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(J^uarterlp Series 
 
 FORTY-FIFTH VOLUME 
 
 THE LIFE OF OUR LIFE 
 
ROEHAMPTON 
 PRINTED BY JAMES STANLEY 
 
 1 
 
THE LIFE OF OUR LIFE 
 
 PART THE SECOND 
 
 THE PUBLIC LIFE OF OUR LORD 
 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Training of the Apostles 
 
 {part III.) 
 
[All rights resefved^ 
 
THE TRAINING OF THE 
 APOSTLES 
 
 (PART III.) 
 
 HENRY JAMES COLERIDGE 
 
 OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS 
 
 LONDON 
 
 BURNS AND GATES 
 
 GRANVILLE MANSIONS W 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The portion of the Public Life of our Lord, which is 
 contained in the present volume, has a character of its 
 own, and deserves to be treated apart. It is, in truth, 
 the period of the rise and growth of a great calumny, 
 which had more influence, both on our Lord's own 
 movements and on the ultimate issues of His preaching 
 in the eyes of the world, than may commonly be sup- 
 posed. It drove Him, continually more and more, 
 away from the places where He had most frequently 
 preached, it forced Him to adopt a greater reserve in 
 His teaching and in the performance even of His 
 miracles of mercy, and it cannot be doubted that it 
 alienated the hearts of a large part of the common 
 people from Him, and that part, in some respects, the 
 most naturally inclined to receive Him, because the 
 most religiously and devoutly disposed. During the 
 preceding period of His preaching He had been met 
 with scant and grudging welcome by the religious 
 authorities of the nation, and at last this reserve and 
 coldness on their part was changed into open opposi- 
 tion and persecution, which made it dangerous for 
 Him to trust Himself, for any length of time together, 
 in places where they could easily have seized His 
 
Preface. 
 
 Person, especially after the Pharisees had allied them- 
 selves with the officers of the government of the 
 Tetrarch Herod against Him. But, up to the time 
 of the present portion of His life, there had been no 
 blasphemous attack on His mission by means of the evil 
 tongue. He had been found fault with, for working 
 miracles on the Sabbath day, but that did not imply 
 that they were false miracles, or that they were worked 
 by means of collusion with Satan. This is the form 
 which was taken by the opposition to our Lord at the. 
 time at which this volume opens, and we find, at its 
 very close, that the calumny was repeated again and 
 again, so that it became a kind of stock answer on 
 the part of those who represented the religious autho- 
 rities of Judaism — ' He casteth out devils by Beelzebub 
 the prince of the devils.' 
 
 Our Lord may have had many reasons for the course 
 of action which He took about this time, in withdrawing 
 almost entirely from the public eye, and passing rapidly, 
 as we shall find in the next volume, from place to place, 
 keeping very much on the extreme borders of the Holy 
 Land, and shunning, except on a very few occasions, 
 the favoured city of Capharnaum itself But we cannot 
 doubt that this reason was prominent among those which 
 induced Him so to act — the reason of avoiding every 
 opportunity when the repetition of this calumny might 
 be suggested by His presence to the bitter enemies 
 who now haunted His movements, in order if possible 
 to give the slander time to die out of the minds of the 
 people and to save His enemies themselves from this 
 
Preface, xi 
 
 continual blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Our 
 Lord did not indeed simply retire from before His 
 enemies. He was all this time most actively engaged 
 in training His Apostles, not only as to this particular 
 point, in the manner in which they and those who were 
 to come after them should meet the diabolical calumnies 
 to which the Church was to be exposed in all ages and 
 in all places, but also in all the principles of their 
 Sacred Ministry. The present volume contains a most 
 important body of this instruction in the first great series 
 of parables. It has been necessary to dwell at con- 
 siderable length on this precious deposit, preserved to 
 the Church chiefly by St. Matthew. The first Gospel, 
 as has been said in the course of this work, is pre- 
 eminently the Gospel of the Christian teacher, the Scribe 
 instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven. Nowhere has 
 St. Matthew laid us under greater obligations, than in 
 the series of these first parables as he has preserved 
 them for us in their completeness, with the single ex- 
 ception of one most striking parable, which St. Mark 
 has added to the list. This is the chief doctrinal treasure 
 of that part of the Gospels which is dealt with in the 
 present volume — a treasure which it is more easy to 
 point to than to illustrate as it deserves. These eight 
 parables form a sort of manual for all, but most espe- 
 cially for the teachers and preachers of the Word of 
 God, and in this respect they have an importance alto- 
 gether singular, which may be compared, in its own 
 way, to that of the Sermon on the Mount or the 
 counsels of perfection. 
 
xii Preface. 
 
 The miracles of this period are comparatively few. 
 This only means that few are recorded, the Evangelists 
 being occupied in relating the incidents which are more 
 peculiar to the time of which they are speaking. It 
 cannot be doubted that, wherever our Lord went in the 
 course of His preaching, He marked His way by these 
 prodigies of charity and compassion. This is obvious^ 
 when we consider that, by a kind of accident — though 
 nothing in the arrangement of the Gospels is really 
 accidental — we have in the last chapters of this volume 
 the history of a few successive hours, and these are full 
 of miracles of the first class, — the stilling of the storm 
 on the Lake, the casting out of the legion of devils, the 
 cure of the woman with an issue of blood, the raising to 
 life of the daughter of Tairus, followed by the cure of 
 two blind men, and the casting out of the devil from 
 one who was also dumb. All these things happened 
 within a period of twenty-four hours, of which we have 
 the complete account in the Gospels. And these were 
 miracles, in many cases, worked almost against our 
 Lord's will, that is, which were to some extent forced 
 upon Him by the circumstances of the time. 
 
 As this volume presents a contrast,, in the sense 
 already pointed out, to its immediate predecessor, so 
 also will there be a similar contrast between this and 
 that which is to follow. Our Lord did not let Himself 
 be evercome by the evil tongues which were so ready- 
 to set afloat slanders against Him, slanders which at 
 the same time had the still more dreadful character of 
 being blasphemies against the Holy Ghost. The months 
 
Preface, xiii 
 
 which succeeded to this portion of the second year of 
 His preaching, aUhough they were spent mostly away 
 from Caphamaum, and even on the very confines of 
 the Holy Land, were marked by some of His most 
 signal miracles, and also by the very bold step which 
 He took in sending forth His Apostles to preach in 
 His Name. Indeed, after the departure from Caphar- 
 naum, which immediately followed on the last miracle 
 recorded in this volume, we find our Lord making, 
 as we should say, a fresh start in His activity, and 
 filling the whole land more than ever with the fame 
 of His teaching and of His wonderful works. This 
 continued up to the time of the great Confession of 
 St. Peter, after which our Lord again changed His 
 method, and even the scene of His preaching. Of 
 this we shall have to speak in the following volume 
 of this series. 
 
 H. J. C. 
 
 Ill, Mount Street. 
 
 Feast of St. Joseph, 1884. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Blind and Dumb Demoniac. 
 
 St. Matt. xii. 22 — 30 ; St. Mark iii. 22 
 — 27 ; Vita Vit(B Nostra, § 56. 
 
 A circuit of Galilee . . . i 
 
 The Pharisees and Scribes . 2 
 
 New phase of opposition . 4 
 
 The blind and dumb demoniac 4 
 
 Astonishment of the people . 5 
 
 Our Lord's calumniators . 7 
 
 His warning to them . . 8 
 
 Quiet reasoning ... 9 
 
 Argument from the exorcists . 11 
 True import of our Lord's 
 
 power over the devils . 12 
 Invasion of the kingdom of 
 
 Satan 14 
 
 Satan in possession of the 
 
 world 15 
 
 The strong armed man bound 16 
 Heathenism . . . -17 
 
 Rifling of Satan's goods . . 18 
 
 The Fathers on Satan's binding 19 
 
 ' He that is not with Me ' . 20 
 
 Our Lord's adversaries . . 22 
 
 Importance of this truth . 24 
 
 Guilt of pretended neutrahty . 25 
 Especially in ministers of reli- 
 gion .... 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 The Blasphemy against the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 St. Matt. xii. 31, 32 ; St. Mark iii. 28— 
 30 ; Vita Vitce Nostrce, § 56. 
 
 Gradual worsening of our 
 Lord's enemies . . .27 
 
 26 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Blasphemy against the Holy 
 
 Ghost 28 
 
 What that sin is . . .29 
 Operation of the Holy Ghost 
 
 in the Gospel Kingdom . 29 
 Blackness of this sin against 
 
 God 30 
 
 Sin against the Son of Man 
 
 contrasted . . . '31 
 Language of the New Testa- 
 ment 32 
 
 St. Stephen and St. Peter . 33 
 The Holy Ghost spoken of in 
 
 the Acts .... 34 
 Character of the sin . . 35 
 The sins against the Holy 
 
 Ghost 37 
 
 St. Augustine and St. Bernard 37 
 Our Lord's words about the 
 
 'everlasting sin' . . 39 
 
 Forgiveness in either world . 39 
 Two parts in remission . . 40 
 Literal meaning of the words 
 
 of our Lord . . . 41 
 
 Sins punished both here and 
 
 hereafter . . . .42 
 Another interpretation . . 42 
 Intense obduracy in certain 
 
 sins 44 
 
 Most difficult to remit . . 45 
 Sins that live on . . .46 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 Idle Words. 
 
 St. Matt. xii. 33—37 ; Vita Vitce 
 Nostrce, § 56. 
 
 The Scribes and Pharisees 
 
 47 
 
XVI 
 
 Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The tree and its fruit 
 
 48 
 
 Our spiritual foes . 
 
 80 
 
 Meaning of our Lord's words 
 
 49 
 
 Activity of the evil spirits 
 
 81 
 
 Evil of the heart and tongue . 
 
 50 
 
 Sins increasing in number and 
 
 
 ' Idle words ' . 
 
 52 
 
 heinousness 
 
 82 
 
 Frivolity of the priests . 
 
 52 
 
 The men of that generation . 
 
 83 
 
 Evil spoken hghtly. 
 
 53 
 
 Preaching of St. John 
 
 83 
 
 Our Lord condemns not only 
 
 
 Our Lord and the Jews . 
 
 84 
 
 calumnious words 
 
 54 
 
 Heretical teachers . 
 
 85 
 
 Account to be given of all 
 
 54 
 
 The Jewish rulers . 
 
 86 
 
 Faults of the tongue 
 
 55 
 
 How sins become worse. 
 
 87 
 
 Enumerated by ascetical 
 
 
 Wilfulness in heresy and schism 
 
 88 
 
 writers .... 
 
 56 
 
 
 
 Reasons for the doctrine 
 
 57 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 
 
 
 Our Lord and His Disciples. 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 
 
 
 The Sign of the Prophet Jonas. 
 
 St. Matt. xii. 38—42 ; Vita Vita; 
 Nostrce, § 57. 
 
 The demand for a sign . . 59 
 Our Lord's answer . . .60 
 Signs in the Old Testament . 61 
 Character of their occasion . 62 
 Of our Lord's mission . . 63 
 Our Lord's custom . . 64 
 
 Jonas, and the Resurrection . 65 
 The Resurrection, urged by 
 
 the Apostles . . . 66 
 The Ninivites. . . .67 
 The Queen of the South . 68 
 
 Danger of neglecting Divine 
 
 calls 70 
 
 ' A greater than Solomon ' .71 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 The Returning Devil. 
 
 St. Matt. xii. 43—45 ; Vita Vitce 
 Nostrce, § 57. 
 
 Further warning to our Lord's 
 
 enemies . . . .73 
 The unclean spirit cast out . 74 
 Wishing to return . . .76 
 The house ' empty, swept, 
 
 and garnished ' . . .76 
 These things in the soul . . ■j'j 
 The seven other devils . . 79 
 
 St. Matt. xii. 47—50 ; St. Mark iii. 31— 
 
 35 ; St. Luke viii. 19 — 21 ; Vita Vitas 
 
 NostrcB, § 57. 
 
 Anecdote here added by the 
 
 Evangelists . . .89 
 
 Where it is to be placed . 90 
 
 Our Lord's Mother and 
 
 ' brethren ' . . . .91 
 Our Lord as our example . 92 
 Motives of our Blessed Lady . 93 
 Causes of anxiety . . -94 
 Arrival of our Lady . . 95 
 Our Lord's action . . .96 
 Love of our Lord for His 
 Disciples . . . -97 
 
 Chapter VIL 
 
 The Teaching by Parables. 
 
 St. Matt. xiii. 1—9; St. Mark iv. i— 9; 
 St. Luke viii. 4 — 8 ; Vita Vita Nostrce, 
 
 §58. 
 Use of the parabolic form of 
 
 teaching .... 98 
 
 Our Lord's increasing reserve 99 
 Opportunities of grace soon 
 
 pass 100 
 
 Teaching of our Lord after 
 
 this point .... 102 
 
 Teaching mainly in Judaea . 103 
 
 Men are soon tested . . 104 
 Change in the truths to be 
 
 taught . 105 
 
 I 
 
Contents. 
 
 xvu 
 
 PAGE 
 
 St. Paul on the ' first elements ' 105 
 Different classes of hearers . 106 
 Our Lord had to reveal His 
 
 Father . . . .107 
 His constant thought of Him 108 
 The Parables teaching con- 
 cerning Him , . . 109 
 The laws of His Kingdom . no 
 Difficulties concerning God . in 
 How to meet them . .112 
 Importance of the formation 
 
 of the Apostles . . 113 
 
 Two classes of the earliest 
 
 Parables . . . .114 
 Scene of the Parables . • 115 
 Question of the disciples and 
 
 our Lord's answer . ,116 
 Apparent difficulty ex- 
 plained . . . .117 
 Two accounts of our Lord's 
 
 words .... 121 
 Blinding of the Jews spoken 
 
 of by the Apostles . . 123 
 Our Lord in the boat . . 125 
 Parables explained to the 
 
 disciples .... 126 
 Our Lord questioning the 
 
 Apostles .... 127 
 Special relation of the earlier 
 Parables to their work . 128 
 
 Chapter VHL 
 
 The Parable of the Sower. 
 
 St. Matt. xiii. 18—23 '■> St. Mark iv. 10 
 
 — 25; St. Luke viii. 9 — 18; Vita Vitce 
 
 NostrcE, § 61. 
 
 The first Parable . 
 Details easily understood 
 Not so their apphcation 
 Points in God's action omitted 
 Increase in goodness or bad- 
 ness 
 
 The greater part of the seed 
 
 not wasted 
 The Parable 
 
 130 
 131 
 131 
 132 
 
 133 
 
 134 
 135 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Word of God, how sown 136 
 
 Activity of Satan . , . 137 
 Importance of the Word of 
 
 God 138 
 
 Activity of sectarians in 
 
 shutting it out . . . 139 
 
 How Satan acts . . . 139 
 
 The seed by the wayside . 140 
 
 Attractiveness of the Gospel 141 
 
 Persecution .... 142 
 
 The seed among the thorns . 143 
 
 Meaning of the image . . 144 
 
 Tlie good ground . . 145 
 
 Degrees of fertihty . . 146 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 
 The Parable of the Cockle amid 
 the Wheat. 
 
 St. Matt. xiii. 24—28, 36—53 ; Vita Vitce 
 Nostra^ § 59—62. 
 
 The second Parable 
 Explained to the disciples 
 The action of the evil one 
 Transfer of the image . 
 Phenomenon represented by 
 
 the cockle . 
 Angels and saints 
 Satan using men . 
 Oversowing 
 Heresies 
 The sleep of the servants of 
 
 God 
 
 Satan befouling everything , 
 The hierarchy, religious life 
 
 the home 
 ' An enemy hath done this ' 
 Evil and the Kingdom of God 
 How will God deal with it ? 
 Answer of our Lord 
 Toleration of evil 
 Future retribution 
 Evil may be made good 
 Advantage from the existence 
 
 of heresies 
 Objection against discipline 
 
 148 
 149 
 150 
 151 
 
 152 
 
 153 
 153 
 154 
 154 
 
 15s 
 
 156 
 
 157 
 158 
 159 
 160 
 160 
 161 
 161 
 162 
 
 163 
 164 
 
XVlll 
 
 Contents, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Punishment of heretics . 165 
 The evil gathered from among 
 
 the good . . . .166 
 The angels at the end of the 
 
 world .... 166 
 
 The cockle bound in bundles 167 
 
 Manifestation of the just . 168 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 The Light on the Candlestick. 
 
 St. Mark iv.21— 25; St. Luke viii. 16— 
 18 ; Vita Vitce Nostrce, § 61. 
 
 Our Lord's words about the 
 
 light . . . .169 
 
 Parabolic meaning . .170 
 Light of the Christian doc- 
 torate .... 171 
 Ever\lhing to be manifested 
 
 ultimately .... 172 
 Discouraging features . . 173 
 Failure of correspondence to 
 
 grace . . . .173 
 
 The Apostles unfolding the 
 
 truths of the Parables . 174 
 The Acts and Epistles . . 175 
 Unfolding of Christian doc- 
 trine 176 
 
 Precepts as to hearing . . 177 
 Application of our own 
 
 measure .... 178 
 Having and not having . 179 
 
 Chapter XL 
 
 The Seed growing of itself. 
 
 St. Mark iv. 26 — 29 ; Vita Vitce 
 Nostrce, § 60. 
 
 St. Mark's record . . 181 
 
 Connection of the Parables . 182 
 
 Growth of the seed . . 183 
 
 Office of the preacher . . 184 
 
 Innate power of the word . 185 
 God deals with men through 
 
 men ..... 185 
 
 The seed sown in faith , 186 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Instances .... 187 
 
 Fruitfulness of the earth . 188 
 
 Far greater fertility of the soul 189 
 
 The seed must be there . 190 
 
 The work of grace . . 191 
 Its immense power, even 
 
 ordinarily . . , . 192 
 
 Necessity of hearing the 
 
 Word . . . . 193 
 
 Aid of preaching . . . 193 
 
 St. Paul to St. Timothy . 194 
 
 Commentaries of the Fathers 195 
 The work of the Church in 
 
 the world . . . 196 
 
 Connection with the following 
 
 Parables .... 197 
 
 Chapter XII. 
 
 The Parable of the Mustard 
 Seed. 
 
 St. Matt. xiii. 31, 32 ; St. Mark iv. 30 — 
 32 ; Vita Vitce Nostra, § 60. 
 
 The two Parables . . 198 
 
 Points in the Parable of the 
 
 Mustard Seed . . . 199 
 
 Question as to the plant . 200 
 
 Qualities of mustard . . 201 
 
 Main points of the Parable . 202 
 
 Growth of the Church . . 203 
 
 The ' fowls of the air ' . . 204 
 
 Growth of grace in a soul . 205 
 
 Love of God . . . 205 
 
 Gradual progress . . . 206 
 
 State of perfection . . 208 
 Interior fruitfulness and 
 
 beauty .... 209 
 
 Development of the mind . 210 
 
 Profit to others . . . 210 
 
 Chapter XIII. 
 
 The Parable of the Leaven. 
 
 St. j\Iatt. xiii. 33 ; Vita Vitce 
 Nostra, § 60. 
 
 Distinct from the Parable of 
 
 the Mustard Seed . . 21 
 
 1 
 
Contents. 
 
 XIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Assimilating power of truth . 212 
 Christian commentators . 213 
 Power of leaven . .214 
 
 Action of grace, and the 
 
 Church .... 215 
 Congeniality . . . 216 
 
 Uses of the image in Scripture 217 
 The three leavens mentioned 
 
 by our Lord . . . 218 
 Of the Pharisees . . .218 
 Of Herod .... 219 
 Of the Sadducees . . 220 
 
 Chapter XIV. 
 
 The Parables of Asaph. 
 
