The Genius of the Gospel.

ABLE expositions of the gospel, describing the manners, customs, and localities, alluded to by the inspired writers; also interpreting their words, and harmonizing their formal discrepancies, are, happily, not wanting amongst us. But the eduction of its widest truths and highest suggestions is still a felt desideratum. To some attempt at the work we devote these pages. We gratefully avail ourselves of all exegetical helps within our reach; but to occupy our limited space with any lengthened archæological, geographic, or philological, remarks, would be to miss our aim; which is not to make bare the mechanical process of scriptural study, but to reveal its spiritual results.

TWENTY-SIXTH SECTION.-Matt. ix. 18-35.

Old Specimens of Ever-recurring Facts.

WE take these four cases together, not merely because we are anxious to hasten on our way through this Gospel, but also because they contain so much that is common to one another; that whilst the general meaning of each will gain power and prominence by the combination, ideas specifically related need not, in the slightest measure, be either merged or clouded.

I. HERE ARE SPECIMENS OF THE IMMENSE AFFLICTIONS WHICH ARE EVER PRESSING ON THE RACE. There are four specimens recorded in these verses; and we shall take them not according to their supposed degree of aggravation, but according to the order in which they are here recorded.

The first case is the death of the ruler's daughter. "While he spake these things unto them, behold, there came a certain ruler, and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is even now dead." The name of this ruler, according to Mark and Luke, was Jairus. He was a person of distinction, having the control of the affairs and worship of the synagogue. Here is death-death in the young. The fair girl

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the delight, perhaps, of the father, and the hope of the mother, the "only daughter"-is a lifeless corpse, and the whole house is in sadness and confusion. "All wept and bewailed her," says Luke.

The second case is the woman with the "issue of blood." This woman's disease seems to have been of an aggravated character. She had been the subject of it for "twelve" long years. During that period she had tried all likely and available means of restoration; all the physicians probably, within her reach, had been consulted, had tried, and failed. MARK says, she "had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse." The many physicians, as is too often the case now, had, by their ignorant experiments on human life, and their rapacious cupidity, both aggravated her disease, and exhausted her funds. They had, under the garb of the "healing art," injured her constitution and rifled her purse. Added to this, her disease was of that kind which, according to the Levitical law, rendered her ceremonially unclean, so that she was not allowed to enter the courts of the Lord's house, in order to obtain the comforts connected with the public ordinances of religion. Her condition was indeed a pitiable one ;—without health, and without the means of subsistence, wasted, worn, and shunned, the child of suffering and want, fast sinking into the chilly gloom of despair.

The third case is the "two blind men." "And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed him, crying, and saying, Thou Son of David, have mercy on us." The disease of the woman was bad, but the case of these two blind men, we think worse than either. What a calamity is the loss of sight! What tides of pleasurable sensations flow to us from sea and sky, mountain and mead, and the million forms of life and beauty that encircle us, through the eye! It lets into our hearts a rich fountain of delight. From every object in the horizon it brings to us something which either charms us with its loveliness, cheers us with its brightness,

awes us with its grandeur, or inspires us with the evolutions of its force. To lose the eye is to lose the best part of the physical universe. The sun shines and landscapes bloom in vain to a sightless man :—he is in starless midnight.

The fourth case is the "dumb man possessed with a devil." The faculty of speech is one of the choicest gifts of heaven. It enables us to relieve the mind of thoughts, anxieties, and feelings, which, if kept "pent within," would so burden the spirit as to destroy its powers, and make existence intolerable. It introduces us into a world of souls, and enables us to win their wisest counsels, their warmest sympathies, and most friendly help. A dumb man is, to a great extent, denied all this. He may, it is true, by signs and writing, get something like compensation, but all such artificial inventions are miserable substitutes for the natural power of speech. Here was a "dumb man." Whether he was dumb from a defect in the organs of speech, or from deafness, or from that species of nervous disease which the Jews referred to satanic possession, it does not matter. He was dumb, and as such was a miserable object. He was "possessed with a devil." The devil being the primal originator and agent of sin, and sin being the cause of all disease, wherever there is a disease of mind or body, there are the proof and presence of a devil. Though the dumbness of this man, however, was a serious affliction to himself, it was rather a blessing to others, so long as he was under the special influence of this devil. "Of the two," says Matthew Henry, "better a dumb devil than a blaspheming one." It would be well, perhaps, for the world if all who are the special subjects of Satan had less tongue. Dumbness, in thousands of instances, would be a blessing to the race.

