him, acknowledged his divinity, and prayed, saying, Lord help me.

The compassionate Redeemer of mankind now condescended to speak to her, but with words seemingly suffi cient to have discouraged every farther attempt; nay, to have filled her with bitter dislike to his person, though she had conceived such high and distinguished notions of his mercy and favor. It is not meet (said he) to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. It is not justice to deprive the Jews, who are the children of the covenant, the descendants of Abraham, of any part of those blessings which I came into the world to bestow, especially to you, who are aliens and strangers from the commonwealth of Israel.

But, severe as this answer was, it neither shook the poor woman's humility, nor overcame her patience. She meekly answered, Truth, Lord; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table. As if she had said, "Let me enjoy that kindness which the dogs of any family are not denied; from the abundance of cures which thou bestowest on the Jews, drop this one to me, who am a poor distressed heathen: for they will suffer no greater loss by it, than the children of a family do by the crumbs which are cast to the dogs."

Our Blessed Lord having thus put the woman's faith to the most severe trial, and being convinced that she possessed a just idea of his power and goodness, as well as of her own unworthiness, wrought with pleasure the cure she solicited in behalf of her daughter; and, at the same time, gave her faith the praises it so justly merited. O woman! (said he) great is thy faith, be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

After performing this miracle, our Lord left the coast of Sidon, and proceeded eastward towards Decapolis, in his way to which he cured a poor man who was both deaf and dumb, by only touching his tongue, and putting two of his fingers into his ears. The fame of this miracle was spread through every part of the country; and therefore, to avoid the prodigious crowds of people that gathered to

gether in consequence thereof, our Lord retired to a desert mountain near the Sea of Galilee. But the solitary retreats of the wilderness were unable to conceal this beneficent Saviour of the human race. The people soon discovered his retreat, and brought to him from all quarters the sick, the lame, the dumb, the blind, and the maimed; all of whom he graciously relieved from their respective complaints, to the great astonishment of the surrounding spectators. The multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see; and they glorified the God of Israel.

The various works performed by the Blessed Redeemer detained the multitude in the desert with him three days, during which time they consumed all the provisions they had brought into this solitary place. But Jesus would not send them away fasting, lest any who had followed him so far from their habitations should faint in their return home. Accordingly he again exerted his Almighty power, by miraculously feeding the whole multitude, which amounted to four thousand men (besides women and children) with only seven loaves, and a few small fishes.

After our Lord had thus miraculously fed the people, he dismissed them, and went, with his disciples, into a district called Dalmanutha, a part of the territories of Magdala. Here he was visited by many Pharisees and Sadducees, who having heard that he had a second time fed the multitude in a miraculous manner, were fearful that the common people would acknowledge him for the Messiah; and therefore determined openly and publicly to endeavor to confute his pretensions to that character. To effect this they boldly demanded of him a sign from heaven, whereby they might be convinced that he was the true and long promised Messiah.

If the minds of these obstinate people had been open to conviction, the proofs which our Lord was daily giving them would have been more than sufficient to have established the truth of his mission. But they were not desirous of being convinced; and to that alone, and not to want of evidence, or of capacity in themselves, it was

owing, that they refused to acknowledge our Saviour to be the person foretold by the prophets. Their disposition was absolutely incorrigible; which made our Lord declare that the sign they sought should never be given them, and that the only sign they were to expect was, that of the prophet Jonas, or the miracle of his own resurrection: a sign, indeed, much greater than any shewn by the ancient prophets, and consequently a sign which demonstrated that Jesus was far superior to them all. A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given unto it; but the sign of the prophet Jonas.

