CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 7:24. Tyre and Sidon.—Great commercial cities in Phœnicia. Tyre is mentioned in 2 Samuel 5:11; 1 Kings 9:11-14; 1 Kings 10:22; 1 Kings 16:31: Sidon in Genesis 10:19; Joshua 11:8; Judges 1:31. Apparently Christ did not actually go into Phœnicia, but into the adjacent district, belonging to the tribe of Asher. See R. V.
Mark 7:26. Syrophœnician.—So called by way of distinction from the Libyophœnicians of Africa, the Carthaginians.
Mark 7:27. Dogs.—A diminutive, indicating the household pets.
Mark 7:28. Crumbs.—Another diminutive. Wondrous humility!
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 7:24-30
(PARALLEL: Matthew 15:21-28.)
The Syrophœnician woman.—What a powerful principle faith is, and how great its success, we have a striking example here. It shews itself to be of Divine original, and that there is no discouragement which it will not overcome.
I. The excellence of this woman’s faith—
1. The disadvantages under which she laboured. She was a Syrophœnician, an alien to the commonwealth of Israel, and had been born and educated amongst idolaters. It discovered great liberality of mind in her to acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth and to apply to Him for a cure. She had got over the prejudices of her education and country, and entertained the grandest apprehensions of His ability; nay, she acknowledged Him as the true Messiah, the Son of David, and presented her petition to Him in that character. This shews how sovereign and free the grace of God is, and that it is not confined to any one nation under heaven! This Divine seed is sometimes sowed in a seemingly neglected soil, and carefully cultivated by the Heavenly Husbandman, to teach us that He can plant it anywhere and bring it to great perfection. It is not where He taketh the greatest pains that He receiveth the largest returns, but where the children of men are diligent in improving the advantages they enjoy.
2. The severe trial to which it was put. Our Lord knew well what virtue was in her, for He was the author of it; and He proved it, for His own honour and her consolation. He concealed His regard under the appearance of displeasure. One would have thought that, when she first applied to Him, He would have taken some notice of her, and have given her a hearty welcome; she was a stranger, and who would not be kind to strangers? Yet we are told He answered her not a word. This was so unlike His common manner, which was all condescension and sympathy, that the disciples were surprised at it, and interceded in her behalf. This application of the disciples probably encouraged the poor woman, and her heart would bless them for it. But it drew from Christ a reply more forbidding than His silence, and which plainly indicated that she had no reason to expect any favour from Him. “I am not sent save to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” What a disheartening reply was this! Was it not enough to drive her to despair? Methinks we may suppose her reasoning thus with herself: “What an unhappy creature am I, to be born a Greek, and consequently to be excluded from the mercy of Jesus of Nazareth! Can it be that His heart is so contracted as to be confined to the house of Jacob, and must all the rest of mankind perish? I will not, I cannot entertain so mean an opinion of Him; I will go and prostrate myself at His feet, and implore His compassion; if He will not hear me, I can be no worse; but perhaps His bowels may be moved, and He will vouchsafe me His blessing.” Could anything be more melting than an address of this nature? Yet our Lord resisted, and would not be importuned; He told her the great impropriety, nay, the injustice, of complying with her petition: “For that He would not starve the children to feed the dogs.” One would think that an epithet of this nature would have roused her pride and inflamed her anger. But she had a better spirit, and had learned humility. “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the children’s crumbs.” I confess I am no better than a dog; but may I not have the portion of a dog? The argument was irresistible. The compassionate Jesus felt the force of it, and yielded immediately.
3. The greatness of the reward conferred upon it. There is no grace which our Lord hath distinguished with such marks of approbation as faith, because there is none which confers such honour upon Himself.
II. Why our Lord delays granting those petitions which are pleasing to Him, and which He is determined to grant.—
1. To make us prize the blessings He hath already bestowed. Mankind, in general, put a much greater value upon something which they want than upon all that they possess. Nay, such is the perversion of our natures, that we will not allow ourselves to enjoy the blessings which Providence hath conferred upon us, but torture ourselves in seeking after what it hath denied. Ought not so perverse and unreasonable a disposition to receive a severe check? May not God justly contract His hand, and restrain His bounty, when we prove insensible to His former beneficence?
