et bibunt, nullam tamen efficaciam ex eo percipiunt, nee sentiunt fluxum ilium pecca-
torum suorum sisti et exsiccari. Unde illud ? Quia destituuntur vera fide, quae sola
ex hoc fonte haurit gratiam pro gratia..
158 THE WOMAN WITH AN ISSUE OF BLOOD.
that the denial, which probably she had made with the rest, for it is
said, '^ aU denied," (Luke viii. 45,) would profit her nothing; unable,
too, to escape his searching glance, for " he looked round about to see
her," (Mark v. 82,) " came trembling, and falling down before him, she
declared unto him," and this " before all the people, for xohat cause she
had touched him, and how she was healed immediately." Olshausen
brings out here, with much beauty, how in all this the loving and gra-
cious dealings of the Son of man, who always sought to make through
the healing of the body a way for the healing of the soul, are to be
traced. She had borne away a maimed blessing, hardly a blessing at
all, had she been suffered to bear it away in secret and unacknowledged.
She desired to remain in concealment out of a shame, which, however
natural, was untimely here in this crisis of her spiritual life : and this
her loving Saviour would not suffer her to do: by a gracious force he
drew her from it; yet even here he spared her as far as he could. For
not before, but after she is healed, does he require the open confession
from her lips. She had found it perhaps altogether too hard, had he
demanded it of her before ; therefore does he graciously wait till the
cure is accomplished, and thus helps her through the narrow way.
Altogether spare her this painful passage he could not, for it pertained
to her birth into the new life.*
And now he dismisses her with words of gracious encouragement,
" Daughter, he of good comfort ; thy faith hath made thee whole."^ Her
faith had made her whole, and Christ's virtue had made her whole.:}: It
is as when we say that faith justifies : our faith is not itself a blessing ;
but it is the organ by which the blessing is received ; it is the right
* Sedulius then has exactly missed the point of the narrative, when of the Lord
he says,
fnrtnmiiue fidele
Laudat, et ingenuae tribuit sua vota rapina; ;
for it was precisely this which was deficient in her, that she sought it as a furtum,
when she should have claimed it openly: and no less Bernard {De Divers., Senn. 99,)
when he makes her the figure of all those who would do good hiddenly, avoiding all
human applause : Sunt alii qui noimuUa bona occultfe faciunt, .... sed lamen furari
[regnum ccclorum] dicuntur, quia laudem humanam vitantes, solo divino testimonio
contenti sunt. Horum figuram tenuit mulier in Evangelio, &c. Rather she is the
figure of those who would get good hiddenly, and without an open profession of their
faith, who believe in their hearts, but shrink from confessing with their lips, that Jesus
Christ is Lord, forgetting that not this alone, but that also is required. (Rom. x. 9.)
t Tertullian, Adv. Marc, 1. 4, c. 20.
t Her faith, dpyauinw?, Christ's virtue, cvepyt]TiKtSs. This, as the causa efliciens;
that, as the conditio sine qui non.
THE WOMAN WITH AN ISSUE OF BLOOD. 159
hand of the soul, which lays hold upon it. " Go in peace ;" this is not
merely, Go with a blessing, but, Go into the element of peace as the
future element in which thy life shall move ; — " and he whole of thy
•plague. ^^
Theophylact brings out a mystical meaning in this miracle. This
woman's complaint represents the ever-flowing fountain of sin ; the
physicians, the philosophers and wise men of this world, that with all
their medicines, their systems and their philosophies, prevailed nothing
to stanch that fountain of evil in man's heart. To touch Christ's gar-
ment is to believe in his Incarnation, wherein he touched us, enabling
us to touch him : whereupon that healing, which in all those other
things was vainly sought, follows at once. And if we keep in mind
how her uncleanness separated her off as one impure, we shall have
here an exact picture of the sinner, drawing nigh to the throne of grace,
but out of the sense of his impurity not with boldness, rather with fear
and trembling, hardly knowing what there he shall expect ; but who is
welcomed thei-e, and, all his carnal doublings and questionings expelled,
dismissed with the word of an abiding peace resting upon him.
VIII.
THE OPENING THE EYES OF TWO BLIND IN THE
HOUSE.
Matt. ix. 27— 31.
