A Cure in High Life
IV EWS did not speed on lightning wings or whirring train in the days of Christ, but good report, in which all people were concerned, flew I f swiftly by aid of horse and camel and fleet foot and intercommunication. Capernaum was twenty miles away, but as if borne by whispering winds, the glad intelligence of Christ’s return to Cana quickly reached that place. Peter may have been the messenger, returning home after a nine months’ absence spent with Jesus; but if not Peter, then some other trustworthy person carried the happy news. And there was one person in Capernaum to whom the information was especially gladdening, though he may never have seen Jesus or regarded Him with great concern until the hour that affliction excited his hopes. It is true that the miracles wrought by Jesus had been reported to Herod Antipas, and that his foster brother, Manaen, and that Joanna, wife of the king’s steward, and many other influential persons had made public acknowledgment of their belief in Jesus as the Messiah, but we are not told that any officers of the court were believers. But to one of the fine residences of Capernaum there had come a visitor that drove out thought of worldly ambition and princely and left the sorrow of a deep affliction in their place. A nobleman’s son had been stricken with a fever and lay so ill that the air from the wings of death could almost be felt. On a rich couch, with sumptuous surroundings, lay the sufferer, whose hectic cheeks, quickened pulse, short respirations, parched tongue, and staring eyes, showed how tightly he was embraced by the hot arms of a deadly fever. Mother had spent the hours of night as well as of day bathing his temples, wetting his swollen lips, smoothing his dry forehead, speaking soothing words while her eyes were wet from weeping and her heart bursting with grief. Father, a nobleman of degree, almost princely of rank, but now an unstrung man, wrung by this great affliction, stood in the sick chamber with bated breath, his tongue almost as useless as that of his dj’ing boy, and his eyes looking into vacancy. The doctors had probably told him how hopeless was the case, and leaving some narcotic or quieting febrifuge as a last prescription had turned away with the assurance that skill of earthly physician could do no more. Oh, what a sad hour was this to the rich man, whose wealth and position could only be a mockery now; which could only serve to emphasize the puerility, the weakness, the extreme helplessness of the most exalted when brought to answer the inexorable law of nature,
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Hope Points the Way to Jesus.
But in the iiKMueiit i»f his most profound grief the nobleman learns of the presence of Jesus in Cana. (Juick to his mind he recalled the many reports current of the miracles performed, of the sick healed, of all the splendid deeds of charity performed by Christ. Without hesitating t) reason on the probability of the truth of these reports, without waiting to call Manacn, or Peter, the nobleman decides promptly, innnediately, to call Jesus. Saddling up the swiftest horse, making the most hurried preparation, he sets out for Cana, nor stops for food or water initil he comes into the Divine presence, about one o’clock in the aftenioon. There may have been a crowd about Jesus, but being one in authority the nobleman would not hesitate to press his way through, and without scarcely preceding his request with a salutation, so urgent the occasion, he addressed the Lord with anxious speech and with evidence of intense grief, “Come down and heal my son.” Jesus, obser-ing his anxiety, had great compassion for the nobleman, but embraced the opportunity of imparting a lesson in faith as well as to give proof of His Messiahship. So He answered, “Except ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe.” But the nobleman would not be brought into a discussion, time was too precious; therefore with tears of supplication, in which faith in Christ’s ppower was clearly exhibited, he again besought, “Sir, conic down ere my child die.” For his faith he was rewarded with an assurance that must have made his heart leap with joy; which must have thrilled him with ecstasy greater than any he had ever felt before: “Go thy way; thy son liveth.”
That the nobleman was not puffed up with arrogance or doubted the power of Jesus, is proved by the fact that, upon receiving assurance that his son would recover, he departed so leisurely for Capernaum that it took him twenty-four hours to travel back over the distance which he had accomplished, in his eagerness to find Jesus, in less than six. As he was nearing Capeniaum some of his ser’ants went out to meet him, being anxious to bear the joyful news of his son’s recoven.’, and as they announced to him the glad tidings, he showed no more concern than a desire to verif)’ what he already believed — so great was his faith — that the cure was coincident with the pronouncement of Jesus. And he found it to be so, “and himself believed, and his whole house.”