2. To teach us patience and submission. In the pride of our hearts we are apt to think ourselves neglected, if we do not receive a speedy answer to our prayers; hence sullenness and discontent are ready to spring up in our minds, and we are apt to accuse Him of coldness and disaffection. But are these becoming dispositions in dependent, guilty, necessitous creatures? Is it not our duty to wait with patience the event of the Divine counsel, and to acquiesce cheerfully in its proceedings? Is it not more for the honour of God, and for our own interest, that His will be obeyed, and the purposes of His providence accomplished, than that we should immediately obtain what we ask? I acknowledge that chastisement is unpleasant and cross to corrupt nature; but is not corrupt nature what we wish to have subdued? Must not our Father in heaven use the most effectual means for extinguishing it?
3. To make us more fervent and importunate. Do not our prayers too often resemble rain in the time of frost, which freezes before it reaches the ground? A cold petitioner in some measure begs a denial. We provoke the Almighty to detain us at His throne, or to send us empty away, to arouse us from our lethargy, and to excite in us greater fervour.
4. That we may be examples to others of faith and patience. Who would grudge to be held a little longer in doubt, if to be the means of exciting in some humble fellow-Christian a holy boldness and patient perseverance? Is it not enough to satisfy us that “in due season we shall reap, if we faint not”? Therefore let us go with boldness to a throne of grace, that we may find mercy and grace to help us in every time of need.
Lessons.—
1. The great advantage of affliction. It was the distress of this poor woman’s family which brought her to Jesus, and she had reason to be thankful for it all her life. When adversity hath this happy effect, we should make it welcome, and kiss the hand which dispenseth it.
2. Though this poor woman’s faith was very urgent, it was not presumptuous. Oh that all of us may be actuated with a similar spirit! It is to be regretted that there are some so full of themselves, and have so high an opinion of their own importance, that in their addresses to God they resemble creditors who have a demand to make upon Him, rather than debtors who owe Him every obligation.
3. Genuine Christians need not be discouraged, though an immediate return is not given to their prayers. God may treasure up their petitions, as He does their tears, in a bottle, reserving the answer to some future occasion. Let me add, that we sometimes blame our Father in heaven unjustly, and may actually receive a blessing without knowing it. It is one thing to obtain a favour, and another to have a lively sense of it. God frequently dispenseth His richest gifts whilst He conceals the hand which bestoweth them. May He graciously condescend to hear our prayers and send us an answer of peace!—D. Johnston, D.D.
The Canaanitish mother.—In all the parts of this narrative we may read that which concerns ourselves most closely. For what else are our lives, with all their varying accidents and issues, than, as it were, the shadows cast forward into all time by these dealings of the Son of God with man whilst He stood amongst us in the flesh? Have we not each one our own burden? Whether it be some outward or some inward trial; some family sorrow or some heartache; the secret wasting of some spirit-wound, some pang of conscience, or some besetting temptation; or whether it be the world’s hollowness and the thirst of the soul for truth,—have we not each our need of Him amid evils of which He can be the only Healer? And further: do not characters now divide off and part asunder even as they did then? Are there not those who, like the Jews, know not the office of this Healer; who hear all His words, and see all His signs, and languidly let Him pass, or angrily murmur at Him or blasphemously drive Him from them; from whom He passes, even to the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, to pour on others the blessing they refuse? But then there are also those who do seek Him with their whole heart,—opening to Him their hidden affliction; bearing seeming refusals in the strength of faith and the patience of an unfeigned humility; and still looking for crumbs, if they may not eat the children’s bread; daring to hope against hope; ready to take up with any portion He shall give them; and waiting still on Him, because they cannot turn to any other.
I. There is the lesson taught us by the Jews, that He does pass away from those who will not stay Him with them; that He goes on and heals others; and that they die unhealed, because they knew not “the time of their visitation.” And the root of this evil is here pointed out to us: it is a want of faith, and, from this, a lack of the power of spiritual discernment.
II. But there is also here the lesson of the woman of Canaan; and this has many aspects, of which the first, perhaps, is this, that by every mark and token which the stricken soul can read He to whom she sought is the only Healer of humanity, the true portion and rest of every heart,—that He would teach us this by all the discipline of outward things; that the ties of family life are meant thus to train up our weak affections till they are fitted to lay hold on Him; that the eddies and sorrows of life are meant to sweep us from its flowery banks, that in its deep strong currents we may cry to Him.
III. And, once more, there is this further lesson, that He will most surely be found by those who do seek after Him. And this is taught us here, not by a mere general assurance that we shall be heard, but in a way which enters far more practically into those difficulties with which every one who has striven to pray earnestly finds earnest prayer beset. For here we see why it often happens that really earnest and sincere men seem, for a time at least, to pray in vain—why their “Lord, help me!” is not answered by a word. He has a double purpose herein: He would bless by it both us and all His Church. 1. How could His Church have been taught always to pray, and not to faint, better than by such a narrative as this?
