from a centurion,

was dear to him,

desiring him to come and heal a servant, who and ready to die.

This centurion, from the account given of him by the Evangelist, seems to have been a proselyte to the Jewish religion, as he was a lover of the sons of Jacob, and had erected for them a place of worship; and accordingly, the inhabitants of Capernaum strongly espoused his cause on this occasion, saying, "that he was worthy for whom he should do this. For he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue." Luke, vii. 4, 5.

There was not the least danger that this petition would be rejected by the blessed Jesus, who sought all occasions of doing good to the children of men. Accordingly, he very readily accompanied the messengers; but before he came to the house, he was met by some of the centurion's friends, who expressed the high idea that officer entertained of his power, and desired that he would not take the trouble of coming to his house, as a word was abundantly sufficient to perform the cure. At this message, Jesus turned himself about, and said to the multitude, "I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel." Luke, vii. 9.

The persons having delivered their message, returned to the house, and found the servant, who had been sick, perfectly recovered.

Many persons have thought that this miracle, and that mentioned in Matt. viii. are the same; but this is a mistake. The centurion, in the former, came in person, but in the latter, the petition was sent by the elders of Capernaum. There is not the least hint in the first miracle, that the centurion was a proselyte; but he in the second, is said to have been a lover of the Jewish nation, and to have built them a synagogue. other particulars, which prove these miracles to have been really different, will easily occur to the reader, and therefore I shall not here enumerate them; what has been said will, I presume, be sufficient to remove any objection that may be offered against my considering them as different transactions.

Having thus miraculously healed the centurion's servant, he repaired to Peter's house to eat bread; but the multitude came again together, and surrounded the house in a very tumultuous manner, demanding, in all probability, that he would heal their sick and it was not without difficulty, they were dispersed by his friends.

The multitude being dispersed, Jesus called unto him the twelve apostles he had before chosen, and conferred on them the power of working miracles, in confirmation of the doctrines they were appointed to preach, and delivered them such instruc

tions as he thought necessary, to enable them to discharge the duties of this important commission.

"Go," said their heavenly Master, "and preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Publish in every corner of Judea, the glad tidings of the Gospel, and the near approach of the great Messiah's kingdom: not a temporal, but a spiritual empire, consisting of righteousness and peace.

To inure them to those hardships and dangers which were to attend them in their preaching, after the death of their Master, our Lord forbade them to provide any thing for their journey; teaching them to rely wholly on the providence of God, for support in every distress, and to have recourse to his protection in every danger.

Our Lord's disciples had, perhaps, flattered themselves with the pleasing expectation, that the glad tidings they were going to publish, and the miraculous cures they were enabled to perform, would procure them an honorable reception wherever they came. Their Master, however, told them the event would not in any manner answer their expectations; but that they were every where to be despised, persecuted, delivered into the hands of the rulers, and punished as wicked men. But, at the same time he promised them the aid of the Almighty, and gave them instructions for their behaviour in every particular. added, that those who rejected their message should be treated with severity by the great Judge of all the earth; but those who received them kindly, and gave even a cup of cold water to the least of his disciples, for their Master's sake, should not fail of receiving a large reward.

He

Having received this commission, the apostles visited all the parts of Palestine, where the Jews inhabited, preaching the Gospel and the doctrine of repentance, working miracles for its confirmation, and particularly, healed the sick, while our blessed Saviour continued the course of his ministry in Galilee.

The apostles being returned from their tour, Jesus went to Nain, a town situated near Endor, about two miles south of Mount Tabor, attended by many of his disciples, and a great multitude of people.

On their coming to the entrance of the city, a melancholy scene presented itself to the eyes of Jesus and his followers. "Behold there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow." Luke vii. 12. Who would not have imagined, that God had indeed "forgotton to be gracious, and in his anger shut up his tender mercies" from this poor widow, suffering under the heaviest load, and laboring under the most oppressive burden of distress? Deprived of her son, her only son, in the flower of his youth; when he might have repaid his mother's toils, and been to her in the place of a

husband; of that husband she had long since lost, and whose loss was supportable only through the comfort of this child, the surviving image of his departed father, the balm of all her grief, the hope of her afflicted soul: who now shall administer consolation to this solitary widow, to this lonely parent, bereaved of her husband, deprived of her child? What misery can be more complicated? What can be more natural than that she should refuse to be comforted," that she should " go down to the grave with mourning," and visit the chambers of death, the residence of the beloved remains of her husband and her son, with sorrow?

Towards the receptacle of mortality, that dreary waste of forgetfulness, the mournful funeral was now, with slow and solemn pomp advancing, when the compassionate Redeemer of mankind met the melancholy procession, composed of a long train of her weeping neighbors and relations, who pitied her distress, sympathized with her in this great afiliction, and were melted with compassion at her deplorable circumstances: but sighs and tears were all they had to offer; relief could not be expected from a human being: their commiseration though grateful to her oppressed soul, could neither restore the husband nor the son; submission and patience were the only lessons they could preach, or this afflicted daughter of Israel learn.