 St. Matt, xiii. 35 ; Vita Vita Nostrce. 
 §60. 
 
 Quotation by St. Matthew , 222 
 
 The Psalms of Asaph . , 223 
 
 Characteristics . . . 223 
 
 The seventy-seventh Psalm . 224 
 Chastisement of the chosen 
 
 people .... 224 
 
 The Exodus .... 225 
 
 Chastisement in the desert . 226 
 
 In the Holy Land . . 226 
 Sl Matthew and the Old 
 
 Testament . . . 227 
 
 St. Paul's interpretation of 
 
 the Scripture historj' . , 228 
 
 Apphcation by St. Matthew . 229 
 
 Ch.\pter XV. 
 
 Tlie Parables of the Treasure 
 and the Pearl. 
 
 St. Matt. .xiii. 44 — 46 ; Vita Vitce 
 Nostra:, § 62. 
 
 Explanation of the Parables 
 
 to the disciples . . .231 
 Some points reserved for the 
 
 Apostles .... 232 
 
 The three last Parables . 233 
 
 Contrast to the rest . , 233 
 
 The Kingdom of Heaven in 
 
 these Parables . . . 234 
 
 PAGE 
 
 236 
 
 237 
 238 
 
 239 
 240 
 241 
 
 242 
 243 
 
 Wide application of the truth 
 God and the human race 
 Something like a discovery . 
 Variety of details . 
 Another interpretation . 
 St. Paul and St. Justin Martyr 
 Spiritual goods to be purchas- 
 ed at any cost . 
 They help to perseverance . 
 
 Chapter XVI. 
 
 The Parable of the Seine. 
 
 St. Matt. xiv. 47—50 ; Vita Vitce 
 Nostree, § 62. 
 
 Series of truths in the Parables 245 
 
 The Sower and the Cockle . 245 
 
 The third, fourth, and fifth . 246 
 
 The Treasure and the Pearl . 247 
 
 Another truth to be added . 247 
 
 The Seine .... 248 
 Compared with the Parable 
 
 of the Cockle . . . 249 
 Teaching of the Parable of 
 
 the Labourers . . . 250 
 A similar doctrine here. . 251 
 No vocation secm-es Heaven 251 
 No vocation makes the high- 
 est rewards impossible . 252 
 
 Chapter XVII. 
 
 The Scribes of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. 
 
 St. Matt. xv. 51, 52 ; Vita Vitce Nostree, 
 §62. 
 
 Our Lord's words m St. Mat- 
 thew 254 
 
 Scribes in the Kingdom of 
 
 Heaven .... 254 
 Things new and old . . 255 
 Office of the Scribe . . 256 
 The Parables giving general 
 
 rules 257 
 
 The Word of God as preached 
 or taught . . . .258 
 
XX 
 
 Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 What a husbandman would 
 
 do 259 
 
 Value of the Parables to 
 
 teachers .... 259 
 
 And to readers or hearers . 260 
 The Apostohc preaching and 
 
 the Parables . . . 26T 
 
 St. Paul and the Cockle . 262 
 
 The Mustard Seed . . 262 
 
 The Leaven .... 263 
 
 The Treasure and the Pearl 264 
 
 St. John and the Seine . . 264 
 
 Wide range of teaching . 265 
 
 The Parables and the Apostles 266 
 
 The Parables revealing God . 266 
 
 Chapter XVIII. 
 
 The Followers of the Son of Matt. 
 
 St. Matt. viii. 18—22; Vita Vltce 
 Nostree, § 63. 
 
 Questions as to the Harmony 
 
 here 268 
 
 The Scribe and the disciples 269 
 Circumstances of the time . 270 
 The Scribe . . . .271 
 Our Lord's ansvi^er . . 272 
 Two impediments to the fol- 
 lowing of our Lord . . 273 
 Examples in religious life . 274 
 The disciples . . . 275 
 Our Lord's answer . . 276 
 The dead to bury the dead . 277 
 
 Chapter XIX. 
 
 The Storm on the Lake. 
 
 St. Matt. viii. 28—34; St. Mark v. i— 
 21 ; St. Luke viii. 26 — 40 ; Vita 
 Vita Nostree, § 64. 
 
 Miracles on the Lake 
 
 . 279 
 
 Threefold meaning 
 
 . 279 
 
 Crossing the Lake 
 
 . 280 
 
 Reason for this , 
 
 . 281 
 
 The Storm . 
 
 . 282 
 
 Sleep of our Lord 
 
 . 283 
 
 Not like ours 
 
 . 284 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ' Faith ' in the New Testament 285 
 
 Rebuking the elements . . 286 
 His action on the powers of 
 
 nature .... 287 
 Parable in the history . . 2S8 
 Souls in tempest . . 289 
 Application of the history . 290 
 Instruction as well as conso- 
 lation .... 291 
 Prophetical meaning . . 293 
 Fortunes of the Church . 294 
 
 Chapter XX. 
 
 The Legion of Devils. 
 
 St. Matt. viii. 28—34; St. Mark v. i— 
 
 21; St. Luke viii. 26 — 40; Vita 
 Vitcs Nostree, % 64. 
 
 Reaching the shore 
 
 . 296 
 
 The demoniacs . 
 
 . 297 
 
 Meeting our Lord 
 
 . 298 
 
 Incidents 
 
 . 299 
 
 Our Lord and the devils . 301 
 ' What have we to do with 
 
 Thee?' .... 302 
 
 Mendacity of the devils . 303 
 
 Torment ' before the time ' . 304 
 Power of the devils in heathen 
 
 lands .... 306 
 
 Adjuration of our Lord . 307 
 Frightful character of this 
 
 possession . . . 308 
 
 The name of the devils . . 310 
 
 Their petition . . • 311 
 
 The herd of swine . . 312 
 
 Their destruction . . . 313 
 
 Possible ends of the devils . 314 
 
 Our Lord's reasons . . 315 
 
 His sovereign rights . . 316 
 
 Chapter XXI. 
 
 The Gerasenes. 
 
 St. Matt. viii. 30—34 ; St. Mark v. 14— 
 21 ; St. Luke viii. 34 — 40 ; Vita Vita 
 
 Nostra, § 64. 
 
 News spread among the 
 population . . .319 
 
Contents. 
 
 XXI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fear of the Gerasenes , . 319 
 
 Interpretation of the Fathers 320 
 Instinctive fear of God . .321 
 
 The man dispossessed . . 322 
 
 Prayer of the Gerasenes . 323 
 
 Reasons of our Lord . . 324 
 
 Mission of the dispossessed . 325 
 
 Instruction from his case . 326 
 Accidental character of our 
 
 Lord's movements . . 327 
 
 Chapter XXII. 
 The Disciples of St. Jolui. 
 
 St. Matt. 
 
 ix. 14 — 17 ; Vita VitcB 
 Nostrce, § 65. 
 
 Harmonistic questions . . 329 
 Incidents often recurring . 330 
 Our Lord and His disciples . 331 
 He adjourned many things . 332 
 Questions of St. John's dis- 
 ciples very natural . . 333 
 On the former occasion they 
 
 were not present . . 334 
 St. John Baptist in the hands 
 
 of Herod . . . -335 
 He had probably been mur- 
 dered at this time . . 336 
 Answer of our Lord to His 
 
 disciples .... 337 
 
 Principles it contains . . 338 
 
 Words about the Bridegroom 340 
 
 Principle of homogeneity . 341 
 
 ' The wine and the bottles ' . 342 
 
 Chapter XXIII. 
 
 The daughter of Jairus and the 
 woman with the issue of blood. 
 
 St. Matt. ix. 18—26 ; St, Mark v. 22— 
 43 ; St. Luke viii. 41 — 56 ; Vita 
 VitcB Nostrce, § 66. 
 
 Jairus and his daughter 
 Our Lord goes with him 
 The hasmorrhoissa 
 Our Lord conscious of her 
 cure ..... 
 ' Who hath touched Me?' . 
 
 344 
 345 
 345 
 
 346 
 347 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Reasons of our Lord . . 348 
 
 The woman coming forward. 349 
 Death of the daughter of 
 
 Jairus .... 350 
 
 Precautions of our Lord . 351 
 
 His words at the house . . 352 
 
 Details of the miracle . . 353 
 
 The miracle published . . 354 
 Providence of God in linking 
 
 our lives together . . 355 
 The miracle of Naim con- 
 trasted .... 357 
 The raising of Lazarus . . 358 
 
 Chapter XXIV. 
 
 The Evil Tongue. 
 
 St. Matt. ix. 27—34 ; Vita Vita 
 Nostrce, § 67. 
 
 Series of miracles in St. 
 
 Matthew .... 359 
 
 His notes as to connection . 360 
 The blind men at Caphar- 
 
 naum .... 360 
 
 The dumb possessed man . 361 
 
 Cure of the blind man . . 361 
 
 And of the demoniac . . 362 
 Renewal of the calumny 
 
 about Beelzebub . . 363 
 The evil tongue in our Lord's 
 
 life 364 
 
 In the history of the Church 365 
 
 Immense power of lying . 366 
 
 Heretics and schismatics . 367 
 
 Modern books of controversy 368 
 
 Appendix. 
 Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 § 56. The calumny of the 
 Pharisees about 
 Beelzebub . . 370 
 
 § 57. The Scribes and Phari- 
 sees seeking for a 
 sign. The close 
 union of the disciples 
 to our Lord . . 372 
 
XXll 
 
 Contents. 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 §58. 
 
 The Parable of the 
 
 
 
 Cockle. Three 
 
 
 
 Sower 
 
 374 
 
 
 others added . 
 
 380 
 
 §59. 
 
 The Parable of the 
 
 
 §63. 
 
 Our Lord stilling the 
 
 
 
 Wheat and Cockle . 
 
 375 
 
 
 storm 
 
 381 
 
 §60. 
 
 The Parables of the 
 
 
 §64. 
 
 The legion of devils 
 
 382 
 
 
 Seed, the Mustard 
 
 
 §65. 
 
 The disciples of St. 
 
 
 
 Seed, and the 
 
 
 
 John 
 
 385 
 
 
 Leaven . 
 
 376 
 
 §66. 
 
 The daughter of Jairus 
 
 
 §61. 
 
 Explanation of the 
 
 
 
 and the woman with 
 
 
 
 Parable of the 
 
 
 
 the issue of blood . 
 
 386 
 
 
 Sower . 
 
 377 
 
 §67. 
 
 Healing of two bhnd 
 
 
 §62. 
 
 Explanation of the 
 Parable of the 
 
 
 
 men and one dumb . 
 
 389 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 T^ie Blind a?id Dumb Demoniac. 
 
 St. Matt. xii. 22 — 30 ; St. Mark iii. 22 — 27 ; Vita Vitcs Nostra, § 56. 
 
 The words of St. Luke in the passage in which he 
 mentions the attendance on our Lord and His followers 
 of that band of holy women, of whom Magdalene appears 
 to have been the chief, lead us to suppose that the 
 circuit of Galilee, on which He was now engaged, was 
 one of considerable importance and duration. It prob- 
 ably filled up the months of the later autumn, until near 
 the seed-time at the very commencement of winter. But 
 St. Luke and his brother Evangelists are silent about the 
 details of this remarkable period, and we can only answer 
 the question as to the cause of their silence by the 
 remark which has already been made more than once, 
 namely, that the periods of our Lord's life which were 
 spent in this kind of continual activity were just those 
 in which the incidents were probably characterized by 
 the greatest sameness, in which the account of what 
 passed on one day was very probably the account also 
 of what took place on the next day, the only difference 
 being in the minor details of the changes among the 
 persons who were assisted by the working of miracles, 
 or the varieties which might exist among the inhabitants 
 of the towns or villages among which the work of this 
 time was mostly spent. When we come to examine 
 closely the incidents which have been preserved to us 
 in the Public Life, we find that there is almost always 
 E 7 
 
2 The Blind and Dumb Demoniac, 
 
 some reason discernible for the mention of the miracles 
 or discourses which are selected by the EvangeHsts. 
 The days were days of hard work, and the nights were 
 spent by our Lord in prayer. The teaching was the 
 same that had already been delivered in one place after 
 another, and the kind of persons who presented them- 
 selves to our Lord for instruction, or with their objec- 
 tions to be solved, were very similar day after day. We 
 have one reason for thinking that the miracles and dis- 
 plays of Divine charity on the part of our Lord at 
 this time were very splendid, but it is a reason which 
 must, if it existed, have been a cause of great pain to 
 His Sacred Heart. It is probable that any great mag- 
 nificence in the miraculous evidences of our Lord's 
 missions was answered to by a proportionate success 
 in His preaching and in the conversion of souls, and 
 we gather the success of the preaching of this period 
 from the mournful but significant fact that, either during 
 the circuit or at its close, the malice of His enemies 
 had been stimulated to an outrageous pitch, and their 
 hostility to Him blown, so to say, to a white heat. Such 
 is too frequently the issue, in the hearts of those op- 
 posed to the teaching of the Church, of the most suc- 
 cessful exertions of her preachers, or the most laborious 
 devotion of her missioners. 
 
 We have heard but little of the practical issue of the 
 league formed, some months before this time, between the 
 Pharisees and Scribes from Jerusalem, and the officials 
 charged with the administration of the Tetrarch Herod. 
 This understanding determined our Lord to retire, for a 
 time at least, from the usual scenes of His public preach- 
 ing during the past year, and to confine His missionary 
 labours to the country parts of the very populous 
 province over which the Tetrarch bore sway. It is 
 natural to conjecture, from the anxiety evinced by our 
 
The Blind and Dimib Demoniac, 3 
 
 Lord's nearest relations for His safety, on the occasion 
 of His short visit to Capharnaum, when the Centurion 
 obtained from Him the heaHng of his servant, that it 
 Avas dangerous for Him to show Himself in the greater 
 ■cities, at least where He was most commonly known. 
 We do not hear, at this time, of any danger in the more 
 ■retired parts of the country, and it is very likely that our 
 Lord changed His scene of action frequently, and that 
 the most violent and bitter of His enemies were to be 
 found rather among the Scribes from the capital than 
 among those whose duties kept them in the country 
 parts. It is natural to think that where He was most 
 known there could be least hostility to Him, and, on the 
 other hand, the emissaries from Jerusalem could hardly 
 set themselves the task of following Him about from 
 place to place, especially as, wherever they so followed 
 Him, they would find Him in the midst of large and 
 ■enthusiastic multitudes. Under such circumstances, they 
 could do but little by their presence to check His 
 influence directly, and there might have been some 
 apprehensions on their own part as to the safety of 
 such a course. All through the Gospel history we can 
 observe the fear of the people as a powerful influence in 
 the minds of the rulers, whether ecclesiastical or secular. 
 The populations over which they presided were turbulent, 
 violent, and excitable, and they had not only to deal 
 with the populations, but with the Imperial power of 
 Rome, always ready to find fault with and to punish its 
 subordinates on account of disturbances among the 
 people, though not so much on account of its regard 
 for the people as of its dislike of anything that might 
 ruffle the peace of its enormous dominions. 
 
 But, if our Lord was thus safe from any attempts on 
 His Person or Life, for the present, this security only 
 turned the malice of His enemies into a fresh channel. 
 
4 The Blind and Dtunb Demoniac, 
 
 If they could not lay hands on Him, they could do far 
 worse by slander and misrepresentation. And, indeed, 
 the magnificence of His miracles, and the cogency of the 
 argument which was naturally drawn from them in favour 
 of the Divinity of His Mission, forced on the Scribes and 
 Pharisees their last resource of calumny, as the only 
 means left in their power of impairing His influence 
 over the multitudes. They used it, probably, not with- 
 out an immense effect on the minds of many, and thus 
 it is that the chief notes which remain to us, in illustra- 
 tion of the incidents of the period before us, are such as 
 relate to the extremely captious and malignant opposition 
 to which He was now subjected. The device to which 
 they were driven is one of which we have constant 
 instances in the history of the Church, whose enemies, 
 like those of our Lord, are fain to calumniate the plain 
 workings of God's Holy Spirit, rather than allow the truth 
 of the claims to which those workings witness. This 
 new phase in the opposition to our Lord marks a fresh 
 epoch in the persecution to which He was exposed, and 
 had a very important influence on His line of conduct. 
 It seems probable that the incidents of which we are 
 now to speak took place at the end of this circuit of 
 missionary teaching, that is, while our Lord was returning 
 to Capharnaum, where His Blessed Mother seems to 
 have been. It was there that His bitterest enemies 
 also were awaiting Him. 
 
 *Then was offered to Him one that was possessed 
 with a devil, blind and dumb, and He healed him, so 
 that he spake and saw, and all the multitude were 
 amazed, and said, Is not this the Son of David ? And 
 the Pharisees hearing it said. This man casteth not out 
 devils but by Beelzebub the prince of devils.' St. Mark 
 tells us that the Pharisees who said this were * the Scribes 
 who were come down from Jerusalem/ in distinction 
 
The Blind and Dumb Demoniac. 5 
 
 from the Scribes and Elders of the towns of Galilee, and 
 that they added to their calumny the still more wicked 
 circumstance, that our I>ord Himself had a devil, and 
 this devil Beelzebub, the prince of devils. Here then 
 for the first time we meet this extreme instance of the 
 malice of these miserable men. Our Lord 'was going 
 about doing good,' as St. Peter said of Him after the 
 Day of Pentecost, ' and healing all that were oppressed 
 of the devil,' ^ showing by His works of mercy and power 
 that God was with Him. This was the truth which these 
 men never would acknowledge, and, as they were the 
 teachers of the people, and saw the multitude led on 
 by the evidences with which the Providence of the 
 Eternal Father authenticated the mission of the In- 
 carnate Son, they were bound, both by their office and 
 by their own interests, to find some reasonable explana- 
 tion of these great miracles, if they would not submit to 
 that one true conclusion, which simple and humble men 
 were thankfully drawing from them. ' Is not this the 
 Son of David ? ' that is, * is not this the promised 
 Messias?' The fact could not be denied, that the 
 diseases and corporal afflictions of men were healed by 
 His touch and by His word, and even, what was more 
 wonderful, and what showed a power which could not 
 but be Divine, the very devils obeyed His word, and left 
 the poor victims of whom they had been permitted to 
 take possession. This was a greater exercise of power 
 than the simple healing of disease, inasmuch as the 
 spiritual kingdom, to which the devils belong, is higher 
 than the natural and physical kingdom, to which belong 
 the bodies of men, and consequently health and disease, 
 and, inasmuch as the devils were not only the enemies 
 of the bodies but also, and principally, of the souls of 
 men. The power which our Lord showed over them, in 
 1 Acts X 38. 
 
6 The Blind a7id Dumb Demoniac, 
 
 the case of dispossession, was an earnest of the deliver- 
 ance through Him of the souls of men from the tyranny 
 which the devils constantly exercised over them, the 
 truest and most terrible of slaveries, the evil which led 
 on to the eternal miseries which are the punishment of 
 sin, and which do not end with this life. 
 
 This was the great boon of which Zachary, the father 
 of St. John, said so much in his Canticle of thanksgiving. 
 ' Salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all 
 that hate us. That being delivered from the hand of 
 our enemies, we may serve Him without fear, in holiness 
 and justice before Him all our days.' Never was our 
 Lord so compassionate and so merciful as in these 
 miracles of power over the enemies of mankind. Those 
 who were thus delivered were the choicest instances of 
 His condescension and love. One of them had been 
 the blessed Mary herself, of whom we have been speak- 
 ing in the last chapter. For many reasons, therefore, 
 the people had the best of grounds for their rejoicing 
 question, * Is not this the Son of David ? ' especially 
 when the two kinds of power were united in one miracle, 
 as in the case before us, when the poor victim of de- 
 moniac possession was also set free, and at the same 
 moment, from the bodily infirmity which shut him out 
 from the whole worlds of sight and of speech. Later on 
 in the history we find the people exclaiming in wonder 
 and joy when our Lord worked the double miracle in the 
 coasts of Decapolis, * He hath done all things well. He 
 maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.' ^ 
 And now the miracle was threefold, and the senses which 
 were restored to the man delivered from the power of 
 the devil were not those two which are usually kindred, 
 of speech and hearing, but those of seeing and speaking, 
 the cure of which is not so usually concomittant. 
 2 St. Mark vii, 37. 
 