Bloody Desecration of the Temple.
After healing the nobleman’s son, Jesus went into retirement for a season of several months, no doubt spending a while with His mother in Nazareth. The disciples had in the meantime returned to their respective vocations, and the ministrations of both Lord and followers ceased. The cause of their temporary disappearance from public view may be found, as Geikie states, in two events which transpired about this time; John the Baptist, who had been repining in prison,
li but who was so strong in the affections of the people that it was believed Antipas would soon release him, was now brought from his imprisonment, at the instigation of Herodias, and beheaded. This act created such an agitation that for a while a revolt was threatened which promised to array the Galileans against the Pharisees and to bring on civil revolution. The great excitement under which the people now labored unfitted them for religious instructions, and the continued appearance of Jesus before large crowds would have intensified and aggravated the situation, and probably led to His own apprehension by order of Antipas.
At the Feast of Tabernacles, held either in the preceding year or in the fall following the return of Jesus to Cana, there occurred a shocking scene in Jerusalem precipitated by the Roman garrison, who, by acts of intolerance towards the pilgrims from Galilee, aroused the latter to a brave and sturdy resistance. An emeute followed, which soldiers from the fortress of Antonia were sent to quell, and so violently did they assail the Galileans that they drove the latter into the Temple and followed them even into the courts of that sacred place and slaughtered them with a very fiendish bloodthirstiness. The unfortunates who took refuge in the Temple were not only killed by the soldiers, but their offerings of cattle and sheep were also butchered that blood of beasts might mingle with that of the slain (Luke xiii. i). To add fuel to the flame of excitement which the murder of John and the slaughter of the Galileans had started, Judas, a Galilean, who had led the first insurrection against Rome, was stirring the people up, by impassioned appeals, to arise and establish the Kingdom of God by the sword. The wildest religious fanaticism took possession of the Galileans particularly, who began to look towards Jesus as a leader in the revolt, but from which He shrank with feelings of abhorrence; for His was” a mission of peace and good-will; a binding up of the nation’s differences in the diffusion of a universal fellowship founded upon forgiveness, mercy, charity, love and righteousness. Hence He retired for a season and remained in seclusion until the disturbances subsided.
Jesus Appears in the Synagogue at Nazareth.
The events thus recorded are only intimated by Luke and are not mentioned by any of the Apostles, nor does it appear from the Scriptural text that Jesus withdrew from the public ministry, for following (as it appears) the healing of the nobleman’s son He appeared at Nazareth, and on the Sabbath opened the service in the synagogue. Being accepted as a rabbi He was given the roll, at His request, from which to read. It was the custom, as we are. told in Acts xv. 12, to read the law of Moses in the synagogue ever>^ Sabbath day, the reading being consecutive and so divided as to require three years to read the whole. But there was also another roll on which was written the prophecies, and portions of these were also read in the opening service, or preliminary to the regular discourse.
Whether by accident, in pursuance of Divine purpose, or it chanced that the verse
was appointed for that day’s service, the fact is no less remarkable, that when
Jesus opened the roll His eyes rested upon the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah, first
verse, from which He read the following Divinely approjjriate words: “The
Spirit of the Lord is upon
Me, becau.se the Lord hath
anointed Me to preach good
tidings to the meek; He
hath sent Me to bind up the
broken-hearted, to proclaim
liberty to the captives, and
the opening of the prison
to them that are bound; to
])roclaim the acceptable year
of the Lord.”
Having thus read (the
text of Luke iv. being
slightly different from that
of Isaiah), Jesus closed the
roll, and sitting down, began to preach to the congregation. In so doing He
practically usurped the duty
of the regular reader, and
also of the officiating rabbi;
but was He not both the
Law and the Gospel, and
hence above the priest and
the synagogue? Closing
the roll, His first utterance
was, ’ ‘This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.”
