CCXXIX. THE SAME SUBJECT-continued. St. Mark v. 10-20. And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country. Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand ;) and were choked in the sea. And they that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that was done. And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid. And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with the devil, and also concerning the swine. And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts. And when he was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that he might be with him. Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel. Sometimes it seems as if one evil spirit, usurping the voice of the man, was spokesman for the rest; sometimes all seem, with horrid din, to speak together. Concerning the swine, it might be sufficient to say that the Lord of all, the Judge of all the earth, who knows what is in all, who has made both man and beast, has His reasons in all He does, and does nothing without reason, though those reasons are not always known to us, nor can as yet be made known. What child can understand all that his father does? What father will explain all that he does to his child? "The time is not yet come." "He can create and He destroy." And whether it be slow or sudden, on a larger or on a smaller scale, by murrain or sword or steel, who shall say to Him, What doest Thou? His Providence notes the sparrows' fall. Not one of them is forgotten before God. There was, we may not doubt, good reason for this judgment on the selfish owners of these swine.' It might too have been the readiest way to rid the country of the evil spirits that infested it, to remand them to the pit. In any case the owners, we find, did not resent it; however in their selfishness, fearing further worldly loss, they begged Him, but with humility, to depart. "There are a great many who prefer their swine before their Saviour."2 Far and wide the rumour had spread. Ought not this to have moved them more than the loss of their swine, to see one who had been so possessed, and "out of whom the devils were departed, sitting," 3 like another Mary," "at the feet of Jesus," to hear His word; restored to society and to a sound mind? They were afraid, not glad. They feared the Lord's might, but were not moved by His mercy. This restored one seems to have accompanied his Healer back to the ship, and desired to be ever with the Lord. But the Lord for his soul's health, and because the same reasons against publicity did not exist Some reasons are assigned by the writers in Poole's Synopsis, as That it might be seen that the Dæmons really departed from the bodies of men; That those who fed on swine's flesh contrary to the law, might be punished by the loss of their property; That the power and multitude of evil spirits might be made manifest, and the mischiefs they might work among men unless restrained by God; That He might confute the Sadducees, who denied that Dæmons were essential spirits, and feigned that they were no more than depraved passions whether of the body or of the mind; That He might show Gentiles that the religion of the Jews was from God, and ad here as in His own country, monish Jews not to imitate, as they were inclined to do, the swinish manners of the Gentiles. 2 Henry. 3 St. Luke viii. 35. St. Luke x. 39. "This was the attitude of a Disciple."-A Plain Commentary. "Only by a reference to this moral condition are we able to reconcile the apparently contradictory injunctions which the Lord laid on those whom he had healed . . . Where there was danger of all deeper impressions being scattered and lost through a garrulous repetition of the outward circumstances of the healing, there silence was enjoined . . has work for him elsewhere. Jesus we see claims here to be Lord and God. And so the man understood Him. All could not choose but marvel. The man himself we find did more. CCXXX. JAIRUS' DAUGHTER. St. Mark v. 21-24. And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto him: and he was nigh unto the sea. And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, and besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live. And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him. The rejected of the Gadarenes, who refused to be blessed, returns to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, where He was welcomed by a multitude of people, who were evidently expecting His return.' This Jairus was one of the chief ministers of the Synagogue, or place of worship, probably at Capernaum. He begs the Lord's help for his little daughter, his "one only daughter, about twelve years of age," who, when he left the house, "lay a dying; "" and who, for aught he knew, might be (as indeed before returning home he learned she was) "even now dead." This message however But where, on the contrary, there was a temperament over-inclined to melancholy.. and needing to be drawn out from self, and into healthy communion with its fellow men... there the command was, that the man should go and tell to others the great things which God had done for him, 1 St. Luke viii. 40. does but stir him up to the more earnest prayer. His faith is equal even to such a trial. "Come," he adds to his first request, "and lay Thy hands upon her, and she shall live." 1 Imposition of hands was ever a sign of blessing. This Ruler of the Synagogue had already witnessed the wonders which flowed from the touch of that healing hand. Here he might have called to mind the case of that Shunamite whose only child the Prophet of the Lord recalled to life. He believes that He is able to do even this. In his eagerness he leads the way, which the Lord readily condescends to follow.' How graphic is the description! We almost seem to see the crowd accompanying Him and His Disciples,' the crowd of eager and expectant and thronging people. He is more ready to hear than we to pray.3 CCXXXI. THE WOMAN WHO TOUCHED HIS GARMENT. St. Mark v. 25-29. And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. Our Lord is on His way to the house of Jairus to raise His daughter from the dead. On the road He encounters from one of that thronging crowd a strange interruption. This delay, while at first a trial to the anxious father, yet tended to the confirmation of his faith. people, and He has a blessing in St. Matt. ix. 18. 22 Ki. iv. 14-37. Christ is the Father of His store, not for the daughter 3 Collect for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity. 2 3 "5 of Jairus only, but also for this daughter of Abraham.1 While each is as much His care as if each were the solitary case to be considered, yet must we remember that there are others besides ourselves awaiting the coming of the Lord. We must not, as it were, monopolise Him. Ours is not the only sorrow. "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." So let us consider this parenthesis in His work of mercy, this record of the woman who touched the hem of His garment on the way to the house of Jairus, which "cuts that narrative in two." This woman's infirmity "dated as far back as the life of the child whom the Great Physician was going to restore.' "14 The one was "about twelve years of age;" the other had been twelve years ill. When we consider the ignorance of the Jewish physicians in those days, and the horrible nature of their supposed remedies, which did but aggravate the disease, we can understand how much she must have suffered. Like the Prodigal too she had "spent all," and spent it in vain. Health gone, money gone; she was reduced to the greatest extremity when she came to Jesus. And what was it brought her to Jesus? It was Faith. "She had heard of Jesus." "Faith cometh by hearing." But she was a doer of the Word and not an hearer only. It was the "hem" or "border" of His garment that she touched, the riband or fringe of blue, which the Jews of old were bidden to wear in order to remind them whose they were and whom they ought to serve, and which the hypocrites among them used to enlarge, not to remind them of God, but that they might be seen of men. It was "within herself" that she said this." "None could hear this voice of the heart but He that made it." 9 1 V. 34 below. 2 Thou art as much His care as if beside Nor man nor angel lived in heaven or earth."-The Christian Year, 3 Abp. Trench. 6 7 ♦ A Plain Commentary. 6 St. Matt. ix. 21. 7 Num. xvi. 38-40. 8 St. Matt. xxii. 5. Bp. Hall. 8 |