We have here the first of those healings of the blind whereof so
many are recorded (Matt. xii. 22 ; xx. 30 ; xxi. 14 ; John ix.) or al-
luded to in the Gospel narrative.'' Nor is this little history without one
or two features distinguishing it from others of a like kind. These two
blind men appear to have followed Jesus in the way ; it may have been,
and Jerome supposes it was, as he was returning from the house of Jai-
rus. Yet one would not lay too much stress on the connection in which
St. Matthew sets the miracle, or necessarily conclude that he intended
to place it in such immediate relation of time and place with the raising
of the ruler's daughter. There was the same trial of tlie faith of these
blind men, although in a more mitigated form, as found place in the case
of the Syrophenician woman. Not all at once did they receive the boon
which they sought ; but the Lord seemed at first rather to withdraw
himself from them, suffering them to cry after him, and for a while pay-
* Their frequent recurrence need not surprise us ; for blindness throus^liout all the
East is a far commoner calamity than with us. For this there are many causes. The
dust and flying sand, pulverized and reduced to minutest particles, enters the eyes,
causing inflammations, which being neglected, end frequently in total loss of sight.
The sleeping in the open air, on the roofs of the houses, and the consequent exposure of
the eyes to the noxious nightly dews, is another source of this malady. A modern
traveller calculates that there are four thousand blind in Cairo alone, and another that
you may reckon twenty such in every hundred persons. It is true that in Syria the
proportion of those afflicted with blindness is not at all so great, yet there also the ca-
lamity is of far more frequent occurrence than in western lands, so that we find humane
regulations concerning the blind as concerning a class in the old Law. (Lev. xix. 14 ;
Deut. xxvii. 18.)
THE OPENING THE EYES OF TWO BLIND. 161
ing no regard to their cries. It was onl)'- after they followed him into
the house, and had thus shown that they were in earnest in seeking and
expecting a boon from him, that he yielded to them the blessing which
they sought.* But ere he does this, as he has tried them in deed by the
delay of the blessing, he proves them also in word. He will have the
confession of their faith from their own lips : " Believe ye that I am able
to do this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord." And then, when he found
that they had this necessary condition for the receiving any one of his
blessings, when he perceived that they had faith to be healed, "Ae touched
their eyes." And this time it is by that simple touch that he opens those
closed eyes ; (Matt. xx. 34 ;) at other times he uses as the conductors of
his power, and as helps to the faith of those who should be healed, some
further instruments, — the clay mingled with spittle (John ix. 6, 7,) or
the moisture of his mouth alone. We do not, I think, anywhere read of
his opening the blind eyes simply by his word, although of course that
would have been equally easy to him. The words which accompany
the act of healing are remarkable — " According to your faith be it unto
you," — remarkable for the insight which they give us into the relation
of man's faith and God's gift. The faith, which in itself is nothing, is
yet the organ of receiving every thing. It places the man in relation
with the divine blessing ; of no esteem in itself, but only in its relation
to its object. It is the bucket let down into the fountain of God's grace,
without which the man could not draw up out of that fountain ; the
purse, which though itself of the coarsest material, does yet enrich its
owner by that which it contains. f
It is very characteristic, and rests on very deep differences, that of
the Romish interpreters almost all, indeed I know not an exception,
should excuse, or rather applaud, these men for not adhering strictly to
Christ's command, his earnest, almost threatening,:}: injunction to them,
that they should let none know what he had done, — that the expositors of
that Church of will-worship should see in their disobedience the over-
* Calvin : Re igitur et verbis examinave voluit eorum fidem : suspenses enini
tenens, imo praeteriens quasi non exaudiat, patientiae ipsorum experimentuin capit, et
qualem in ipsorum animis radicem egerit fides.
t Faith, the opyavov \rinriK6v, nothing in itself, yet every thing, because it places us
in living connection with him in whom every good gift is stored. Thus on this passage
Chemnitz {Harm. Evang., c. 68) : Fides est instar haustri gratiae ccslestis et saiutis nos-
trae, quo ex inscrutabili et inexhausto divinse misericordiae et bonitatis fonte, ad quem
aliter penetrare non possumus, haurimus et ad nos attrahimus quod nobis salutare est.
Calvin {Inst., iii. 11, 7) : Fides etiamsi nullius per se dignitatis sit, vel pretii, nos justi-
ficat, Christum afferendo, sicut oUa pecuniis referta hominem locupletat.
t 'EnclSptunaaro airoTj. Suidas explains Cjil^pi^iiadai = /'irii dnciMi hriWeadai pier
avoTijpoTijros iiriTi^av.
