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Lord had called Him in righteousness for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house:" for God would "bring the blind by a way they knew not: He would lead them in paths that they have not known: He would make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight." And once the Spirit of the Lord God was upon His Christ; He was anointed to preach good tidings to the meek; He was sent to bind up the broken hearted; to proclaim liberty to the captives; and the opening of prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; . . . that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified."

And so, if Christ gave sight to the blind, surely, as He Himself has told us, we at the same time are taught, how "for judgment He came into this world, that they, which see not spiritually, might see; and that they,

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which see, might be made blind,”—so that the darkness of understanding, which follows judicially upon holding the truth in unrighteousness, is the judgment of Christ. And, if again He cleansed the lepers, surely we are thereby taught of that spiritual leprosy of sin, which the Blood of Christ can only wash away, both as to guilt and as to actual defilement of the soul. And when we behold the Saviour casting out devils, does not the miracle tell us, how Satan binds and chains men in the bonds of iniquity, but Christ is stronger than that strong man, and binds him, and spoils his goods, and, delivering us from his power, no doubt the kingdom of Satan is fallen, and the kingdom of God is come unto us. And yet once more, when we are allowed to be present at those very awful manifestations of His power, and behold Him raising the dead to life, is He not thereby preached to us, as the Lord of life and death, the Resurrection and the Life, who shall change our vile bodies and raise us up to eternal life, if so be that our souls are raised by Him now from the death of sin to newness of godly living?

And so also in this miracle, which, brought before us in the Gospel for the Day, we purpose now to consider, though no doubt we may learn very much, looking upon it merely as a notable instance of bodily healing, yet we shall scarcely, I think, have learnt the whole lesson it was meant to teach us, if we see not in that issue of uncleanness, which the virtue going out from our Lord dried up, the more direful plague of sin, the fountain of wrong thoughts, and bad words, and evil actions, which can only be made to cease to flow by the saving graces of Christ, the Physician of our souls. Bearing this in mind. we shall not dismiss the narrative of this miracle with the thought, that as our Lord no longer in bodily Presence is among us to heal the sicknesses of our flesh, therefore it concerns us not directly. It does concern us very much,-unless, indeed, sin be no disease, of which it were well we were rid, unless, indeed, we are able, by natural powers and without help from God, to be cured of sin and to be made whole,-unless, indeed, there are now no means, by which the hem of our Saviour's garment may yet be touched, and

His saving 'virtue' obtained, to give health to our souls. But, if men be yet born children of wrath,-if the infection of their nature yet remaineth in the regenerate,—if sin be yet among us and in us,—if Christ may yet be found, by those that seek Him, in the holy Sacraments, His voice yet be heard in the sacred Scriptures, and repentance and faith be yet available to obtain from Him a blessing, then we shall, indeed, God blessing our meditations, derive much instruction and consolation from the account of this miracle, in which the woman, who had an issue of blood of twelve years, was healed by His Almighty power and grace. May God's Holy Spirit so teach us, that we hear not these things in vain.

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Our Lord was on His way to raise to life again the young daughter of Jairus, the ruler of the Synagogue. No doubt a word from His mouth would have been sufficient, and the ruler would have gone home again, and found his child alive. But in this instance it seemed good to Christ to attend the father home, before He gave life to his daughter that was dead. Perhaps it was that Jairus had

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besought our Lord to come to his house," and so scarcely believed that He could have worked the miracle just as well without coming. We may often notice, that the answer, which He gave to the prayers of those who came to him, was just in proportion to their faith and no further. They who believed most, received the greatest blessings.

"And as Jesus went, the people thronged Him. And, behold, a certain woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of Physicians, and had spent upon them all her living, even all that she had,—and could not be healed of any, inasmuch as after all she was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, hearing of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched the hem or border of his garment.'

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You know that our blessed Lord took upon Him the seed of Abraham,—and was born under the Law. Now one of the commandments of Moses's Law was this, "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they make them fringes in the borders of their garments,"

1 Matt. ix. 20. Mark v. 25-27. Luke viii. 42-44

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