and significance to the words which else they would not have possessed ;
and what significance this was, and why his words should have had it,
he explains in what follows.
" This spake he not of himself ; hut being high priest that year, he
prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation." It is clear that the
Evangelist sees here an inner connection between the words spoken and
the office which the speaker filled, and herein lies the real knot of the
passage, which has to be untied ; for that a bad man should have ut-
tered words which were so overruled by God as to become prophetic,
would be no difficulty. God, the same who used a Balaam to declare
how there should come a Star out of Jacob and a Sceptre out of Israel,
(Num. xxiv. 17,) might have used Caiaphas to foreannounce other truths
of his kingdom. :j: Nor is there any difficulty in such unconscious pro-
phecies as this evidently is.§ How many prophecies of the like kind,
* Augustine {la Ev. Joh., Tract. 49,) notes the difficulty, thouorh he has a singular
accnmulation of mistakes in his explanation. Among others, that Zacharias, the
father of the Baptist, was high priest ; a mistake continually re-appearing in the
middle ages. It grew out of an inaccurate understanding of Luke i. 9.
t Lightfoot, Sermon on Jvdg xx. 27. (Pitman's edit , v. 6, p. 280.)
t Augustine adducing this prophecy, exclaims (Serm. 315, c. ]): Magna vis est
veritatis. Oderunt veritatem homines, et veritatem prophetant nescientes. Non agunt,
fled agitur de illis.
§ It exa
336 THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.
— most of them, it is true, rather in act tl)an in word, meet us in the
whole history of the crucifixion ! What was the title over our blessed
Lord, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews," but another such
a scornful and contemptuous, yet most veritable, prophecy ? Or what
again the robe and the homage, the sceptre and the crown ? And
in the typical rehearsals of the great and final catastrophe in the drama
of God's providence, how many Nimrods and Piiaraohs, antichrists that
do not quite come to the birth, have prophetic parts allotted to them,
which they play out, unknowing what they do; for such is the divine
irony ; so, in a very deep sense of the words,
Ludit in humanis divina potentia rebus.*
But the perplexing circumstance is the attributing to Caiaphas, as
high priest, these prophetic words, for prophetic the Evangelist pro-
nounces them plainly to be, and all attempts to get rid of this as his
intention, and to destroy the antithesis between " speaking of hiinse/f"
and ^' prophesying,'^ are idle.f There is no need, however, to suppose,
(and this greatly lightens the difficulty,) that he meant to affirm this to
have been a power which always went along with the high priesthood ;
that the high priest, as such, must prophesy ; but only that God, the ex-
torter of those unwilling, or even unconscious, prophecies from wicked
men, ordained this further, that he who was the head of the theocratic
spoken by one person in a lower meaning are taken up by another in a higher, and by
him claimed to be prophetic of that. Cicero (De Divin., 1. 1, c. 46) gives examples;
these, too, resting on the faith that men's words are ruled by a higher power than
their own.
* We have an example of this, in this very name Caiaphas, which is onJy another
form of Cephas, being derived from the same Hebrew word. He was meant to be
" the Rock ;" here, too, as in names like Stephen's {ariipavos, the first winner of the
martyr's crown,) the nomen et omen was to have held good. And sucli^ had he been
true to his position, had the Jewish economy passed easily and without a struggle into
that for which it was the preparation, he would naturally have been ; the first in the
one would have been first in the other. But as it was, he bore this name but in
mockery ; he was the rock indeed, but the rock on which, not the Church of Christ,
but the synagogue of Satan, was built.
t For examples of these, see Wolf's Cura (in loc.) It has likewise been pro-
posed to put a stop after TrpntipfiTtvacv, and to find here a device on the part of Caiaphas
for silencing opposition, and for making his own opinion to carry the day : This he spake,
not as though he was giving his own opinion, {hvk di/i' lavrov,) but taking advantage of
the old faith, that on great emergent occasions the high priest would be endowed with
oracular power, he professed now to be uttering that which was directly given him by
the inspiration of God. And then on zuiWiv, k. t. \. are words of the Evangelist :
He did this, and succeeded in so getting the decree of death to be passed, for Jesus
was about to die for the people.
