And at even when the sun did set.
In ministering to the sick, we follow and find Christ
I. Describe the scene at Capernaum to which text alludes. Presence of Christ among sick. Wonderful change His visit wrought. What happy hearts and homes; what prayers and praises; what jubilant psalms.
II. If we be true Christians, we believe we shall see that same Jesus coming forth to reward those who have done works of mercy in His name. Such works are the only proof of our possessing that charity which is the development and excellence of faith and hope. Such works are within the reach of all.
III. Of such works none can be more merciful than the visitation of the sick. Let us all do our best to prevent disease. Better to keep sickness away than to repair its ravages.
IV. Help those who help themselves, by providing against the time of sickness-life assurance societies, benefit clubs, etc.
V. And those who cannot help themselves. The parish doctor should have less work and more pay.
VI. Do we honour the physician.
VII. And those who nurse and wait upon the sick?
VIII. Do we ourselves visit the sick? So finding Jesus, so taught to suffer and to die.
IX. Appeal in His name and in His words. (Canon S. R. Hole, M. A.)
Hospital healing
When one of the greatest of God’s heroes, one of the most illustrious saints of Christendom, made an oration-preached, as we should say, a funeral sermon-concerning a brother, holy and heroic, whose soul was in Paradise-when Gregory of Nazianzum would show unto the people how, though Basil rested from his labours, his works did follow, and he being dead yet spoke-he pointed towards the hospital which Basil had built, and said, “Go forth a little out of the city, and see the new city, his treasure of godliness, the storehouse of alms which he collected; see the place where disease is relieved by charity and by skill, where the poor leper finds at last a home! It was Basil who persuaded men to care for others; it was Basil who taught them thus to honour Christ.” (Canon S. R. Hole, M. A.)
Power to heal
I. Its design twofold.
1. To do good.
2. To prove the Messiahship of Jesus (John 14:11).
II. Its effect twofold.
1. It awakened general interest in Him.
2. It led many to believe on Him.
III. Its all-comprehensiveness.
1. Over material nature-e.g., walking on the water, curing diseases, etc.
2. Over spiritual nature-e.g., expelling demons, etc.
IV. Its lessons for us. We should learn from the miracle working power of Jesus
(1) His real and personal interest in us.
(2) That nothing can baffle His skill or resist His power if we put our case in His hands. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.)
Christ the restorer of humanity
If we may reverently compare this scene with its modern analogies, it bears less a resemblance to anything that occurs in the life of a clergyman, than to the occupation of a physician to a hospital on the day of his seeing his out-patients. There is, indeed, all the difference in the world between the best professional advice and the summary cure such as was our Lord’s. But we are, for the moment, looking at the outward aspects of the scene; and it shows very vividly how largely Christ’s attention was directed to the well-being of the bodily frame of man. Now it would be a great mistake to suppose that this feature of our Saviour’s ministry was accidental or inevitable. Nothing in His work was accidental: all was deliberate, all had an object. Nothing in His work was inevitable, except so far as it was freely dictated by His wisdom and His mercy. To suppose that this union in Him of Prophet and Physician was determined by the necessity of some rude civilization, such as that of certain tribes in Central Africa and elsewhere, or certain periods and places in medieval Europe when knowledge was scanty, when it was easy and needful for a single person at each social centre to master all that was known on two or three great subjects-this is to make a supposition which does not apply to Palestine at the time of our Lord’s appearance. The later prophets were prophets and nothing more-neither legislators, nor statesmen, nor physicians. In John the Baptist we see no traces of the restorative power exerted on some rare occasions by Elijah and Elisha; and when our Lord appeared, dispensing on every side cures for bodily disease, the sight was just as novel to His contemporaries as it was welcome. Nor are His healing works to be accounted for by saying that they were only designed to draw attention to His message, by certificating His authority to deliver it; or by saying that they were only symbols of a higher work which He had more at heart in its many and varying aspects-the work of healing the diseases of the human soul. True it is that His healing activity had this double value: it was evidence of His authority as a Divine Teacher; it was a picture in detail, addressed to sense, of what, as the Restorer of our race, He meant to do in regions altogether beyond the sphere of sense. But these aspects of His care for the human body were not, I repeat, primary; they were strictly incidental. We may infer with reverence and with certainty that His first object was to show Himself as the Deliverer and Restorer of human nature as a whole: not of the reason and conscience merely without the imagination and the affections-not of the spiritual side of men’s nature, without the bodily; and, therefore, He was not merely Teacher, but also Physician, and therefore and thus He has shed upon the medical profession to the end of time a radiance and a consecration which is ultimately due to the conditions of that redemptive work, to achieve which He came down from heaven teaching and healing. (Canon Liddon.)