The Blind and Dumb Demo7iiac. 7 
 
 And yet, in the midst of these displays of mercy and 
 power, there were to be voices raised against the benefi- 
 cent and gracious Lord Who bestowed these boons so 
 lovingly, and yet only as a proof and an earnest that He had 
 far higher boons to give. The voices were not those of the 
 poor and ignorant, of gross sinners wallowing in the mire 
 of corruption, not of the unbelieving courtiers of the 
 Herodian princes, or of the heathen population mixed 
 up in so large a proportion with the Jews in some parts 
 of Galilee. They were the voices of learned Scribes of 
 the Law, of ministers of the altar, of ecclesiastics deputed 
 by the central authorities of the holy nation, to watch 
 the proceedings and, if possible, to thwart the growing 
 influence of the Teacher on Whose death they were 
 already determined. Thus the calumny, black in itself, 
 derived additional malignity from the persons who set it 
 in circulation. It is wicked enough to oppose the work 
 of God in any way, and when miracles and other effects 
 which proceed from Him are calumniated, even by 
 simple denial of their supernatural character, the guilt 
 cannot but be great, for to spread abroad such falsehoods 
 is to set ourselves against the designs of God for the 
 salvation of mankind, it is to take part with the very 
 devils themselves in attempting to frustrate the action 
 of God for the benefit of His creatures and for the 
 advancement of His own glory. Lies are always the 
 weapons of the enemies of God, but a lie of this kind 
 has a peculiarly diabolical character. This was a lie 
 which affected, not some point of truth only, as when 
 heretics teach some falsehood against the Catholic creed, 
 or as when the personal character of some servant of 
 God is aspersed, but it affected the evidence of the 
 Kingdom, the appointed means which God had chosen 
 for the proof of the true character of the mission which 
 came from Him. Moreover, it is a peculiarly black 
 
S The Blind and Dumb Demoniac. 
 
 charge to make against any one, that he has dealings 
 with Satan, a charge which transcends in enormity a 
 charge against virtue or honesty, in the common sense of 
 the words. And this charge was now made against out 
 Lord by persons who were designed in His Providence 
 to be the assistants, and not the opponents, of His 
 teaching. They were sitting to a great extent, in the seat 
 of authority, and on their attitude towards Him depen- 
 ded, in great measure, the attitude of the whole nation, 
 the salvation of which was at stake in the issue of their 
 reception of Him. Altogether, the calumny of which we 
 now have the first instance, was one of the very blackest 
 of the crimes of these rulers of the holy people, and it 
 drew down on them a very severe admonition from our 
 Blessed Lord. 
 
 It would seem that this calumny had not been 
 uttered in His presence, and that He took some measure 
 for securing the attendance of those who made it on the 
 teaching which He now determined to deliver on the 
 subject. St. Matthew says, in His concise way, 'Jesus, 
 knowing their thoughts, said to them.' St. Mark, filling 
 up the picture with details, from the faithful memory of 
 St. Peter, who was present, says, 'And after He had 
 called them together. He said to them in parables,' and 
 the rest. It was, therefore, a solemn occasion, which He 
 had provided, for the severe warning He was« about to 
 address to them. ' How can Satan cast out Satan ? ' 
 This is the thought that was in their hearts at the time, 
 but which they had uttered and spread abroad before. 
 ^And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that king- 
 dom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against 
 itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan be risen 
 up against himself, he is divided, and cannot stand, but 
 hath an end.' The report in St. Matthew is, as usual, 
 more concise and summary, giving the sense of what our 
 
The Blind and Dumb Demoniac, 9 
 
 Lord said in a few words. 'Every kingdom divided 
 against itself shall be made desolate, and every city or 
 house divided against itself shall not stand. And if 
 Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself, how 
 then shall his kingdom stand ? ' 
 
 It is clear then that our Lord began, as was His wont, 
 with quietly reasoning with them on the foolishness of 
 their supposition. Satan cannot be supposed to be so 
 foolish as to fight against himself He is a being of 
 malice, of knowledge, and of skill, infinitely surpassing 
 the knowledge and skill of any human intelligence, and 
 you are making him out to be a child. Even in 
 human polities people know the paramount importance 
 of union in the members of those polities, and that the 
 common interests cannot but be destroyed if citizens of 
 the same commonwealth fight against each other. So it 
 is in families and houses also. Union is strength, dis- 
 cord is weakness and leads to ruin. The policy which 
 you are supposing Satan to be pursuing, is one which 
 must certainly lead immediately to the destruction of his 
 kingdom. * He is divided and cannot stand, but hath an 
 end.' The argument rests on the common sense of 
 mankind. To make Satan at war with himself, is to 
 make him foolish and remiss, in his warfare against God 
 and His creatures. It is not be to questioned that the 
 kingdom of Satan, in which it appears from Holy Scrip- 
 ture that there are various orders among the fallen spirits, 
 who retain in their misery the ranks which they respec- 
 tively occupied in Heaven before their sin, is a kingdom 
 of mutual hatred and discord, as indeed must be the 
 case, where every one is filled with pride, rage, disap- 
 pointment, and despair. Perhaps it is a proof of the 
 intensity of their hatred for God and for the race of 
 mankind, which He has destined to occupy the places 
 from which the evil spirits have fallen, that they can 
 
lo The Blind and Dumb Demoniac. 
 
 combine into what seems so like a disciplined army in 
 their assaults on the souls of men. But it appears cer- 
 tain that there is a kind of tyrannical and hateful 
 authority among them, and that the lower orders of 
 these fallen foes of God are subordinate to the higher, 
 and that all are under the supreme dominion of Satan. 
 This being the case, the argument of our Lord has its 
 full force. The warfare between Him and the enemy of 
 God and man was internecine, and without truce. Satan 
 was to do his worst, and for a moment he was to seem to 
 gain the victory, for he was to bring about the plot of 
 Caiaphas, the betrayal of Judas, the pusillanimity of 
 Pilate, the final catastrophe of the Cross. He was to 
 have his hour, when the power of darkness was to be 
 supreme. But that hour was to be the end and over- 
 throw of his kingdom. For he was to bring about therein 
 the salvation of the world, and to be despoiled most 
 justly of the power which he had been allowed to exer- 
 cise over mankind, because he had ventured to exercise 
 it over the Incarnate Son of God. He was to be caught 
 in his own snare, and destroyed by his own device. 
 And the warfare against him and his evil angels, on the 
 part of our Lord, was to know no interval of repose, and 
 thus to imagine that there could be any compact between 
 them, as may be the case with false teachers and will be 
 the case with Antichrist, was to indulge in a dream which 
 could have no foundation in the elementary conditions 
 of the government of the world by God and of the 
 Dispensation of the Incarnation. Our Lord would 
 never even allow the evil spirits to bear witness to 
 Him, He would not accept testimony to the truth con- 
 cerning His person or mission, from them. The calumny 
 of the Scribes from Jerusalem, therefore was an evidence 
 of their deep ignorance as to the malice of the devil, and 
 the rules of God's government of the world. 
 
The Blind and Dumb Demoniac. 1 1 
 
 This argument of our Lord, then, was a calm appeal 
 to their reason. He went on with another argument, 
 which is related by St. Matthew, but naturally omitted 
 by St. Mark. This argument is drawn from the practice 
 of exorcism, which was a part of the system of the Jews. 
 In every religious system which is founded on the wor- 
 ship of the true God, there must of necessity be some 
 means of dealing with the evil spirits, the enemies of 
 God and of man, who are allowed by God, in His great 
 wisdom, to tempt and molest men in various degrees and 
 ways, always under His own control, and with due 
 regard to the weakness of the beings whom they assail. 
 For it is for His glory that His enemies should be 
 conquered, in His strength, by beings weaker than them- 
 selves. In all such systems, therefore, in which the 
 truth of the existence and of the molesting power of the 
 evil spirits is recognized, there are also some persons to 
 whom power is imparted, by the use of certain rites and 
 holy ordinances, to dispossess the devils of the bodies 
 of men whose control they have been allowed for a time 
 to usurp. This system of exorcisms and exorcists existed 
 among the Jews, and it was a recognized thing among 
 them that devils could be cast out, under certain circum- 
 stances, and by certain people, nor were these ministers 
 always the highest in the hierarchical grades of the Old 
 Covenant, any more than in the system of the Catholic 
 Church. Our Lord now calmly appeals to the existence 
 of this system among the Jews, as a proof of the injustice 
 and malignity of His enemies. The charge which they 
 had made against Him, might with equal justice have " 
 been made against any exorcist whatever, and yet it was 
 made against Him alone. *And if I, by Beelzebub, 
 cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out ? 
 Therefore, they shall be your judges.' This form of 
 language is like that which our Lord uses a little later 
 
12 The Blind and Dumb Demomac. 
 
 on, when He speaks of the Queen of the South, and of 
 the men of Ninive, as rising up in judgment against the 
 men of that generation and condemning them, that is, as 
 showing by their own example how inexcusable the Jews 
 of His time were. In the same way these Jewish 
 exorcists would be the condemnation of those of their 
 own Scribes and teachers who brought this calumnious 
 charge against our Lord, that He was in league with the 
 devils and so cast them out, because their own instance 
 would show that they did not deny the power of exorcism 
 in the Kingdom of God, and that therefore they were 
 inconsistent in their malignity in making their accusation 
 against Him. If they saw an exorcist of their own 
 casting out a devil they would say that he did it by the 
 power of God, but if they saw our Lord doing the same 
 work of mercy, they said He did it by the power of the 
 evil one himself. Why was this ? It was only because 
 of the malice of their own hearts, which made it a 
 necessity for them to decry Him and discredit His 
 miracles in every possible way, because they were before- 
 hand determined not to acknowledge His Divine mission. 
 Our Lord goes on to set forth the true import of this 
 exercise by Him of His power over the devils. It was 
 for the sake of escaping this inevitable conclusion, which 
 they had made up their minds never to accept, that they 
 had taken refuge in the foulest and most blasphemous 
 calumnies. Nevertheless the conclusion was there, and 
 they could not deny its cogency. ' But if I, by the 
 finger of God, the Spirit of God, cast out devils, then is 
 the Kingdom of God come upon you.' The fact of His 
 power over the devils could not be set aside, and like 
 the other evidences which the Providence of His Father 
 ordained for the authentication of His mission, it had its 
 clear irresistible importance. It was no power like that 
 committed to the exorcists, who by certain prayers and 
 
The Blind and Dumb Demoniac, 13 
 
 invocations were allowed to cast out devils in certain 
 cases. Our Lord always spoke and acted with sovereign 
 authority, in His own Name, and without the rites of 
 preparation and invocation which were to be used by 
 others, which showed that they possessed only a dele- 
 gated power. He cast out devils in the Spirit of God, 
 and in His own Name. This proved, beyond all cavil, 
 the truth that the Kingdom of God was now come. For 
 this was one of the works of the Kingdom, which it 
 belonged to the Holy Ghost to carry out and organize, 
 first through the Sacred Humanity of our Lord Himself, 
 and afterwards in the Church, which He was to leave 
 behind Him for the continuance of His work for the 
 benefit of mankind. The existence of this power in the 
 Church has always been one of the evidences of her 
 Divine mission, and its exercise by our Lord was another 
 proof, added to many more, that He was sent to them by 
 God. The word used by our Lord for the coming upon 
 them of the Kingdom, is the word which signifies a 
 sudden unexpected arrival, as of a great blessing, or a 
 great calamity, which bursts on people unawares. They 
 knew the Kingdom of God was to come, and they could 
 tell many of the signs of its coming, but when it came, 
 it caught them unprepared and inclined, by the corrup- 
 tion of their hearts, to disbelieve its arrival. So it so 
 constantly is with the great dealings of God with man, 
 especially with the presence of His Church. People are 
 always wishing for something which is to come, always 
 talking about the future blessings which are to be, and 
 they do not know that they have them already among 
 them, they even turn upon His Church and revile her, 
 saying, if necessary, in the face of all the evidences of her 
 mission, that she is in league with the powers of evil. 
 
 Our Lord adds yet another argument from the facts of 
 the case, as they might have been perceived by the Jews. 
 
14 The Blind and Dumb Demoniac. 
 
 It is in some sort a continuance and drawing out of the 
 former. He appeals to what is going on around them, 
 and before their eyes, not only in the casting out of 
 devils by the finger of God, but in the invasion and 
 conquest of the whole kingdom of Satan by the power 
 of the Gospel preaching. This was a great deal more 
 than the simple casting out of devils. Even this had 
 been performed by our Lord on a far more extensive 
 scale than in the ordinary ministrations of the synagogue. 
 But this was not all. The kingdom of Satan had been 
 attacked on every side. Satan himself had been quelled 
 by our Lord in His single encounter with him at the 
 time of His temptation in the wilderness, and he had 
 _gone away defeated and cowed. He had found nothing 
 in Him, as afterwards at the time of the Passion he was 
 to find nothing in Him. All his wiles and devices had 
 turned out absolutely of no avail against Him Whom he 
 suspected to be the Incarnate Son of God, but Whose 
 humility and low condition in the world completely 
 blinded and baffled him. But the temptation had not 
 been quelled by our Lord for Himself only, nor had His 
 victory profited only Himself. How could He profit, 
 what had He to gain, by a victory over Satan ? Nothing 
 for Himself, but much for us. From that time the de- 
 struction of the kingdom of evil had begun. Thousand?, 
 had been rescued from him already by the preaching of 
 St. John, and then our Lord began to preach, and to 
 teach and to work miracles, and every step on His 
 onward path was a defeat of Satan. It was a blow to him 
 to lose the dominion over the bodies of men whom he 
 might for a time possess, but now his hold on souls was 
 being broken off. Our Lord had already gathered to- 
 gether a multitude of followers who were to become, 
 after many defections, perhaps, the nucleus of the future 
 Church, and He had spread far and wide over the country 
 
The Blind and Dumb Demofiiac. 15 
 
 the true and life-giving teaching of the Gospel, so 
 different, both in attractiveness and in power, from the 
 traditions and percepts of the Old Law, and men were 
 flocking into the new Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven 
 suffering violence, and the violent carr}'ing it away. This 
 was what was going on all around these miserable men, 
 who were cavilling at the Teacher sent from God, and 
 letting the publicans and harlots pass them in the road 
 to Heaven. '■ How can any one enter into the house of 
 a strong armed man and rifle his goods, unless he first 
 bind the strong man, and then he will rifle his goods and 
 his house ? ' 
 
 St. Mark puts the words affirmatively instead of in- 
 terrogatively, and it is very likely that our Lord used 
 first the one form and then the other. The picture is 
 easily to be understood, but it is very instructive to con- 
 sider what it is that our Lord implies by His use of it. 
 He implies that the dominion of Satan in the world, 
 before He Himself came to conquer him, and set men 
 free from his tyranny, was like nothing more than the 
 peaceful tranquil possession of a strong armed man of 
 the house and goods which belong to him as his own. 
 God had started mankind after the fall, and again after 
 the flood, with a certain amount of knowledge of Him- 
 self, with the law of right written in their hearts by 
 nature, with a cluster of holy traditions to keep up the 
 memory of the truth, with the knowledge of their own 
 fall and the promise of a Redeemer, with the constant 
 witness to Himself contained in the order and beauty 
 and tender care for creatures manifested in the visible 
 universe, with the lesson of a particular Providence over 
 them, speaking to them from the order of the world in 
 which they dwelt, and from their own personal experi- 
 ence. One by one the devils had conquered these 
 defences, as it were, of man. They had almost obli- 
 
1 6 The Blirid and Dumb Demoniac. 
 
 terated the knowledge of God in the human heart, 
 they had placed themselves on the altars of a thousand 
 shrines as the objects of an impure worship, attractive to 
 the lower part of man's nature by its very impurity, they 
 steeped the whole of human life, as far as was allowed 
 them, in the foulest corruption and hardest cruelty, so 
 that there hardly remained a standard of morality to 
 look to, or a law of conscience to uphold the struggling 
 relics of good in the human heart. The result of this 
 was the utter darkness and degradation in which our 
 Lord found mankind. In truth the strong armed man 
 was in peaceable possession. Scarcely a voice was lifted 
 against him. Only in the chosen nation which God had 
 placed under the iron discipline of the law of Moses, 
 was there comparative light, the inestimable blessing of 
 the knowledge of the one God, and of His promises for 
 the salvation of the world. And even over a great 
 portion of the chosen nation Satan had extended his 
 reign. 
 
 Our Lord's words imply that the first process in the 
 redemption of the world and the establishment of the 
 new Kingdom had necessarily been the binding of the 
 strong armed man. Satan had first been subdued, be- 
 fore his house could be rifled. It is remarkable how 
 familiar this thought is to the prophets and to the saints 
 of the New Testament in their Canticles. When our 
 Lord read in the synagogue at Nazareth the passage of 
 Isaias which He chose for the most perfect exposition of 
 His own mission, it was a passage which promised 
 deliverance of the captive and liberty to the bruised. 
 Our Blessed Lady's Canticle contains the same idea. 
 By the side of her own exaltation and blessedness, she 
 places the scattering the proud in the imagination of 
 their hearts, the putting down the mighty from their seat. 
 These words may apply primarily to the casting of the 
 
The Blind and Dumb Demoniac. 17 
 
 proud and rebellious spirits from their thrones in 
 Heaven, but they may also convey an allusion to the 
 deposition of Satan and his followers from the thrones 
 they had usurped on earth. The great work of the 
 Incarnation was no child's play. It involved an im- 
 mense change in the condition of the world, not only in 
 the interior of the hearts of men — though there never can 
 be a great change there without external manifestation 
 and influence on the state of things outside — but also in 
 the state of society, of social life, of the relations of men 
 one to another, of governments and polities. Even 
 externally, to the eye that could judge truly, the world 
 was a great Palace or Temple of Satan. The devils 
 were worshipped in a thousand shrines, and all this 
 worship was to cease, the temples were to be either 
 destroyed or left to rot away, the whole system of the 
 established idolatry, as we should term it, was to be 
 destroyed, with the thousand material institutions and 
 endowments which w^ere attached to it, and which 
 secured to it the allegiance of a vast number of in- 
 terested families. The heathen religion, consisting in 
 the worship of devils under the name of gods, had taken 
 possession of social life, of civil and military administra- 
 tion, and all this was to be changed. The public amuse- 
 ments, the theatres, the schools, the literature of the 
 people, were all saturated with devilry, and all this was 
 to be destroyed and supplanted in due time by the 
 Christian system in all these particulars. And still more, 
 of course, the reign of Satan in the hearts and lives and 
 minds of men was to be overthrown. He ruled them 
 by their passions and lusts, which he encouraged them 
 to indulge, by the things of sense and the allurements of 
 the world, by covetousness, by ambition, by revenge and 
 hatred, and by the whole array of temporal goods which 
 he promised them, as he ventured to promise them ta 
 c 7 
 
i8 The Blind and Dttmb Demoniac, 
 
 our Lord, if they would fall down and worship him. In 
 all these matters he was to be despoiled, his palace was 
 to be entered by force, and his weapons taken away, his 
 goods by which he tempted and enslaved men, were to 
 be torn from his grasp, and handed over to his enemies. 
 Men were to be taught the truth concerning God, 
 concerning themselves, concerning the world and life, 
 and death, and time, and eternity. They were to 
 be endowed with graces which would enable them, 
 if they would, to withstand his assaults, and those 
 of his satellites. They were to learn a religion which 
 made virtue easy and happiness possible, which set in 
 order alike the state of the world outside man and his 
 own inner conscience. He was to be at peace with him- 
 self, and with his God, and with his neighbour, and to 
 know how to use the good things of this fleeting life 
 without abusing them, to restrain his passions, to elevate 
 his aims and aspirations, to lead a life after the pattern 
 of an Incarnate God, and to have his conversation in 
 Heaven while passing as a pilgrim through this valley of 
 exile, changed into an outer court of Paradise by the 
 exercise of the Christian virtues. And the new King- 
 dom was to take possession of the external world also, 
 and to write its gentle supremacy on every department 
 of human and social life, with an universality and a 
 thoroughness of dominion at least equal to those of the 
 usurpation which it had overthrown. 
 