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 337
people, for such, till another high priest had sanctified himself, and his
moral character was nothing to the point, Caiaphas truly was, — that
the man who according to the idea of the Levitical constitution was to
utter lively oracles, wearing upon his breastplate, while the priesthood
stood in its first perfection, the oracular stones, the Urim and the
Thummim, which he might consult on all great affaii's that concerned
the well-being of the nation, — that this man, because he bore this
office, should be the organ of this memorable prophecy concerning
Christ and the meaning and end of his death in regard of that na-
tion.*
We are not to take these words which follow, "and not for that na-
tion only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of
God that uiere scattered abroad,'''' as part of the meaning which is legi-
timately involved in the words of Caiaphas, but as St. John's addition
to his words, added to prevent a limitation of the benefits of the death
of Christ which might seem to lie in them, — a misinterpretation which,
now that the words had been made more than man's words, it was
worth while to exclude. Caiaphas indeed prophesied that Jesus should
die for that nation, and, (St. John himself adds,) not for it only, but
also for the gathering into one of all the children of God which were
scattered abroad in the whole world. The best parallel to this verse is
1 John ii. 2, " He is a propitiation for our sins ; not for ours only, but
also for the sins of the whole world. "f Not the Law, as the Jews
* Vitringa {Ohss. Sac.,\. 6, c. 11): Visus est Caiaphas Joanni fatidicum et omi-
nosum quid pioferre. Et ver6 sententia ejus hujusmodi est, ut altiorem aliquem
sensum condat .... Supponit igitur apostolus non fuisse alienum h. Pontifice Hebree-
orum illo tempore TTpo(prjTciziv, oiacula fundere, et nescium etiam mandata Numinis
profaii. A Pontifice, inquani, hoc solum respectu Deo commendabiii, quod Pontifex
asset ; cum ceeleroquin persona! ejus nulla essent merita. quae facere poterant, ut Deus
illius rationem haberet. Sed ciim Deus Pontifices constituisset in ilia gente, publicos
6ua3 Legis voluntatisque interpretes, etiamsi eos in universum propterea neutiquam ex-
emisset omni erroie judicii in re religionis ; placuit illi Caiaphae Pontificis potius quim
ulHus alterius Assessoris linguam in dicenda sententia, ita moderari, ut, praeter animi
sui consilium, de necessitate et vero fine mortis Christ! sapienter loqueretur, veramque
ederet confessionem, ac si non tanquam Caiaphas sententiam pronunciasset. On the
special illumination vouchsafed to the high priest as the bearer of the ephod, see
Bahr's Symbolik des Mosaischen Culius, v. 2, p. 136.
t I'his almost imperceptible transition from the record of another's words to his
own commentary on them, is very much in St. John's manner. Thus, ch. iii. from
ver. 16 to ver. 21, is, most probably, not any more the Lord's discourse to Nicodemus,
for he nowhere calls himself " the only begotten Son of God," but St. John's addition
to and interpretation of it : and the Baptist's reply to the Jews (iii. 27,) hardly stretches
to the end of the chapter; but from ver. 31 to the end are the narrator's own. And
not less is it his manner thus to guard against an erroneous interpretation : in Bengel'a
words, Ubique occurrit Johannes interpretationi sinistrae. Cf xxi. 23.
338 THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.
supposed, but the atoning death of Christ was that which should bind
together all men into one fellowship: " I, if I be lifled up from the
earth, will draw all men unto me." The law was rather a wall of
separation ; it was only that death which could knit together. We may
compare Ephes. ii. 13 — 22, as the great commentary of St. Paul on
these words of St. John.* The term " children of God " is probably
applied here by anticipation, — those that, through obeying his call when
it reached them, should become hereafter his children. E.xacfly in the
same way, and in a parallel passage, Christ says, " Other sheep 1 have,
which are not of tliis fold," (John x. 16,) others that should be his
sheep. There is perhaps a subordinate sense in which they might be
termed the children of God already, — they were the nobler natures,
although now run wild, among the heathen, — the " sons of peace" that
should receive the message of peace ; (Luke x. 6 ;) in a sense, "of
the truth," even while they were sharing much of the falsehood round
them, so "of the truth" that, when the King of truth came and lifted
up his banner in the world, they gladly ranged themselves under it.
(John xviii. 37; cf. Luke viii. 15; John iii. 19 — 21.)
It had now come to a solemn decree on the part of the Sanhedrim,
that Jesus should be put to death, and from that day forth there were
continual counsels among them how his death might be brought about:
but he, whose hour was not yet come, withdrew himself awhile from
their malice to the neighborhood of the desert country lying north-
ward of Jerusalem, there to abide, till the approach of the Passover
should bring him back to the city, to supply at length the true Paschal
Lamb.
