SERMON XXXVIII.

The woman was a Greek, a Syrophonician by nation.-MARK vii. 26.

THESE words describe what was most remarkable in the character of a woman, a Canaanite by birth, an idolatress by education, who implored our Lord's miraculous assistance in behalf of her young daughter tormented with an evil spirit. In my last Discourse, the lessons to be drawn from this character of the woman, and from the manner in which her petition was preferred, were distinctly pointed out. I come now to consider, still with a view to practical inferences, the manner in which on our Lord's part the petition was received.

In the lovely character of the blessed Jesus, there was not a more striking feature than a certain sentimental tenderness, which disposed him to take a part in every one's affliction to which he chanced to be a witness, and to be ready to afford it a miraculous relief. He was apt to be particularly touched by instances of domestic distress; in which the suffering arises from those feelings of friendship, growing out of natural affection and habitual endearment, which constitute the perfection of man as a social creature, and distinguish the society of the human kind from the instinctive herdings of the lower animals. When at the gate of Nain he met the sad procession of a young man's funeral-a poor widow, accompanied by her sympathizing neighbours, conveying to the grave the remains of an only son, suddenly snatched from her by disease in the flower of his age-the tenderness of his temper appeared, not only in what he did, but in the kind and ready manner of his doing it. He scrupled not to avow how much he was affected by the dismal scene:> he addressed words of comfort to the weeping mother: unasked, upon the pure motion of his own compassion,

he went up and touched the bier; he commanded the spirit to return to its deserted mansion, and restored to the widow the support and comfort of her age.

The object now before him might have moved a heart less sensible than his. A miserable mother, in the highest agony of grief, perhaps a widow, for no husband appeared to take a part in the business,-implores his compassion for her daughter, visited with the most dreadful malady to which the frail frame of sinful man was ever liable---possession. In this reasoning age we are little agreed about the cause of the disorder to which this name belongs. If we may be guided by the letter of holy writ, it was a tyranny of hellish fiends over the imagination and the sensory of the patient. For my own part, I find no great difficulty of believing that this was really the case. I hold those philosophizing believers but weak in faith, and not strong in reason, who measure the probabilities of past events by the experience of the present age, in opposition to the evidence of the historians of the times. I am inclined to think that the power of the infernal spirits over the bodies as well as the minds of men suffered a capital abridgment, an earnest of the final putting down of Satan to be trampled under foot of men, when the Son of God had achieved his great undertaking: that before that event, men were subject to a sensible tyranny of the hellish crew, from which they have been ever since emancipated. As much as this seems to be implied in that remarkable saying of our Lord, when the seventy returned to him expressing their joy that they had found the devils subject to themselves through his name. said unto them---" I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." Our Lord saw him fall from the heaven of his power: what wonder then that the effects should no longer be perceived of a power which he hath lost? Upon these general principles, without any particular inquiry into the subject, I am contented to rest, and exhort you all to rest, in the belief which in the primitive church was

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universal, that possession really was what the name imports. Be that as it may, whatever the disorder was, its effects are undisputed,---a complication of epilepsy and madness, sometimes accompanied with a paralytic affection of one or more of the organs of the senses; the madness, in the worst cases, of the frantic and mischievous kind.

Such was the malady in which our Lord's assistance was implored. The compassion of the case was heightened by the tender age of the miserable patient. St. Mark calls her the "young daughter" of the unhappy suppliant; an expression which indicates that she had just attained that engaging season when a winning sprightliness takes place of the insipid state of puling infancy, and the innocence of childhood is not yet corrupted by the ill example, nor its good humour ruffled by the ill usage, of the world. It might have been expected, that the slightest representation of this dismal case would have worked upon the feelings of our compassionate Lord, and that the merciful sentence would immediately have issued from his lips which should have compelled the trembling fiend to release his captive: but, strange to tell! he made as if he were unmoved by the dismal story; and, regardless of the wretched mother's cries, "he answered her not a word."

It is certain that the most benevolent of men are not equally inclined at all seasons to give attention to a stranger's concerns, or to be touched with the recital of a stranger's distress. A suppliant to our charity, whose case deserves attention, sometimes meets with a cool or with a rough reception, because he applies in an unlucky moment. Since our Lord was made like unto his brethren, may something analogous to this fretfulness, which more or less is incident to the very best of men, be supposed in him, to account for the singularity of his conduct in this instance? Were his spirits exhausted by the fatigue of a long journey made afoot? Was his mind ruffled by his late

contentions with the captious Pharisees? Was he wearied out by the frequency of petitions for his miraculous assistance? Was he disgusted with the degeneracy of mankind in general, and with the hardened incredulity of his own nation? Was his benevolence, in short, for the moment laid asleep, by a fit of temporary peevishness?-God forbid that any here should harbour the injurious, the impious suspicion; a suspicion which even the Socinians (not to charge them wrongfully) have not yet avowed, however easily it might be reconciled with their opinions. The Redeemer, though in all things like unto his brethren, was without sin; the fretfulness which is apt to be excited by external circumstances, whatever excuses particular occasions may afford, is always in some degree sinful. Benignity was the fixed and inbred habit of his holy mind; a principle not to be overcome in him, as in the most perfect of the sons of Adam, by the cross incidents of life. We must seek the motives of his present conduct in some other source-not in any accidental sourness of the moment.

This was the first instance in which his aid had been invoked by a person neither by birth an Israelite nor by profession a worshipper of the God of Israel. The miracle which he was presently to work for the relief and at the request of his heathen suppliant was to be an action of no small importance. It was nothing less than a prelude to the disclosure of the great mystery which had been hidden for ages, and was not openly to be revealed before Christ's ascension,-that through him the gate of mercy was opened to the Gentiles. When an action was about to be done significant of so momentous a truth, it was expedient that the attention of all who stood by should be drawn to the thing by something singular and striking in the manner of the doing of it. It was expedient that the manner of the doing of it should be such as might save the honour of the Jewish dispensation, that it should mark the consistency of the old dispensation with the

new, by circumstances which should imply, that the principle upon which mankind in general were at last received to mercy was the very same upon which the single family of the Israelites had been originally taken into favour,— namely, that mankind in general, by the light of the gospel revelation, were at last brought to a capacity at least of that righteousness of faith which was the thing so valued in Abraham that it rendered him the friend of God, and procured him the visible and lasting reward of special blessings on his posterity. It was fit that she who was chosen to be the first example of mercy extended to a heathen should be put to some previous trial; that she might give proof of that heroic faith which acts with an increased vigour under the pressure of discouragement, and show herself in some sort worthy of so high a preference. The coldness therefore with which her petition was at first received was analogous to the afflictions and disappointments with which the best servants of God are often exercised; which are intended to call forth their virtue here and heighten their reward hereafter. It is one of the many instances preserved in holy writ, which teach the useful lesson of entire resignation to the will of God under protracted affliction and accumulated disappointments,-upon this principle, that good men are never more in the favour and immediate care of God, than when, in the judgment of the giddy world, they seem the most forgotten and forsaken by him.

Our Lord's attendants, touched with the distress of the case---penetrated by the woman's cries---perhaps ashamed that such an object should be openly treated with neglect, for what had hitherto passed was upon the public roadand little entering into the motives of our Lord's conduct, took upon them to be her advocates. "They besought him, saying, Send her away, for she crieth after us.' Send her away, that is, grant her petition, and give her her dismissal. That must have been their meaning: for