 This is what our Lord describes as the rifling of the 
 goods of the strong armed man, by One Who is stronger 
 than he. This is to be the fruit and issue, not the first 
 seed and the beginning of the Kingdom of God. There 
 is something required for this, before it can happen, as 
 He says. That something is the binding of the strong 
 armed man, and this, as He implies, is what has been 
 going on the midst of the people who were cavilling at 
 
The Blind and Dumb Demoniac, 19 
 
 Him and calumniating Him. Some of the holy Fathers 
 and writers on the Gospel have differed among them- 
 selves as to the exact interpretation of the binding of 
 Satan which our Lord declares either to have taken 
 place or to be in process of execution, and some of 
 them connect this passage in the Gospels with the 
 famous passage in the Apocalypse of St. John, in which 
 it is said that an Angel is seen coming down from 
 Heaven and laying hold of the old dragon, and the 
 old serpent which is the devil and Satan, and binding 
 him for a thousand years, after which he is to be loosed 
 for a little time.^ This is thought by many among the 
 Fathers to signify the binding of Satan during the time 
 ■of the reign of the Church, before the last great apostasy 
 and persecution, in the time of Antichrist, when Satan 
 will be loosed and allowed, for a short period, to use all 
 his tremendous natural power for the seduction of men, 
 just before the Second Coming of our Lord. But till 
 that last period comes, they think that he is himself 
 confined to Hell, and not allowed to go forth himself 
 for the temptation of men, which, however, he carries 
 on by means of his followers and subordinates. If it 
 be asked when this binding of Satan took place, it is 
 .answered, with the greatest probability, that it was not 
 accomplished till after the Passion of our Lord, though 
 Satan must have been greatly weakened and beaten 
 down by many things which occurred before, especially 
 .the defeat of his assaults on our Lord Himself at the 
 time of the Temptation. Our Lord does not, in this 
 passage, speak of the binding of Satan as a thing already 
 accompHshed, but as a thing which has been begun, as 
 a necessary preliminary to that process of the conquest 
 ■of His Kingdom which He describes as the rifling of 
 'the goods of the strong armed man. This process may 
 
 3 Apoc. XX. 23. 
 
20 The Blind and Dumb Demoniac. 
 
 be dated back even before the Incarnation itself, for at 
 the Immaculate Conception of our Blessed Lady the 
 binding of Satan may be said to have been begun. 
 Afterwards it was carried on further and further, as at 
 the Incarnation and Nativity of our Lord, at the sancti- 
 fication of St. John Baptist and by the whole course of 
 his preaching and that of our Lord Himself, and a 
 great step in it may have been the frequent disposses- 
 sions wrought by our Lord and by the Apostles, and 
 the seventy disciples whom He sent out to preach in 
 His Name during His lifetime. And then the binding 
 of the arch-enemy may have been consummated and 
 concluded for the time when our Lord entered triumph- 
 antly into the possession of His Kingdom at His 
 Resurrection and Ascension. The thousand years of 
 the Apocalyptic vision may be understood naturally 
 of the duration of the power of the Church in the 
 world up to the last, and it may be thought, as some 
 Fathers teach, that during this time, and up to the 
 revelation of Antichrist, Satan is bound by the power 
 of God and prevented from putting forth his full strength 
 and wonderful cunning for the destruction of mankind. 
 And the force of the argument in this passage now 
 before us may be, that the whole course of our Lord's 
 preaching was step after step in the direction of the 
 weakening and binding of Satan, in which process the 
 dispossessions of so many who were before under his- 
 power held a conspicuous part, so much so that it 
 rendered the calumny of the Scribes from Jerusalem 
 plainly untrue. 
 
 The words which follow next in the relation of St, 
 Matthew, and which are omitted in St. Mark's account, 
 are full of important meaning in themselves, and also 
 as connecting the preceding words with the sequel. 
 * He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that 
 
The Blind and Dumb Demoniac, 21 
 
 gathereth not with Me scattereth.' It is just because 
 they are a link between two different subjects in this 
 discourse of our Lord, that it is not certain to which 
 of the two subjects they refer. That is, it is not 
 certainly obvious on the face of the passage whether 
 these words refer to Satan or to the Scribes and 
 Pharisees themselves. Our Lord had been refuting 
 by calm and simple reasoning the calumnies of the 
 Scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem, by which He 
 was Himself accused of a league with the devil 
 when He cast out devils. He had first shown the 
 absurdity of imagining that Satan was fighting against 
 himself, — Satan was too wise in his own policy, and 
 too full of hatred against God and man to commit the 
 folly of undoing with one hand what he was labouring 
 at with the other. His kingdom, miserable as it was, 
 was not divided against itself, consciously and of set 
 purpose. Then He had appealed to the fact that the 
 practice of exorcism was nothing new, and that they 
 themselves acknowledged, in scores of instances, that it 
 was a lawful exercise of power over demons, which be- 
 longed to the ministers of the true religion. Thus on 
 the first ground their cavil was absurd, on the second 
 ground it was gratuitous and malicious. It was founded 
 on a wicked judgment, which they did not form in 
 other cases. Then it seems that our Lord's thoughts 
 passed to the warfare that He was waging against Satan, 
 with whom He was supposed or asserted to be in league, 
 and He spoke in short but clear words of that warfare, 
 and of the part in it which this exercise of power over 
 the devils had to fill. It was one of the essential pre- 
 liminaries to the utter overthrow of the kingdom of evil, 
 and the setting up of the heavenly Kingdom in its place 
 on which He was engaged. This would naturally bring 
 before our Lord's mind, if we may so speak, the whole 
 
22 The Blind and Dumb Demoniac. 
 
 of that great enterprise for which He had come on 
 earth, the conditions under which it was to be pressed 
 on, and the enemies of various kinds by whom it would 
 be opposed. The conditions of the enterprise were 
 such that none could be neutral in the conflict which 
 it involved. He had begun already to bind Satan, with 
 the further purpose of rifling his house and depriving 
 him of his arms and of his possessions. It would be 
 absurd to think that Satan could be indifferent to the 
 measures taken against himself. It was absurd to think 
 that he could care nothing for the deliverance of man- 
 kind, and for the destruction of his own supremacy over 
 their souls and bodies. It was certain that Satan could 
 have no part in this, could make no compact with Him 
 who was doing this in his despite. On the contrary, 
 Satan could be nothing but an enemy and an active 
 opponent of such a work. Our Lord's enterprise was 
 one of aggression on Satan. If Satan did not resist it, 
 he was fighting against himself, and if he did not help 
 it on he could but oppose it with all his might. ' He 
 that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth 
 not with Me scattereth.' Therefore the fact that our 
 Lord cast out devils by the finger of God and by the 
 Spirit of God, considered in the light of this truth, was 
 a fresh and convincing proof that the Kingdom of God 
 had come upon them. 
 
 But the words of our Lord, as has been said, are so 
 fitting for the transition which now naturally follows, 
 from the thought of the great adversary of God and 
 man with whom He had been calumniously stated to 
 be in confederation, to that of the other adversaries, 
 before Him, who were doing the work of the devil by 
 this very calumny, that it has seemed to many com- 
 mentators on this passage that they are rather the 
 preparation for the terrible words which follow than a 
 
The Blmd and Dumb Demoniac. 23. 
 
 continuation of the same subject of the conflict between 
 Satan and our Lord. That is, they seem naturally to 
 introduce the subject of the sin against the Holy Spirit, 
 of which these miserable men were now making them- 
 selves guilty. It is as if our Lord had said, 'Take 
 heed what you are doing in this charge against Me of 
 a league with the evil spirits whom I cast out. The 
 work on which I am engaged, and of which this is a 
 part, is one which forces you to take one side or the 
 other; you must either place yourselves on My side, 
 or you must enlist under the banner of the open enemies 
 of God.' It is not always the case that there is no 
 neutral ground with respect to a work that is to be 
 carried on. In the ordinary works of human life it is 
 not so. We do not oppose the building of a house or 
 the cultivation of a farm, or any other such work, by 
 taking no part in it. But if, when a house is burning, 
 we do not help, when we can, in extinguishing the 
 flames, we help on the fire. If when a ship is sinking 
 we do not exert ourselves to save the crew or passengers, 
 we are helpers in their destruction. If in the time of 
 the invasion of our country we do not rush to arms in 
 her defence, we are on the side of the invaders. So it 
 is in all cases, as we call them, of life or death. To 
 stand aloof is to take a part against the work that has 
 to be done. So it is also in all that concerns the salva- 
 tion of men by Jesus Christ. God is our Lord and 
 Master, and has a right to our service, and if we refrain 
 from taking our place on the side of God, we take a 
 place among the rebel angels on the side of evil. The 
 nature of the work on which God engages when He 
 undertakes the salvation of man, makes it impossible for 
 any one to have, so to say, the miserable right of 
 neutrality. 
 This is true, even of that unconscious influence which 
 
24 The Blind and Dumb Demoniac. 
 
 every one of us exercises on those among whom he lives, 
 and on the whole world around him. He either is with 
 God or against God. He either gathers with our Lord 
 or he scatters. It is a most terrible truth that we are 
 always contributing in one way or the other, to the 
 salvation or the loss of those around us. We are either 
 promoting the cause of virtue, truth, perfection, or the 
 cause of imperfection, laxity, error, and vice. This is 
 one of the conditions under which we live. We must 
 either edify or disedify our neighbour, take part with 
 our Lord or take part against Him. Thus it is that 
 we all have need constantly to repeat the words of .the 
 Psalmist, 'Who can understand sins? Who can tell 
 how often he offends? From my secret sins cleanse 
 me, O Lord, and from those of others spare thy ser- 
 vant.'* But this truth about the impossibility of neutrality 
 in the warfare by which man is delivered from sin and 
 from the bondage of the evil one, is not only generally 
 vaUd in regard of that perpetual exercise of influence 
 on one side or on the other, which is inevitable in the 
 case of men situated as we are, but it has also a peculiar 
 importance in all that concerns the means by which it 
 pleases God to ordain that His Kingdom should be 
 advanced on earth. The whole work of the advance- 
 ment of the Kingdom of God is the work, in an especial 
 manner, of God the Holy Ghost, and we have seen how 
 the conduct of our Lord Himself in His Ministry is 
 often spoken of as being under the guidance of the 
 Holy Ghost. The whole of the economy, as the Fathers 
 love to call it, of the Incarnation and the salvation of 
 the world thereby, was carried out by the operation of 
 the Holy Spirit. It was the appointed scheme of God 
 for man's redemption, and it was not merely proposed 
 to man as a thing he might accept or not, and be without 
 ■* Psalm xviii. 13. 
 
The Blind and Dumb Demoniac. 25 
 
 guilt if he did not accept it, — it was proposed to him 
 as a thing which God commanded him to accept, 
 although He did not force his will to its acceptance. 
 It is not free to man, in this sense, to reject the Gospel, 
 to leave it on one side and pay no attention to its claims 
 and the evidence by which those claims were supported. 
 The Gospel was the Word of the Lord, the Master, the 
 Lawgiver, the Judge. It was enough to decline to 
 attend to it to incur guilt, in addition to the guilt of 
 the sins from which it was intended to deHver man. 
 Faith was to be meritorious, and increduHty a sin suffi- 
 cient for condemnation. And as the Gospel was the 
 message of a Sovereign and imperative on the allegiance 
 of men, so also was it a message and a work which it 
 was not lawful for men to gainsay without incurring fresh 
 guilt. 
 
 Again, as guilt was incurred by not accepting it, so 
 also was guilt incurred by not helping on its acceptance 
 with others, because it was a positive decree of God, 
 and it was sinful not to attend to it, and the guilt of 
 rejecting it was incurred even by a pretended neutrality. 
 In this sense, not to be with our Lord in this great 
 work was to be against Him. The work was hindered 
 if it was not embraced. Not to gather with Him was 
 to scatter, that is positively to undo the work which He 
 was doing. Those who acted in that way could only 
 do so on the false principle that it is optional to embrace 
 the salvation which God had ordained, or not to embrace 
 it. But this is only the first part of the truth which 
 seems to be folded up, as it were, in our Lord's words. 
 For this truth also involves another, namely, that in the 
 designs of God, the carrying out of the great benefit of 
 the Incarnation and the establishment of the kingdom 
 founded upon it, are committed, in a most true sense, 
 to all men, though not to all in an equal degree. Parents 
 
26 The Blind and Dumb Demonfac. 
 
 have a mission to further the Kingdom of the Gospel 
 with regard to their children, superiors to their subjects, 
 friends to their friends, and so on. This ' commandment 
 concerning his neighbour' is as truly imposed on man 
 in the matter of religion, as it is in the natural society 
 which is the institution of God. The neglect of this 
 commandment is the real cause of the apparent failure 
 of the Church in the conquest of the world. 
 
 And lastly, if no one can be neutral in a case such 
 as this, much less can those be neutral who are, by 
 their vocation and position, officially bound to take the 
 side of God. Those to whom our Lord was speaking 
 belonged to the divinely appointed ecclesiastical order, 
 they were the responsible teachers and guides of the 
 people, the shepherds of the flock of God. Their 
 responsibility, therefore, was far greater than that of 
 others. These men, therefore, were under an accumu- 
 lated weight of obligation towards the work on which our 
 Lord was occupied. And yet they were taking a part 
 of which it was to speak very gently indeed to say, he 
 that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth 
 not with Me scattereth. For they occupied in great 
 measure the position which the Catholic Hierarchy in 
 all its grades, from the highest to the lowest, occupies in 
 regard to any action of the Holy Spirit in the Church 
 that can be even distantly compared to that which was 
 now going on in the preaching of the Gospel. But the 
 still more heinous character of the sin which the Scribes 
 from Jerusalem had committed, by attributing the work 
 of God in the dispossession of the devils to the devil 
 himself, must be reserved for treatment in the next 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 St. Matt. xii. 31, 32 ; St. Mark iii. 28—30 ; Vita Vitce NostrcB, § 56. 
 
 The words of our Lord which now follow in the 
 narrative of the two earliest Evangelists, seem, as has 
 been said, to depend on the sentence immediately 
 preceding them. Our Lord seems to have had in His 
 mind the terrible case of those adversaries of His, who 
 were being driven from sin to sin in their opposition to 
 Him. They had begun, perhaps, by wishing and saying 
 to themselves that their line should be to take no part 
 concerning Him at all, to leave things alone and to 
 range themselves neither against Him nor on His side, 
 and they had found out by experience that this could 
 not be, for their position, as the rulers and authorities 
 of the people to whom He was specially sent, forced on 
 them the responsibility, whether they chose it or not, 
 of taking a side. They must say something, and they 
 could not speak for Him, on account of their own 
 interests and corrupt hearts. So they were forced on 
 and on, to the most furious and reckless opposition, 
 and now at last they had been driven so far as to have 
 to calumniate the very works of power and mercy by 
 which His mission was authenticated by the Providence 
 of the Father and by the action of the Holy Ghost. 
 Our Lord, as we have seen, first reasoned with them on 
 the foolishness of the only theory on which their asser- 
 tion could be maintained, and had then appealed to the 
 
28 The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, 
 
 instances, before their eyes and within the experience 
 of all, of the practice of exorcism which was customary 
 among some of the ministers of their own Temple and 
 synagogues. But He has more to say to them than 
 this. He has to pass a most severe sentence on the 
 sin of which they were making themselves guilty, and 
 by so doing to leave a warning to all time against similar 
 opposition to the truth as evidenced by the works of 
 God. 
 
 'Therefore I say to you, every sin and blasphemy 
 shall be forgiven to men, but the blasphemy of the 
 Spirit shall not be forgiven. All sins shall be forgiven 
 unto the sons of men, and the blasphemies wherewith 
 they shall blaspheme. And whosoever shall speak a 
 word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him, 
 but he that shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall 
 not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in the 
 world to come. He shall never have forgiveness, but 
 shall be guilty of an everlasting sin. Because they said 
 He hath an unclean spirit.' These simple and solemn 
 words raise, as is seen at once, two great questions — 
 what is the sin here spoken of, and in what sense is it 
 that our Lord says of it, that it is an everlasting sin, 
 and that, unlike all other sins, it shall never be forgiven 
 either in this world or in the world to come ? 
 
 With regard to the first of these questions, without 
 going into the history of the many explanations which 
 have been given of the meaning of our Lord, it is 
 sufficient to say, that the sin of which He is speaking 
 is clearly that of which the men whom He is addressing 
 had been guilty. They had deliberately attributed to 
 the agency of Satan the miraculous works which had 
 been wrought by our Lord, as evidences of the truth 
 of His mission, and these works were, as has been said, 
 the works of the Holy Ghost. It is said in the Sacred 
 
The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 29 
 
 Scriptures that all the works of our Lord were wrought 
 by means of the Holy Ghost, by Whom He had been 
 anointed, according to the famous passage of Isaias 
 which He Himself read in the synagogue of Nazareth 
 at the very opening of His Ministry. But if this is true 
 of the works of mercy, of the preaching of the Gospel 
 to the poor, and of the other actions of our Lord, it 
 was in a special sense true of that particular work of 
 power and mercy, which consisted in the casting out 
 of the devils, as our Lord expressed it in this passage, 
 by the finger of God, that is, by the Holy Ghost. The 
 Spirit in Which our Lord cast out these devils was the 
 Holy Spirit of God, and these men, in fact, called Him 
 the evil spirit or the unclean spirit, the prince of the 
 devils. This was the calumny or blasphemy against the 
 Holy Ghost of which there is here mention, and we 
 conclude from the context of our Lord's words that He 
 means to speak, if not exclusively, yet directly and 
 particularly of this blasphemy as aimed, not simply 
 against the Person of the Holy Ghost, as for instance 
 it might be in the case of those who deny the Divinity 
 of the Third Person in the Ever Blessed Trinity, but 
 as directed against the Holy Ghost in His special office 
 as the witness to the truth of the mission of the Incarnate 
 Son, whether in His own Person or in the continuation 
 of His work by the instrumentality of the Catholic 
 Church. For there is a malice of a peculiar character 
 and blackness in thus opposing, by the engines of lying 
 and calumny, the very operations of that most Blessed 
 Spirit in the way of evidencing to men the great work 
 of the Redemption by means of Jesus Christ. Because 
 these operations embody, in a particular manner and 
 degree, the merciful counsels and designs of God for 
 the salvation of the human race, they are the very 
 credentials with which He has chosen in His wisdom 
 
30 The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 to recommend to the minds and hearts of men those 
 truths, by faith in which He intends them to be saved. 
 This kind of blasphemy, in regard to its mahce and its 
 mischievousness, may be compared to the act of persons 
 who might intercept the provisions sent by some most 
 beneficent sovereign to a starving population, and either 
 poison them, or persuade the people, for whose salvation 
 they were intended, that they were poison. 
 
