hostile. And this feeling would be greatly increased, in measure as the mind was under the influence of superstitious fears.
In such place and circumstances Jesus could not have continued. And, as He entered the ship, the healed demonised humbly, earnestly entreated, that he might go with his Saviour. It would have seemed to him, as if he could not bear to lose his new found happiness; as if there were calm, safety, and happiness only in His Presence; not far from Him, not among those wild mountains and yet wilder men. Why should he be driven from His fellowship, who had so long been an outcast from that of his fellow-men, and why again left to himself? So, perhaps, should we have reasoned and spoken; so too often do we reason and speak, as regards ourselves or those we love. Not so He Who appoints alike our discipline and our work. To go back, now healed, to his own, and to publish there, in the city, nay, through the whole of the large district of the ten confederate cities, the Decapolis, how great things Jesus had done for him, such was henceforth to be his life-work. In this there would be both safety and happiness.
'And all men did marvel.' And presently Jesus Himself came back into that Decapolis, where the healed demonised had prepared the way for Him. [2 As this healing of the demonised may be regarded as the 'test-case' on the general question, I have entered more fully on the discussion. The arguments in favour of the general view taken of the demonised are so clearly and forcibly stated by Archbishop Trench (on 'The Miracles') and in 'The Speaker's Commentary' (N. Test. vol. i. p. 44), that it seems needless to reiterate them. To me at least it seems difficult to understand, how any reader of the narrative, who comes to it without preconceived opinions, can arrive at any other conclusion than that either the whole must be rejected as mythical, or else be received as implying that there was a demonised state, different from madness; that Jesus treated the present as such;
bade the unclean spirits go out, and by His word banished them. The objection as to the morality of the destruction of the herd seems scarcely more weighty than the sneer of Strauss, that the devils must have been stupid in immediately destroying their new habitations. The question of morality cannot even be raised, since Jesus did not command, only not hinder, the devils entering into the swine, and as for the destruction of their new dwellings, so far from being stupid, it certainly did secure their undisturbed continuance in the country and the withdrawal of Jesus. All attempts to adapt this miracle to our modern experience, and the ideas based upon it, by leaving out or rationalising one or another trait in the narrative, are emphatically failures. We repeat: the history must be received as it stands, or wholly rejected.]
THE ASCENT: FROM THE RIVER JORDAN TO THE MOUNT OF TRANSFIGURATION
THE HEALING OF THE WOMAN, CHRIST'S PERSONAL APPEARANCE, THE RAISING OF JAIRUS' DAUGHTER
CHAPTER XXVI
(St. Matt. ix. 18-26; St. Markv. 21-43; St. Luke viii. 40-56.)
There seems remarkable correspondence between the two miracles which Jesus had wrought on leaving Capernaum and those which He did on His return. In one sense they are complementary to each other. The stilling of the storm and the healing of the demonised were manifestations of the absolute power inherent in Christ; the recovery of the woman and the raising of Jairus' daughter, evidence of the absolute efficacy of faith. The unlikeliness of dominion over the storm, and of command over a legion of demons, answers to that of recovery obtained in such a manner, and of restoration when disease had passed into actual death. Even the circumstances seem to correspond, though at opposite poles; in the one case, the Word spoken to the unconscious element, in the other the touch of the unconscious Christ; in the one case the absolute command of Christ over a world of resisting demons, in the other absolute certainty of faith as against the hostile element, of actual fact. Thus the Divine character of the Saviour appears in the absoluteness of His Omnipotence, and the Divine character of His Mission in the all-powerfulness of faith which it called forth.