Having thus .spoken He
gave a full exposition of the
meaning of the text and its
fulfillment in His appearance, though He did not attempt to present proofs of His Messiahship. But havmg
declared Himself as the Messiah He anticipated the resentflilness of His hearers,
who would ask evidence of His claims, in the performance of such miracles as He
was reported to have accomplished elsewhere, and He therefore answered their
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JKWISH PRIE.ST, AND ROLL OF MANUSCKU’T EMBRACING
THR rKNTATKl’CH.
tacit objections by saying, “Verily 1 say unto pou. No prophet is accepted in his own country. “He then recalled to their minds the fact that Elijah had foretold the famine that would prevail for three and a half years in Israel to no one but a widow woman oi Sarepta; and oi the many lepers in the time of Ehsha that prophet had healed only Naaman; yet the people believed in Elijah and Elisha, nor required repeated manifestations o{ their power, as instruments of God. The rebuke was so direct, the retlection upon their corruptness so palpable, that the jews sitting” within sound of His voice become not only uneasy but hostile. They looked at one another in amazement and said, with an air of suryrise at His pretensions. “Why, is not this the son of Joseph, the carpenter, our townsman? has He not grown up amongst us? has He had any advantages of schooling? though He speaks wisely is He not unfitted for the priesthood? was there anything remarkable in His boyhood? do we not know His sisters and brothers, and that the>- are all, like Himself, common people? Humph! the presumption of this Man is amazing; not only comparing Himself with our greatest prophets but actually declaring Himself the Messiah that is to come.” And their jealous rage was so increased that probably moved by one bolder spirit in the congregation, they rose up like a mob. and seizing Jesus they hustled Him with rough usage to the brow of a ledge shelving off the hill on which the synagogue stood, intending to hurl Him upon the rock below. “But His time was not yet come.” On the instant the mob cease their murderous clamors; their arms fall, their feet falter, their lips grow mute. As God paralyzed the hand of Jeroboam so He now palsied the limbs of the mobocratic Jews, and they were compelled to see the object of their wrath pass hannless through their midst, triinnphant in
their discomfiture.
Call to the Fishermen.
Rejected and despised by His own townspeople, who were so ingrained with bigotn-, and so vain of their institutions and pompous ceremonials, contaminated as they were by the abuses of priestly ambition, that they were no longer disposed towards the truth or revelation, Jesus left Nazareth and went to reside at Capernaum, on the shore of Lake Galilee, probably making His home with Peter, and here He began His ministn- again. It was in Galilee that His labors were to bear the richest fruits, in fulfillment of both prophecy and tradition: the land to which Isaiah pointed in his grand prefigurement: “The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by way of the sea, beyond Galilee of the Gentiles: The people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.” In this land the Jews have long looked for the Messiah, and still hold so sacredly to the belief that His appearance will be made there that in any Jews assemble each year at Tiberias, one of their holy cities, in expectation of witnessing His coming.
nn: i.” m.i.ini”. oi’ simon anu anpkkw. Hrawn by lUda.
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A more beautiful country it is hard to find than the region about Capernaum, and to the beauty of the landscape was added great hospitality of the people. It was a region the best adapted to the preparation of Christ’s teaching; a field awaiting the sower; a field fallow from long disuse, and rich from the accumulations of abuses which the people themselves had grown weary of. In Galilee, as in all parts of Judah, the dispensations of Moses had become obsolete, and hypocritical ceremony, under pretence of observing the law, had grown into “theocratic slavery.” In short, Israel was spiritually dead, and this moribund condition of the ancient faith and teaching was due directly to a hierarchy thst regarded only a zeal for the rabbinical precepts, an outward show without even respect to an accountability to God. Worldly ambition had usurped the throne of conscience and of faith. The people realized this even though they were under priestly domination. Hence, when Christ came preaching a new dispensation, a new religion, in which ceremony and rites, and sacrifices and genuflexions before priests had small part, He found not a few ready to receive Him gladly. He came to do away with the old, to teach the folly of putting new wine into old bottles, or patching up old clothes with new pieces. His call was therefore to repentance, the arousing of Israel to their shortcomings, to their decay as a people under the emasculating efiects of shallow pretences, in which the spirit of their ancient faith was no longer discoverable. He came asking. Are you just? are you pure? are you God-fearing and God-serving? do you love one another? do you keep the commandments? He did not care to know, for it was unimportant, whether the people observed all the feast and fast days, or whether they went regularh to the synagogue services; or whether their phylacteries were broad or narrow; or whether they were faithful to the rigorous laws respecting the Sabbath. All these were but travesties on holy ordinances, so long as their obsersance was wanting in the true spirit of righteousness.