2. For ourselves, too, there is a special mercy in these long-delayed blessings. For it is only by degrees that the work within us can be perfected; it is only by steps, small and almost imperceptible as we are taking them, yet one by one leading us to unknown heights, that we can mount up to the golden gate before us. Much are we taught by these delayed answers to our prayers. By them the treasure of our hearts is cleared from dross, as in the furnace-heat; our earthly will is purified and bowed; the passionate fervency of unchastened prayer is deepened into the strong breath of humble supplication; patience has her perfect work; we are kept looking up to Christ; and by His grace, even as we hang upon Him, we grow like unto Him; we dwell in Him, and He in us.—Bishop S. Wilberforce.
Christ’s mercy.—The unusual conduct of our Lord, as seen in this story, has been often attributed to an intention of calling into full consciousness the faith which He knew to exist in the woman’s heart, and thus at once to deepen it in Himself, and to elicit an example which should serve, as it has served, for the instruction and support of all Christian souls. But, without excluding this consideration, there are some circumstances in the case which seem to give a more obvious explanation of the first motive of our Lord’s conduct, and may give the story a still closer application to ourselves.
I. The people had just been raised to the highest point of enthusiasm for Christ, and, as a double consequence, His disciples were ready to make Him a king by force, and the Pharisaic party were moving into active hostility. On account of this twofold excitement, then, He withdrew into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. He was therefore specially concerned to abstain from using His miraculous powers; and had He at once healed the woman’s daughter, the purpose of His retirement might have been at once frustrated.
II. But there is a further consideration which shews that His repellent answers were more than formal excuses.—“I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” That was a definite principle of His ministry. Consequently when this woman appealed to Him, she was asking Him to depart from an important principle of His ordinary conduct. His ministry was governed by certain laws which had been determined for purposes of the highest import, and it was no easy matter for Him to depart from them.
III. This aspect of the narrative adds a great attraction and force to the bearing of the story upon ourselves.—We too are living under certain definite laws of God; and if we transgress them, then under all ordinary circumstances we must expect the consequences, and we make a grievous mistake in appealing lightly to the mercy of God. Doubtless His mercy is infinite; but so are His truth and justice, and His determination to uphold the laws He has laid down. Our Lord longed to help the woman, but it was hard for Him to infringe the rule which He had laid down for His own guidance.
IV. Thus our Lord’s conduct is first a warning.—It illustrates what must often be the feeling of God towards us when we have violated our covenant with Him, and expect Him to have pity on us simply because of the misery we have brought upon ourselves.
V. But the example of this woman is also given for infinite encouragement.—By the side of these rules of His ordinary government there is ever present a higher principle or a higher law—that of the response of perfect love to genuine and entire faith.—H. Wace, D.D.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 7:24. Christ’s departure from Galilee.—Take warning from Christ’s departure from the active ministry in Galilee. His own rejected Him. They were deeply moved; conscience told them to yield their hearts to Him in meek obedience, and they would not. So He left them. Christ is near each one of us, far nearer to us than He was to those scribes and Pharisees; He demands, therefore, more of us than He did of them; and if we will not give Him our hearts, He will leave us to our worst enemy—our own miserable selves.
Jesus in Phœnicia.—To the Jerusalem Jews this north-land was a sink of idolatry. Even the Galileans spoke of their frontagers as “dogs,” “heathen,” “unclean,” “outcasts.” Uncircumcised aliens, left unextirpated by Joshua and his conquering soldiers, were these Gentiles. Out of this ill-omened quarter had come Ethbaal and Jezebel, and the priests of Astarte, border-ruffians in the age of the judges, and the raiders who in the days of the kings had desolated Israel. Apparently only twice was Syrian contact wholesome to the Holy Land and people. These were when Hiram the king and Hiram the architect, with Phœnician timber and Phœnician art, contributed to the glory of Solomon’s Temple, and again when Elisha won trophies of grace in Naaman and his company. Except one or two bright lines of association, the whole spectrum of memory was that of darkness. Added to all else was the thought of Phœnicia, the slave-land to which Judah’s children had been sold in the days of Joel.
Christ not hidden from the seeking soul.—It is easy to hide Christ from those who do not want Him. But the heart which feels its need of Christ, and cannot do without Him, will find Him wherever He is hidden.