A great hospital Sunday near a great city
I. This is the story of a wonderful Sabbath-a true Sunday-“One of the days of the Son of Man.”
II. What a picture it gives us of his power as the healer. And do not these healing powers exerted by Christ declare that there is a spiritual order in the universe outside of the natural order, and beneath whose powers all the natural disorder will be at last reduced to subjection. These miracles are illustrations of the character and intention of God loving us.
III. This is the doctrine; but what is any doctrine without an application? What is the use of faith in Christ without appropriation? Jesus has not come into the world to condemn, but to heal and save it. His love is universal. Fly to the healing of God in Jesus Christ. (E. Paxton Hood.)
The house of mercy
Once it was given to me to see the soul of man as a poor creature out at night in a wild storm and hurricane, flying through the tempest over a wild moor houseless; the wild lightnings blazed across the heath, and revealed one house, and thither fled the soul. “Who lives here?” “Justice.” “Oh, Justice, let me in, for the storm is very dreadful.” But Justice said, “Nay, I cannot shelter thee, for I kindled the lightnings and the hurricanes from whence you are flying.” And I saw the poor spirit hastening over the plain, and the storm flash lit up another house, and thither fled the soul. “Who lives here? Truth.” “Oh, Truth, shelter me.” “Nay,” said the white-robed woman, Truth’s handmaid, “Hast thou loved Truth so much and been so faithful to her that thou canst fly to her for shelter? Not so; there is no shelter here.” And away in weariness sped the soul through that wild night. Still through the gleams of the blue heavens looked out a third house through the drenching storm. “And who lives here?” said the lost soul. “Peace.” “Oh, peace, let me in!” “Nay, nay; none enter the house of Peace but those whose hearts are Peace.” And then near to the house of Peace rose another house, white and beautiful through the livid light. “Who lives here?” “Mercy. Fly thither, poor soul. I have been sitting up for thee, and this house was built for thy shelter and thy home.” I read and hear such lessons as I watch Christ moving through the sick multitude that Sabbath evening in that old city. (E. Paxton Hood.)
Christ’s miracles
These may be divided into distinct classes.
I. Miracles of restoration. Raising up the afflicted from a helpless, incapable state, to a condition of self-help and usefulness. This Christ’s grace is continually doing. Sin works evil results on man’s nature similar to, and worse than, those wrought by fever, paralysis, or impotency, making men vicious, shiftless, indolent, useless. The gospel brings back our fallen nature to its proper dignity and worth.
II. Miracles delivering from evil spirits. Do we not sometimes feel, even the best of us, as demoniacs act? The power of Christ can cure us.
III. Miracles of cleansing. Sin defiles the purity of the soul, and, so far as this defilement is felt and perceived, it separates the sinner from others. He feels that a gulf divides him from the pure and good; his conscience often drives him into voluntary solitude; and if his sin is particularly gross and shameful, the sentiment of society sends him into banishment. The seeds of evil which produce this defilement are hid in every soul. They are the source of evil thoughts and base suggestions which we are glad are not visible to all. Who could bare to expose his secret thoughts to the gaze of the world? Who has not need to pray, “Make and keep me pure within?” Christ’s grace is able to do this. He cleanses from the foulest leprosy of sin. (A. H. Currier.)
