the Law the means ; not these the end, and man the means. if: Man was
* So Maldonatus : Hoc est quod apostolos maxime excusabat, quod in prsedicando
et faciendis miraculis adeo fuissent occupati, ut nee parare cibum nee capere possent.
t In like manner Wolf (Curce, in loc.) : Non dubitaverim . . . verba haec opponi
judicio Pharisaeorum immiti et rigido, de discipulis tanquam violatoribus Sabbathi, rata.
t See a remarkable parallel 2 Mace. v. 19.
MAN WITH A WITHERED HAND. 255
not made to the end that he might observe these ; but these were given,
that they might bless man, that they might train and discipline him till
he should be ready to serve God from the free impulses of his spirit.*
And all this being so, " therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sab-
bath." Now to say here with Grotius, that "Son of man" is equivalent
to man, and thai the meaning of these words is. The Sabbath was made
for man, and man therefore can do with it as he will, is evidently an
error.f For, in the first place, there is no passage in the New Testa-
ment in which " Son of man," occurring as it does eighty-eight times,
does not mean the Messiah, the man in whom the idea of humanity was
fully realized ; and, again, with all the bold things which St. Paul
speaks of man's relations to the Law, he never speaks of him, even after
he is risen with Christ, as being its lord. He is not underwit ; he is re-
leased from its rule, so that it is henceforth with him as a friendly com-
panion, not as an imperious schoolmaster.:]: But it is God's Law, and
so long as he is still in the flesh, and therefore may continually need its
restraints upon his flesh, he never stands above it ; rather, at the first
moment of his falling away from the liberty of a service in Christ, will
come under it anew.
Even the ceremonial law man is not lord of, to loose himself from
it, as upon the plea of insight into the deeper mysteries which it
shadows forth : he must wait a loosing from it at the hands from which
it first proceeded, and which first imposed it. Simply as man, Christ
himself was " made under the law." (Gal. iv. 4.) But as Son of man,
as the Messiah, who is also Son of God, he has power over all these
outward oixlinances : he himself first gave them for the training of
man, as a preparatory discipline, and when they have done their work,
when this preparatory discipline is accomplished, he may remove them ;
he may say when the shadow shall give place to the substance, when
his people so possess the last that they may forego the first. And it
* Even in the Talmud it was said, " The Sabbath is in your hands, and you not in
the hands of the Sabbath ; for it is written, The Lord hath given you the Sabbath
Exod. xvi. 29 ; Ezek. xx. 12."
t See {in loc.) Grotius's ingenious defence of his theory, which he confidently
affirms is the only one which the connection of the words in St. Mark will allow: but
Cocceius answers well, Non sequitur : Hominis causa factum est Sabbatuni : Ergo
homo est Dominus Sabbati. Sed bene sequitur : Ergo is, cujus est homo, et qui
propter hominem venit in mundum, quique omnem potestatem in coelo et terra possidet,
in hominis salutem et bonum est et Dominus Sabbati. Ceterum Dominus Sabbati non
esset, nisi esset supremus voiiudtrrn, et nisi ad ipsius gloriam pertineret Sabbati insti-
tutio, et ejus usus ad salutem hominis.
t He is not, to use Augustine's distinction, sub lege, but he is cum lege, and in
lege.