The doctrine which Jesus taught appealed so directly to the loftiest purpose
and best ambitions of man, and quickened the heart to such a true conception of
the nature of God, that He converted thousands through the conviction of His
reasoning, independent of the Messianic power which He exhibited in the working
of miracles.
The Disciples Called to their Labors.
It was doubtless directly upon His visit to Capernaum that He sought the beach of Galilee, and there seeing His two first disciples, Simon Peter and Andrew, cast in their nets, He called to them, saying, “Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men.” In response to the Divine summons they immediatelj’ left off fishing, and joining Him the three walked along the beach until He saw two other fishermen, who were also brothers, named James and John, sitting in a boat with their father, Zebedee. John was, with Peter, the first follower of Jesus, and he was aftei wards to be known as the * ’ beloved disciple,” faithful in all things. His brother James may have also known the Lord, but if not He was certainlyacquainted with Him through reports He had heard from John, and was therefore glad to become a follower. The party now being augmented to five they went back to Capernaum, where, on the Sabbath succeeding, Jesus went into the synagogue to preach. The power of His speech was so great and His reasoning so earnest and convincing that the audience was both astonished and felicitated. The congregation could not help comparing Him with the rabbis and scribes whom duty required them to listen to as long as they could prevent sleep from shutting up their ears. The same thing uttered Sabbath after Sabbath, the same monotone of meaningless instruction, the same forms, that had become obsolete so far as they had any significance, until church had become a place of preliminary torment. But how the people straightened in their seats when Christ began to preach; the poor of sight rubbed the sleep and water from their eyes, while the dull of hearing made a trumpet of their hands. Why, what eloquence of speech! what wealth of striking illustrations! what sublime similes and metaphors and word-pictures! what revelations! what wisdom! what doctrines! No wonder that the congregation was astonished,” for His word was with power, and He taught them as one that had authority and not as the scribes.”
Undeviled.
The spiritual outpouring in the audience was great, the enthusiasm of conviction was tremendous; the awakening to a new and holier faith was overpowering. But in the assemblage was a man who, Mark says, “had a spirit of an unclean devil.” All devils are unclean; they are the scavengers of humanity, as much as the hog is of brute or porcine creation. But the devil-possessed man interrupted the meeting, and hence Mark may have had a purpose in applying the word unclean as an epithet to express special vileness. And the devil cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Let us alone; what have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art Thou come to destroy us? I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God.” And Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Hold thy peace and come out of him.”
Whether the demoniacs whom Jesus quieted and restored were lunatics, as many authors maintain, or were really possessed of devils, is a question which does not affect the importance of the miracles of their “casting out.” It is hardly more wondrous to undevil a man than it is to restore reason, at a word, to the brain-distracted, the ravening, frenzied bedlamite — the re-enthronement of a mind lost in the darkness of shattered intellect. But if devils are instrumentalities of evil; if to them the loss of Eden is due; if they sought Jesus to tempt Him on the Temple height, and on Quarantana’s peak, and in the wilderness; and if Job was afflicted through the operative spirit of a malicious and jealous devil, then we cannot believe that the power of demons was limited merely to outward control, since possession, through spiritual agency, follows by implication. And while the possession of a demon was confounded with many diseases, such as the various forms of lunacy, and especially of violent cases of epilepsy, yet the Eord distinctly recognizes the possession of devils in two instances, when He refers to the casting out of demoxis through Beelzebub, and the entrance of demons into the herd of swine at Gadara. Therefore, Dr. Smith says, “We are led to the ordinary and literal interpretation of these (scriptural) passages, that there are evil spirits, subjects of the Evil One who, in the days of the Lord himself, and His Apostles especially, were permitted b)^ God to exercise a direct influence over the souls and bodies of certain men.”