There is in man something akin to the diabolical
He is subject to violent and wasting passions, often dominated by a fierce and ungovernable temper; exhibits, upon slight provocation, anger, impatience, hatred, revenge; is ill-natured, moody, capricious, sullen; ready at times to take up arms against all the world, and shunned and detested in turn for his spirit of malicious mischief. We have all seen pronounced examples of this sort-probably have suffered from their malice and ill-temper. They may be persons of great energy and ability. They are not indolent or shiftless. They know how to make money, and how to use it for their own advantage. They are keen, shrewd, and successful in business. Sometimes they bestow magnificent gifts-exhibit strange freaks of generosity; but of true kindness and amiability, or the disposition to make others happy, they have but little. They seem, in short, to be possessed by a devil. The fault may be often due to inherited qualities, or to neglect of early training. They were not disciplined to self-control. One of the princes of the old French monarchy manifested in childhood and youth an unhappy disposition of this kind. But he was placed under the care of a wise and pious teacher, who laboured so successfully to correct his violent temper, that he became one of the most amiable of men. A painstaking Christian mother often amends the faults of nature. (A. H. Currier.)
Sunset
1. The natural sun set, but the Sun of Righteousness arose with healing in His wings. Evening and morning Christ was at work.
2. Men come to Christ according to the urgency of their want. Here it was physical. It is well if men can feel their need of Christ at any point.
3. When men begin with their lower wants they should ascend to the higher. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The attraction of Jesus
Leaving the Paris exhibition as the sun went down, I noted an electric light that, revolving round and round, shot its ethereal pencilled rays far across the sky, touching with a momentary radiance the vegetation or the buildings across which they passed; and looking up I noted innumerable sparks wavering, vibrating in the illumination. For a moment I could not think what this meant, for there is scarcely any scintillation, and certainly no sparks, thrown off from the electric light. Then in an instant it occurred to me that these bright lights were myriads of insects attracted from the dark ocean of air around, and which, protected from the burning luminary by the strong glass, were safely rejoicing in the ecstasy of those beams. So here, around the beams of spiritual light and love that radiate from the Saviour, the innumerable hosts of suffering, struggling men and women of that day come within the field of our vision. (J. Allanson Picton, M. A.)
Diverse elements in humanity dealt with by Christianity
A wild, strange flame rages in human nature, that in combinations of great feeling and war and woe, is surpassed by no tragedy or epic, nor by all tragedies and epics together. In the soul’s secret chambers there are Fausts more subtle than Faust, Hamlets more mysterious than Hamlet, Lears more distracted and desolate than Lear; wills that do what they allow not, and what they would not do; wars in the members; bodies of death to be carried, as in Paul; wild horses of the mind, governed by no rein, as in Plato; subtleties of cunning, plausibilities of seeming virtues, memories writ in letters of fire, great thoughts heaving under the brimstone marl of revenges; pains of wrong, and of sympathy with suffering wrong; aspirations that have lost courage; hates, loves, beautiful dreams and tears; all these acting at cross purposes, and representing the broken order of the mind. If some qualified teacher by many years of study could worm out a thoroughly perceptive interpretation of sin, or lecture on the working or pathology of mind under evil, he would offer a contribution to the true success of Christian preaching, greater than, perhaps, any human teacher has ever yet contributed. (H. Bushnell, D. D.)
Miracles at Capernaum
I. Christ healing. “And at even, when the sun did set,” etc.
1. The season was interesting. It was on a Sabbath evening.
2. The ailments of the sufferers were various.
3. The excitement produced was great.
4. The number of those who were cured was considerable.
II. Christ praying.
1. When He prayed.
2. Where He prayed.
III. Christ preaching.
1. The importance He attached to its “For therefore came I forth.”
2. The places in which He exercised His ministry-“Throughout all Galilee.”
3. The encouraging indications which appeared-“All men seek for Thee.” (Expository Outlines.)