Mark 7:25-30. Persistent effort is not in itself true faith, but it always accompanies true faith. Thunder never split the heart of the oak tree, but it always accompanies the lightning’s flash, and tells to all about of the lightning’s presence. The farmer does not shew his faith by lying in his bed and waiting for God to plough and harrow his field and sow his seed. He ploughs and harrows and sows, and shews his faith in then waiting for God to give the increase. God’s winds are always blowing; the man of faith spreads his sail before God can fill it. Does not this story shew—
1. That the Lord is humane enough, tender enough, to satisfy all mankind.
2. That even if He seems silent at first, and does not grant our prayers, yet still He may be keeping us waiting only that He may be gracious to us at last.
3. That He can feel for mothers and with mothers; that He actually allowed Himself to be won over—if such a word may be used reverently—by the wit and grace of a mother pleading for a child.—C. Kingsley.
Lessons.—
1. Any trouble, however grievous, is a blessing, if it brings us to seek Christ and His help.
2. There are none who may not come to Christ for help.
3. No true blessing is too great for Christ to grant.
4. Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.—J. R. Bailey.
Christ’s dealings with His people.—
1. Remember how various are the dealings of the Lord with His people who pray to Him, answering at once with some, answering after long delay with others, and not answering at all with a third class.
2. Examine into the causes of delay so far as we can, or of failure in prayer. Is it that we ask for what is contrary to His will and providence, and not that His will be fulfilled? Is it that we seek temporal things first, and not spiritual—not “first the kingdom of God”? Is it that we are| indulging some known sin, and so our prayers are not acceptable? Or is it that we have not the dispositions which the heathen mother had—of faith and fervour, of lowliness and perseverance?
3. Let us imitate her, and wait upon God until He is gracious to us. Take especially her perseverance in prayer, and copy it. “Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Let delay enlarge the desire of the soul. Ward off impatience and despair. “The kingdom of God suffereth violence; and the violent take it by force.” Let us struggle on till we gain the grace we are seeking, and say, with the patriarch of old, “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me.”—W. H. Hutchings.
Bringing others to Christ.—This case is one out of a multitude in which the immediate sufferer is brought to Christ not by his own prayer, but by the prayer of others. Have you ever seen anything like this in the symptoms of this raging pestilence of sin? Have you ever known the patient fascinated by its illusions, or crazed with its mad delirium, or hardened into apathetić indifference, or inactive in the helpless torpor of despair, so that if anything is to be done in his behalf, it must needs be done by others? And do you find no encouragement, in such stories as this, to believe that those who seem to be past the power of praying for themselves may be taken up in the arms of natural affection and brought to where the Lord may lay His hands upon them and heal them? Each bond of social influence, each tie of natural affection, may be a means that God shall use to bring them within the circle of the attractions of the Cross, “drawing them with the cords of love, with the bands of a man.” Oh, doubly blessed such an affliction which brings to Christ not one alone but two—preparing the sufferer to receive the grace, and teaching the sympathiser how to pray for it!—L. W. Bacon.
Prayer for others.—It is said truly, that necessity makes a man pray for himself, but charity for another; and in charity the rule is good, the nearer the dearer: and therefore, seeing our children next unto ourselves, and our wives our other selves, are nearest unto us, it is good reason we should wish them all good, especially that they may be dispossessed of the devil.—Dean Boys.
Mark 7:27. Christ’s reluctance to depart from His plan of work.—Jesus’ work was proceeding in a certain method. He could depart from that method, but He must depart for a reason. When a departure was suggested, the first thing that came up to Him was the great law and purpose of His life. It was only when the reason became very strong that He was willing to depart. It would seem that there was a necessity for adhering to the ordinary course of His work, yet not an absolute but a relative necessity, which could be surpassed, but had first to be moved aside by reason.—Bishop Phillips Brooks.
Words with tender tone.—Hard words. Yes: but all depends on how they were spoken—on Christ’s look, and the tone of His voice. Did He speak with a frown, or with something like a smile? There must have been some tenderness, meaningness, pity, in His voice which the quick woman’s wit caught instantly, and the quick mother’s heart interpreted as a sign of hope.—G. Kingsley.
Mark 7:28. This verse contains three important principles for our guidance in the spiritual life.
1. Agree with the Lord, no matter what He says. “Yes, Lord.”
2. Think of another truth, and urge it with Him as a plea. “Yet.”
3. Whatever happens, have faith in the Lord, and possess thy soul in patience. His dealings may be inscrutable, but the foundation of them all is love.
