Baring-Gould (S.), Village Preaching, 2nd Ser., ii. 99.
Deshon (G.), Sermons for the Ecclesiastical Year, 330.
Ellerton (J.), Holiest Manhood, 78.
Frinder (D.), Worship of Heaven, 48.
Furae (C. W.), Sermons Preached at Richmond, 121.
Gibbons (J. C), Discourses and Sermons, 391.
Hare (J. C), Hirstmonceux Chapel Sermons, i. 245.
Horue (C. S.), The Life that is Easy, 69.
Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermons, ii. 73.
Maurice (F. D.), Sermons Preached in Country Churches, 10.
Keichel (C. P.), Sermons, 211.
Tauler (J.), Life and Sermons (Winkworth.), 380.
Tyng (S. H.), The People's Pulpit, New Ser., ii. 245.
Vaugban (J.), Sermons (Brigbton Pulpit), 14tb Ser., No. 1010.
Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), The Life of Duty, ii. 104.
Wood (J.), in Sermons by Unitarian Ministers, 2nd Ser., L
Church Pulpit Year Book, i. [1904], 209.
Five-Minute Sermons by Paulists, New Ser., i. 373.
Christian World Pulpit, xlviii. 200 (Holland).
Churchman's Pulpit (Twelfth Sunday after Trinity), xL 422
(Winterbotbam), 424 (Heard), 427 (Furse), 430
(Clements). „ „ Sermons to the Young, 334.
Clergyman^s Magazine, i. 76 (Light) ; 3rd Ser., xi. 215 (Youard).
Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., viii. 162 (Furae).
iM
ADMIRATION OR ADORATION.
And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well : he maketh even the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak. — vii. 37.
St. Matthew tells us in general terms that^ when the Lord returned from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon unto the Sea of Galilee, "great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed in their hands, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet, and he healed them." But of this multitude of cures St. Mark selects one to relate in detail, doubtless because it was signalised by peculiar circumstances. It was that of a man deaf and having an impediment in his speech ; one not altogether dumb, if we are to take the original word as our authority, but probably incapable of making articulate or intelligible sounds. This deaf-mute, labouring under mere physical incapacity, his friends now bring to the Great Physician, and " beseech him," as the Evangelist tells us, " to put his hand upon him." But it is not exactly in the way they had imagined that Jesus wills to heal him. He first took the man He would heal aside from the multitude, as, in a case recorded in the very next chapter of St. Mark, He took a blind man He was about to restore to sight by the hand and led him out of the village.
1. Now for what reason are we to imagine that our Saviour thus isolated this case ? Not for the avoidance of publicity, for then He ought to have done the same alike in all. Was it that He might pray over him with greater freedom? But surely He whose whole life was one unintermitted prayer, needed not solitude for this ? And we know that before performing the greatest of all His mighty works, the Saviour lifted up His eyes to heaven and prayed to His Father, in the presence not only of
i«7
i88 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
the sorrowing family of Lazarus, but of all the numerous Jews who had come out to Bethany to testify to their sympathy. Perhaps His purpose in secluding from the multitude some of the recipients of His omnipotent benevolence, was to make a more deep and lasting impression on their minds than could be made amidst the din and interruptions of a crowd ; even as the same Lord does now often lead a soul apart when He would speak with it and heal it of its spiritual plague, setting it in the solitude of a sick chamber, or in the loneliness of a bruised and deserted spirit, or taking away from it all earthly companions and friends. Having thus prepared the man's spirit to receive the full benefit of what was to be done to his body, Christ put His fingers into his ears and spit and touched his tongue, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, i.e. be opened. No sooner was the " Ephphatha " pronounced than the man's ears were straightway opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. Not only were the powers of hearing and speaking restored, but the full iise of those powers seems to have been instantaneously conferred. Well might the people say " He hath done all things well."
2. Though we are not to suppose that the spectators of this compound miracle were as fully able to appreciate the whole mastery of Nature it exhibited, as we who better understand the mutual relation between deafness and dumbness than the simple peasants of Galilee could do, yet this does not detract from the value of the testimony thus articulately rendered to the double nature of this miracle ; indeed, the very circumstance that they could not know as we know that the dumb could not have been made to speak had not the deaf ^rs^ been made to hear, makes their separate testimony to both parts of the cure all the more valuable, because it proves that it proceeded not from theorising as to what Jesus must have done, but from simple eye- and ear- witness of what He actually did. Whether they drew any further inference as to the character of Him who had wrought this strange and complex cure, we are not told ; yet from the silence of the Evangelist as to any deeper feeling than one of astonishment, we may probably conclude that no deeper feeling, no further conviction was excited. The real dignity of Jesus