256 THE RESTORING OF THE
was the sign and augury tliat they had done their work, when he was
come, in whom tlie highest gifts of God to men were given. The very
fact that he was trusted with the highest, involved his power over all
lower forms of teacliing. Ciirist is " the end of the law," ā is every
way the end, as that to which it pointed, as that in which it is swallowed
up ; being himself living law, not therefore in any true sense the de-
stroyer of the law, as the adversaries charged him with being, but its
transformer and glorifier, changing it from law into liberty, from shadow
to substance, from letter to spirit.*
To this our Lord's clearing of his disciples, or rather of himself in
his disciples, (for the accusation was truly against him,) the healing of
the man with a withered hand is attached immediately, as we have seen,
by St. Matthew, although St. Luke shows us that it did not find place
till the following Sabbath. Like another healing, very similar in its
circumstances, that of the woman with the spirit of infirmity, (Luke
xiii. 11,) like that too of the demoniac at Capernaum, (Mark i. 2, 3,) it
was wrought in a synagogue. There, on the ensuing Sabbath, in " their
synagogue" the synagogue of those with whom he had thus disputed,
he encountered "a man who had his hand withered." St. Luke tells us
that it was \\\s 'ā 'ā right /ta?irZ " which was tlius affected. The disease
under which this man labored, and which probably extended throughout
the whole arm, was one occasioned by a deficient absorption of nutriment
in the limb ; it was in fact a partial atrophy, showing itself in a gradual
wasting of the size of the limb, with a loss of its powers of motion, and
ending with its total death. When once thorouglily established, it is
incurable by any art of man.f
The apparent variation in the different records of this miracle, that
in St. Matthew the question proceeds from the Pharisees, in St. Mark
and Luke from the Lord, is no real one ; ā the reconciliation of the two
accounts is easy. The Pharisees first ask him, " Is it lawful to heal on
the Sabbath day ?" He answers this question as was his wont, (see
* Augustine {Serm. 136, 3) : Dominus Sabbatum solvebat: sed non ide6 reus.
Quid est quod dixi, Sabbatum solvebat ? Lux ipse venerat, umbras removebat.
Sabbatum enim k Domino Deo prajceptum est, ab ipso Christo prajceptum, qui cum
Patre erat, quando lex ilia dabatur : ab ipso praeceptum est, sed in umbra futuri.
t See Winer's Eeal WOrterhuch, v. 1, p 796. In the apocryphal " Gospel
according to the "Hebrews," in use among the Nazarenes and Ebionites, which con-
sisted probably o*" our St. Matthew, with some extraneous additions, this man appeared
as a mason, and is introduced as thus addressing the Lord : Goementarius eram,
manibus victum quaeritans : precor te, Jesu, ut mihi restituas sanitatem, ne turpiter
mendicem cibos. The xsTfja ix'^" iip^f is equivalent to the rfiv xtffia dSpai/i); wv of
Philostratus, (Vita Apollon., I. 3, c. 39,) whom the Indian sages heal.
MAN WITH A WITHERED HAND. 257
Matt. xxi. 24,) by another question. That this is such another counter-
question conies out most plainly in St. Luke : " I will ask you one thing.
Is it lawful on the Sabhath days to do good or to do evil? to save life or
destroy it ?" Our Lord with the same infinite wisdom which we admire
in his answer to the question of the lawyer, " Who is my neighbor ?"
(Luke X. 29,) shifts the whole argument and lifts it altogether into a
higher region, where at once it is seen on which side is the right and
the truth. They had put the alternatives of doing or not doing ; here
there might be a question. But he shows that the alternatives are,
doing good or failing to do good, ā which last he puts as identical with
doing evil, the neglecting to save as equivalent with destroying. Here
there could be no question : this under no circumstances could be right;
it could never be good to sin. Therefore it is not merely allowable, but
a duty, to do some things on the Sabbath.* "Yea," he says, "and
things much less important and earnest than that which I am about to
do, you would not leave undone. Which of you would not draw your
sheep from the pit into which it had fallen on the Sabbath ; and shall I,
the true shepherd, not rescue a sheep of my fold, a man, that is far
better than a sheep ? Your own consciences tell you that that were a
true Sabbath work ; and how much worthier this ? You have asked me,
Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath ? I answer, It is lawful to do well on
that day, and therefore to heal." They can answer him nothing further,
ā " they held their peace.''