The acknowledgment of Jesus by the demoniac might have gone far towards establishing His claim to the Messiahship, because the people regarded the sayings of these possessed persons with great faith, as the utterances of a higher power than man. But Jesus would not permit the testimony of a devil to be accepted in His behalf; He would acknowledge no favors from the arch adversary whom He had been sent to oppose. Hence, waving His hand toward the victim, with much indignity, He says, “Hold thy peace, and come out of him!” And immediately the devil is forced by the Divine will to relinquish possession of the man, and to flee from the Holy Presence, but not until the evil spirit had thrown the demoniac to the floor and into convulsions, which caused him to cr>’ out in agony as the devil gave him one final clutch. But after the struggle there was a calm as a second surprise to the witnesses. Rising from the floor with grateful spirit, the man fronts the audience with eyes that had suddenly lost their wildness, with lips that were no longer quivering, and with speech that bespoke the equilibrium of his brain, the restoration of his intellect, the freedom of his mind. And those who saw this wondrous thing, said one to another, “What thing is this? What new doctrine is this? for with authority and power commandeth He even the unclean spirits and they do obey Him.”
A Typhoid Arrested.
The news of the service in the synagogue, the new doctrine which Christ preached, and the manifestation of His power to cast out devils, spread rapidly until soon every person in Galilee had heard of Him and began to flock to Capernaum to hear Him teach and to see His works. But this good deed done in the synagogue on the first Sunday of His stay in Capernaum was to be equaled by another before the day should be done. As Jesus and His four disciples came out of the synagogue, Simon Peter must have asked them to dine or sup at his house, which invitation being accepted, the five went on until some of the house servants or neighbors of Simon met him with the sorrowing intelligence that his mother-in-law had been stricken with a fever and his presence was imm’ediately required.
The report of the woman’s illness, no doubt, made the whole party anxious to reach the bedside as quickly as possible, though Jesus foresaw th.e speedy termination of the affliction. But they hurried on till our Lord was brought into the sick room and saw the deeply-flushed cheek of the suffering mother-in-law, whereupon looking down upon her. He spoke comforting words and with His healing hand stroked the burning forehead, cooled the dry and hot lips, refreshed the parched body, tranquilized the hurried breathing. Then, so gently, so cheerily, so sympathetically, He took hold of the woman’s hands and raised her up, when lo! she discovered that the fever had fled before the rebuke of the Saviour, and her restoration to health was upon the instant so complete that she set about the preparation of the meal to which Jesus and His disciples had been
invited.
A Hospital in flotion.
The news of this first and second miracle spread with extraordinarj’ celerity through the town. Strict Sabbatarian laws prevented the people from flocking to Him until after a trumpet blast at the setting of the sun proclaimed the close of the day. Then the excitement quickly became intense. Here came crowds of five, of ten, of a score, of a hundred, until “all the city was gathered together at the door “of Simon Peter’s house. Not only the well, but the sick; some on crutches, some carried on cots, some in beds which they had not been able to leave for months. There were men, women, children, in all manner of affliction; the fever-stricken, the consumptive, the asthmatic; the epileptic, the paLsied, “pining atrophy, marasmus, and wide- wasting pestilence;” the blind, deaf, dumb; the apoplectia, the paralyzed, the cancerous; the lunatic, maniac, demoniac,” And all that had any sick with divers diseases, brought them unto Him; and He laid His hands on every one of them and healed them.”
What an amazing sight! what wonderment! what admiration! and what enrapturing, transporting, joy-infusing miracles were these! the touch that set abloom the rose of health on the pallid cheek of invalidism! the words that straightened distorted limbs and gave back strength to the wasted muscles! The world has never seen but one surgeon who could straighten the crooked limbs, cure the blind eye, or reconstruct the drum of a soundless ear, or reduce a dropsy without any pain at the time or any pain after, and that surgeon was Christ, the mightiest, grandest, gentlest and most sympathetic surgeon the world ever saw, or ever will see, and He deserves the confidence and love and worship and hosannahs of all the earth and hallelujahs of all heaven. “The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear.”
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