THE TRUE TEST.

"Forbid him not."-ST. LUKE ix. 49, 50.

THESE words contain but a single remark of Jesus made in response to a single statement of His disciple. It is not easy to set before ourselves the whole circumstances and to understand exactly all the conditions in which any of our Lord's conversations took place. We feel more and more as we read the Gospels how much we must confess ourselves ignorant of the special conditions in which Jesus and His disciples were living; and yet we can more and more clearly perceive the tenor of what the Saviour said. There are very few of His words indeed that are not intelligible to us.

What was meant definitely by casting out devils we cannot understand. It is some distinct and subtle recognition of the way in which the sufferings of this poor human body are bound up with the spiritual life. Some form of pestilence or disease or insanity seems to have been alluded to in this phrase. Nor do we know what was being done when John, as he said, saw a man casting out devils in the name of Jesus Christ. But we can make out very clearly what John meant in what

he said to Jesus and what Jesus meant in the answer which He made to John.

Jesus was here dealing with that hardest condition, in which wrong and right are mixed together. It is easy enough to deal with those who are good, to praise those who are doing the commandments of God and walking in His ways. It is easy, on the other hand, to condemn those who are altogether wrong. But it is one of the most interesting things in studying the life of Jesus to see how He dealt with His disciples, who were loyal to Him, and yet were constantly going astray. They had in them a spiritual life, but it was constantly mixed up with very human elements. They were partly right and partly wrong. Jesus had to praise part and condemn part-to weed away the tares and to allow the wheat to stand forth in full beauty.

There was something good and something evil on this occasion. There was good in their jealousy for Him, even though it misled them. There was evil in the narrowness into which it led them. It was that narrowness which Jesus rebuked in the answer which He made to the disciple John. John had met some one who was dealing with disease much in the same way in which Jesus dealt with it, and who was claiming authority in the name of Jesus. The disciples were filled with jealousy for their Master. Knowing that this man had no open and recognised association with Him, they rebuked the man, and told him he had no right to use the

sacred name. They thought his cures could not be real and true cures, because he did not walk with the company which immediately belonged to Jesus' life. It would seem that John spoke of this some days after it occurred. Apparently he was led to speak of it by the events which followed the coming down of Jesus from the mountain after the glory of the transfiguration and while the brightness of that heavenly communion was still shining in the Saviour's face. Jesus came down and found the poor lunatic and cast the devil out. That must have brought to the mind of John what took place on a previous day. We can imagine that he had not been satisfied altogether with that which he and the other disciples had done in attempting to cast the devil out; and when he saw Jesus Himself doing the work He naturally turned to Him and told Him of this man whom he had seen casting out devils in His name and whom he had forbidden. And we may suppose that he asked Jesus whether in forbidding him he had done right or wrong.

It seems that there four people involved. In the first place we may think of him from whom the devil was being cast out. There is but little suggestion of him, and yet it seems that he was the one most interested in all the story. He was some poor, afflicted creature, who at last seems to have met with one who had power to cure him. He recognised, we must suppose, that this man was different from other people. He was one who had

some power over devils. The poor lunatic was thus going to be healed when the disciples of Jesus came and said, "You must not heal him". To that suffering man it must have seemed a cruel thing.

In the second place, there was the man who was casting out an evil spirit. We do not know just exactly where he stood, what degree of association he had with Jesus; but it seems that he was doing something. He had associated himself in some way or other with his great Teacher and Master who was doing such wonderful works. And it appears that the power of the Master was working through him. Then the disciples came with the authority of Jesus, seeming to represent Jesus, and said, "You must not do it". We can understand his bewilderment. He would say, "Shall I refrain from doing this thing which it is so evident I have the power to do?"

In the third place, there were the disciples. They had come forward ont of regard to the honour of their Master, and jealous because this work was not done directly under His auspices and in what seemed to be the regular and appointed way. No doubt they were men who rejoiced to see any good work done in the world, and still they bade this man to cease the work he was doing.

Then behind all stands Jesus Himself looking upon the whole transaction and declaring at once, without any hesitation, "Forbid him not". It is not right that in this world where sorrow and suffer

ing and sin are so abundant anybody should hinder anybody else who is doing good, no matter how imperfectly and irregularly he is working; for "he that is not against us is on our side".

My friends, is it a story of the centuries ago, which belongs only back in the old Book of the Gospel? Is it not the story of what is continually taking place? Wherever Christian men, in very virtue of their loyalty to Christ, incline to limit the operations of His power in the world, there are these four. If they who seem to represent peculiarly the Church of Christ forbid another man who less authoritatively seems to be doing the work of Christ, and Jesus stands forth and declares their interference wrong and impertinent, and tells them to let His work go on in whatever irregular ways and partial manifestations it may be going on, we have over again this picture in the ninth chapter of St. Luke. We have the four again-the poor man being helped by some one who has in him the power of Jesus Christ, the man himself, conscious of some power, not realising what it is that is keeping Christ from a full operation through him; the disciples, standing with superior right and knowledge of Christ and Christ's ways of working, and yet narrowed by their very perception of Him and their loyalty to Him, coming in to hinder the work from going on; and Jesus declaring that they shall let the work proceed. It is taking place everywhere in Christian lands to-day, and