 The power of calumny is marvellously great for evil, but 
 no instance of such power can be imagined more deadly 
 than this, that when God has invented a wonderful 
 scheme of mercy and compassion, full of arrangements 
 of infinite love and tenderness for the healing of all the 
 ills of humanity, those for whom it is designed should 
 be persuaded, and taught by authority in His Name, 
 that it came from their most deadly enemy. The sin 
 is more than a common blasphemy against God, as when 
 it is said that He is unmerciful or unjust or cruel, or 
 has created man for the purpose of tormenting him for 
 €ver. This blasphemy touches God in the very greatest 
 exercise of His goodness and mercy, and it is more than 
 a common lie to man, because it is a lie which makes 
 him turn away from these very proofs by means of 
 which, in the counsels of God, he was to be led to his 
 own greatest good and saved from the most extreme 
 and irremediable evils. To persuade man that these 
 evidences, addressed to him by God in the carrying 
 out of the economy of salvation, came in truth from the 
 enemy of God and man, and to use for this purpose 
 the authority and influence which they held, in con- 
 sequence of their position as the representatives of the 
 ecclesiastical chair of truth, was to impose on men, on 
 the authority of God Himself, the duty of disbelieving 
 the message of God, and of discrediting the Divine 
 authentication of the message, and this not simply by 
 
The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 3 1 
 
 proclaiming it to be false, but by proclaiming it to be 
 the work of the father of lies himself. 
 
 This enables us to understand the further words of our 
 Lord, in which He declares that men who may speak a 
 word against the Son of Man shall be forgiven, but that 
 if they speak against the Holy Ghost they shall not be 
 forgiven. It was not that it was a light thing to speak 
 against the Son of Man. For He came to them, all 
 sweetness and spiritual beauty, overflowing with grace 
 and attractiveness of every kind, because God had so 
 ordained to win the hearts of men by making Himself 
 such as to draw them to Himself by condescension and 
 loveliness. He was all holiness, and purity, and charity, 
 shedding gifts of mercy on every side, and no one could 
 find in Him a fault or suggest a sin. But still it did 
 not go beyond ordinary human perversity to misunder- 
 stand Him, and to see in Him an occasion of scandal, 
 fooHsh as it was. He had already complained of the 
 manner in which they had misunderstood the gracious 
 wisdom of God in sending, first St. John Baptist and 
 then Himself, in different ways, the first in the way or 
 austerity and the second in the way of condescension. 
 They had said that the Baptist had a devil, and then 
 they said that our Lord was a gluttonous man and a 
 drinker of wine, a friend of publicans and of sinners. 
 This was bad enough, but it was not more than might 
 be expected of men such as the Jews. For, where there 
 is pride and evil living, there there is certain to be an 
 immense store of censoriousness, and a great unwilling- 
 ness to embrace the truth, by which God is addressing 
 men to win them from their sins, an unwillingness which 
 makes them ever on the watch for flaws in the character 
 of the messengers of God, so as to excuse themselves 
 from the duty of listening to their messa'ge. Our Lord 
 did not ask them to take His own word for Himself, 
 
32 The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 He appealed to the evidences by which His Father^ 
 in His Providence, gave a visible and undeniable 
 sanction to His mission. His Divinity was hidden 
 from their eyes, and He did not obtrude it on them^ 
 on the contrary, He kept it unspoken of, leaving it ta 
 the Father to lead men to the recognition of it. And 
 so, to speak against Him, was bad indeed and wicked,, 
 but it was not bad and wicked with this pecuhar and 
 singular malice of which He is here speaking. It was 
 an ordinary sin, an ordinary blasphemy, in the sense in 
 which He here uses the word, to signify calumny and 
 detraction against a person. It was a most direct assault 
 against works and evidences distinctly and confessedly 
 supernatural, against clear and unmistakeable exercises- 
 of authority over the evil spirits, an authority which can 
 belong intrinsically to no one but to God, and which 
 these men attributed to the prince of the evil spirits. 
 This assertion involved many enormous falsehoods. It 
 involved the falsehood that God was permitting Satan 
 to use a kind of authority over the evil spirits, for the 
 purpose of accrediting false claims, and supporting a 
 lie preached in the name of God Himself It involved 
 the falsehood that the doctrine and claims of our Lord 
 were such as Satan could support in his own interests,, 
 and thus the whole work of the Holy Ghost, both in 
 the teaching and in the evidences which supported the 
 teaching of our Lord, was declared to be false and 
 Satanic, such as it was the duty of the priests of God 
 to denounce and of the people of God to fly from. 
 And this falsehood, as has been said, was uttered to 
 the people by the mouths of those under whose care 
 and authority they had been placed by the arrangement 
 of God Himself 
 
 It is hardly necessary to point out how entirely this 
 interpretation of the sin of which our Lord is here 
 
The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 33 
 
 speaking, is borne out by the constant language of the 
 writers of the New Testament. It is the doctrine of 
 Sacred Scripture that the whole economy of Revelation 
 and of the evidences by which it is accredited is the 
 work of the Holy Ghost. This seems to be the meaning 
 of the burning words of the first martyr, St. Stephen, 
 when he reproached the Jews in their great assembly — 
 * You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, 
 you do always resist the Holy Ghost, as your fathers did, 
 so do you also. Which of the prophets have not your 
 fathers persecuted? and they have slain those who 
 foretold of the coming of the Just One, of Whom you 
 have been now the betrayers and murderers.'^ The 
 mission of the prophets was a prediction of, and also 
 a sort of participation in, the mission of our Lord, and 
 it is attributed in general to the Holy Ghost, and to 
 resist it is to resist the Holy Ghost. It is unnecessary 
 to point out how often our Lord Himself speaks of His 
 own work in the same way. It is the same with the 
 mission and work of the Church after Him. The decree 
 of the First Council, held at Jerusalem, runs in official 
 language, so to speak — 'It hath seemed good to the 
 Holy Ghost and tous.'^ The language is the same of 
 many individual acts of the chief Apostles, notably 
 St. Peter in the exercise of his authority. He says to 
 Ananias, 'Why hath Satan tempted thy heart, that thou 
 shouldst lie to the Holy Ghost ? ' and to Sapphira, ' Why 
 have you agreed together to tempt the Spirit of God?'^ 
 — the lie and the temptation being to the rulers of the 
 Church. In the same way, in the case of the vision 
 which revealed to St. Peter the immediate opening of 
 the Church to the Gentiles, it is said : ' As Peter was 
 thinking of the vision, the Spirit said to him. Behold 
 three men seek thee,' and when he gives an account of 
 
 1 Acts vii. 51, 52. ' Acts xv. 28. ' Acts v. 3, 9. 
 
 D 7 
 
34 The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, 
 
 this afterwards in Jerusalem, he says, 'The Spirit said 
 to me that I should go with them, nothing doubting.'* 
 The same language is used with regard to the mission 
 of St. Philip for the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch : 
 *■ The Spirit said to Philip, Go near and join thyself to 
 this chariot/ and again, 'The Spirit of the Lord took 
 away Philip.'^ It is the same with other prominent acts 
 and steps in the development of the Church, and of the 
 preaching of the Gospel, such as the mission of St. Paul 
 and St. Barnabas for the first great Apostolical journey 
 into the parts of the Gentiles, when it is said, 'The 
 Holy Ghost said to them. Separate me Saul and Barnabas 
 for the work whereunto I have taken them,' and imme- 
 diately after, ' They being sent by the Holy Ghost, went 
 to Seleucia.'*^ Later on in the same history it is said 
 of St. Paul and St. Silas, ' They were forbidden by the 
 Holy Ghost to preach the Word in Asia, . . . and they 
 attempted to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus 
 suffered them not''^ — Asia and Bithynia being two of 
 the provinces in which, as we learn from his first Epistle, 
 the Word had already been preached by St. Peter him- 
 self Thus when St. Paul tells the priests of Ephesus 
 that the ' Holy Ghost had placed them as bishops to 
 rule the Church of God,'^ he uses the same strictly 
 Apostolic form of speech, and we know from the famous 
 passage in the Epistle to the Corinthians, how all the 
 diversities of operations and ministrations in the Church 
 are to be in a special manner attributed to the Holy 
 Ghost — the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, 
 faith, the grace of healing, the working of miracles, 
 prophecy, the discernment of spirits, divers kinds of 
 tongues, interpretation of speeches, and the like.^ In 
 this passage St. Paul is certainly speaking of the same 
 
 * Acts X. 19 ; xi. 12. 5 Acts viii. 29, 39. ^ Acts xiii. 2, 4. 
 
 ' Acts xvi, 6, 7. 8 Acts xx. 28. ^ i Cor. xii. 8, 9. 
 
The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 35 
 
 kind of evidences of the mission of the Church as these 
 .castings out of the devils in the case of our Lord, but 
 the other passages go beyond this particular office of the 
 Holy Ghost, and describe Him as ruling and guiding 
 the Church, and especially its chief authorities, in the 
 manner which belongs to Him as the Paraclete Whom 
 our Lord was to send in His own Name. 
 
 If then this be the true account of the sin against 
 the Holy Ghost of which our Lord is here speaking, we 
 are already prepared for finding that it is, in His eyes, 
 one of the most heinous, if not the most heinous, that 
 can be committed. It is a sin of a peculiarly diabolical 
 character, and fraught with the utmost mischief for the 
 defeating of the good counsels of God for the salvation 
 of mankind. The same consideration prepares us for 
 a further truth, with regard to the manner in which God 
 will deal with this sin. It is often said that there are 
 certain sins as to which God cannot let Himself follow 
 what is a very ordinary rule in His government of 
 mankind, namely, the rule of waiting till the next world 
 for the chastisement of offences against Himself. There 
 .are some sins which have a peculiar character of their 
 own, inasmuch as they are direct assaults on the positive 
 institutions of God, on His arrangements for salvation 
 -and for the propagation of the religion and Kingdom of 
 His Divine Son, or, in general, such as bring His Name 
 into discredit among the peoples of the world, unless 
 they are speedily and conspicuously avenged. There 
 is something of this kind about what is said to David 
 .after his sin with the wife of Urias and after his repent- 
 .ance : ' Nevertheless, because thou hast given occasion 
 to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme because of this 
 4;hing, the child that is born to thee shall surely die.'^^ 
 That is, it belonged to the honour of the name of God 
 
 10 2 Kings xii. 14. 
 
o 
 
 6 The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, 
 
 that some public and signal punishment should be 
 exacted for the offence which had become public, and 
 so that, though the guilt of the sin of David had been 
 remitted on his repentance, and though the child that 
 had been born to him had been brought within the 
 covenant by means of circumcision, still that child 
 should die, that it might be seen that God would not 
 pass over such a sin. Thus, when God sends His 
 messengers into the world, or when He establishes a 
 Church for the salvation of mankind. He is in a manner 
 bound to punish any public contempt of, or assault on, 
 what He has so established, as well as to furnish those 
 whom He sends with credentials that show that He has 
 sent them, and to chastise those who wilfully and mali- 
 ciously impugn their mission. And on this account it is 
 that sins like heresy and schism, or persecution of the 
 Church, or slanders against her doctrine or her ministers, 
 or her system, are usually visited by exemplary chastise- 
 ments, and this quite apart from the remission or non- 
 remission of the guilt of such sins in individual cases. 
 For it is not impossible for those who have sinned in 
 this way to obtain pardon of their guilt by means of 
 true penitence, if God vouchsafes them that grace. 
 These are considerations concerning the sin here spoken 
 of by our Lord which may serve to prepare us for the 
 further statement on which we shall presently have to 
 comment, contained in His words about the irremissi- 
 bility of the sin in question. 
 
 Many beautiful things are to be found in the writings 
 of the Fathers and commentators of the Church con- 
 cerning this passage, which has given them occasion to 
 draw out the peculiar enormity of the sins against the 
 Holy Ghost as they are commonly called, and to show 
 how it is that they are very difficult of forgiveness. 
 The particular sin of these Scribes and Pharisees was 
 
The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, 3 7 
 
 certainly one of the sins against the Holy Ghost, and 
 has a character which is common to the others as well 
 as to itself. The principle which seems to run through 
 these comments is this, that certain sins are directly 
 contrary to the very principle and source of the remission 
 of sin, which is the goodness of God. It is this which 
 in various ways and degrees is assailed by despair, by 
 presumption, by obstinacy in evil, by continued impeni- 
 tence, by envy at the spiritual good of another, and by 
 the impugning of the known truth, which is the parti- 
 cular species of the sin against the Holy Ghost, in the 
 general sense, under which the sin of the Scribes and 
 Pharisees would probably fall. St. Augustine in one 
 place speaks of three kinds of blasphemy, that which 
 was committed out of infirmity, as when men were com- 
 pelled by the fear of torments or of death to blaspheme, 
 and this he says is against the Father, because it is a 
 sin of weakness and so contrary to His power. He 
 puts in the second place the blasphemy which was 
 committed through ignorance, and this is against the 
 Son, because it is against His wisdom, and in the third 
 place, he tells us, there is the blasphemy which was 
 committed out of malice, and this is against the Holy 
 Ghost because it is against the goodness of God. And 
 in the first two cases he says there are some extenuating 
 circumstances, but in the last there are none. St. Bernard 
 has the same ideas, but he speaks more generally of 
 all sins instead of blasphemy in particular. He says 
 that power is attributed to the Father, wisdom to the 
 Son, and charity to the Holy Ghost. Sins committed 
 out of frailty are against the power of the Father, sins 
 committed out of ignorance are against the wisdom of 
 the Son, and sins committed out of malice are against 
 the Holy Ghost. And he says that sins of the two 
 first kinds are more easily remitted on penitence in this 
 
38 The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, 
 
 world, or, if they are carried into the next, they are 
 remitted so far as to have a lighter punishment. But 
 the sins of the third kind, even if repented of, are to- 
 be fully punished in this world, and if they are not 
 repented of they will be punished in the next with the 
 full measure of eternal damnation. St. Bernard there- 
 fore seems to recognize in this passage the doctrine 
 mentioned above, that there may be some sins which 
 even if forgiven, cannot be left without chastisement 
 in this world. Other holy writers explain how it is that 
 the sins against the Holy Ghost are so difficult of 
 forgiveness, and how they are more or less connected 
 one with the other. The goodness of God consists 
 in the mixture of justice and mercy with which He 
 governs the world, and to presume that He will not 
 notice sins is to sin against His justice, while to despair 
 is in the same way to deny His mercy. In each case 
 the sin, whether of presumption or of despair, leads 
 directly to impenitence and obduracy, for the motives 
 of penitence are taken away, the presumptuous man 
 thinking that he does not need it, and the despairing 
 man thinking that he cannot gain anything by it. 
 Further, we may notice in the comments of the Fathers 
 and others on this passage, a strong tendency to explain 
 the impossibility of which our Lord speaks of their 
 forgiveness as meaning that such sins are very difficult 
 to forgive, for the reason, already stated, namely, that 
 sinners of this kind shut the very door of hope against 
 themselves, as if it had been said that those who per- 
 severe in impenitence should not be able to find for- 
 giveness.^^ 
 
 It now remains to see how the words of our Lord can 
 be explained, with reference to that particular sin against 
 the Holy Ghost, of which He had an instance before 
 
 11 See Ludolphus, /;/ loc. 
 
The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 39 
 
 Him in the case of these Scribes and Pharisees. Our 
 Lord seems certainly to make a strong contrast between 
 these sins and other sins, even blasphemies, and the 
 contrast consists in this, that these sins shall not, like 
 others, be forgiven in this world or in the world to come. 
 And certainly no sin can be imagined more difficult of 
 forgiveness than the direct opposition to the provision 
 made by God for the remission of sin, carried to the 
 extent of a calumnious imputation of diabolical action 
 in the very evidences chosen by God for the authenti- 
 cation of those provisions. For the whole of the good 
 counsel of God for the remission of sins is contained in 
 the mission of Jesus Christ, and if this mission be so 
 calumniated as to be imputed to the enemy of God 
 and man, the way for the reception of that remission is 
 directly blocked by the action of the very men who, 
 most of all, need forgiveness and the application of 
 those means of grace against which they have been 
 speaking. The words of our Lord in St. Mark seem 
 to imply that the cause for which there shall be no 
 remission is that the sin cannot be removed : ' He that 
 shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost shall never 
 have forgiveness, but shall be guilty of an everlasting 
 sin.' 
 
 It must first be remembered that our Lord does not 
 simply say that this sin shall never be forgiven, but that 
 it shall not be forgiven, either in this world or in the 
 world to come. We must naturally apply to this language 
 the light which the Catholic doctrine of the remission of 
 sin affords us, and we learn from that doctrine that the 
 guilt of a mortal sin can never be forgiven in the next 
 world if it is not forgiven in this world. That which 
 can be forgiven in the next world is the pain or penalty 
 of sin, whether mortal or venial, and, in the case before 
 us, it is not easy to suppose that our Lord is speaking 
 
40 The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, 
 
 of any sin but of the blackest character. He therefore 
 uses the word forgiveness in the sense compatible with 
 this doctrine, and we are therefore naturally led to 
 think of that remission of sin which consists in the 
 remission of pain, or at the very least, of that remission 
 of sin which includes this remission of pain. And 
 indeed it is true to say that this is the one, full, adequate 
 sense of the word remission in the mouth of our Lord 
 and in the intention of God, for when He gave to the 
 Church the power of the forgiveness of sins, He gave it 
 in its fulness, as the administration of the reconciling 
 power of the Precious Blood shed upon the Cross, and 
 on the supposition of right and perfect dispositions on 
 the part of those whose sins are forgiven. But if these 
 dispositions are perfect in the penitent, it is the full 
 natural effect of the remission of sins, through the 
 Precious Blood, that the pain should be done away with 
 as well as the guilt. This is the effect of the application 
 of the merits of the Passion to the soul in the Sacrament 
 of Regeneration, and, supposing contrition to be perfect, 
 in the Sacrament of Penance also. And when the 
 Church exercises her power of remitting the pain alone, 
 after the guilt has been remitted, by the granting of 
 Indulgences, she does not exercise any power that was 
 not conferred on the Apostles by the simple words of 
 our Lord, ' Whose sins you remit they are remitted, 
 whose sins you retain they are retained.' She uses that 
 power in a way different from that in which it is used 
 in the Sacrament of Penance, but it is the same power, 
 and the words used by our Lord naturally convey it. 
 