Encouragement from a severe word.—Instead of “Yes, Lord: yet,” the R. V. gives “Yea, Lord: even”; and the more exact rendering brings to light a valuable truth. The old translation, it has been truly said, expresses the way in which our mind too generally looks at things. We fancy that we set one truth over against another, whereas all truths are agreed, and cannot be in conflict. Out of the very truth which looks darkest we may gain consolation. This woman did not draw comfort from another truth which seemed to neutralise the first; but as the bee sucks honey from the nettle, so did she gather encouragement from the severe word of the Lord: “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.” She said, “That is true, Lord, for even the dogs eat of the children’s crumbs.” She had not to turn what Christ said upside-down; she took it as it stood, and spied out comfort in it.
Are we pleading the better covenant?—This woman had God’s old covenant against her; we have His new and better covenant on our side. Are we pleading it with anything like the earnestness she shewed? Do we pray for others with such pertinacity and importunity?
Reading between the lines.—Like a skilful musician, she caught the strain and finished the strophe. To the Jewish ear the Master had begun to tell the parable of elect and reprobate, covenant and aliens, of the home and the outcasts, of the children and the curs. She, with faith’s power and in the light of that eye, read between the lines the tiny parable of the children and their pets, even the parable of humanity and its Saviour. Her gentleness made her great; her trust made her mighty. No longer Canaanitish or Syrophœnician, she is for ever in sacred story as the woman great of faith, on whose will was laid answer to prayer from the Holy One of God.
In the love of God there is ample room, if only men will enter in at the right door, and pursue it in the lawful way. What Esau imputed to an earthly father, when he said, “Bless me, even me also, O my father,” the same fulness of bounty do the hearts of “such as shall be saved” impute to their Heavenly Father, and to His express image, Jesus Christ.” And so did this woman’s heart impute it to Him, when she replied, “Truth, Lord,” etc. It is clear she caught glimpses, at least, of the true and living God, who “giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not.” It is clear she had a lively notion what kind of “Master” God was. She had also a notion of the necessities and dependence of man upon God. What she calls “the master’s table” is, in the enlarged application of the parable, the common order of Providence. She herein silently acknowledges, at the same time, the justice of God in giving different gifts to men,—to some abundance, whether of wealth or health; to others poverty and sickness. She does not dispute the order of Providence, but acquiesces in it.
Mark 7:29. Perseverance rewarded.—There is no withheld mercy that the soul requires which is not waiting simply for the opportunity to abandon itself in the utter bestowal of its grace upon the needy soul. Persevere, even if you have pleaded for years and seemed to get no entrance into the ear of God. The man, wrestling with the burden of this life and finding it too heavy, who by-and-by kills himself because he thinks there is no salvation at the hands of God, how cowardly his conduct is, and how poor it is, beside the impetuous faith with which this poor woman wrestles with the stone athwart the torrent of the mercy of her God, until by-and-by it is turned away and the torrent pours itself into the help of her need!—Bishop Phillips Brooks.
The limitations of mercy.—All through the record of mercies and the miracles of Jesus there runs a certain subtle tone which puzzles us. I seem to hear, as I read, the sound of a great sea of might and mercy shut in behind necessities which it cannot disobey; I seem to hear it clamouring to escape and give itself away along long stretches of the wall which shuts it in; and then I seem to see it bursting forth rejoicingly where some great gate is flung wide open, and it may go forth unhindered to its work of blessing. So seems to me the story of the power and love of Jesus held fast under the conditions of the faith of men.—Ibid.
The outside and inside healing.—The child was healed; but no more than the mother. The demon was cast out of the child; but no more than it was out of the mother. The child was brought back to the mother. Yes, and the mother was brought back to God. It was a double miracle that was performed. There was an inside one and an outside one; and the inside one was the more resplendent and glorious. God’s mercies are to be counted not on the outside, but on the inside. If they make you selfish, and hard-hearted, and unsympathetic, and you grow close, and you separate yourself from your fellow-men, and you are ungodlike in the proportion in which you are prospered, woe be unto you! If God’s external mercies make you better, they are tolerable. If God’s chastisements make you better, thank God for them. Those unfeeling words, that cold look, and that indifferent way of Christ—what a gush of feeling they brought out from this woman’s soul! That pushing away—how it brought the pleading hands out, as it were! how it caused every tendril and fibre of her heart to clasp and cling to the Saviour, and made her refuse to let Him go! It was out of the apparent winter of His face that her summer came. It was out of this repulsion that her blessing came. Any dealing that makes you better inside is beneficent. And do not feel, when God is dealing with you severely, that He has forgotten you. It takes a great while to answer some prayers. You cannot be transformed in an instant. You cannot be changed between twilight and sunrise. When, therefore, you pray that God will regenerate your nature, will you not give Him time to do such a work? When you pray for the reconstruction of your character, will you not wait till God can perform such an act of mercy? If, looking at the interior, He sees that the work can be expedited, He will expedite it; but you must be patient.—H. W. Beecher.
