"He sent forth His word, and healed them."-Ps. cvii. 20.

THE Inauguration of the Great Doctrine was immediately followed and ratified by mighty signs. Jesus went, says one of the Fathers, from teaching to miracle.1 Having taught as one who had authority, He proceeded to confirm that authority by accordant deeds.

It might have been thought that after a night of ceaseless prayer under the open sky, followed at early dawn by the choice of Twelve Apostles, and by a long address to them and to a vast promiscuous multitude, our Lord would have retired to the repose which such incessant activity required. Such, however, was very far from being the case, and the next few days, if we rightly grasp the sequence of events, were days of continuous and unwearying toil.

When the Sermon was over, the immense throng dispersed in various directions, and those whose homes lay in the plain of Gennesareth would doubtless follow Jesus through the village of Hattîn, and across the

1 Euthymius. Matt. viii. 1-4; Mark i. 40-45; Luke v. 12-16.-St. Matthew narrates twenty miracles; St. Mark, eighteen; St. Luke, nineteen ; and St. John, seven. The total number of miracles related by the Evangelists is thirty-three.

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narrow plateau, and then, after descending the ravine, would leave Magdala on the right, and pass through Bethsaida' to Capernaum.

As He descended the mountain, and was just entering one of the little towns,3 probably a short distance in advance of the multitude, who from natural respect would be likely to leave Him undisturbed after His labours, a pitiable spectacle met His eyes. Suddenly,1 with agonies of entreaty, falling first on his knees, then, in the anguish of his heart and the intensity of his supplication, prostrating himself upon his face,5 there appeared before Him, with bare head, and rent garments, and covered lip, a leper-"full of leprosy "-smitten with the worst and foulest form of that loathsome and terrible disease. It must, indeed, have required on the part of the poor wretch a stupendous faith to believe that the young Prophet of Nazareth was One who could heal a disease of which the worst misery was the belief that, when once thoroughly seated in the blood, it was ineradicable and progressive. And yet the concentrated hope of a life broke out in the man's impassioned prayer, "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean."

1i.e., the Western Bethsaida-probably the pleasant spot on the lake with its gently sloping banks, abundant streams, and strip of bright sand, now called Ain et-Tâbijah.

2 This definite mark of time and place is furnished by St. Matthew (viii. 1). I have combined with his narrative the incidents alluded to by the two other Synoptists.

3 Luke v. 12. Hattin, or Magdala, would best suit the conditions mentioned.

4 This is implied in the κal idoù of Luke v. 12; Matt. viii. 2. The phrase is peculiar to these two Evangelists, of whom St. Matthew uses it twenty-three, and St. Luke sixteen times (Westcott, Introd., p. 237, n.).

5 προσεκύνει (Matt. viii. 2), γονυπετῶν (Mark i. 40), πεσὼν ἐπὶ πρόσωπον (Luke v. 12). A leper was regarded as one dead (Jos. Antt. iii. 11, § 3, μηδενὶ συνδιαιτωμενους καὶ νεκροῦ μηδὲνδιαφέροντας).

TOUCHING A LEPER.

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Prompt as an echo came the answer to his faith, "I will: be thou clean."1 All Christ's miracles are revelations also. Sometimes, when the circumstances of the case required it, He delayed His answer to a sufferer's prayer. But we are never told that there was a moment's pause when a leper cried to him. Leprosy was an acknowledged type of sin, and Christ would teach us that the heartfelt prayer of the sinner to be purged and cleansed is always met by instantaneous acceptance. When David, the type of all true penitents, cried with intense contrition, "I have sinned against the Lord," Nathan could instantly convey to him God's gracious message, “The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.”2 Instantly stretching forth His hand, our Lord touched the leper, and he was cleansed.

It was a glorious violation of the letter of the Law, which attached ceremonial pollution to a leper's touch ;3 but it was at the same time a glorious illustration of the spirit of the Law, which was that mercy is better than sacrifice. The hand of Jesus was not polluted by touching the leper's body, but the leper's whole body was cleansed by the touch of that holy hand. It was even thus that He touched our sinful human nature, and yet remained without spot of sin.*

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1"Echo prompta ad fidem leprosi maturam" (Bengel). St. Ambrose says, very fancifully, Dicit volo propter Photinum; imperat propter Arium; tangit propter Manichæum." The prompt, almost impetuous gladness and spontaneity of these miracles contrasts with the sorrow and delay of those later ones, which Jesus wrought when His heart had been utterly saddened, and men's faith in Him had already begun to wane (cf. Matt. xiii. 58; Mark vi. 5). 'Prima miracula fecit confestim, ne videretur cum labore facere " (Bengel).