162 THE OPENING THE EYES OF TWO BLIND.
flowings which could not be restrained of grateful hearts, and not there-
fore a fault but a merit. Some indeed of the ancients, as Theophylact,
go so far as to suppose that the men did not disobey at all in proclaiming
the miracle, that Christ never intended them to preserve his precept
about silence ; but gave it out of humility, being best pleased when it
was not observed.* But the Reformed, whose first principle it is to take
God's Word as absolute rule and law, and to worship God not with self-
devised services, but after the pattern that he has given them, stand fast
to this, that obedience is better than sacrifice, even though that sacrifice
may appear in honor of God himself; and see in this publishing of the
miracle, after the prohibition given, a blemish in the perfectness of their
faith who did it, a fault, though a fault into which they only, who were
full of gratitude and thankfulness, could have fallen.
* Thus Aquinas (Sum7n. Theol., 2* 2''^, qu. 104, art. 4) : Dominus caecis dixit ut
miraculum occultarent, non quasi intendens eos per virtutem divini prajcepti obligare ;
sed sicut Gregorius dicit 19 Moral., servis suis se sequentibus exemplum dedit, ut ipsi
quidem virtutes suas occultare desiderent, et tamen, ut alii eorum exemplo proficiant,
prodantur inviti. Of. Maldonatus in loc.
IX.
THE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC
Matt. ix. 1—9 ; Mark ii. 1—12 ; Luke v. 17—26.*
It was at Capernaum, while the Lord was teaching there, and on an
occasion when there were present Pharisees and doctors of the law from
many quarters, some of whom had come even as far as from Jerusalem,
(Luke V. 17,) that this healing of the paralytic took place. f It might
have been a kind of conference, more or less friendly upon the part of
these, which had brought together a^ listeners and spectators the great
multitude of whom we read, a multitude so great that the avenues of
approach to the house were blocked up ; " there was no room to receive
them, no not so much as about the rfoor,":j: and thus no opportunity, by
any ordinary way, of access to the Lord. (Malt. xii. 46, 47.) And now
some who arrived late with their sick, who brought with them a poor
paralytic, " could not come nigh unto him for the press. ^' Only the two
later Evangelists record for us the extraordinary method to which the
* Chrysostom mentions, in a sermon upon this miracle, (v. 3, p. 37, 38, Bened.
edit.) that many in his day confounded this history with that of the impotent man at
Bethesda, — a supposition so wholly groundless as hardly to be worth the complete refu-
tation which he gives it, showing that on no one point do the histories agree. In the
apocryphal Evangelium Nicodemi, (see Thilo's Cod. Apocryph., v. 1, p. 556,) there is
a confusion of the two miracles.
t The words of St. Luke, " The power of the Lord was present to heal them," are
difficult, aiiTovs having no antecedent to which it refers ; for clearly it cannot refer to the
Pharisees and doctors just before named. There was nothing in them which made
them receptive either of a bodily or a spiritual healing. Most likely it is proleptic ; the
Evangelist, in writing thus, has already in his mind him, though yet unnamed, on
whom that power was put forth. We must take vu as pregnant, supplying ipya^oftli/ri, or
some such word.
t Ta Ttpd; tIiv dipav, soil, fiipri = irpoOvpov, vestibulum, atrium.
164 THE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC.
bearers of the suffering man (St. Mark tells us they were four,) were
compelled to have recourse, for bringing him before the notice of the
great healer of bodies and of souls. They first ascended to the roof:
this was not so difficult, because commonly there was a flight of steps on
the outside of the house, reaching to the roof, as well as, or sometimes
instead of, an internal communication of the same kind. Such are to be
seen (I have myself seen them,) in those parts of the south of Spain
which bear a permanent impress of Eastern habits. Our Lord assumes
the existence of such, when he says, " Let him that is on the house-top
not come down to take any thing out of his house," (Matt. .\xiv. 17 ;)
he is to take the nearest and shortest way of escaping into the country :
but he could only avoid the necessity of descending through the house
by the existence of such steps as these.* Some will have it, that, on the
present occasion, the bearers having thus reached the roof, did no more
than let down their sick through the grating or trap-door, which already
existed therein, (cf. 2 Kin. i. 2 ;) or, at most, that they might have wi-
dened such an aperture, already existing, to enable them to let down
the sick man's bed. Others,f that Jesus was sitting in the open court,
round which the houses in the East are commonly built, and that to this
they got access by the roof, and breaking through the breastwork or
battlement (Deut. xxii. 8,) made of tiles, which guarded the roof, and
removing the linen awning which was stretched over the court, let him
down in the midst before the Lord. But there seems no sufficient rea-
son for departing from the obvious meaning of llie words. In St. Mark,
at least, they are so plain and clear, that we can suppose nothing else
than that a part of the actual covering of the roof was removed, that so
the bed on which the palsied man lay might be let down before the
Lord.:]: The whole circumstance will be much more easily conceived,
and present fewer difficulties, when we keep in mind that it was probably
the upper chamber, [vnepooov,') where were assembled those that were
* The same must have existed in a Roman house, from a notice we have in Livy,
1. 39, c. 14. A witness, whom it is most important to preserve from being tampered
with, is shut up in the chamber adjoining the roof, (ccenaculum super aedes,) — and, to
make all sure, scalis ferentibus in publicum obseratis, aditu in aedes verso. (See
Becker's Gallus, v. 1, p. 94.)
