viii. 2-4; St. Mark i. 35-45; St. Luke iv. 42-44; v. 12-16.)
A day and an evening such as of that Sabbath of healing in Capernaum must, with reverence be it written, have been followed by what opens the next section. [1 So both in St. Mark (i. 35-39) and in St. Luke (iv. 42-44), and in substantial accord even in St. Matthew (iv. 23).] To the thoughtful observer there is such unbroken harmony in the Life of Jesus, such accord of the inward and outward, as to carry instinctive conviction of the truth of its record. It was, so to speak, an inward necessity that the God-Man, when brought into contact with disease and misery, whether from physical or supernatural causes, should remove it by His Presence, by His touch, by His Word. An outward necessity also, because no other mode of teaching equally convincing would have reached those accustomed to Rabbinic disputations, and who must have looked for such a manifestation from One Who claimed such authority. And yet, so far from being a mere worker of miracles, as we should have expected if the history of His miracles had been of legendary origin, there is nothing more marked than the pain, we had almost said the humiliation, which their necessity seems to have carried to His heart. 'Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe;' 'an evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign;' 'blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed', such are the utterances of Him Who sighed when He opened the ears of the deaf, [a St. Mark vii. 34.] and bade His Apostles look for higher and better things than power over all diseases or even over evil spirits, [b St. Luke x. 17-20.] [2 So also St. Paul, 1 Cor. xii. 31:xiii. 1.] So would not the Messiah of Jewish legend have spoken or done; nor would they who invented such miracles have so referred to them.
In truth, when, through the rift in His outward history, we catch a glimpse of Christ's inner Being, these miracles, so far as not the outcome of the mystic union of the Divine and the Human in His Person, but as part of