In the ancient Church there was ever found, besides the literal, an
allegorical interpretation of this and the two other miracles of the like
kind. As Christ raises those that are naturally dead, so also does he
quicken them that are spiritually dead ; and the history of this miracle,
as it abounds the most in details, so was it the most fruitful field on
which the allegorists exercised their skill. Here they found the whole
process of the sinner's restoration from the death of sin to a perfect
spiritual life shadowed forth ; and these allegories are often rich in
manifold adaptations of the history, as beautiful as they are ingenious,
to that which it is made to set out.* Nor was this all ; for these three
* It is notable that the word idvoi is here more than once used for the Jewish
nation. In general this is the word used for the Gentiles, and " the people " are
honored with the title of Xaiij, as at Luke ii. 32. Bengel thinks it not accidental:
Johannes non jam appellat 'Xadv populum, politic, exspirante.
t See, for instance, Augustine, Quast. 83, qu. 65 ; Bernard, De Assum., Serm 4.
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS. 339
raisino-s from the dead were often contemplated not apart, not as each
portraying exactly the same truth, but in their connection with one
another ; as setting forth one and the same truth under different and
successive aspects. It was observed how we have; the record of three
persons that were restored to life, — one, the daughter of Jairus, being
raised from the bed ; another, the son of the widow, from the bier ; and
lastly, Lazarus, from the grave. And it is even thus, men said, that
Christ raises to newness of life sinners of all degrees ; not only those
who have just fallen away from truth and holiness, like the maiden who
had just expired, and in whom, as with a taper just extinguished, it
was by comparison easy to kindle a vital flame anew ; — but he raises
also them who, like the young man borne out to his burial, have been
some little while dead in their trespasses. Nor has he even yet ex-
hausted his power ; for he quickens them also who, like Lazarus, have
Iain long festering in their sins, as in the corruption of the grave, who
were not merely dead, but buried, — with the stone of evil customs and
evil habits laid to the entrance of their tomb, and seeming to forbid all
egress thence :* even this he rolls away, and bids them to come forth,
loosing the bands of their sins ;f so that anon we see them sitting down
with the Lord at his table, there where there is not the foul odor of
the grave, but where the whole house is full of the sweet fragrance of
the ointment of Christ.:}: (John xii. 1 — 3.)
* Gregory the Great (Moral., I. 29, c. 15): Veni foras ; ut nimirum homo in
peccato suo mortuus, et per molem malae consuetudinis jam sepultus, quia intra con-
Bcientiam suam ab3consus jacet per nequitiam, k semetipso foras exeat per con-
fessionem. Mortuo enim, Veni foras, dicitur, ut ab excusatione alque occultatione
peccati ad accusationem suam ore proprio exire provocetur. And he refers to 2 Sam.
xii. 13. Thus, too, the Christian poet : —
Extra portam jam delatum,
Jam fcBtenlem, tumulatum,
Vitta ligat, lapis urget;
Sed si jubes, hie resurget.
Jube, lapis revolvetur,
Jube, vitta dirumpetnr,
Exiturus nescit moras,
Postquam clamas ; Exi foras.
+ Sometimes Augustine makes the stone to be the Law. Thus In Ev. Joh.,
Tract. 49 : Quid est ergo, Lapidem removete 1 . . . . Littera occidens, quasi lapis est
premens. Removete, inquit, lapidem. Removete Legis pondus, Gratiam praedicate.
And, " Loose him and let him go," is sometimes referred to the release from Church
censures. It was Christ's word which quickened the dead ; yet afterwards he used
men for the restoring entire freedom of action to him whom he had quickened. Thus
Augustine, Enarr. in Fs. ci. 21; and Serm. 98, c. 6: lUe suscitavit mortuum, illi
solverunt ligatum.
t We nowhere find the other raisings from the dead as affording subjects for early
340 THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.
Christian Art ; but this most frequently, and in all its stages. Sometimes it is Martha
kneeling at the feet of Jesus ; sometimes the Lord is touching with his wonder-staff
the head of Lazarus, who is jilaced upright, (which is a mistake, and a transfer of
Egyptian customs to Judaia.) and rolled up as a mummy, (which was nearly correct,)
in a niche of the grotto ; sometimes he is coming forth from thence at the word of the
Lord. (MuENTER, Sinnbilden d. alt. Christ, v. 2, p. 98.) From a sermon of Asterius
we learn that it was a custom in his time, and Chiysostom tells us it was the same
among the wealthy Byzantines, to have this and many other miracles of our Lord
woven on their garments. " Here mayest thou see," says Asterius, " the marriage in
Galilee and the waterpots, the impotent man that carried his bed on his shoulders, the
blind man that was healed witli clay, the woman that had an issue of blood and
touched the hem of his garment, the awakened Lazarus ; and with this they count
themselves pious, and to wear garments well-pleasing to God." How close on the
edge of not unlike superstitions do we find ourselves at this day.