t Shaw, for instance, quoted in Rosenmuller {Alte und Neve Morgeuland, v. 5, p.
129.) He makes rd ^iaov to signify the central court, impluvium, cava aedium. But
against this use of cU to j/iaov, or rather for the common one, sec Luke iv. 35 ; Mark
iii. 3 ; xiv. 60. And so, too, Titus Bostrensis (in Cramer's Catena) : EiVoj 6' !i» nj
vnaiOoov cinat t6t:iiv, cii Sn 6ia ruv Kcpajioiv Kartfiijiaaav rfiv K\u>riv tov TrapaXirov, fxriilv Trav-
TtXwf ri/f aTCyi! dvaTpiipavTCi.
\ Winer, (Real WOrterhuch, s. v. Dach,) who weighs tlie other explanations, has
come to exactly the same conclusion. Cf De Wette's Archaologic, p. 118, seq.
THE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC. 165
drawn together to hear the Lord. This, as the most retired, (2 Kin. iv.
10, LXX. ; Acts ix. 37,) and probably the largest room in the house,
extending oftentimes over its whole area, was much used for such pur-
poses as that which now drew him and his hearers together.* (Acts i.
13; XX. 8.)
The merciful Son of man, condescending to every need of man, and
never taking ill that which witnessed for an earnest faith in him, even
though, as here, it manifested itself in a way so novel, — in one, too,
which must have altogether disturbed the quiet of his teaching, saw with
an eye well-pleased their faith. Had we only the account of St. Mat-
thew, we should hardly understand wherein their special faith consist-
ed, — why here, more than in many similar instances, it should have
been noted ; but the other Evangelists admirably complete that which
he would have left obscure. They tell us how it was a faith which
pressed through hinderances, and was not to be turned aside by difficul-
ties. f By " iheir faith," many, as Jerome and Ambrose, understand the
faith of the bearers only, but there is no need so to confine the words.
To them the praise justly was due,:}: but no doubt the sick man was
approving all which they did, or it would not have been done : so that
Chrysostom, with greater reason, concludes, that it was alike their faith
and his which the Lord saw and rewarded. And this faith, as in the
case of all whom he healed, was not as yet the reception of any certain
doctrines, but a deep inward sense of need, and of Christ as the one,
who only could meet that need.
Beholding this faith, the Lord addressed him, " Son,^ be of good-
cheer ; thy sins be forgiven thee ;" — a striking example this of the way
in which the Lord gives before men ask, and belter than men ask ; for
this man had not asked any thing, save, indeed, in the dumb asking of
that earnest effort to come near to Jesus ; and all that he dared to ask
even in that, or at least all that his friends and bearers hoped for him,
was that his body might be healed. Yet there was no doubt in himself
* As Vitringa too (Z?e Synag., p. 145, seq ) proves by abundant examples.
t Bengel: Per omnia fides ad Christum penetrat. Gerhard {Harm. Evang., c.
43) : Pictura est quomodo in tentationibus et calamitatibus ad Christum nobis conentur
intercludere hominum judicia, quales fuerunt amici Jobi, et qui Ps. iii. 3, dicunt : Non
est salus ipsi in Deo ejus. Item : Legis judicium et propriae conscientiae accusationes.
Et quomodo per ilia omnia fides perrumpere debeat, ut in conspectum Christi Media-
toris se demittat.
t Tivcs TTKTTOTaTot, as In the apocryphal Evangelium Nicodemi they are called.
§ In St. Luke, " Man, thy sins are forgiven thee." But as he addresses another
down-smitten soul, " Daughter, be of good comfort," (Matt. ix. 22,) it is probable
that the tenderer appellation here also found place.