After our Lord had reproved the impertinent curiosity of the Pharisees and Sadducees, he embarked with his disciples on board a ship, intending to go to Bethsaida. His disciples, in the hurry of their departure, had forgot to take bread with them; and therefore, when our Lord, on the passage, cautioned them to take care of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, they took the meaning of his words in a literal sense, and imagined he meant they should not purchase bread of those heathenish people. Upon this our Lord first gently reproved them for the blindness of their understandings and the shortness of their memories, in having so soon forgotten his miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes at two different times; and then gave them to understand that his words did not concern the leaven of bread, but the corrupt doctrines of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

As soon as our Blessed Lord landed at Bethsaida, the people brought unto him a blind man, earnestly requesting that he would be pleased to restore him to sight. The inhabitants of this city had, by their perverseness and infidelity, so offended our Lord, that when they presented this man to him for cure, he would not do it in the city in sight of the multitude; but, taking him out at the gate, he anointed his eyes with spittle, and then laid his hands on them. The man, at first, saw objects indistinctly, men like trees walking; but when our Lord laid his hands on him the second time, his sight was perfectly restored, and he saw every man clearly.

From Bethsaida our Lord retired into the territories of Cæsarea Philippi,* where being inclined to make some trial of his apostles faith and proficiency, he asked them this question: Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? To which they replied, Some say, that thou art John the Baptist: some Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. The people in general mistook the character of our Saviour, because he did not assume that outward pomp and grandeur with which they supposed the Messiah would be adorned. Our Lord was therefore desirous of knowing what idea his disciples formed of his character, as they had long enjoyed the benefit of his doctrine and miracles. He accordingly asked, What they themselves understood him to be? To which Simon Peter (in the name of the rest) replied, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. This confession our Lord not only allowed to be true, and what was confirmed by the attestation of God himself, but, in allusion to Peter's name (which signifies a rock) promised that he should have a principal hand in establishing his kingdom; and that the Christian church should be erected on his labors, as on a solid foundation, never to be destroyed. "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and "upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates "of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give "unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven;† and

* This city was situated near the head of the river Jordan, and was, by the Canaanites, called Laish; but, being taken by some of the Danites, it was by them called Dan. Augustus Cæsar gave it (together with all the territories belonging to it) to Herod the Great. He, after rebuilding the place, gave it, (with the tetrarchy of Ituræa and Trachonitis to which it adjoined) to his youngest son Philip, who, when he had enlarged and beautified it, so as to make it the capital of his dominions, and chief place of his residence, gave it the name of Cæsarea Philippi, partly to compliment Tiberius Cæsar, who was then emperor; partly to preserve the memory of his own name; and partly, to distinguish it from another Cæsarea (mentioned in Acts x. 1.) situated on the Mediterranean, and which was built by his father in honor of his great benefactor Augustus Cæsar.

† Peter is here to be considered as one who acted in the name of all the rest of the disciples; and when Christ says, I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, he means no more, than that all

"whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in "heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall "be loosed in heaven."

After delegating this power to Peter, our Lord strictly forbade all his disciples to tell any man that he was the Messiah; because it had been decreed, in the courts of heaven, that he should be rejected by the rulers of Jerusalem as a false Christ, and should suffer the pains of death; circumstances which (if generally known) could not fail of giving his followers great offence, as they did not yet understand the true nature of his kingdom.

The heavenly discourses which the apostles had repeatedly heard from their Divine Master had, no doubt, filled their minds with the most lofty imaginations; and therefore our Lord thought proper to acquaint them with the sufferings he was to undergo, in order to check any fond expectations they might entertain of temporal power. But this was a subject very disagreeable to the ears of Peter, who giving intimation thereof, our Lord sharply rebuked him, and then told him and his fellow apostles, that all who intended to share with him in the glory of the heavenly Canaan, must deny themselves; that is, they must be always ready to renounce every worldly pleasure, and even life itself, when the cause of religion required it. He also told them, that in this life they must expect to meet with troubles, and disappointments, and that whoever intended to be his disciple, must take up his cross daily and follow him.

In order to add to the weight of this argument, and enforce the necessity of self-denial, our Lord told his disciples that a day was fixed for distributing rewards and punishments to all the human race; that he himself was appointed by the Father as universal judge; so that his enemies could not flatter themselves with the hope of escaping the punishments they deserved, nor his friends be afraid of losing their eternal reward. He farther told them, that he should not appear to judge the world in his low and despised condition, but magnificently arrayed

those who followed his example should, in the end, reap the advantages arising from such virtuous and pious conduct.