XXX.
THE OPENING THE EYES OF TWO BLIND MEN
NEAR JERICHO.
Matt. xx. 29—34 ; Mark x. 46—52 ; Luke xviii. 35 — 43.
. This is one of the events in tiie life of our Lord which has put the
ingenuity of Scripture harmonists to the stretch. The apparent discre-
pancies which it is their task to reconcile are these. St. Matthew
makes our Lord to have restored sight to two blind men, and this as he
was going out of Jericho. St. Luke appears at first sight to contradict
both these facts, for he makes the cure to have taken place at his
coming nigh to the city, and the healed to have been but one ; while
St. Mark seems to stand between them, holding in part to one of his
fellow Evangelists, in part to the other. He with St. Luke names but
one whose eyes were opened, but consents with St. Matthew in placing
the miracle, not at the entering into, but the going out from, Jericho, so
that the narratives curiously cross and interlace one another. To
escape all difficulties of this kind there is of course the ready expedient
always at hand, that the sacred historians are recording different events,
and that therefore there is nothing to reconcile, although oftentimes this
is an escape from difficulties of one kind, which only really involves
in far greater embarrassments of another. Thus, accepting this solu-
tion, we must believe that twice, or even thrice, in the immediate
neighborhood of Jericho, our Lord was besought in almost the same
words by blind beggars on the wayside for mercy ; — that on every
occasion there was a multitude accompanying him, who sought to
silence the vociferations of the claimants, but did only cause them to
cry the more ; — that in each case Jesus stood still and demanded what
they wanted ; — that in each case they made the same reply in very
nearly the same words ; — and a great deal more. All this is so unna-
342 • THE OPENING THE EYES OF
tural, so improbable, so unlike any thing of actual life, so unlike the
infinite variety which .the Gospel incidents present, that any solution
seenns preferable to this.
There are three apparently discordant accounts, none of them en.
tirely agreeing with any other : but they can at once be reduced to two
by that rule, which in all reconciliations of parallel histories must be
held fast, namely, that the silence of one narrator is not to be assumed
as the contradiction of the statement of another; thus St. Mark* and
St. Luke, making especial mention of one blind man, do not contradict
Si. Matthew, who mentions two. There remains only the difficulty that
by one Evangelist the healing is placed at the Lord's entering into the
city, by the others at his going out. This is not, I think, sufficient to
justify a duplication of the fact.f Nor have I any doubt that Bengel,
with his usual happy tact, has selected the right reconciliation of the
difficulty iX namely, that one cried to him as he drew near to the city,§
but that he did not cure him then, but on the morrow at his going out of
the city cured him together with the other, to whom in the meanwhile
he had joined himself, — the Evangelist relating by prolepsis, as is so
common with all historians, the whole of the event where he first intro-
* Augustine, {De Cons. Evang., 1. 2, c. 65) : Procul dubio itaque Bartimaeus iste
Timcci filius ex aliqua, magnci felicitate dejectus, notissimae et famosissimae miseriae
fiiit, quod non solum caecus, veriim etiam mendicus sedebat. Hinc est ergo quod ipsum
solum voluit commemorare Marcus, cujus illuminatio tarn claram famam huic miraculo
comparavit, quam erat illius nota calamitas. Cf. Quest. Evang., 1. 2, c. 48.
t Some, indeed, equally in old times and in modern, have seen themselves bound
in to such a conclusion: — thus Augustine {De Cons. Evang., 1. 2, c. 65), who expresses
himself strongly on the matter; Lightfoot (Harmony of the N. T., sect. 69) ; and, in
our own time, Mr. Greswell. On the other hand, Theophylact, Chrysostom, Maldo-
natus, Grotius, have with more or less confidence maintained that we have here but
one and the same event.
I Bengel : Marcus unum commemorat Bartimacum, insigniorem, (x. 46,) eun-
demque Lucas (xviii. 35) innuit, qui transponend* historiae occasionem exinde habuit,
quod caecorum alter, Jesu Hierichuntem intrante, in via notitiam divini hujus mcdici
acquisivit. Salvator dum apud Zacchacum pranderet, vei pemoctaret potius, Bartimaeo
csecorum alter, quem Matthasus adjungit, interim associatus est. I observe Maldonatus
had already fallen upon the same.
