CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE DEMONIAC BOY.

Τινὲς δέ φασὶν ὅτι ἡ ὄψις αὐτοῦ ὡραιοτέρα γινομένη ἀπὸ τοῦ φωτὸς ἐφείλκετο τούς ὄχλους.—THEOPHYL.

THE imagination of all readers of the Gospels has been struck by the contrast-a contrast seized and immortalised for ever in the great picture of Raphael-between the peace, the glory, the heavenly communion on the mountain heights, and the confusion, the rage, the unbelief, the agony which marked the first scene that met the eyes of Jesus and His Apostles on their descent to the low levels of human life.1

For in their absence an event had occurred which filled the other disciples with agitation and alarm. They saw a crowd assembled and Scribes among them, who with disputes and victorious inuendoes were pressing hard upon the diminished band of Christ's chosen friends,2

Suddenly at this crisis the multitude caught sight of Jesus. Something about His appearance, some unusual majesty, some lingering radiance, filled them with amazement, and they ran up to Him with saluta

1 Matt. xvii. 14-21; Mark ix. 14-29; Luke ix. 37-45.

2 There were, of course, many Jews, and therefore naturally there would be Scribes, in the kingdom of Philip.

THE DEMONIAC BOY.

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tions.1 "What is your dispute with them ?" He sternly asked of the Scribes. But the Scribes were too much abashed, the disciples were too self-conscious of their faithlessness and failure, to venture on any reply. Then out of the crowd struggled a man, who, kneeling before Jesus, cried out, in a loud voice,2 that he was the father of an only son whose demoniac possession was shown by epilepsy, in its most raging symptoms, accompanied by dumbness, atrophy, and a suicidal mania. He had brought the miserable sufferer to the disciples to cast out the evil spirit, but their failure had occasioned the taunts of the Scribes.

The whole scene grieved Jesus to the heart. "O faithless and perverse generation," He exclaimed, "how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?" This cry of His indignation seemed meant for all-for the merely curious multitude, for the malicious Scribes, for the half-believing and faltering disciples. "Bring him hither to me.'

The poor boy was brought, and no sooner had his eye fallen on Jesus, than he was seized with another paroxysm of his malady. He fell on the ground in violent convulsions, and rolled there with foaming lips. It was the most deadly and intense form of epileptic lunacy on which our Lord had ever been called to take compassion.3

He paused before He acted. He would impress the

Mark ix. 14. We here follow mainly the full and vivid narrative of St. Mark.

2 Matt. xvii. 14; Luke ix. 38.

3 Matt. xvii. 15, σeλnvidjetai kal Kaкŵs wάσxel. This describes, at any rate, the natural side of his malady; but there is, in truth, to such maladies no purely natural side. They belong to some mystery of iniquity which we can never understand. They are due, not to the oráσis, but to the dwóσraσis of human nature.

d*

scene in all its horror on the thronging multitude, that they might understand that the failure was not of Him. He would at the same time invoke, educe, confirm the wavering faith of the agonised suppliant.

"How long has this happened to him?"

"From childhood: and often hath it flung him both into fire and into water to destroy him; but if at all thou canst, take pity on us and help us."

"If thou canst ?" answered Jesus-giving him back his own word "all things are possible to him that believeth."

And then the poor hapless father broke out into that cry, uttered by so many millions since, and so deeply applicable to an age which, like our own, has been described as "destitute of faith, yet terrified at scepticism "_"Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief."

Meanwhile, during this short colloquy, the crowd had been gathering more and more, and Jesus, turning to the sufferer, said, "Dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him." A yet wilder cry, a yet more fearful convulsion followed His words, and then the boy lay on the ground, no longer wallowing and foaming, but still as death. Some said, "He is dead." But Jesus took him by the hand, and, amid the amazed exclamations of the multitude, restored him to his father, calm and cured.