" Then," that is, as St. Mark tells us, " when he had looked round
aiout on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, ^
* Danzius (in Meuschen's N. T. ex Talm. illustr., p. 585) : Immutat ergo bene-
ficus Servator omnem controversiae statum, ac longe eundem rectius, quam fraudis isti
artifices, proponit. The object of the interesting and learned Essay, Christi Curatio
Sabbathica vindicata ex legihus Judnicis, from which the above quotation is made, is
to prove by extracts from their own books that the Jews were not at all so strict, as
now, when they wanted to find an accusation against the Lord, they professed to be,
in the matter of the things permitted or prohibited on the Sabbath. He finds an indi-
cation of this (p. 607,) in our Saviour's words, " Thou hypocrite" addressed on one
of these occasions to the ruler of the synagogue. (Luke xiii. 15.) Of course the
great diflaculty in judging whether he has made out his point, is to know how far the
extracts in proof, confessedly from works of a later, often a far later date, than the
time of Christ, do fairly represent the earlier Jewish canons. The fixity of Jewisli
tradition is much in favor of the supposition that they do ; but there always remains
something in these proofs, which causes them to fail absolutely to prove. In the
apocryphal gospels, as for instance in the Evangelium Nicodemi, (see Thilo's Codex
Apocryphus, pp. 502, 558,) it is very observable how prominent a place among the
accusations brought against Christ on his trial, are the healings wrought upon the
Sabbath.
258 THE MAN WITH A WITHERED HAND.
saith he to the man, Stretch forth thy hand." The existence of grief and
anger together in the same heart is no contradiction : indeed, with him
who was at once perfect love and perfect holiness, grief for the sinner
must ever have gone hand in hand with anger against the sin ; and this
anger, which with us is ever in danger of becoming a turbid thing, of
passing into anger against the man, who is God's creature, instead of
being anger against the sin, which is the devil's corruption of God's
creature, ā with him was perfectly pure ; for it is not the agitation of
the waters, but the sediment at the bottom, which troubles and defiles
them, and where no sediment is, no impurity will follow on their agita-
tion. The man obeyed the word, which was a word of power ; he
stretched forth his hand, " and it loas restored whole like as the other."
The madness of Christ's enemies rises to the highest pitch ; he had
not merely broken their traditions, but he had put them to silence and
to shame before all the people. Wounded pride, rancorous hate, were
mingled with and exasperated their other feelings of evil will to him :
" They were filled iinth madness ;" (Luke vi. 11 ;) and in their blind hate
they snatch at any weapon whereby they may hope to destroy him.
They do not shrink from joining league with the Herodians, the Roman-
izing party in the land, ā attached to Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee,
who was only kept on his throne by Roman influence, ā if between
them they may bring to nothing this new power which seems equally
to threaten both. So, on a later occasion, (Matt. xxii. 16,) the same
parties combine together to ensnare him. For thus it is with the world :
it lays aside for the moment its mutual jealousies and enmities, to
join in a common conspiracy against the trutli. It is no longer a kingdom
divided against itself when the kingdom of light is to be opposed. Herod
and Pilate can be friends together, if it be for the destroying of the Christ.
(Luke xxii, 12.) He meanwhile, aware of their machinations, withdraws
himself from their malice to the neiijhborhood of the sea of Galilee.
XX.
THE WOMAN WITH A SPIRIT OF INFIRMITY.
Luke xiii. 10 ā 17.
We have here another of our Lord's cures which, being accomplished on
the Sabbath, awoke the indignation of the chief teachers of the Jewish
Church ; cures, of which many, though not all, are recorded chiefly
for the sake of showing how the Lord dealt with these cavillers ; and
what he himself contemplated as the true hallowing of that day. This
being the main point which the Evangelist has in his eye, every thing
else falls into the background. We know not where this healing took
place ; we are merely told that it was " in one of their synagogues.'^
While there was but one temple in the land, and indeed but one for all
the Jews in all the world, there were synagogues in every place : and
in one of these Christ, as was often his wont, was teaching upon the
Sabbath. Among those present there was a woman that was bent double,
that had, in the words of St. Luke, " a spirit of infirmity" which
showed itself in this permanent and unnatural contraction of her body.