Bring your wants to Christ.—Bring all your wants to Christ, and always bring them with a consciousness that for the answering of your prayer the best of all persuasions and arguments is a heart that will be made better by having its petitions answered of God. It may be that you stand between your desires and God’s mercies. Seek to keep the way clear between your soul and His.—Ibid.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 7
Mark 7:24. Tyre and Sidon.—Toward the north, where the cliffs of Lebanon rise bolder and loftier, and crowd closer down upon the sea, is the narrow strip of seacoast memorable in history as the earliest home of maritime commerce, and of the splendid wealth that resulted from it, as well as of the luxury and corruption, the disasters and overthrows, that followed in their turn—the land of Tyre and Sidon, otherwise called Phœnicia. Fifteen hundred years before Christ, Tyre was a great and famous town—mentioned in the book of Joshua—and Sidon, a day’s walk to the north of it, was older yet. Six hundred years before Christ, following hard after the prophecies of Ezekiel to fulfil them, Nebuchadnezzar the Great came marching down the coast with his Chaldeans, and destroyed it after a siege of thirteen years’ duration. It would not stay destroyed. That little rocky island lying off the cliffs of the inhospitable coast has been one of the points of earth predestinated for the abode of man. Three hundred years before Christ, Alexander the Great, marching his Macedonian phalanxes down this narrow coast-line, found Tyre lying across his path to India. On its island of rock it seemed to defy him, until, after seven months of vain siege, he gathered up the ruins of the former city that cumbered the shore and tumbled them into the sea, and over that isthmus marched over and took the town and destroyed it again. Since that, to this day, Tyre is a peninsula, and no more an island. But now, in the days of Christ, the city was growing up a third time. And the relics of its splendour at the period in question are visible to the traveller to-day. You see the traces of that magnificent enterprise that marked the palmy days of the Roman Empire. They sent to Egypt for the numberless granite columns that decorated the quays and breakwaters—you can see them now lying in piles under the blue, tideless Mediterranean waters. They sent to the Grecian islands for sculptured marbles. They decorated the neighbouring hillsides with the villas of Greek and Roman merchants, with statues and fountains and tesselated pavements. And not least, “on every high hill and under every green tree” they set up again the shrines and temples of that utterly corrupt and licentious idolatry that had polluted not only this Canaanitish race itself from the beginning, but all the races that came into relation with it. The glory of Tyre is departed now. The hovels of poor fishermen occupy the sites of palaces and temples, and the munitions of her rocks are a place for the drying of nets.—L. W. Bacon.
Mark 7:26. A rich heritage.—There is no heritage so rich as the heritage of a mother’s pious example and godly counsels—no patrimony so valuable and profitable as a mother’s prayers. Upon a tombstone erected by a family of children was the inscription, “Our mother. She always made home happy.” Cecil, though once full of sceptical notions, said afterwards, “There was one argument I never could get over—the influence and life of a godly mother.” Oh, mothers, take your daughters to Jesus, and be determined to plead and persevere until He shall speak the healing word and cause them to sit at His feet, “clothed and in their right mind”!
Mark 7:27-28. “Feed me as a dog.”—The Talmud contains a story so singularly parallel to this that it is worth reproducing. “There was a famine in the land, and stores of corn were placed under the care of Rabbi Jehudah the Holy, to be distributed to those only who were skilled in the knowledge of the law. And, behold, a man came, Jonathan, the son of Amram, and clamorously asked for his portion. The Rabbi asked him whether he knew the condition and had fulfilled it, and then the suppliant changed his tone and said, ‘Nay, but feed me as a dog is fed, who eats of the crumbs of the feast’; and the Rabbi hearkened to his words, and gave him of the corn.”
The gospel for the outcast.—Duff, the missionary, was about to begin service in a Boer farmer’s house, when he noticed that none of the Kaffir servants were present. To his request that they should be brought in, the Boer replied roughly, “What have Kaffirs to do with the gospel? Kaffirs, sir, are dogs.” Duff made no reply, but opened his Bible and read, “Yes, Lord; yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs.” “Stop,” cried the farmer, “you’ve broken my head. Let the Kaffirs come in.”