On the shore at Capernaum many were gathered on the morning after the storm. It may have been, that the boats which had accompanied His had returned to friendly shelter, ere the storm had risen to full fury, and had brought anxious tidings of the storm out on the Lake. There they were gathered now in the calm morning, friends eagerly looking out for the well-known boat that bore the Master and His disciples. And as it came in sight, making again for Capernaum, the multitude also would gather in waiting for the return of Him, Whose words and deeds were indeed mysteries, but mysteries of the Kingdom. And quickly, as He again stepped on the well-known shore, was He welcomed, surrounded, soon 'thronged,' inconveniently pressed upon, [1 comp. St. Luke viii. 45; St. Mark v. 31.] by the crowd, eager, curious, expectant. It seemed as if they had been all 'waiting for Him,' and He had been away all too long for their impatience. The tidings rapidly spread, and reached two homes where His help was needed; where, indeed, it alone could
now be of possible avail. The two most nearly concerned must have gone to seek that help about the same time, and prompted by the same feelings of expectancy. Both Jairus, the Ruler of the Synagogue, and the woman suffering these many years from disease, had faith. But the weakness of the one arose from excess, and threatened to merge into superstition, while the weakness of the other was due to defect, and threatened to end in despire. In both cases faith had to be called out, tried, purified, and so perfected; in both the thing sought for was, humanely speaking, unattainable, and the means employed seemingly powerless; yet, in both, the outward and inward results required were obtained through the power of Christ, and by the peculiar discipline to which, in His all-wise arranging, faith was subjected.
It sounds almost like a confession of absolute defeat, when negative critics (such as Keim) have to ground their mythical explanation of this history on the supposed symbolical meaning of what they designate as the fictitious name of the Ruler of the Synagogue, Jair, 'he will give light' [a Jesu v. Nazar. ii. 2, p. 472.], and when they [b Strauss, Leben Jesu ii. p. 135.] further appeal to the correspondence between the age of the maiden and the years (twelve) during which the woman had suffered from the bloody flux. This coincidence is, indeed, so trivial as not to deserve serious notice; since there can be no conceivable connection between the age of the child and the duration of the woman's disease, nor, indeed, between the two cases, except in this, that both appealed to Jesus. As regards the name Jairus, the supposed symbolism is inapt; while internal reasons are opposed to the hypothesis of its fictitiousness. For, it seems most unlikely that St. Mark and St. Luke would have rendered the discovery of'a myth' easy by needlessly breaking the silence of St. Matthew, and giving the name of so well-known a person as a Synagogue-ruler of Capernaum. And this the more readily, that the name, though occurring in the Old Testament, and in the ranks of the Nationalist party in the last Jewish War, [c Jos. Jewish War vi. 1. 8, close.] was apparently not a common one. [2 The name, a well-known O.T. one (Numb, xxxii. 41; Judg., x. 3), does not occur in Rabbinic literature till after the Middle Ages.] But these are comparatively small difficulties in the way of the mythical interpretation.
Jairus, one of the Synagogue-rulers [1 Keim starts the theory that, according to St. Matthew, Jairus was an in the sense of a civil magistrate. This, in order to make St. Matthew contradict St. Mark and St. Luke, as if were not one of the most common designations of Synagogue-rulers.] of Capernaum, had an only daughter, [2 The particulars of her history must be gathered from a comparison of the three Gospels.] who at the time of this narrative had just passed childhood, and reached the period when Jewish Law declared a woman of age. [3 A woman came of age at twelve years and one day, and boys at thirteen years and one day.] Although St. Matthew, contracting the whole narrative into briefest summary, speaks of her as dead at the time of Jarius' application to Jesus, the other two Evangelists, giving fuller details, describe her as on the point of death, literally, 'at the last breath' (in extremis). [4 Godet points out a like summarisation in St. Matthew's account of the Centurion's servant.] Unless her disease had been both sudden and exceedingly rapid, which is barely possible, it is difficult to understand why her father had not on the previous day applied to Jesus, if his faith had been such as is generally supposed. But if, as the whole tenour of the history shows, his faith had been only general and scarcely formed, we can account the more easily for the delay. Only in the hour of supreme need, when his only child lay dying, did he resort to Jesus. There was need to perfect such faith, on the one side into perseverance of assurance, and on the other into energy of trustfulness. The one was accomplished
through the delay caused by the application of the woman, the other by the supervention of death during this interval.
There was nothing unnatural or un-Jewish in the application of this Ruler to Jesus. He must have known of the healing of the son of the Court-official, and of the servant of the Centurion, there or in the immediate neighbourhood, as it was said, by the mere word of Christ. For there had been no imposition of silence in regard to them, even had such been possible. Yet in both cases the recovery might be ascribed by some to coincidence, by others to answer of prayer. And perhaps this may help us to understand one of the reasons for the prohibition of