Had we only these words, " spirit of infirmity,''- we might be doubtful
whether St. Luke meant to trace up her complaint to any other cause
beyond the natural causes, whence flow the weaknesses and sufferings
which afflict our race. But our Lord's later words concerning this
woman, ā ^'^ whom Satan hath bound," ā are more explicit, and leave no
doubt of his meaning. Her calamity had a deeper root ; she should
be classed with those possessed by evil spirits, though the type of her
possession was infinitely milder than that of most, as is shown by her
permitted presence at the public worship of God. Her sickness, having
its first seat in her spirit, had brought her into a moody melancholic
state, of which the outward contraction of the muscles of her body, the
inability to lift herself, was but the sign and the consequence.*
* This woman is often contemplated as the symbol of all those wliom the poet
addresses ā
260 THE WOMAN WITH A SPIRIT OF INFIRMITY.
Our Lord did not here wait till iiis uid was sought, though it may be
that her presence in that place was, on her part, a tacit seeking of his
help, ā as, indeed, seems implied in the words of the ruler of the syna-
gogue, bidding the multitude upon other days than the Sabbath to " come
and he hea/ed." Seeing her, he himself " called her to him, and laid his
hands on her,''* ā those hands being here the channel by which the
sti'eams of his truer life, which was to dissolve those bonds, spiritual
and bodily, whereby she was held, should flow into her, ā saying at the
same time, (for though recorded, as was necessary, one after another, we
are to assume the words and imposition of hands as identical in time,)
" Woi/ian, thou art loosed from thine infirmity." And the effect followed
the words and the hands laid on : 'ā immediately she was ?nade straight,
and glorified God." She glorified too, no doubt, the author of her salva-
tion, and this was what the ruler of the synagogue could not bear, (cf.
Matt. xxi. 15, 16,) ā a '' hypocrite," as the Lord calls him, ā zeal for
Oh curvjE iu terras niiimae !
For the erect countenance of man, in contrast with that downward bent of all other
creatures, is the symbol impressed upon his outward frame, of his nobler destiny, of a
heavenly hope with which they have nothing in common ; which the poet, describing
the gifts which God gave to man at his creation, has well expressed :
Os liomini sublime deiiit, coelumque tneri
Jussit, et erectos in sidera tollere vultus;
and Juvenal, Sa^ 15,142 ā 147, in a yet nobler strain: compare Plato's TimcBus,
Stallbauni's ed., p. 360, and the derivation of uvflpcorros, namely, the upward looking,
which some have suggested, is well known. On the other hand, the looks ever bent
upon the ground are a natural symbol of a heart and soul turned earthward alto-
gether, and wholly forgetful of their true home, and of man's good, which is not
below but above him. Milton's fine use of this symbol in his description of Mammon
(Par. Lost, b. 1) will readily occur:
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell
Friim lieaven ; for even in lieaveu his looks and thoughts
Were always downward bent.
Thus Augustine {Enarr. 2* in Ps. Ixviii. 24) : Qui bene audit, Sursuni cor, curvum
dorsum non habet. Erecta quippe statural exspectat spem repositam sibi in ccelo . . .
At vero qui futurae vitac spem non intelligunt, jam excoecati, de infcrioribus cogilant:
et hoc est habere dorsum curvum, a quo morbo Dominus mulierem illam liberavit. Cf.
Enarr. in Ps. xxxvii. 7 ; Quast. Evang., 1 2, qu. 29 : Ambrose, IlexaHm., 1.3, c. 12.