2 2 Sam. xii. 13.

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3 Lev. xiii. 26, 46; Numb. v. 2.-"Quia Dominus Legis est non obsequitur Legi, sed Legem facit" (Ambr., in Luc.).

4 H. de Sto. Victore (in Trench on Miracles, p. 237).

It was in the depth and spontaneity of His human emotion that our Lord had touched the leper into health. But it was His present desire to fulfil the Mosaic Law by perfect obedience; and both in proof of the miracle, and out of consideration to the sufferer, and in conformity with the Levitical ordinance, He bade the leper go and show himself to the priest, make the customary offerings, and obtain the legal certificate that he was clean.1 He accompanied the direction with a strict and even stern injunction to say not one word of it to any one. It appears from this that the suddenness with which the miracle had been accomplished had kept it secret

1 We shall speak more of leprosy hereafter, when we consider others of our Lord's miracles. Perhaps no conception of it can be derived from any source more fearfully than from Lev. xiii., xiv. The reader will find the subject fully and learnedly treated in Jahn's Archaeologia Biblica, §§ 188, 189. The rites which accompanied the sacerdotal cleansing of a leper are described at length in Lev. xiv. It was a long process, in two stages. First the priest had to come to him outside the camp or town, to kill a sparrow over fresh water, to dip a living sparrow with cedar-wood, scarlet wool, and hyssop into the blood-stained water, to sprinkle the leper seven times with this strange aspergillum, and then let the living bird loose, and pronounce the man clean. The man was then to shave off his hair, bathe, remain seven days out of his house; again shave, and bathe, and return to the priest, bringing one lamb for a trespass-offering, and a second with a ewe-lamb for a burnt and sin-offering (or, if too poor to do this, two young pigeons), and flour and oil for a meat-offering. Some of the blood of the trespass-offering, and some of the oil, was then put, with certain ceremonies, on the tip of his right ear, the thumb of his right hand, and the great toe of his right foot, the rest of the oil being poured upon his head. He was then pronounced clean. There could not well be any dispute about the reality of the cleansing, after ceremonials so elaborate as this, which are the main topic of the Mishnaic tract Negaîm, in fourteen chapters. Since writing the above note I have read Delitzsch's Durch Krankheit zur Genesung, in which the whole rites are elaborately described.

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“Opa undevì undèv eĭπņs (Mark i. 44). This probably is the correct reading of B. The expression is much stronger than usual (see xiii. 2; xiv. 2). For other instances of enjoined secrecy see Mark i. 25, 44 (Luke iv. 35; v. 14); Mark iii. 12 (Matt. xii. 16); v. 43 (Luke viii. 56). It will be seen from this that such commands were mainly given in the early part of the ministry.

INJUNCTIONS TO SECRECY.

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from all, except perhaps a few of our Lord's immediate followers, although it had been wrought in open day, and in the immediate neighbourhood of a city, and at no great distance from the following multitudes. But why did our Lord on this, and many other occasions, enjoin on the recipients of the miracles a secrecy which they so rarely observed? The full reason perhaps we shall never know, but that it had reference to circumstances of time and place, and the mental condition of those in whose favour the deeds were wrought, is clear from the fact that on one occasion at least, where the conditions were different, He even enjoined a publication of the mercy vouchsafed.1 Was it, as St. Chrysostom conjectures, to repress a spirit of boastfulness, and teach men not to talk away the deep inward sense of God's great gifts? or was it to avoid an over-excitement and tumult in the already astonished multitudes of Galilee ?2 or was it that He might be regarded by them in His true light -not as a mighty Wonder-worker, not as a universal Hakîm, but as a Saviour by Revelation and by Hope?

Whatever may have been the general reasons, it appears that in this case there must have been some reason of special importance. St. Mark, reflecting for us the intense and vivid impressions of St. Peter, shows us, in his terse but most graphic narrative, that the man's dismissal was accompanied on our Saviour's part with some overpowering emotion. Not only is the word, "He straitly charged him" (Mark i. 43), a word implying an extreme earnestness and even vehemence or

1 The Gadarene demoniac (Mark v. 19; Luke viii. 39).

2 As is clearly indicated in the beautiful reference to Isa. xlii. in Matt. xii. 15—20. No true Prophet regards such powers as being the real root of the matter. At the best they are evidential, and that mainly to the immediate witnesses.