Preaching the gospel of the kingdom. — As far as regards St. Matthew this is the first occurrence of the phrase. It tells of a vast amount of unrecorded teaching, varying in form, yet essentially the same — a call to repentance — the good news of a kingdom of heaven not far off — the witness, by act for the most part rather than words, that He was Himself the Head of that kingdom.
Healing all manner of sickness. — In the Greek, as in the English, sickness implies a less serious form of suffering than “disease,” as the “torments” of the next verse imply, in their turn, something more acute. St. Matthew’s first mention of our Lord’s miracles cannot be read without interest. It will be seen that they are referred to, not directly as evidence of a supernatural mission, but almost, so to speak, as the natural accompaniments of His work; signs, not of power only or chiefly, but of the love, tenderness, pity, which were the true marks or “notes” of the kingdom of heaven. Restoration to outward health was at once the pledge that the Son of Man had not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them, and often, we cannot doubt, served to strengthen that faith in the love of the Father, some degree of which was all but invariably required as an antecedent condition of the miracle (Matthew 13:58).