Theophylact (in loc.) : Tavra &i fioi \(ifi0ave ra daijjiaTa Kai cttI tov ivTuS avQpwizov'
ovyKVTTTCi yap j/zu;^'; orav tiu. Ttis yritiiai ftui^ai (jipovriSa; )-Ā£Ā«;;, Kai unSlv ovpdviov J) OcXov
ipavTa^riTat,
* Chrysostom (in Cramer's Catena): UpoaeKiTWii^xi St xal x^'P'^^ air^, iVa fiadujitv
Sti ttiv tov Qeov Xoyov divafiLV re Kai ivipyetav i/ ayia rreipdpriKC oap^.
THE WOMAN WITH A SPIRIT OF INFIRMITY. 261
God beinir but the cloak which he wore to hide, whether from others
only, or, in a sadder hypocrisy, from his own heart also, his true hatred
of all that was holy and divine.* He Avas not, in fact, disturbed, be-
cause the Sabbath was violated, but because Christ was glorified.
Therefore drew he down upon himself that sharp rebuke from him, whose
sharpest rebuke was uttered only in love, and who would have torn, if
that had been possible, from off this man's heart, the veil which was
hiding his true self even from his own eyes. Another part of his
falseness was, that not daring directly to find fault with the Lord, he
seeks obliquely to reach him through the people, who were more under
his influence, and whom he feared less. He takes advantage of his po-
sition as the interpreter of the Law and the oracles of God, and from
" Moses' seat " would fain teach the people that this work done to the
glory of God ā this restoring of a human body and a human soul ā his
undoing the heavy burden ā this unloosing the chain of Satan, ā was a
servile work, and one, therefore, forbidden on the Sabbath. Blaming
them for coming to be healed, he indeed is thinking not of them, but
means that rebuke to glance off on him who has put forth on this day
his power to help and to save.
Every word of Christ's answer is significant. It is not a defence of
his breaking the Sabbath, but a declaration that he has not broken it at
all.f " You have your relaxations of the Sabbath strictness, required
by the very nature and necessities of your earthly condition ; you make
no difficulty in the matter, where there is danger that loss would ensue,
that your possessions would be perilled by the leaving some act undone.
Your ox and your ass are precious in your sight, and you count it no
violation of the day to lead them away to water. Yet is not a human
soul more precious still ? the .loosing this as allowable as the loosing
those ?" Every word in his answer teJIs. " Each one of you, what-
ever your scheme and theory may be concerning the strictness with which
the Sabbath ought to be kept, disciples of Hillel or disciples of Scham-
mai, you loose your beasts ; yet ye will not that I should loose a human
spirit ā one who is of more value than many oxen and asses ; ā and this
you do, though they have not been tied up for more than for some brief
space ; while, in your thoughts, I may not unloose from the thraldom of
* Augustine (Enarr. 2* in Fs. Ixviii. 24) : Bene scandalizati sunt de ilia erects,
ipsi curvi. And again (Serrn. 392, c. 1) : Calumniabantur autem erigenti, qui, nisi
curvi 1
t Tertullian {Adv. Marc, 1. 4, c. 30) : Unusquisque vestrum sabbatis non solvit
asinum aut bovem suum a praesepi et ducit ad potum ? Ergo secundihm conditionem
legis operatus, legem confirmavit, non dissolvit, jubentem nullum opus fieri, nisi quod
fieret omni animae, quanto potius humanse. Cf. Irenjeus, Con. Har., 1. 4, c. 8.