 We are so accustomed to the separation between the 
 two parts of the perfect forgiveness of sins which our 
 Lord has purchased for us, that the word forgiveness with 
 us seems most particularly to signify the remission or 
 the canceUing of guilt. But the word which is thus 
 
The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 4 r 
 
 rendered in our language signifies in Greek indiffer- 
 ently the remission of guilt and the remission of pain, 
 or the remission of both, and indeed the Scriptural use 
 of it seems to require at least the inclusion of the 
 reference to pain. Thus it may well be supposed, 
 as has been seen in the last volume, that when our 
 Lord said to the blessed Magdalene the loving words : 
 *Thy sins are forgiven thee,' He meant to give her 
 plenary absolution from pain as well as from guilt, and 
 that her contrition might have been quite enough even 
 when she entered the room in which our Lord was 
 to make her free from guilt, though not from the debt 
 of pain. If this meaning may be used in regard to 
 positive statements as to the twofold remission of guilt 
 and of pain, it may also be used of negative statements 
 such as that before us, in which it is said that sins shall 
 not be or are not forgiven. That is, it may be under- 
 stood that such negative statements are meant to convey 
 the meaning that, putting aside all question of the 
 cancelling of the guilt of such sins by penitence, the 
 debt of pain due to the justice of God will still remain, 
 and that its discharge will be insisted on in the justice 
 and providence of God in this world as well as in the 
 next. The most literal translation of the words would 
 be, ' It shall not be let off to him, it shall not be 
 allowed to pass unpunished, either in this world or 
 in the world to come.' Thus the words may be 
 understood as declaring that the sins of which our Lord 
 is speaking are so heinous and so contrary to the 
 execution of the designs of God for the salvation of 
 mankind, that whenever they are committed He will 
 take care to inflict on them some special punishment 
 both in this world and in the world to come. He will 
 not let them go unpunished even in this life, even 
 although He still may be forced by the impenitence 
 
42 The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, 
 
 of those who commit them to punish them also severely 
 in the next. As a general rule God does not do this — 
 He ordinarily leaves the greater part at least of the 
 punishment of sin for the world that is to come, and 
 His patience with many kinds of sinners is made a 
 subject of complaint by His friends, as the prosperity 
 which is permitted to be the lot of the wicked is an 
 occasion of perplexity. Our Lord may mean that such 
 shall not be the case with sins of this enormous guilt, 
 that their punishment shall be swift, and signal, and 
 public, and present. And here again we may see the 
 mercifulness of our Lord in thus threatening His 
 enemies with immediate and temporal punishment, for 
 that is often the only way to bring certain hardened 
 sinners to the sense of their iniquities. So St. Francis 
 Xavier in his letter of advice to Father Baertz, whom 
 he was sending to Ormuz, a place famous for profligacy 
 of every worst kind, recommends his disciple, in dealing 
 with enormous sinners, such as he was likely to meet 
 with in that sink of every iniquity, to threaten them 
 with temporal punishments at the hand of God even 
 in this life, in the hopes of thus converting men whom 
 other motives could not have any power to move. 
 
 This interpretation seems to have the advantage of 
 explaining the unusual language of our Lord, for it is 
 not usual with Him to distinguish between forgiveness 
 in this world and in the next. It has also the advantage 
 of being founded on the Scriptural usage of the Greek 
 word here employed. But the great majority of Catholic 
 commentators have taken the word forgiveness in the 
 more restricted sense, inasmuch as the forgiveness of 
 guilt must precede the remission of pain, and they have 
 understood our Lord as speaking with reference to 
 guilt. And in this sense the words may be considered 
 as spoken prophetically, rather than, so to say, juridically. 
 
The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 43 
 
 as if our Lord foresaw that none of those who had made 
 themselves guilty of this enormous sin would ever seek 
 for pardon in true penitence — and that thus it is true 
 that the sin shall never be forgiven, because as a matter 
 of fact, no one guilty of it will ever have the grace 
 to repent of it. Thus He said later on of the miserable 
 Judas, that it would have been better for that man 
 that he had never been born, not that it was impossible 
 for Judas to repent of his crime, or that if he had 
 repented, his crime would never have been forgiven, 
 — for there was mercy and love for Judas in the Sacred 
 Heart of Him Whom he had betrayed — but that He 
 foresaw that Judas never would repent in a salutary 
 manner, and so close with the pardon which would 
 have been offered to him if he could have wept over 
 his offences as St. Peter wept. In this sense a number 
 of things never will happen which are not yet absolutely 
 and intrinsically impossible, and thus the words come 
 to mean, not that there is any sin for which the Precious 
 Blood shed on the Cross has not made abundant repara- 
 tion to the justice of God, not that there is any sin 
 which God could not forgive for the sake of His Blessed 
 Son, but that, historically speaking, there will be no 
 instance of such a remission. If our Lord foresaw this, 
 it Was a part of that charity which had guided all His 
 former words to these miserable men that He should 
 give them this solemn warning, for many of them might 
 be rather on the brink of the precipice than as yet 
 plunged into the gulf below, and it might also be useful 
 and charitable for others to be warned of the extreme 
 hopelessness of such a sin. 
 
 In accordance with this latter interpretation, these 
 words of our Lord signify the fact that persons guilty 
 of sins of this enormous malice are hardened against 
 the possibility of penitence, such as would lead to their 
 
44 The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. 
 
 pardon, and that this fact holds good so generally 
 that it is not too much to say that the sins in question 
 will never be forgiven, and this although it remains true 
 that the Sacrifice of the Cross atones for the sins of 
 the whole world. This interpretation is quite consistent 
 with the truth of the former, according to which our Lord 
 asserts that sins of the kind of which He is here speaking 
 are so displeasing to God, and involve so much of 
 rebellion against His government of the world, that He 
 will not consent to leave them in any case unpunished 
 in this world as well as in the next. For this truth 
 includes two distinct statements, that even if the guilt 
 of such sins should be washed away by penance and 
 by the application of the Precious Blood shed on the 
 Cross, still there must nevertheless be some signal and 
 public chastisement for the assault made on the designs 
 and decrees of God, and, in the second place, that even 
 if the sin is not repented and forgiven as to its guilt, 
 God will nevertheless visit it by condign punishment 
 in this world as well as in the next, He will not put 
 off the day of His vengeance altogether till the next 
 world, because it belongs to the honour of His Name 
 and His Kingdom that men should see even in this 
 life, what it is that such sinners incur by their temerity. 
 As if it had been said to them, as is said in the Book 
 of Numbers, ' Know ye that your sin shall overtake 
 you,i2 \^Q\\-^ here and hereafter. This is a distinct 
 element in the full description of such sins and of the 
 manner in which God deals with them, and the words 
 of our Lord may be intended to convey it to us in 
 this place. And still further, many of the holy writers 
 of the Church allow that the words before us may mean 
 simply that which they seem at first sight to mean, 
 namely, that there is this particular sin which God will 
 12 Num. xxxii. 23. 
 
The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, 45 
 
 not forgive either in this world nor in the next, by 
 which is meant, according to the analogy of Scripture, 
 that this particular sin is one for which it is most 
 difficult indeed to obtain remission. It is not that 
 there is any sin of man for which atonement has not 
 been made on the Cross, or that there is any guilt which 
 can go beyond the healing power of the Precious Blood, 
 but that the dispositions of the hearts that can be guilty 
 of a sin of this character are so bad and so hardened, 
 that it is in the highest degree difficult for such a sin 
 to be pardoned. For it cannot be doubted that there 
 are some kinds of sin more easy, and some more 
 difficult, than others of remission, not so much on 
 account of the blackness of their guilt and the intensity 
 of their malice, as on account of the peculiar difficulties 
 which they present to the process of grace by which 
 remission is to be obtained. And what is thus so 
 extremely difficult is sometimes spoken of in Sacred 
 Scripture as impossible. 
 
 Both these last-named interpretations do not lay much 
 stress on the words of our Lord about the impossibility 
 of remission in the case spoken of, either in this world 
 or in the next. They deal with the text almost as if 
 those words did not form part of it, except in so far as 
 it is usual with the same commentators to go on to 
 point out that our Lord's language most clearly confirms 
 the Catholic doctrine concerning the possibility of the 
 remission of sins, in the sense explained, in the next 
 world, that is, the cancelling of the debt due to the 
 justice of God in the prison of Purgatory. It is worth 
 while to remark that the second Evangelist does not 
 insert the words now referred to, about this world and 
 the next, and that he does add, as has been said, some 
 other words of our Lord spoken at the same time, in 
 which the offenders against the Holy Spirit are said to 
 
46 The Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, 
 
 be * guilty of an eternal sin.' In some copies the word 
 is not sin, but judgment, but it seems that this is one 
 of the instances in which modern criticism has confirmed 
 the reading of the Vulgate. The best manuscripts have 
 the word 'sin.' The expression is very instructive, 
 inasmuch as it shows us another aspect of the sin in 
 question, which may have much to do with the very 
 fearful character of this blasphemy. For a sin may be 
 eternal, or continuing long after the death of the sinner 
 who is guilty of it, if it be a sin which has propagated 
 itself in the minds and conduct of others as well as in 
 the soul of the person who committed it originally. 
 Such are pre-eminently sins of scandal, slanders, lies, 
 false doctrines, heresies, schisms, calumnies against the 
 Church or against religious bodies. These sins live on 
 in Hterature, in the works of those who have originated 
 them, in the schismatical or heretical communities which 
 have sprung up in consequence, and the like. It may 
 be most truly said, that the sin of these Scribes and 
 Pharisees may have had as much effect as any single 
 thing, on the continual obstinacy of the Jewish nation 
 in resisting the evidence of the Church. They still 
 believe our Lord to have been the impostor and the 
 ally of Satan that he was said to be by Annas and 
 Caiaphas and their subordinates. In this sense the sins 
 of this kind do not die with the sinners in whose hearts 
 they have first been conceived, and who will be con- 
 fronted by them at the last day in all the full-blown 
 mischief and murder of souls in every generation after 
 them, which have been written against them in the 
 books of God. In this sense a sin can live on for 
 ever, as long as the world lasts, not only in its effects 
 on the poor sinner who committed it himself, but in its 
 effects on thousands and millions of others after him, 
 and of course also in the punishment which corresponds 
 
Idle Words, 47 
 
 to its guilt. This is a distinct element in all sins of this 
 kind, and it may have been our Lord's intention in these 
 words, recorded by St. Mark, to warn the Scribes and 
 Pharisees from Jerusalem of the fearful responsibility 
 which they were incurring by their reckless slanders 
 against Him. 
 
 CHAPTER IH. 
 
 Idle Words. 
 
 St. Matt xii. 33 — 37 ; Vita Vitce Nostrce, § 56. 
 
 After laying down in general words the law by which 
 sins, such as that of which the Scribes and Pharisees 
 had been guilty, would be dealt with by God, our Lord 
 proceeded to add some words which were addressed 
 most pointedly to the state of mind and heart of these 
 enemies of His own themselves. They were thoroughly 
 inconsistent in their calumnies against Him, for they did 
 not deny the goodness of His works, while at the same 
 time they attributed those works to an evil principle. 
 But as the tree is known by its fruits, it was unreasonable 
 to call the fruit good and the tree evil. These words are 
 to be found in the Sermon on the Mount, and they seem 
 to have suggested to our Lord the kindred thought of 
 the evil fruits which were so constantly meeting Him in 
 His experience of the men of whom and to whom He 
 was speaking. But after all, what else could be expected 
 of them ? They were, as St. John the Baptist had called 
 them, 'serpents and a generation of vipers,' and how 
 could they speak good things ? That which the mouth 
 utters comes from the abundance of the heart. The 
 
48 Idle Words. 
 
 heart of a good man is like a treasure, and out of it 
 come forth spontaneously things as good as itself. And 
 it is the same with the heart of a bad man, it is a treasury 
 of evil, and in consequence his words are evil also. But 
 this, of which they thought so little, did not render them 
 excusable, nor was the effect of their words, uttered at 
 random, confined to the moment at which they were 
 spoken. Everything would have to be accounted for at 
 the day of judgment. Then, for every idle word, an 
 account was to be given, and by their words they were 
 to be justified, or by their words they were to be con- 
 demned. Not that no account would be required of 
 their thoughts or of their actions, but that it was wrong 
 to suppose that no responsibility attached to words, as 
 if they were less important and less compromising in the 
 sight of God than actions or than thoughts. 
 
 'Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or 
 make the tree evil and its fruit evil. For by the fruit 
 the tree is known. O generation of vipers, how can you 
 speak good things, whereas you are evil ? for out of the 
 abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good 
 man out of a good treasure bringeth forth good things, 
 and an evil man out of an evil treasure bringeth forth 
 evil things. But I say unto you, that every idle word 
 that men shall speak, they shall render an account for 
 it in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt 
 be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.' 
 The first part of the argument, so to call it, by which 
 our Lord answered the calumny of these Scribes and 
 Pharisees, had been built mainly on the unreasonableness 
 of attributing to Satan the conduct which they imputed 
 to him, that is, of destroying his own kingdom in the 
 world by cooperating with the teaching which was hostile 
 to it with the utmost possible hostility. This had led 
 our Lord on to speak of the warfare which He was waging 
 
Idle Words. 49 
 
 with Satan, how He had come on him in His own 
 superior might, and put him in bonds and destroyed his 
 power and taken possession of the very things in which 
 his dominion consisted. After this He had gone on, in 
 the words last commented on, to speak of the terrible 
 sinfulness of the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, of 
 which these men had made themselves guilty, and to 
 declare the extreme severity of the judgment with which 
 this sin should be visited by His Father. In the words 
 now before us, ' either make the tree good and its fruit 
 good, or make the tree evil and its fruit evil," our Lord 
 addressed Himself to them by an argument of simple 
 reason, without connecting His words with the particular 
 calumny which placed Him in alliance with the evil 
 one. The truth to which He now appeals is a truth 
 which might hold valid in any subject matter of human 
 action and judgment. It is simply this, that such as the 
 cause is, such is the effect, such as the effect such "is the 
 cause. If My words are good, then the source from 
 which they proceed is good also, if My works are evil, 
 then the source of them also is evil. You must say one 
 thing or the other, you must make both the tree and its. 
 fruit either good or bad, not one good and the other 
 bad, for the tree is known by its fruits, and the fruits 
 show the tree. The fruits before you are the deliver- 
 ances of many souls and bodies from the bondage of the 
 devils. If this is a good fruit, then the tree is good. If 
 the tree is bad, then you must say in all reasonableness 
 that it is a bad and wicked thing to deliver men from 
 the slavery of Satan. But if you say that it is a good 
 and a blessed thing to deliver men from their enemy, 
 and from the enemy of God, then acknowledge in all 
 reason that the kingdom of God has come upon you,-, 
 that He Whose words and teaching and claims are thus; 
 attested is the Messenger of God. 
 
 E 7 
 
50 Idle Words, 
 
 There is no passion or anger about these cahii and 
 simple words which appeal, as has been said, to the 
 common reason of mankind. But those which follow, 
 though certainly not passionate, are yet severe, for the 
 image which He has used is enough to bring before our 
 Lord these men themselves and the evil fruit from which 
 they might be known to be evil. It would not require 
 any extreme charity to form the conclusion as to the 
 character of our Lord as reflected in His works, of which 
 the last words speak. It required only reason and fair- 
 ness in concluding naturally from facts before their eyes. 
 And yet even this had not been found in them. Though 
 they were the ministers of the altar and the teachers of 
 the synagogue, they had not shown goodness enough for 
 this common act of reasonable fairness. But how could 
 it be otherwise with them? The piercing eye of the 
 Incarnate Son saw down to the very bottom of their 
 hearts, and there it discerned, not only the reason for 
 their error, but the reason why they could not possibly, 
 being what they were, be expected to speak or think 
 otherwise. ' O generation of vipers, how can you speak 
 good things, whereas you are evil ? ' As He had said 
 on that former occasion, in the Sermon on the Mount, 
 men do not gather grapes from thorns, or figs from 
 thistles. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
 speaketh. Not all that is in the heart comes forth from 
 the mouth, but all that comes from the mouth comes 
 first from the heart. And in proportion as men are 
 more or less on their guard, more or less thoughtful in 
 what they say, or the reverse, so in proportion is it more 
 easy to measure the heart from the words of the mouth. 
 In another passage of which we shall have to speak later 
 on, our Lord draws a terrible picture of the evils that 
 proceed out of the heart of man, as if it were a sort of 
 well of impurity and malice of every kind, bubbling out 
 
Idle Words. 51 
 
 poison and pollution on all around it. ' For from within, 
 out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, forni- 
 cations, murders, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, las- 
 civiousness, an evil eye, false testimonies, blasphemy, 
 pride, foolishness.' 'These evil things,' He added, 
 ^proceed from within and defile a man.'^ In the pas- 
 sage before us our Lord is speaking of the general 
 truth that what a man is in his heart, that he is gene- 
 rally in his conversation, and that it is hopeless to 
 expect virtuous, holy, and charitable conversation from 
 an evil, a worldly and a corrupt heart. A man may 
 restrain himself perforce and hide what is in his heart, 
 but, in the eye of Him to Whom all things are bare, 
 he reveals his hypocrisy or the motives of selfishness or 
 human respect, for which he speaks what he does not 
 mean. A man may lie, but his words then proceed from 
 his lying heart. But the words of the immense majority 
 of men ordinarily, and of all men except the most 
 perfect, continually, are spoken without much fore- 
 thought or deliberation, and are left without any ex- 
 amination afterwards to remain in the books of God 
 until the Day of Judgment. What our Lord here 
 teaches is that they are not really random and without 
 a cause, which stamps on each one of them a peculiar 
 character and not another. They reflect the heart, they 
 are what the heart is, simple, thoughtless, vain, selfish, 
 uncharitable, worldly, or the reverse, according to the 
 moral character of the heart from which they proceed. 
 Thus whatever people may talk about, whatever may 
 be the subject or the occasion, whether they are full of 
 information and purpose in what they say, or the merest 
 frivolous killers of time and chatterers for the sake of 
 chattering, they are all the time, in everything they say, 
 revealing themselves and displaying one thing at least, 
 
 1 St. Mark vii. 22, 23. 
 
52 Idle Words, 
 
 with unerring truthfulness, that one thing being their 
 own hearts. 
 
 Our Lord then goes on to add another and a kindred 
 truth, one which was necessary for the full treatment of 
 the subject before Him, and is sufficient also for the 
 correction of the evil to which His former words pointed. 
 This truth is, that idle and careless as our words may 
 be, they are still the matter of the judgment of God. 
 We may make little account of them now, but they will 
 be most strictly called to account at the last day. ' But 
 I say to you, that every idle word that men shall speak, 
 they shall render an account for it in the day of judg- 
 ment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by 
 thy words thou shalt be condemned.' A great deal has 
 been written on these solemn words, especially on the 
 question of the exact meaning of the epithet ' idle,' which 
 is here used by our Lord rather than any other more 
 severe word, which might seem to be justified by the 
 occasion. He does not say calumnious word, or blas- 
 phemous word, but idle word, and His expression seems 
 very fairly rendered by our word ' idle.' It may be that 
 our Lord has here shown at once His gentleness and 
 His strictness, the former by using no harder word than 
 idle of the calumnies and blasphemies of which He was 
 here complaining, and the latter by the warning which 
 His words convey against what seem to be the most 
 excusable instances of the misuse of the gift of speech. 
 It is very possible also, that some at least among the 
 emissaries of the Chief Priests, who were now calumniating 
 Him to the multitudes, spoke the evil words of which 
 there is here question in an offhand, light-hearted man- 
 ner, without much reflection on the terrible character of 
 the charge which their words conveyed. For there is 
 discernible, in the enemies of our Lord in the Gospel 
 history, this element of frivolity and carelessness and 
 
Idle Words. 53 
 
 thoughtlessness, as well as the other of deep calculating 
 policy and malice. The position of the Jewish hier- 
 archy at Jerusalem in those days was one of great 
 worldly prosperity and influence, and we may be quite 
 certain that the Chief Priests had a number of ambitious 
 worldly hangers-on, men who looked to success in the 
 ecclesiastical career as the end of their life, men of no 
 strictness or severity in their own conduct, and of no 
 very deep religious faith. Such men would be the ready 
 pliant tools of Annas or Caiaphas, and, without having 
 much personal heart in the matter, would throw them- 
 selves into the work to which their superiors set them. 
 The words of which our Lord is speaking had been 
 uttered, apparently, after the dispossessions to which 
 they directly referred had been accompHshed, and 
 were the expedient to which these men were driven in 
 their resolution to find any explanation for the powers 
 displayed by our Lord rather than that of the truth of 
 His claims. 
 