Jesus had previously given to His disciples the power of casting out devils, and this power was even exercised in His name by some who were not among His

1 This seems to be the force of Mark ix. 23, elnev avtệ tò el dúvaσai πιστεῦσαι, πάντα δυνατὰ τῷ πιστεύοντι, which is the best reading (*, B, C, L, and some versions). For this use of rò see Matt. xix. 18; Luke ix. 46, &c. As for the 'if thou canst '-all things are, &c." It is taken thus by the Æthiopic version, and "proclivi lectioni praestat ardua."

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professed disciples.

POWER OF FAITH.

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Nor had they ever failed before. It was therefore natural that they should take the first private opportunity to ask Him the cause of their discomfiture. He told them frankly that it was because of their unbelief. It may be that the sense of His absence weakened them; it may be that they felt less able to cope with difficulties while Peter and the sons of Zebedee were also away from them; it may be, too, that the sad prophecy of His rejection and death had worked with sinister effect on the minds of the weakest of them. But, at any rate, He took this opportunity to teach them two great lessons: the one, that there are forms of spiritual, physical, and moral evil so intense and so inveterate, that they can only be exorcised by prayer, united to that self-control and self-denial of which fasting is the most effectual and striking symbol; the other, that to a perfect faith all things are possible. Faith, like a grain of mustard-seed, could even say to Hermon itself, "Be thou removed, and cast into the waves of the Great Sea, and it should obey."

Jesus had now wandered to the utmost northern limit of the Holy Land, and He began to turn His steps homewards. We see from St. Mark that His return was designedly secret and secluded, and possibly not along the high roads, but rather through the hills and valleys of Upper Galilee to the westward of the

1 Mark ix. 38.

2 It must, however, be noticed that the Kal vnσTela (Mark ix. 29) is a more than dubious reading. It is not found in & or B, and the corresponding verse in Matt. xvii. 21 is omitted by N, B, as well as by various versions. Tischendorf omits both. See, however, Matt. vi. 16-18; ix. 15.

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Removing mountains " was among the Jews a common hyperbole for the conquest of stupendous difficulties. A great teacher was called by the Rabbispy (gokêr hârîm), or "uprooter of mountains." See many instances in Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr. in Matt. xxi. 21.

Jordan. His object was no longer to teach the multitudes who had been seduced into rejecting Him, and among whom He could hardly appear in safety, but to continue that other and even more essential part of His work, which consisted in the training of His Apostles. And now the constant subject of His teaching was His approaching betrayal, murder, and resurrection. But He spoke to dull hearts; in their deep-seated prejudice they ignored his clear warnings, in their faithless timidity they would not ask for further enlightenment. We cannot see more strikingly how vast was the change which the resurrection wrought in them than by observing with what simple truthfulness they record the extent and inveteracy of their own shortcomings, during those precious days while the Lord was yet among

them.

The one thing which they did seem to realise was that some strange and memorable issue of Christ's life, accompanied by some great development of the Messianic kingdom, was at hand; and this unhappily produced the only effect in them which it should not have produced. Instead of stimulating their self-denial, it awoke their ambition; instead of confirming their love and humility, it stirred them up to jealousy and pride. On the roadremembering, perhaps, the preference which had been shown at Hermon to Peter and the sons of Zebedeethey disputed among themselves, "Which should be the greatest ?"

1 For the variety of readings on Matt. xvii. 22, αναστρεφομένων, συστρεφ., σTрEP., &c., see Keim, Gesch. Jesu, ii. 581. The παρεπορεύοντο of Mark ix. 30 is of uncertain meaning. We have already considered it in Mark ii. 23 (cf. Matt. xii. 1) [v. supra, Vol. I., p. 436]; and in Mark xi. 20; xv. 29, it means "passing by," as in Matt. xxvii. 39, the only other passage where it occurs. In Deut. ii. 14, it is simply used for 7, "he walked.” * Mark ix. 31, ἐδίδασκεν . . . ἔλεγεν.