faith round about your blasphemy, so that you may be saved. Your father wants to include you within the amplitude of his faith, for he calls your unbelief a devil, and in many a secret prayer to heaven he says, "My son is grievously vexed with the demon of unbelief." It is impossible to resist the operation of this law of inclusion we cannot question that we all receive benefits from heaven because of the religion of other people. Ten righteous men spare the city, the house of Potiphar is blessed for Joseph's sake, the ship tossed upon the sea is spared because of the prisoner Paul who is on board, and many of us are to-day reaping the crops which our fathers sowed in seed. Pray for your child: be yours the big faith that surprises God-then who can tell what answers may be returned? for Jesus answered and said unto the Canaanitish woman, "" 'Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.' He gave her the keys of the kingdom and said, "Use them after thy liking."

Then he passed on, and came nigh unto the sea of Galilee, and went up into a mountain and sat there. And the people allowed him to sit there, combining ease with dignity, taking rest, and contemplating the city with all its sin and pain, from a distance. It is not so that the tragic story reads. No sooner had he sat down than great multitudes came to him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at the feet of Jesus. We belong to him most when we are in our deepest, most abject helplessness. He does not say, "Take away these burdens and leave the mountain free for my enjoyment"—no, he was king, and a king must give, a king must identify himself with his subjects, royalty must sympathise. And Jesus healed them, so that they who were borne up the mountain as burdens, left it with agility and delight and thankfulness. Then was there great rejoicing among the multitude: they could not deny the wonderful works that had been done. When we see dumb men speaking, lame men walking, maimed men whole, and the blind seeing, it is surely impossible for us to betake ourselves to some mean intellectual explanation of these marvellous and astounding disclosures of power. The people yielded to the natural instinct, and the mountain throbbed again with the resounding song and shout and jubilance of those who beheld the revelation of the kingdom of gracious power.

350

PERSONAL MIRACLES.

Jesus Christ is doing greater works to-day, and to-day the world should be filled with the music of gratulation and thanksgiving unto God. Were not some of us blind and do we not now see? How few years separate between our present condition and one that we dare scarcely recall because of its humiliation. We were as sheep going astray, but we are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. We were defiled and unclean and polluted and corrupt, but we are washed, we are cleansed, we are sanctified. If it is a great thing—and no man would question its greatness-to see the maimed made whole, and the dumb made to speak, it is a greater thing to see a bad heart turned to righteousness, and to hear blaspheming lips opened in loyal prayer. Such are the continual miracles of the grace of Christ.

LXV.

CHRIST THE SATISFACTION OF HUNGER.

Matthew xv. 32–39.

32. Then Jesus called his disciples unto him, and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way.

33. And his disciples say unto him, Whence should we have so much bread in the wilderness, as to fill so great a multitude?

34. And Jesus saith unto them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, seven, and a few little fishes.

35. And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. 36. And he took the seven loaves and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. 37. And they did all eat, and were filled and they took up the broken meat that was left seven baskets full.

38. And they that did eat were four thousand men, beside women and children.

39. And he sent away the multitude, and took ship, and came into the coasts at Magdala.

A

LL orthodox critics regard this miracle as totally distinct from the strikingly similar one recorded in the fourteenth chapter. There can, indeed, be no doubt about it, if we believe what Jesus Christ himself is reported to have said in the sixteenth chapter, wherein he asks the people if they have forgotten the five loaves of the five thousand, and the seven loaves of the four thousand. This is one of the repetitions which are necessary in beneficent life. We must not find fault with the miracles because we have experienced something very like them before. Our life is a continual miracle; repetitions ought not to be monotonous to us, our love ought to be so intelligent and lively as to discern in every repeated miracle some new phase and tone of the divine mind and purpose.

Amidst all his thinking, which must have been of the most

352

HOW THE CROSS IS TO BE TREATED.

trying nature, Jesus Christ's acute and passionate sympathy was never suppressed. With such problems pressing for solution, with the purposes of eternity about to accomplish themselves in his agony and death, with the cross daily acquiring new definiteness of outline and weight, who could wonder if all that was merely sympathetic should be forgotten or suspended? Are not we absorbed in the solution of our intellectual problems, are we not sometimes so taken up with great questions, that we cannot attend to domestic affairs, or household anxieties, or to the so-called petty troubles of our passing life? Here is a man who was slain from before the foundation of the world, who is now to be seen in heaven by faith's vision, as a lamb slain, who was a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief always, who had the wall salvation pressing upon his attention and crushing the strength of his heart, and yet he has time to bestow attention upon the hunger and thirst of the multitude. Wherein then is our reasoning wrong, when we think that great intellectual and moral considerations might have excluded the action of sympathy? It is wrong in the fact that we do not understand the real nature and scope of sympathy, when properly interpreted and understood. But for his sympathy the cross would have been an impossibility; intellect cowered before it, love took it up and bore it onward until its very gloom was carried into glory.

So shall it be with all crosses that are rightly borne. If we carry our crosses in Christ's spirit and according to the measure of Christ's will, we shall force our troubles beyond the dark point at which they would bind us down, and make those troubles contribute to the very satisfaction which they were meant to destroy. Intellect soon drops its crosses, love bears them on to the happy consummation. We are too impatient with our crosses: we try to cut them down; we should let them alone until they take root and blossom and bear fruit for our soul's satisfaction. Herein is the lesson of Christ broad and gracious to us in all its application of wisdom and of comfort. You want to cut the cross into small pieces of wood and to burn them in the fire and so destroy the tree of crucifixion: Jesus Christ shows us how we are to treat the cross-we are to carry it forward from step to step until we cause the extreme of trouble to touch the beginning of joy. Let us consider then the High Priest of our profession, let us run with

patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God. The joy that is beyond should give strength to bear the cross which is the immediate portion of the passing day. If we omit from our recollection the coming, the necessary joy, what wonder if our souls be cast down as under the pressure of an intolerable burden? Our light affliction is but for a moment, whilst we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. We are to be constrained to nobler heroism of endurance and sweeter gentleness of patience, by the power of an endless life. Take in more field, cast your eyes abroad upon a bolder horizon, recognise the ulterior purpose and the sure consummation of divine love, and then the cross will begin to bud, and to have upon it green leaves, and then coloured blossoms, and then rich sweet fruit; and the soul will know that it was a glad time when that rough cross was planted in the soil of the life.

Hear this sweet music, which rises with the might of gentleness, in the desert. It comes upon us suddenly, and yet there ought not to be any suddenness in such a strain. Jesus says, "I have compassion." This is the key-word of the Saviour's life, the surname of Christ is Compassion. Why should such a speech startle one? He refers to his compassion as if it were a new feature in the day's proceedings: he indicates the rising of compassion as though it were a new emotion of his life. What was the Saviour doing all the time but having compassion? The feeling never ceased it touched with its own gentleness everything that Christ did he might have prefaced every day's work with "I have compassion," he might every night have fallen asleep to the music of his own words, "I have compassion." It gave a wondrous expression to his eyes, caused the subtlest tones to enter into his gentle yet all-pervasive and all-penetrating voice, it lifted him up above his burdens and made him face the devil with a new energyit was the secret and the very inspiration of his life and ministry.

If you read the life of Jesus Christ under this suggestion that compassion is the key-word of it all, you will find everything Jesus Christ did taking on a new colour and bearing a new attitude and general relation to all history and to all providences.