 And, indeed, our Lord begins by reasoning with them 
 as to the force of their own argument, as if they could 
 not have considered beforehand the import of what they 
 were saying. And thus the words which had drawn from 
 Him that most severe denunciation as to the sin which 
 should never be left unpunished, may have been lightly 
 spoken, as so many evil words are every day lightly 
 spoken against adversaries in religion or in worldly 
 matters, by persons full of sectarian prejudice or political 
 rancour, of which it can hardly be thought that they 
 would be deliberately spoken if those who have uttered 
 them had reflected on their own responsibilities. They 
 come out in moments of irritation and difficulty, for the 
 sake of getting rid of a fact or an argument which ruffles 
 the animosities of party, or implies a flaw in a favourite 
 doctrine. And our Lord may have meant to warn them 
 
54 Idle Words. 
 
 of the general fault, which had led to their offence in 
 this particularly dangerous subject-matter, the fault of 
 carelessness in the use of their tongues, which had led 
 them so lightly to pour forth the malignity that was in 
 their hearts. He may have meant also to leave behind 
 Him in the Gospels this warning, not for His enemies 
 only, or for those only who might be tempted to the 
 enormous sin of which the words of the Pharisees were 
 making them guilty, but for His children and His friends 
 to the end of time — the warning against the most 
 common cause of sin in many who lead a sinful life, and 
 of imperfection and tepidity in those who ought to be 
 making daily advances in their spiritual condition, in the 
 unguarded tongue. This warning would have been 
 wanting to us in the words of our Lord Himself, although 
 it is urged on us by St. James and by other of the holy 
 writers, if our Lord had not spoken so gently of the 
 calumnies by which He was now assailed, and which, no 
 doubt, very seriously injured His cause in the minds of 
 the people, as simply the issue of idle words, instead of 
 the very grave moral and spiritual faults of which these 
 enemies of His were guilty. 
 
 It has been thought by some commentators on this 
 passage that the word idle must here bear the significa- 
 tion of calumnious or blasphemous, but it is better to 
 understand it simply in its ordinary sense. As has 
 already been said, the use which our Lord makes of it in 
 this context is indeed frightening, on account of its 
 severity, as well as remarkable for its gentleness with 
 regard to the particular case to which it is applied. For 
 it sounds a terrible thing to be told that every thought- 
 less, and careless, and even every unprofitable word, shall 
 be made the subject of the strict judgment of the last 
 day. But yet this is a truth which no one can question, 
 though it is most easy to forget it, and it only comes to 
 
Idle Words. 
 
 55 
 
 this, that we are ahvays responsible beings, always on our 
 trial before the justice of God, and that our words, 
 multitudinous as they are, are quite as much objects of 
 this Divine scrutiny as our thoughts or our actions. We 
 can never free ourselves from our responsibility, we can 
 never live a day or an hour during which we are not 
 what God has made us, His free and intelligent creatures 
 on our way to the eternity which depends on our own 
 choice, and on our use of the faculties and the life which 
 He has given us. And if we so manage our lives and 
 conduct as to forget altogether our obligations, and the 
 serious work for which God has placed us in this world, 
 our forgetfulness of these things does not exempt us 
 from the account which we shall have to give of our- 
 selves at the last. 
 
 The simple truth that anything is to be subjected to 
 the solemn judgment of God, and that it is to have its 
 effect on our condition of happiness or of misery through- 
 out all eternity, not merely as deciding, or helping to 
 decide, what that condition shall be, but also as increasing 
 our eternal happiness or our eternal misery, according to 
 the character which it shall wear in the eyes of our 
 Judge — this simple truth is enough of itself to make the 
 thing of which it is true a subject of earnest thought and 
 care. The great thought of the presence of God, and 
 the holy practice of the constant and vigilant exami- 
 nation of conscience, naturally tend to make men very 
 circumspect about their words, wlien they have once 
 mastered the truth of which our Blessed Lord here 
 speaks. All the saints bear witness to the extreme 
 difficulty of avoiding altogether the faults of the tongue, 
 though, on the other hand, this knowledge of theirs had 
 not made them avoid the use of speech, nor afraid to 
 commit themselves to the intercourse with their fellow- 
 creatures in which conversation is an essential part. For 
 
56 Idle Words. 
 
 they know that they may sin as much by uniform and 
 unbroken and churlish silence as by inordinate speech, 
 and that there is an almost endless field of good open to 
 those who use the gift of speech aright. To give our- 
 selves to silence, because of this doctrine of our Lord, 
 would be to imitate the unprofitable servant in the 
 parable, who went and hid his talent, or pound, in the 
 earth or in a napkin. When the holy writers of the 
 ascetical life count up for us the faults of which the 
 tongue is capable, they place among them the fault of 
 false taciturnity. But there are reasons why it is more 
 easy to fall with the tongue than in thought or in action, 
 at least to fall more mischievously and with less advert- 
 ence, so as to leave more on the soul for which an 
 account may remain to be given. Our thoughts are 
 indeed more multitudinous than our words, as our words 
 are more multitudinous than our actions, and we are 
 always thinking, though we are not always speaking. But 
 when we speak, we have others by us to whom we speak, 
 and thus we can injure others as well as ourselves, and 
 also their presence often acts as a temptation, or again as 
 a cause of forgetfulness of what we are saying. The 
 great faults of the tongue, detraction, lying, duplicity, 
 contentiousness, boasting, the betrayal of secrets, scurrility, 
 imprudence, irreverence, inopportuneness, and the like, 
 are all the results of dangers which do not meet us when 
 we are alone, at least not in so great a degree as when 
 we are in company, and the mere enumeration, and 
 much more the careful consideration, of these faults is 
 enough to make us see the very constant dangers in 
 which the careless use of the gift of speech places us. 
 Our intercourse one with another for a single day brings 
 us across a thousand perils of this sort. On the other 
 hand it must be added that, as the tongue is the great 
 instrument by means of which we act as beings placed 
 
Idle Words. 57 
 
 by God in society, for the practice of a thousand virtues, 
 and for the carrying out of His good purposes for the 
 advancement of the truth and the discharge of our 
 duties of charity to Him, it cannot be but that the right 
 use of the tongue is almost the most powerful instrument 
 which we possess for giving Him glory in our social life. 
 The dangers of the unguarded tongue are not in any 
 way greater than the opportunities of merit and of 
 spiritual advancement which are open to those who know 
 rightly how to speak. 
 
 If we turn to the writers who have treated of this 
 subject, and ask them what are the particular dangers 
 and characteristics of the idle tongue in the most 
 specific sense of the words, as they denote one among 
 the many faults which can be committed by that unruly 
 member, we find, in the first place, that many of the 
 saints have seemed inclined to give what seems a severe 
 definition of idleness of words. For they have seemed to 
 include under that definition anything that is not serious, 
 profitable, useful in itself, and even what is good in 
 itself, but inopportune, or without profit at the moment, 
 or to the person to whom it is spoken. Many of the 
 rules laid down by the saints are made for the use of 
 religious communities, and seem to require even an 
 explicit goodness in the aim or intention of the speaker. 
 But, at the same time, we find the saints admitting 
 largely such intentions as the evidencing of sympathy, 
 the conciliation of friendship, the recreation of any one 
 who is ill in body or mind, innocent relaxation, and the 
 like, as taking the words spoken out of the category of 
 condemnation. When these interpretations are duly con- 
 sidered, it does not appear that the saints of God have 
 been too severe in their denunciations of idle words. 
 
 The reasons which are given for the doctrine are 
 chiefly four. The first is the consideration of the holi- 
 
58 Idle Words. 
 
 ness and responsibility of speech, which is drawn from 
 these words of our Lord. And surely it is enough to 
 understand them in their simple meaning in order to 
 gain the highest idea of the carefulness to which we are 
 bound in this respect by what we owe to our own souls 
 and to the perpetual indwelling of the Holy Ghost, 
 which is the privilege of Christians, when we remember 
 how easy it is to do what St. Paul calls in one of his 
 epistles, 'grieving the Holy Spirit of God.' The next 
 consideration is that of the extreme danger of passing 
 from merely idle words to what are called scurrilous, or 
 uncharitable, or displeasing to God on some other 
 ground, of making ourselves, therefore, guilty of some 
 one or other of those faults of the tongue already enume- 
 rated. ' As a city that lieth open and is not compassed 
 with walls, so is a man that cannot refrain his own spirit 
 in speaking.' 2 If, as our Lord says, out of the abundance 
 of the heart the mouth speaketh, and if, as He also says, 
 the heart of man is full of all that long catalogue of 
 iniquities, it is almost impossible but that where there is 
 much talk there should not be wanting sin. The third 
 evil of idle words consists in their effect upon the soul, 
 in obscuring the conscience, in extinguishing compunc- 
 tion, in dissipating the spirit of devotion, in destroying 
 fervour and recollection, interior peace, and the whole 
 state of mind which is required for prayer. This is 
 one of the reasons for the strict observance of the rule 
 of silence in religious communities, for it is impossible, 
 without that rule, to preserve the spirit of prayer, even 
 though the inmates of those communities are not persons 
 generally in great danger of sinning grievously with their 
 tongue. There is no doubt a penitential reason for this 
 carefulness of observance, but even without the idea of 
 reparation it would be necessary, for the sake of prayer, 
 2 Prov. XXV. 28. 
 
The Sign of the Prophet Jonas. 59 
 
 to insist on silence. In the same way, the frivolous 
 conversation of people of the world is incompatible with 
 prayer. And the last head of these evils is to be found 
 in the waste of time which is thus incurred, whereas 
 there is no gift of the kind more precious, and the loss 
 of which is more utterly irremediable. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Sign of the Prophet Jonas. 
 
 St. Matt. xii. 38—42 ; Vita Vitcz Nostrce, § 57. 
 
 We have seen that the calumny of the Scribes and 
 Pharisees against the miraculous works of our Lord 
 may be considered as marking a point in the history 
 at which the malignity of His enemies was forced to 
 manifest itself in a most reckless way, on account of 
 the splendour of the evidences by which His mission 
 was attested and of the great influence which those 
 evidences won for Him in the minds of the people. 
 The iniquity of these enemies of His was mounting up 
 to its full height, and it was soon to lead to great 
 changes in His manner of action in public. We find 
 at the same point of the history another indication of 
 their malice, of which the first EvangeHst has taken 
 especial notice, and which appears, like the calumny 
 about Beelzebub, to have grieved our Lord very pain- 
 fully. This was the demand for a sign, as if the whole 
 course of the Providential witness which had accom- 
 panied His preaching was to go for nothing. 
 
 'Then some of the Scribes and Pharisees answered 
 him saying: Master, we would see a sign from Thee. 
 
6o The Sign of the Prophet Jonas. 
 
 Who answering said to them, An evil and adulterous 
 generation seeketh a sign, and a sign shall not be given 
 it, but the sign of the Prophet Jonas. For as Jonas 
 was in the whale's belly three days and three nights, so 
 shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three 
 days and three nights.' This is the direct answer made 
 by our Lord to this insulting proposal, for it was certainly 
 a mark of great levity and insolence to come to Him at 
 that time, in the very midst, as it seems, of His preaching 
 in Galilee, which was continually and daily attested by 
 miracles, and ask Him to work one at their choice and 
 bidding, as if they were seekers for truth, and ready to 
 accept evidence if they could find it. We shall see 
 presently the significance of the one sign which our Lord 
 promised them, and its reference to the words which He 
 had spoken, many months before this time, in the 
 Temple on the occasion of the first purgation of the 
 holy precincts from the profanation which had become 
 so common in them. On that occasion also He had 
 been asked for a sign of the authority with which He 
 acted, and He had replied by telling them to destroy 
 the Temple and He would in three days build it up 
 again — words which St. John tells us were intended by 
 our Lord to refer to the temple of His Body, which they 
 were to destroy, and which was to rise again from the 
 dead after the interval named by Him. This then is 
 the sign which our Lord now says shall be given to 
 them, and no other. What He then spoke of is the 
 same sign as that which is here called the sign of the 
 prophet Jonas. 
 
 The Sacred Scriptures of the Jews contain several 
 instances in which miraculous signs had been given by 
 God for the authentication of some particular revelation 
 or commands made in His name. One of the most signal 
 instances of this is the case of Moses, who said to God, 
 
The Sign of the Prophet Jonas. 6 1 
 
 when he was first commissioned to go as messenger to 
 the Israehtes in Egypt, that they would not beUeve his 
 statement that the Lord had appeared to him. Then 
 God made him cast his rod on the ground, and it 
 became a serpent, which Moses was then commanded 
 to take by the tail, on which it became once more a rod. 
 Then again Moses was told to put his hand into his 
 bosom, and when he took jt out it was leprous as snow. 
 Then again he was told to put it back, and it became 
 again like the rest of his flesh. And, if the Israelites 
 would not believe these two signs, he was to take the 
 water of the river and pour it out on the dry land, and 
 it would become blood. On the arrival of Moses in 
 Egypt he wrought these signs in the presence of the 
 ancients of the people, and they believed his mission 
 on the strength of them.^ On other occasions signs were 
 vouchsafed to other saints of the Old Testament, as to 
 Gideon, to Manoe the father of Samson, to Samuel in 
 the presence of the people when he ' cried unto the 
 Lord and the Lord sent thunder and rain ' at a time of 
 the year when such things were altogether unusual. ^ So 
 again the same kind of sign was given to Elias when his 
 life was sought by Ochozias, and when the Prophet said, 
 * If I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven,' 
 and the rest^ In the same way when Ezechias wished 
 for a sign of the cure which had been promised him by 
 Isaias, the shadow on the sundial of Achaz was made to 
 return back ten degrees.* These are instances which 
 serve to show that the requiring a sign was not in itself 
 an unheard of thing, or a thing that could be always 
 worthy of censure. On the famous occasion mentioned 
 by Isaias in his seventh chapter, Achaz had been directed 
 
 ^ Exodus iv. 2 — 9, 30, 31. 
 
 2 Judges vi. 17, 37 — 40 ; xiii. 20 ; i Kings xii. 18. 
 
 3 ^ Kings i. 10. * 4 Kings xx. 11. 
 
62 The Sign of the Prophet Jonas, 
 
 by the Prophet to ask a sign ' to the depth of Hell, or 
 unto the height above,' and he had been censured for 
 refusing to ask for such a sign. Thus, in the case before 
 us, there must have been special reasons for the severe 
 language of our Lord with regard to the asking for a 
 sign, and some special malice in these Scribes and 
 Pharisees who made the petition. 
 
 On examining the instance^ given above, and others 
 like them, we find that when the signs were vouchsafed 
 and even offered in these cases, it was when the matter 
 revealed or enjoined was something new and particular, 
 of which there had been no prophecies or warnings 
 beforehand, and when, so to say, the persons who were 
 addressed by angels or in other ways, would have had 
 no reason for believing what was said to them in the 
 name of God, unless some sign were specially allowed. 
 Thus it was most natural that Moses should demand 
 a sign which might assure him that he was in truth 
 deputed by God for the great work with which his name 
 was to be for ever connected, a sign which might also 
 convince the people to whom he was sent of the truth 
 of his mission. The signs given by Moses were neces- 
 sary, and there was no other evidence before the people 
 of the truths which were thus attested. The same may 
 be said of the other cases — there was a special occasion, 
 a call to some great work or exertion, the promise of 
 some sudden deliverance, and the like, arid it was but 
 reasonable that those who were called on to undertake 
 the work should have some special manifestation to 
 assure them that the message came from God. Nor, 
 on the other hand, could it be said that the mission of 
 our Lord, for which these captious cavillers required a 
 sign, had not been authenticated by God by the most 
 conspicuous evidence. His mission was no new thing, 
 for it had been prophesied and prepared for from the 
 
The Sign of the Prophet Jonas. 63 
 
 beginning of the world. It was a mission for which all 
 devout students of the Scriptures ought to have been 
 ready, and for which the whole system of the Mosaic 
 law and the Levitical priesthood was as much a prepara- 
 tion as the prophecies themselves, or the personal types 
 which had been scattered so profusely along the whole 
 course of the history of the chosen people. All the 
 prophets and the law bore witness to Him, and, when 
 He had begun to preach and to claim the allegiance of 
 the nation as the Divine Messenger for whom they had 
 been so constantly taught to look out, the Providence 
 of His Father, as has been repeatedly pointed out in 
 this work, had arranged a whole cycle of proofs of 
 various kinds, by which whatever further evidence might 
 be requisite would be • abundantly supplied. These 
 evidences had been urged solemnly on the attention 
 of the Scribes and Pharisees of Jerusalem, whose 
 emissaries these objectors were, on the occasion of the 
 second of the Paschs at which He had been present, 
 when He had so signally claimed their homage by the 
 act of power and authority which He had done when 
 He had healed the impotent man at the pool on the 
 Sabbath Day. Our Lord had then spoken to them of 
 the evidence afforded to His mission by the witness of 
 St, John Baptist, by the voice of His Father, by the 
 miracles which He wrought, as well as by the writings 
 and institutions of their great Prophet Moses, who had 
 distinctly foretold Him. Under such circumstances the 
 asking for a sign, which implied that no sign or evidence 
 had as yet come home to them, was, as has been said, 
 insolent in the highest degree. It was asking God to 
 prove something which He had already proved in the 
 most abundant manner, it was to imply that the proofs 
 which He had chosen were insufficient for them, and 
 it was to show that their • state of mind and heart was 
 
64 The Sign of the Prophet Jonas, 
 
 such, that no amount of evidence would touch them. 
 No sign that God could vouchsafe to them would be 
 greater in its cogency as evidence to our Lord than 
 those signs which they had rejected. To address fresh 
 signs to them w^ould be to address Divine manifestations 
 to persons who were certain to reject them, on account 
 of their own want of the right dispositions for accepting 
 them. For signs fall unheeded on the eyes of those 
 who have already determined to see in them no evidence 
 at all, who have already made up their minds, and even 
 shown by their language that they had made up their 
 minds, to reject them. Let them be ever so conspicuous 
 and overwhelming in their evidence to honest minds, 
 they could have no effect on men who had already 
 declared that the dispossessions of the evil spirits by 
 our Lord were the results of a league between Him and 
 Satan. On two of the occasions in the Gospel history 
 on which this demand for a sign is mentioned, one by 
 St. Matthew and the other by St. Luke, it is remarkable 
 that the calumny about Beelzebub preceded immediately 
 the request for a sign.^ 
 
 It has already been said, moreover, that it was contrary 
 to our Lord's uniform practice to work a sign simply as 
 a sign. The only occasion on which He might seem 
 to have done this is the cursing of the barren fig-tree, 
 but that miracle was a parable as well as a miracle, and 
 must be taken in close connection with His description 
 of the Synagogue under the figure of a fig-tree which 
 would not bear fruit. So also, perhaps, it might be 
 said of the miracle of His walking on the waters, but 
 that also was a miracle which had a most deep parabolic 
 significance, and it was certainly intended for the con- 
 solation of the Apostles who were it witnesses. The 
 miracles of our Lord .were always works of mercy, 
 5 St. Matt. xii. 38 ; St. Luke xi. 29. 1 
 
The Sign of the Prophet Jonas, 65 
 
 symbolizing the character of His work in the world, 
 and the far greater spiritual miracles which He was 
 continually performing in the souls of men. This 
 characteristic of the miracles of our Lord has always 
 been the mark of the great work in the world 
 which has been done by the Church after Him. The 
 signs of the kind which would have satisfied these 
 Scribes and Pharisee, or rather, of the kind which they 
 seem to have desired, would have been merely signs and 
 nothing more, such as the change of the rod in the hand 
 of Moses into a serpent, or the thundering at a time of 
 year when thunder was unusual, or the sending down 
 fire from heaven, or the return of the shadow of the 
 index on the sundial. It seemed most trivial to ask for 
 signs of this kind, at the time when those who asked 
 were shutting their eyes to the most magnificent witness 
 on the part of God to the very truths for which they 
 required such evidence as that of which they spoke. 
 And this answer our Lord made to them on a similar 
 occasion a little later on, when He answered them that 
 they could say in the evening that the sky was red and 
 therefore the weather would be fair, or if the sky was red 
 in the morning, they could say that a storm was coming, 
 and yet they could not discern the signs of the times. 
 
