LIFE FROM THE DEAD
‘There was a dead man carried out.’
Let us fix our thoughts on some of the salient details and teachings of this instructive narrative.
I. Jesus Christ was there.—So far as we know it was His only visit to Nain. He knew what had happened and what He would do. All is designed and arranged beforehand. There is no chance. All is ordered as then, now, and always, here and everywhere, according to the same good will and unerring wisdom.
II. Then note the sympathy.—This word ‘compassion’ is one of the keynotes of the record of the Saviour’s life. Again and again it is told of Him. The sight of any kind of suffering or of trouble at once aroused the feeling. The widowed mother speaks no word. She offers no petition. Perhaps she has never so much as heard of the Prophet of Nazareth. But there is a silent eloquence in her tears that speaks to the soul of the Man Christ Jesus. A true compassion is always anxious without solicitation to soothe and to relieve. It may be that only a word can be spoken. But the simple word, coming from an ‘honest and good heart,’ is apt to go to the heart. But the Lord Jesus in softly saying ‘Weep not,’ is here engaged in part of the work He came to fulfil. The promised Messiah was to bind up the brokenhearted.
III. Then came the word of majesty and might—‘Arise!’—There is a rising up of the prostrate form. There must have been at first a bewildered look of blank astonishment. Then there is heard the well-known voice of the living man. The words are audible to the bearers of the bier, and to the amazed mother. The crowd presses on and gathers round in reverent awe.
IV. The reunion.—Think of the inexpressible joy of that first renewed embrace between mother and son. He who had originally given him gives him back to her once again. He Himself had the blessed experience of a mother’s love, and was to know when ‘the hour was come’ what it was for an only son to part from a beloved mother and she a widow, and that upon a cross. May we not venture to see in this tender act a dim forecast of that time of happy reunions when the dear ones, now for a time lost to one another, shall be given back to one another.
Rev. Canon Austen.
Illustration
‘Observe carefully a difference between the wording of the Old and of the Revised Version. It is not without significance. The former reads, “there was a dead man carried out,” the latter, “there was carried out one that was dead.” Notice the distinction, not a “dead man,” but “one dead.” Strictly speaking, a dead man is a contradiction in terms. A man cannot in a true and perfect and absolute sense “die.” A man has body, soul, and spirit. His body may and does die. But not his soul, still less his spirit. Therefore only part of the man dies, not the man himself, in all that is implied in manhood. The New Version uses the indeterminate indefinite word “one.” What does it indicate? Not a mass of matter, not a neuter object, but a being that had life apart from all else and a something that happened to a part of that being, a something which we call “death.” This is a significant difference. It points to a condition which we do not altogether understand, and which it is therefore hard to describe with accuracy. The truth is our present resources fail us when we try to set death before us. We are face to face with a mystery which partly baffles us. So our thoughts and our words become confused.’