16G THE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC.
a deep feeling of his sickness in its innermost root; as growing out of
sin, perhaps as the penalty of some especial sin whereof he was con-
scious ; and some expression of contrition, some exclamation of a peni-
tent heart, may have been the immediate occasion of these gracious
words of forgiveness, as, indeed, the address, " Son, le of good cheer,"
would seem also to imply that he was one evidently burdened and cast
down, and, as the Lord saw, with more than the weight of his bodily
sicknesses and sufferings. We shall see in other cases how the forgive-
ness of sins follows the outward healing: for we may certainly pre-
sume that such a forgiveness did ensue in cases such as that of the
thankful Samaritan, of the impotent man who was first healed, and at a
later period bidden to sin no more. (John v. 14.) But here the remis-
sion of sin takes the precedence ; the reason no doubt being, that in the
sufferer's own conviction there was so close a connection between his
sin and his plague, that the outer healing would have been scarcely
intelligible to him, would have scarcely carried to his mind the sense of
a benefit, unless his conscience had been also set free ; perhaps he was
incapable even of receiving it, till there had been spoken peace to his
spirit. James v. 14, 15, supplies an interesting parallel, in the connec-
tion which exists there also between the raising of the sick and the for-
giving of his sin. The others, alluded to above, who had a much
slighter sense of the relations between sin and suffering, were not first
forgiven and then healed ; but their thankfulness for their bodily healing
was used to make them receptive of that better blessing which Christ
had in store for them.
The absolving words, " Thy sins be forgiven* thee," are not to be
taken as optative merely, as a desire that it might be so, but as declara-
tory of a fact. They are the justification of the sinner; and, as
declaratory of that which takes place in the purposes of God, so also
effectual, shedding abroad the sense of forgiveness and reconciliation in
the sinner's heart. For God's justification of a sinner is not merely a
word spoken about a man, but a word spoken to him and in him ; not
an act of God's, immanent in himself, but transitive \Ji\)or\ the sinner. In
it there is the love of God, and so the consciousness of that love, shed
* 'A
at one in the explanation of this form. Some make it=d^(oi'rui, 2 aor. conj., as in
Homer a
'i.t) for d^p. Thus Eustathius ; but others more rightly explain it as the
praeter. indie. pass.,= u.^£rfnj(, though of these again some find in it an Attic, others,
more correctly, a Doric form. Cf Herod., 1. 2, c. 165, dviiovrai. This perfect passive
will then stand in connection with the perfect active djieuKa for d
Grarnmatik, p. 77.)
THE HEALING OF THE PARALYTIC. 167
abroad in his heart* on whose behalf the absolving decree has been
uttered. The murmurers and cavillers understood rightly that Christ,
so speaking, did not merely wish and desire that this man's sins might
be forgiven him ; and that he did not, as does now the Church, in the
name of another and wielding a delegated power, but in his own name,
forgive the man his sins. They had also a right insight into the mean-
ing of the forgiveness of sins itself, that it is a divine prerogative ; that,
as no man can remit a debt save he to whom the debt is due, so no one
can forgive sin save he against whom all sin is committed, that is, God;
and out of this feeling, true in itself, but most false in their present ap-
plication of it, they said " This man blasphemeth."
It is well worth our while to note, as Olshausen here calls us to do,
the deep insight into the relations of God and the creature, which is
involved in the Scriptural use of the word blasphemy. Profane an-
tiquity knew nothing like it ; with it " to blaspheme " meant only to
speak something evil of a person, f (a use which indeed is not foreign to
* It will be seen above that I have used Rom. v. 5 in a different sense from that
in which it is too often used. The history of the exposition of the verse is curious,
and is not altogether foreign to the subject in hand. To Augustine's influence, no
doubt, we mainly owe the loss for many centuries of its true interpretation, which
Origan, Chrysostom, and Ambrose, men every one of them less penetrated with the
spirit of St. Paul than he was, had yet rightly seized ; but which, by his influence and
frequent use of it in another sense, was so completely lost sight of, that it was not
recovered anew till the time of the Reformation. He read in his Latin, Charitas Dei
diffusa est in cordibus nostris per Spiritum Sanctum, qui datus est nobis. Had he
read, as Ambrose reads it, (De Spir. Sane, 1. 1, c. 8, § 88,) and as it should have been,
effusa, (sKKe^vrai is the original word,) it is probable he would have been saved from
his mistake ; for the comparison which would have been thus suggested with such
passages as Acts ii. 17; Isal. xxxii. 15; Ezek. xxxvi. 25; Joel ii. 28, in all which
God's large and free communication of himself to men is set forth under the image of
a stream from heaven to earth, would have led him to see that this love of God which
is poured out in our hearts, and is here declared to be our ground of confidence in him,
is his love to us, and not ours to him : that the verse is in fact to find its explanation