262 THE WOMAN WITH A SPIRIT OF INFIRMITY.
Satan this captive of eighteen years.* Yours, moreover, is a long process
of unfastening and leading away to water, ā which yet, (and rightly,) you
make no difficulty about; but ye are offended with me who have spoken
but a word and released a soul."f There lies at the root of this argu-
ment, as of so much else in Scripture, a deep assertion of the specific dif-
ference between man, the lord of the creation, for whom all things were
made, and all the inferior orders of beings that tread the same earth
with liim, and with whom upon the side of his body he is akin. He is
something more than the first in this chain and order of beings; he is
specifically different. (Cf. 1 Cor. ix. 9. "Doth God take care of
oxen ?" and Ps. viii. 8.) And more than merely this : the woman was
a " davghter of Abraham." Some think here that the Lord means to
magnify her claim to this benefit, as being an heir of the faith of Abra-
ham, ā one, indeed, who, for the saving of her soul in the day of the
Lord, had come for some sin under the scourge of Satan and this long
and sore affliction of the flesh. Yet it is more probable that he means
but this, that she was one of the chosen race, a daughter of Abraham
after the flesh, ā however, after this healing, she may have become some-
thing more, a child of the faith of Abraham.:]:
* Ambrose (Exp. in Luc, 1. 7, c. 175): Vinculum vinculo comparat. . . . Ciim
ipsi animalibus Sabbato solvunt vincula, reprehendunt Dominum, qui homines a pecca-
torum viiiculis liberavit.
t Chemnitz {Harm. Evang.,c. 112): Tempus etiam inter se confert. Jumenta
fortassis ad noctem unam aut paucos dies praesepi alligantur. At vero haee focmina
vel saltern ob temporis prolixitatem omnium commiseratione dignissima est.
t In a sermon on the Day of the Nativity (Serm. Inedd., p. 33,) Augustine makes
the following application of this history : Inclinavit se, ciim sublimis esset, ut nos qui
incurvati eramus, erigeret. Incurvata siquidem erat humana natura ante adventum
Domini, peccatorum onere depressa ; et quidem se in peccati vitium spontanea volun-
tate curvaverat, sed sponte se erigere non valebat . . . Hsec autem mulier formam
incurvationis totius humani generis praeferebat. In hie muliere hodie natus Dominus
noster vinculis Satanse alligatos absolvit, et licentiam nobis tribuit ad superna con-
spiceie, ut qui olim constituti in miseriis tristes ambulabamns, hodie venientera ad nos
medicum suscipientes, nimirum gaudeamus.
XXI.
THE HEALING OF THE MAN WITH A DROPSY.
Luke xiv. 1 ā 6.
All which is most remarkable in the circumstances of this miracle has
been already anticipated in others, as especially in the two immediately
preceding, to which the reader is referred. Our Lord, not even at this
late period of his ministry treating the Pharisees as wholly and finally
hardened against the truth, but still seeking to win, if it were possible,
them also for his kingdom, had accepted the invitation of one of the chief
among them " to eat breacV in his house. This was upon the Sabbath,
the day which the Jews ordinarily selected for their festal meals: for
the idea of the Sabbath among the Jews was not at all that of a day to
be austerely kept, but very much the contrary. The practical abuses
of it were the turning it into a day of rioting and excess.* But the
invitation, though accepted in love, yet seems not to have been given in
good faith, but in the hope that the nearer and more accurate watching
of the Lord's words and ways, which such an opportunity would give,
might afford some new matter of accusation against him."|" Such was,
probably, the spring of the apparent courtesy which they showed him
now, and so did they I'everence the sacred laws of hospitality.:}:
It has been suggested that the man with a dropsy was of design
placed where he was, since he would scarcely without permission have
found entrance into a private house. But although it is quite conceiva-
* On the abuses in this kind of the Jewish Sabbath at a later day, see Augustine,
Enarr. in Ps. xci. 1, and 2* in Ps. xxxii. 2, and Serm. 9, c. 3.
t The emphasis, however, which Hammond finds in the Kal airo'i, even they that
had invited him did treacherously watch him, ā as though the Evangelist would bring
into notice the violation here of the laws of hospitahty, is questionable. Such a super-
abounding use of Kal is not unusual in St. Luke.
t ''liaav TraparripoviAefoi. For a similar use of TToparripui', compare vi. 7 ; xx. 20 ;
Mark iii. 2 ; Dan. vi. 11.
264 THE HEALING OF THE
ble of these malignant adversaries of Christ, that they should have laid
such a snare for him as this, yet there is nothing in the narration to give
it likelihood here ; and the difficulty that, without such design, the man