Thus these verses give us a few specimens of the immense afflictions of our race. Here we have the loss of health in the woman; what is worse, the loss of faculties in the dumb and the blind; and what is worse still, the loss of life in that young girl. The afflictions you have in these verses are such that mankind, in every age, are subject to: they are

but a few samples of the woes and miseries of our kind. Under all that is bright and gay connected with our earthly existence, suffering still reigns; amidst all the displays and inspirations of life here, death still reigns. Suffering and death may at times be concealed from us under the fair forms of pleasure and life, but they are ever at work; ever are the poisonous streams rolling through the under-channels of life, and insidiously working their way into the homes and natures of all the sons of men.

II. HERE ARE SPECIMENS OF THE MANNER IN WHICH CHRIST REMOVES THE AFFLICTIONS OF THE RACE. Christ removed all the afflictions which are here recorded. He raised the daughter of the ruler to life, and thus filled the hearts of the sorrowing parents with gladness. He healed the diseased woman, and made her hale as ever. He opened the eyes of the blind men, and thus ushered them into a new world of joyous feeling. He cast out the devil, and caused the dumb man to speak. There was no case that He refused to help, or that over-reached His skill. And He "went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people."

But how does He heal the woes of the world? From the cases of restoration before us, we learn three things in answer to this question :

First He heals the afflictions of men with the utmost ease. By the mere "touch" "* of His garment, the disease of" twelve

Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me." (Luke viii. 46.) "The physical virtue which passes over does not go from Him without His will. That will is always disposed; stands, as it were, always open and prepared for approaching faith; and this is the reason why that which occurred could take place. Further not without His knowledge, as is immediately shown. The touch which cleared the virtue from Him was assuredly unexpected; but He marks it immediately, knowing it within Himself, rejoicing over the faith, by which He is well pleased to allow Himself even to be thus touched."-Stier.

years" standing left for ever the poor woman. The daughter of Jairus started from the cold sleep of death, as He "took her by the hand;" the blind men received their sight, and felt as if ushered into a new universe, as He "touched their eyes ;" and with equal ease did He expel the "dumb devil," and the man spake. In none of these cases do we find the slightest effort;-nay, in none of the miraculous cures ever wrought by Him do we discover anything approaching to an exertion. By a word, or look, or touch at most, restoration from the most aggravated disease, and even from the icy grasp of death, is effected. Who does not rejoice to know that, however varied and aggravated the woes of our afflicted race may be, there is One, who wears our nature, that can remove the whole with the utmost ease? Such instances as those before us, I take as foretokening that bright future of our planet, "when He will destroy the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations; swallow up death in victory, and wipe away tears from off all faces."

Secondly: He heals the afflictions of men from the purest impulses of benevolence. How promptly and tenderly does He attend to those cases! It is impossible for the most unfriendly and lynx-eyed critic to detect the slightest indication of selfishness in these, or any of the, curative acts of Jesus. GAIN, so dear to the selfish heart, He never sought. Had He sought it, the number and magnitude of His healing works would have made Him the Croesus of Judea in a few short days. FAME, which the self-seeker has ever prized, He shunned as an enemy. "See that no man know it,' said He to the man whose eyes He had opened. He made no parade of His illustrious achievements. Nothing but the most disinterested commiseration with suffering influenced Him in all His remedial achievements. "His bosom," says Robertson, in one of his incomparable discourses, 66 was to mankind what the Ocean is to the world. The Ocean has its own mighty tides; but it receives and responds to, in exact proportion, the tidal influences of every estuary, and