But though man was unable to relieve the distresses of this disconsolate widow, the Saviour of the world, who beheld the melancholy procession, was both able and willing to do it. There was no need of a powerful solicitor to implore assistance from the Son of God, his own compassion was abundantly sufficient. "When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her;" he both sought the patient, and offered the cure unexpectedly. "Weep not," said the blessed Jesus to this afflicted woman. Alas! it had been wholly in vain to forbid her refrain from tears, who had lost her only child, the sole comfort of her age, without administering the balm of comfort to heal her broken spirit. This our compassionate Redeemer well knew; and, therefore, immediately advancing towards the corpse, he touched the bier:" the pomp of the funeral was instantly stopped, silence closed every mouth, and expectation filled the breast of every spectator. But this deep suspense did not long continue; that glorious voice, which shall one day call our dead bodies from the grave, filled their ears with these remarkable words: "Young man, I say unto thee, arise." Nor was this powerful command uttered without its effect. "He spake, and it was done :" he called with authority, and immediately he that was dead sat up, and began to speak; and he restored him to his mother." He did not shew him around to the multitude; but by a singu

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lar act of modesty and humanity, delivered him to his late afflicted, now astonished and rejoicing mother, to intimate, that in compassion to her great distress, he had wrought this stupen

dous miracle.

A holy and awful fear fell on all who heard and saw this astonishing event: "and they glorified God, saying, that a great prophet is risen up among us; and that God hath visited his people."

Here it must be observed, that as this miracle is liable to no objection, it therefore abundantly proves, that the power of the blessed Jesus was truly and absolutely divine. He met this funeral procession by accident. It was composed of the greatest part of the inhabitants of the city, who bewailed the disconsolate state of the afflicted widow, and therefore well knew that the youth was really dead. The powerful word, which called the breathless body to life, was delivered in an audible voice, before all the company, and even at the very gate of the city, the place of public resort.

This miracle, with others amply attested, abundantly evince the truth of our Saviour's mission, and that he was, indeed, the Son of God, the Redeemer of mankind.

CHAPTER XI.

The character of John the Baptist cleared and justified by the blessed Jesus. He visits Simon the Pharisee.-Display of our Lord's humility and condescension.

WE have taken notice, in a foregoing chapter, that Herod, incensed at the honest freedom of the Baptist reproving his adulterous commerce with Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, had cast him into prison; and in this state he still continued, though his disciples were suffered to visit and converse with him. In one of these visits they had given him an account of our Saviour's having elected twelve apostles to preach the Gospel, and of his miracles, particularly of his raising to life the daughter of Jairus, and the son of the widow of Nain.

On hearing these wonderful relations, the Baptist immediately dispatched two of his disciples to Jesus, to ask him this important question: "Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?"

Accordingly, the disciples of John came to Jesus, and proposed the question of their master, at the very time when he

"cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits, and to many that were blind he gave sight." Jesus, therefore, instead of directly answering their question, bid them return, and inform their master what they had seen: "Go," said he, "and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see the blind receive their sight, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them." Matt. xi. 4. 5. Go, tell your master, that the very miracles the prophet Isaiah so long since foretold should be wrought by the Messiah, you have yourselves seen performed.

It appears from the Scripture, that the Baptist, through the whole course of his ministry, had borne constant and ample testimony to our Saviour's divine mission; that he exhorted those who came to him, to rest their faith, not on himself, but on "him that should come after him ;" and that as soon as he was acquainted who Jesus was, by a visible descent of the Holy Ghost, and a voice from heaven, he made it his business to dispose the Jews in general, and his own disciples in particular, to receive and reverence him, by testifying every where, that he was the "Son of God, the Lamb of God, who came down from heaven," and "spake the words of God," and "to whom God had given the Spirit, by measure."

The Baptist therefore, well knew who Jesus was; and, consequently, he did not send his disciples to ask this question, to solve any doubt in his mind, concerning the Saviour of the world.

But it may be asked, what else could induce the Baptist to put such a question? To this, some answer, that he had no other intention, than to satisfy his disciples that Jesus was the Messiah, so long expected among the Jews; and to engage them to follow a more perfect Master, especially, as he himself was now on the point of leaving the world.

This solution is doubtless partly right, but it does not seem to remove the whole difficulty, as it is plain from the very account recorded by the Evangelist, that the question had actually some relation to himself; and therefore we must remove the difficulty by another method. In order to which it must be remembered that John had long been confined in prison, that he was persuaded it was necessary for him to preach the Gospel, and prepare men to receive the kingdom of the Messiah; and for that reason, from the very time of his imprisonment, he earnestly expected the Messiah would exert his power to procure his release. But on hearing that Jesus had chosen twelve illiterate fishermen to preach the Gospel, had furnished them with miraculous powers, in order to enable them to perform so great a work; and that two persons of no consequence were raised