§ The explanation of Grotius is, that iv 7h> cyyi^cif of Luke does not necessarily
mean, and does not here mean. When he was drawing near to, but. When he was in
the neighborhood of, — and that this nearness to the city might equrlly have been, and
in this case was, the nearness of one who had just departed frojn the city, and not
that of one who was now advancing to the city. But, to set aside whether the words
can mean this, the narrative, which follows, of Zaccheus, (introduced with a xal
eiccXedu,) is wholly against the supposition that St. Luke means to signify by those
words that the Lord was now leaving Jericho.
TWO BLIND MEN NEAR JERICHO. 343
duces it, rather than, by cutting it in two halves, preserve indeed a
more painful accuracy, yet lose the total effect which the whole narra-
tive related at a breath would possess.
The cry with which these blind men sought to attract the pity of
Christ was on their part a recognition of his dignity as the Messiah ; for
this name, " Son of David," was the popular designation of the Messiah.
There was therefore upon their part a double confession of faith, first that
he could heal them, and secondly, not merely as a prophet from God,
but as the Prophet, as the one who should come, according to the words
of Isaiah, to give sight to the blind. In the case of the man blind from
his birth, (John ix.) we have the same confessions, but following, and
not preceding the cure, and with intervals between ; so that first he
acknowledges him as a prophet, (ver. 17,) and only later as the
Messiah, (ver. 38.)
And here the explanation has been sometimes found of the rebukes
which they met from the multitude, who would fain have had them to
hold their peace. These, it has been said, desired to Jiinder their
crying, because they grudged to hear given unto Jesus this title of
honor, which they were not themselves prepared to accord him.* This
passage will then be very much a parallel to Luke xix. 39; only that
there the Pharisees would have Christ himself to rebuke those that were
glorifying him and giving him honor, while here the multitude take the
rebuking into their own hands. Yet I hardly think the explanation
good. It was quite in the spirit of the envious malignant Pharisees to
be vexed with those Messianic salutations, " Blessed be the King, that
Cometh in the name of the Lord ;" but these well-meaning multitudes,
rude and for the most part spiritually undeveloped, as no doubt they
were, were yet exempt from those spiritual malignities. We never
trace aught of this kind in them, but rather in the main a sympathy
with the Lord ; it was not they who said that his miracles were wrought
in the power of Beelzebub ; but they glorified God because of them.
And here, too, I cannot doubt but that it was out of an intention of
honoring Christ, that they sought to silence what appeared to them these
ill-timed and unmannerly clamors. It may be that he was teaching as
he went, and they would not have him interrupted.
But their endeavors to suppress the crying of these blind men pro-
fited nothing : on the contrary, " they cried the more, saying. Have mercy
on us, thou Son of David." Many admirable homiletic applications of
this portion of the history have been made. Here, it has been often
* Hilary (Comm. in Matth., in loc.) : Denique eos turba objurgat, quia acerbe a
csBcis audiunt quod negabant, Dominum esse David Filium.
344 THE OPENING THE EYES OF
said, is the history of many a soul : when a man is first in earnest about
his salvation, and begins to cry that his eyes may be opened, that he
may walk in his lislit who is the Light of men, when he begins to de-
spise the world and to be careless about riches, he will find infinite
hinderances, and these not from professed enemies of the Gospel of
Christ, but from such as seem, like this multitude, to be with Jesus and
on his side. Even they will try to stop his mouth, and to hinder an
earnest crying to him.* And then, with a stroke from the life, Augus-
tine makes further application in the same direction of the words which
follow in St. Mark, who, speaking as but of one that cried, says, " And
Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they called the
blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise ; he calJeih thee /"
For, he observes, this too repeats itself often in the spiritual history of
men's lives. If a man will only despise these obstacles from a world
which calls itself Christian, and overcome them ; if despite of all he
will go on, until Christ is evidently and plainly with him, then they
who began by reprehending, will finish by applauding : they who at
first said, He is mad, will end with saying, He is a saint. "f
* Augustine {Sprm. 349, c. 5) : Reprehensuri sunt nos, . . . quasi dilectores nostri,
homines saeculares, amantes terrani, sapientes pulverem, nihil de cceIo ducentes, auras
liberas corde, naie carpentes: reprehensuri sunt nos procul dubio, atque dicturi, si
viderint nos ista humana, ista terrena contemnere ; Quidpateris? quid insanis ? Turba