And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.
And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town nor tell to any in the town. Besides the usual reasons against going about "blazing the matter," retirement in this case would be salutary to himself.
Remarks:
(1) When our Lord was about to open the ears and loose the tongue of the deaf man who had an impediment in his speech, our Evangelist says that He looked up to heaven and sighed (Mark 7:34); but when He had to reply to the captious petulance which sought of Him, amidst a profusion of signs, a sign from heaven, he says He sighed deeply in His spirit. Nor can we wonder. For if the spectacle of what sin had done affected Him deeply, how much more deeply would sin itself affect Him; when exhibited in so trying a form! And occurring, as such things now did almost daily, what a touching commentary do they furnish on the prophetic account of Him as "a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief"!
(2) When men apply to religion none of the ordinary principles of judgment and action, it itself to be with them but an empty creed or an outward ritual, neither acceptable to God nor profitable to themselves. But when it becomes a nature and a life, we learn to bring all our natural judgment, worldly sagacity, ordinary shrewdness, and growing experience to bear upon religious matters; and thus our entire life acquires a unity-having to do now with things temporal, and now with things spiritual and eternal, but in both cases alike governed by the same principles and directed to the same ends. And yet, how often do even the children of God incur that rebuke of their Lord, that they can discern the signs of change in the material, mercantile, or political atmosphere, but are dull in their perceptions of what is passing, and in their ability to forecast what is coming, in the moral, religious, or spiritual world!
(3) If the Redeemer was tried with enemies, He had not a little to bear from time to time even from His own chosen Twelve. How little did they comprehend much that He said to them; how unworthy of Him were many of the thoughts which they imagined to be passing through His mind; and how petty the motives by which they supposed Him to be actuated! How admirable is the long-suffering patience which bore with both! But is the need for this patience vet ended? Not to speak of the world's hostility toward Him, His truth, His cause, His people, which time certainly has not changed, is there not much still in His own people, the endurance of which, when rightly apprehended, is matter of wonder?
(4) As our Lord seems purposely to have varied His mode of healing the maladies that came before Him-having respect, doubtless, to the nature of each case-so is the history of every soul that is healed of its deadly malady by the Great Physician different, probably, from that of every other: some, in particular, being healed quickly, others slowly; some apparently by one word, others by successive steps. But as in all the result is one, so the hand of one mighty, gracious Healer is to be seen alike in all.