last. Thomson, the American traveller, says, — "My experienca in this region enabled me to sympathize with the disciples in their long night's contest with the wind. — I have seen the face of the lake like a huge boiling caldron. The wind howled down the valleys from the north-east and east with such fury that no efforts of rowers could have brought a boat to shore at any point along that coast. — To understand the causes of these sudden and violent tempests we must remember the lake lies low, — six hundred feet lower than the ocean, — that water-courses have cut out profound ravines and wild gorges, converging to the head of the lake, and that these act like gigantic funnels to draw down the cold winds from the mountains. On the occasion referred to w«^ pitclied our tents on the shore, and remained for three days and nights exposed to this tremendous wind. We had to dou- ble-pin all the tent-ropes, and frequently were obliged to hang with our whole weight upon them, to keep the quivering taber- nacle from being carried up bodily into the air. No wonder the disciples toiled and rowed hard all that night." In another place he says, — " Small as the lake is, and placid in general as a molten mirror, I have repeatedly seen it quiver, and leap, and boil like a caldron, when driven by fierce winds." — Thomson's " Land and the Book."
Burkitt remirks that the position of the disciples, immediately tempest-tossed after witnessing and partaking in a mighty mira- cle, IS an instructive type of the common experience of believers. After seasons of peculiar privileges there often come sharp trials of faith and patience.
Tliis sudden trial of faith by danger was no doubt intended to be a lesson to the disciples as to what they must expect in the exercise of their ministry. Affliction and crosses are the grind- stones on which God is constantly sharpening those instruments which He uses most.
19. — [So when...rowed about Jive and twenty or thirty furlongs i] We might gather from the disciples " rowing," and not sailing, that the wind was again t them, and we are expressly told, both by St. Mattliew and St. Mark, that " the wind was contrary." From the distance they had rowed, and the known width of the lake, at tliat particular part of it, they were probably now about the middle of their passage. St. Matthew says, — they were '' in the midst of the sea." (Matt. xiv. 24.) This M'ould make them at lea t two or three miles from shore, a fact which should be care- f\illy noted with re'^erence to what follows.
Let the expression " twenty-five or thirty'' be noted. It is not necessary to define to a hair's breadth distances and quantities in narrating an event. Even an inspired writer does not. He uses the cc mmon language of men, and such language as those