 *An evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign, 
 and a sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas the 
 Prophet. For as Jonas was in the whale's belly three 
 days and three nights, so shall the Son of Man be in 
 the heart of the earth three days and three nights.' 
 For the Resurrection of our Lord from the grave was 
 the greatest of all the miracles, and not only the greatest 
 in itself, but the appointed sign by which God had 
 determined to confirm the truth of the Gospel for all 
 time. It was this to which the Apostles were appointed 
 in a special manner to bear witness, and we find this 
 y 7 
 
66 The Sign of the Prophet Jonas, 
 
 the one great assertion made by them in the Acts as the 
 foundation of their whole teaching, that He had risen 
 from the dead the third day. St. Paul speaks of it in 
 this manner in a score of places, and even to the 
 philosophers of Athens, when he spoke to them of the 
 coming Judgment, he added that the proof which God 
 had given of His intention to judge the world by the 
 Man Whom He had chosen was that He had raised 
 Him from the dead. Our Lord's words, therefore, imply 
 that, though He will not work for them a sign at their 
 bidding, after all the miracles which they had rejected 
 and even imputed to the agency of Satan, still they 
 should have a sign which they could not gainsay, and 
 which would far transcend in brilliancy anything that 
 they could have imagined in their demands, and that 
 that sign should consist in the fulfilment in His own 
 Person of the type in which the direct prophecy of 
 Jonas had consisted, that is, in the Death of the Son of 
 Man and His Resurrection from the grave on the third 
 day. Our Lord uses the Jewish mode of speaking, by 
 which the third day is that which comes the third 
 counting the day from which the date is taken as the 
 first, and by which a part of a day or a night counts 
 for the day or the night of that space of twenty-four 
 hours to which it belongs. In this way, our Lord lay 
 in the grave a part of Friday, the whole of Saturday, and 
 a part of Sunday. The three days are made up by the 
 day hours of Friday which remained before nightfall, 
 after His burial, by the day hours of Saturday, and by 
 the day hours of the early morning of Sunday, before 
 the sun was fully risen. And the three nights are made 
 up by the night hours of Friday, the night hours of 
 Saturday, before dawn and after sunset, and the night 
 hours of Sunday before the dawn, up to the time when 
 it was sufficiently light to be considered day. 
 
The Sign of the Prophet Jonas. 67 
 
 Although our Lord says nothing in this place about 
 the perversity of these enemies of His in not recognizing 
 the signs of the times, as He says afterwards, it is clear 
 that this thought was in His mind concerning them, from 
 the words which immediately follow. For these words 
 are very parallel to others of which we have had to speak, 
 in which He reproached the cities in which so many of 
 His mighty works had been done for their incredulity. 
 The natural link of thought in the passage is supplied 
 by the mention of the prophet Jonas, whose preaching 
 of repentance had produced so wonderful an effect in the 
 conversion of the Ninivites, an effect which, as far as we 
 are told by the history, was not due to any miracles 
 which He wrought, but simply to His preaching of the 
 coming destruction of the city, and the working of this 
 preaching on the consciences of the King and of his 
 people. They were heathens and idolaters, famous for 
 their violence and cruelty, and probably sunk deeply 
 in moral corruption, and the preaching of Jonas lasted 
 a very short time. And yet the result was so complete 
 -a change of heart in that vast population, as to appease 
 the wrath of God and lead Him to spare the city from 
 the punishment which He had commissioned Jonas to 
 announce. The contrast between these Ninivites and 
 the people of whom our Lord had to complain, that 
 notwithstanding all His mighty works they were not 
 converted, was signal indeed. It was but little that 
 these Scribes were not converted — they had turned and 
 were turning against Him with malice so inveterate as 
 to involve them in all the terrible guilt of which He 
 had just been speaking, the blasphemy against the Holy 
 Spirit. ' The men of Ninive shall rise in judgment with 
 this generation, and shall condemn it \ because they did 
 penance at the preaching of Jonas, and behold, a greater 
 than Jonas is here.' Our Lord in another place says 
 
68 The Sign of the Prophet Jonas, 
 
 that Jonas was a sign to the Ninivites, and it is gathered 
 from this that, in some way or other, whether by his own 
 statement or by that of others, the people knew his story 
 and the wonderful deliverance from death which was its 
 chief feature. Thus the resemblance between the two 
 signs is made more complete. The resurrection, so to 
 call it, of Jonas, was the evidence of the truth of the 
 mission by which he was ordered to proclaim the ap- 
 proaching destruction of the city, as the resurrection of 
 our Lord was to be the great evidence of the tnith of 
 the mission by which He was sent to bring about and 
 to preach the salvation of the whole world, a mission 
 which He handed on to His Church to continue in His 
 Name. 
 
 Our Lord had as yet another example of readiness in 
 receiving Divine truths on the part of those who have 
 been brought up far away from the knowledge of revela- 
 tion, which is perhaps still more striking than the 
 conversion of the Ninivites. For marvellous as that 
 conversion was, and as far as we know unparalleled in 
 history, there was still at the bottom of the hearts of 
 these poor heathen the common gift of conscience, the 
 sense of sin and of the coming judgment, to which a 
 preacher of penance can always appeal with some hope 
 of success and fruit. But it is more striking when those 
 who come readily to the teaching of the truth are not, 
 as it were, driven by the remorse of conscience, or by 
 the fear of chastisement from the unknown Judge Whose 
 shadow rests as a terrible threat on the souls of so 
 many who are yet but very little instructed about Him 
 and about their own relations to Him. The Queen of 
 the South, of whom our Lord next speaks, was young and 
 prosperous and wealthy, and in the full possession of 
 her royal state and dignity, and if she was attracted to 
 the Wise King of whose name the whole Eastern world 
 
The Sign of the Prophet Jonas. 69 
 
 was full, it was not by anything so much as by her desire 
 to learn and to be guided and made partaker of his 
 wisdom. Her coming was a spontaneous act, and her 
 rich presents were the marks of her devotion and admi- 
 ration, not the gifts of any policy or any fear. She 
 stands out in the history to all time, as the type of the 
 generous noble soul in search of wisdom, valuing it at 
 its true price, and caring for nothing in comparison with 
 it. She is an anticipation of the blessed visitors to the 
 cradle of our Lord at Bethlehem, the wise and noble 
 Kings who came so far in their grand simplicity of faith, 
 to honour the new-born Light of the world, at the time 
 when His own people knew Him not or cared not for 
 Him. 
 
 * The Queen of the South shall rise in judgment with 
 this generation and shall condemn it ; because she came 
 from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, 
 and behold a greater than Solomon is here.' These words 
 repeat once more the lesson which had already been 
 proposed by our Lord when He spoke of the faith of 
 the centurion at Capharnaum as greater than any He 
 had found in Israel, and had said, that many should 
 come from the East and the West and sit down in the 
 Kingdom of God with the patriarchs, while the children 
 of the kingdom were to be cast out into the exterior 
 darkness. For there are always dangers which accom- 
 pany the possession of great spiritual opportunities, and 
 the ultimate decision of the judgment of God, in any 
 particular case, will be guided, not so much by the 
 advantages or disadvatages which men have had, as by 
 their use or neglect of those advantages. And as there 
 are always in the Kingdom of God, that is, within the 
 range of those special favours which are the privilege of 
 those who are the heirs of the covenant with Him, 
 whether of old in the synagogue or in Christian times 
 
70 The Sign of the Prophet Jonas, 
 
 in the Catholic Church, many souls who are instances 
 of the great power of the means of grace, because they 
 have cooperated faithfully with the blessings which they 
 have received, so also there are always, in the same 
 blessed kingdom, many and many souls who have made 
 no account of their blessings, and who, from their mere 
 familiarity with the externals of religion and with the 
 truths of revelation, are more difficult to move to true 
 repentance and devotion than others who have never 
 before heard of them. And when, as in the case cf 
 these Scribes and Pharisees, there is added to careless- 
 ness and indifference the far blacker quality of hostility 
 to the truth or to the law of God, which results from 
 pride, an evil life, worldliness, ambition, the love of 
 domination and influence, and the desire to rise to the 
 highest ranks in the hierarchy, qualities which can hardly 
 exist in the soul without a good deal of jealousy or fear 
 of the success or pre-eminence of others who may be 
 considered by such persons as rivals in the same line as 
 themselves, then there seems to be scarcely any length 
 to which poor human souls may not be led in the way 
 of opposition to good or direct promotion of evil. 
 
 But our Lord is speaking rather of the danger of not 
 listening to the call of grace, whether it be a call to 
 repentance and amendment of life, or a call to higher 
 things than the soul has yet known. Humility and 
 simplicity are the essential qualities for the closing with 
 the overtures of Divine grace, and when these are want* 
 ing, men may live in the full blaze and noon of the 
 truth, and yet their souls may not be opened to one 
 single ray of heavenly illumination. And, on the other 
 hand, there will always be among men those who, by the 
 circumstances of their position, birth, country, education, 
 associations, and the like, are far from the opportunities 
 which seem to be so necessary for the conversion or the 
 
The Sign of the Prophet Jonas, 7 1 
 
 illumination of the soul, in whom, notwithstanding, God 
 sees the precious pearl of a humble and simple spirit, 
 and these He will convert by the words of a single 
 sermon, or the passing remark of an acquaintance, or by 
 a momentary glance at a book taken up by chance, and 
 He will lead them along the path to perfection and 
 intimate knowledge of Himself without let or hindrance 
 or delay. And when the great day of the manifestation 
 of all things comes at last, and men are confronted one 
 with another in the presence of their Judge, and with 
 the full light of that perfect revelation of all secret things, 
 to inform them of the true character of the dealings of 
 God with man and of man with God, then it will be seen 
 without concealment or the possibility of mistake that 
 all excuse for those who have turned away from God is 
 cut off, by the presence there by their side, of thousands 
 who have had fewer and lesser opportunities of light and 
 of grace, and yet have so faithfully used what they had 
 as to have won the crowns which the others by their own 
 wilfulness have forfeited. 
 
 There is something also remarkable about the com- 
 parison which is suggested by the words of our Lord 
 between the evidence and the Person witnessed to by 
 the evidence, in the respective cases of which He speaks. 
 He says that the men of Ninive and the Queen of the 
 South will put the men of that generation to shame, 
 because, as He says, a greater than Jonas and a greater 
 than Solomon is here. These words imply that the 
 men of His generation had far more evidence to lead 
 them to believe in Him than the men of Ninive in 
 Jonas, or the Queen of the South to make herself the 
 disciple of Solomon. And, indeed, it is very obvious 
 that so it was, for the men of Ninive could only have 
 heard at second hand of the miracle by which Jonas 
 had been saved from death, and the fame of Solomon 
 
72 The Sign of the Prophet Jonas. 
 
 was after all only that of a very wise and powerful King. 
 On the other hand, the miracles by which our Lord's 
 mission was attested, were witnessed by the men of His 
 generation, and they were so numerous and magnificent 
 as to leave no room for cavil or doubt. But He puts 
 the contrast rather on the dignity of the Person in the 
 several cases, that is, of Himself in the one case and of 
 Jonas or Solomon on the other. For no prophet or 
 king could be compared in dignity to the Incarnate Son 
 of God. In this respect the words of this passage are 
 not identical in import with those others of which they 
 remind us, in which our Lord had said of Tyre and 
 Sidon, and of Sodom and Gomorrha, that if the mighty 
 works which had been done in the cities of Galilee had 
 been wrought in those famous seats of every vice, their 
 inhabitants would have done penance long ago in sack- 
 cloth and ashes. Thus we come to the truth that the 
 men who witnessed the preaching of our Lord in 
 Galilee and in Judaea had something more than the 
 signs themselves to force on them the duty of repent- 
 ance and faith. That is, they had the truth brought 
 home to them, if they had but had eyes to see it, that 
 the Person to Whom all these marvellous things bare 
 witness was, as He claimed to be, the Incarnate God. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 The Returning Devil. 
 
 St. Matt xii. 43—45 ; Vita VitcB NosircB, § 57. 
 
 Our Lord has still more to say to the men with whom 
 He was dealing, who unhappily represented, only too 
 faithfully, the general character of the generation to 
 which He was sent, than what was contained in the 
 warning which He had already given them, by com- 
 paring them unfavourably with the repentant Ninivites 
 and with the Queen of the South, who had come so far 
 to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Their case was worse 
 than this. It was not only that they had failed to avail 
 themselves of the opportunities which God had afforded 
 them, and so had forfeited the crowns which they might 
 have won. They had gone far backwards instead of 
 advancing, and their state was now far worse than it had 
 been before the great privileges of the Gospel had been 
 offered to them. So it always is, according to that saying 
 of which we have just spoken, ' he that is not with Me is 
 against Me.' There is no neutrality in the war between 
 God and Satan, and the ground that is not gained by the 
 one side is occupied by the other. The offer of great 
 opportunities does not leave men as it found them — they 
 are either better for having closed with it, or they are 
 worse for having rejected it. It is this truth which our 
 Lord now sets before these reckless enemies of the truth, 
 and He does this in a manner which might of itself have 
 made them tremble. He takes their own calumny as the 
 
74 The Returning Devil. 
 
 ground of an illustration, and then He applies this illus- 
 tration to themselves. They had been scoffing at the 
 dispossessions of the demoniacs, and imputing the 
 undoubted power there manifested to diabolical agency. 
 The purport of our Lord's illustration is to put them in 
 the place of the poor souls who have been thus delivered, 
 and to warn them that they are incurring the danger of a 
 renewal of the power of the devil over them in a iar more 
 terrible form than before. But the application of the 
 parable to themselves does not come till the very last 
 word, so that their attention may have been engaged in 
 the illustration without a suspicion that it was to be 
 turned against themselves. 
 
 ' And when the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, 
 he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth 
 none. Then he saith, I will return to my house from 
 whence I came out. And he findeth it empty, swept, 
 and garnished. Then he goeth, and taketh with him 
 seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they 
 enter in, and dwell there, and the last state of that man 
 is made worse than the first. So shall it be also to this 
 wicked generation.' This illustration is called a parable, 
 but it is in truth a simple statement of what really takes 
 place, though there are a few expressions in it which are 
 figurative, as when the soul into which the devils enter is 
 called the house from which the first spirit had been cast 
 forth. But there is no reason for thinking that our Lord 
 does not intend to describe the actual process, by which 
 wicked men, who have been once delivered from the 
 bondage of the devil, are again allowed to fall under his 
 influence, an influence which in such cases becomes 
 more powerful and deadly than before. 
 
 The first point in this description is what our Lord 
 tells us takes place when the unclean spirit has been cast 
 out of a man. * He walketh through dry places, seeking 
 
The Returning Devil, 75 
 
 rest, and findeth none/ He is driven forth from the 
 haunts of men, for he cannot enter them without per- 
 mission, a permission which is granted to him generally 
 on account of the sins or the carelessness of men whom 
 he desires to infest. As we see in the instance of the 
 legion of devils, of which we shall soon have to speak, 
 the chief fear of the devils is to be cast out entirely into 
 the abyss, and not allowed to molest men, and the place 
 which they are allowed to make, as it were, more their 
 own than any other part of the world, is the wild dreary 
 desert, the land without water, in which the habitation of 
 man is almost impossible. In this inhospitable region 
 the devil is described as roaming up and down, like a 
 beast of prey in search of its food and unable to satisfy 
 its hunger, ' seeking rest and finding none.' Rest indeed 
 and peace those enemies of God can never find, for all 
 eternity, nor are they ever free from torments which 
 make rest impossible. But they have a kind of miserable 
 rest, in comparison to the torments of their loneliness, 
 when they are forced to prey as it were on themselves, 
 and this comparative rest consists in the opportunities of 
 doing mischief, and venting their hatred for God on His 
 other creatures, and especially on man. This occupation 
 feeds their malice, gives them something to do outside 
 themselves, and injures God and His creatures, either 
 for time or for eternity. The devils are incapable of joy, 
 but what is nearest to joy in their case is the capacity of 
 doing harm, and the leave to exercise this power. And 
 thus, as our Lord tells us, the thought of the soul or 
 body from which he has been ejected occurs to the evil 
 spirit. Perhaps, even if he be not permitted to invade 
 some one who has not before been under his power, 
 there may have been so much ingratitude or carelessness 
 or negligence on the part of the man from whom he has 
 been cast out, as to provoke God into permitting him once 
 
76 The Returning Devil. 
 
 more to resume his power there. And it is a wonderful 
 thought which is here suggested to us by our Lord, that 
 those who have been signally delivered from the power of 
 Satan by a special act of the mercy of God, may be in 
 more danger from his machinations than others over 
 whom he has not before had power, if they do not show 
 more than usual gratitude, more than common diligence 
 and watchfulness in God's service. For in this, as in other 
 cases, the particular mercies of God bring with them a 
 special debt of loving gratitude and correspondence with 
 grace, and it is not at all a thing unknown in the annals 
 of the Church, that persons who have been vouchsafed 
 even very remarkable favours on the part of God, have 
 afterwards fallen lower than others, on account of their 
 want of appreciation of their singular debt of thankfulness 
 to His mercy. 
 
 * I will return into my house from whence I came out.' 
 It is not that the evil spirits have power to go whither 
 they choose, but our Lord is describing the process 
 summarily, and not in all its details. And, when the 
 evil one is made to speak as if he had the power to do 
 what he cannot do without the express permission of 
 God, he is only described as using language such as he 
 always uses, the language of arrogance and lying, as when 
 Satan ventured to tell our Lord Himself that he was the 
 master of the world, and could give all its splendours 
 and glories to any one whom he chose, without saying 
 that he was allowed to do in this respect just as much as 
 God saw fit to permit to him and no more. Our Lord is 
 describing the case of persons in whom God sees fit to 
 permit the return of the evil spirit, on account of their 
 own need of further chastisement, and He does not 
 mean that in every case of dispossession the same 
 process takes place. ' And coming, he findeth it empty 
 and swept and garnished.' These three words describe 
 
The Returning Devil, 77 
 
 each a step in the preparation of a house for a new guest 
 or master. It must first be emptied of all other occu- 
 pants, or there will be no room for him ; then it must be 
 at least made clean from dust and dirt and any other 
 impediments to habitation, and lastly it must be furnished 
 and done up, the ordinary utensils and furniture neces- 
 sary for dwellers must be supplied, and the whole 
 decorated and adorned, in proportion to the dignity of 
 the new comer and the means that exist for making it fit 
 for him. Dwelling is impossible if the house is already 
 filled and occupied, it is uncomfortable and miserable if 
 the house has not even been swept, and it is unbecoming 
 a person of any position if the furniture and other neces- 
 saries have not been provided. 
 
 It is not difficult to see what must answer to these 
 three things in the case of the human soul, into which 
 the devil who has once been cast out is desirous once 
 again to enter. In the first place the house must be 
 empty, that is, it must not be occupied by the Holy 
 Spirit of God indweUing in it by His grace and His 
 presence. The idle empty heart is the house, with its 
 door wide open for Satan to enter in, while the souls in 
 which God dwells, and which are full of thoughts and 
 affections which belong to his service, and busied in holy 
 occupations or in the works of their vocation, have them- 
 selves filled, so as to leave no room by which the evil 
 one can make his approaches. If idleness, and emptiness, 
 and the absence of the grace of God, make the occupation 
 of the soul possible to the evil one, the second process, 
 which is what our Lord speaks of as sweeping, must be 
 something which removes impediments and hindrances 
 and useless encumbrances, and all that may be repre- 
 sented by the dust and dirt and rubbish which the image 
 suggests to the mind. That is, the soul in which this 
 hellish occupant is to make his home must be free from 
 
78 The Returning Devil, 
 
 virtuous habits, and good actions, and the remains of 
 good deeds, which ordinarily leave behind themselves 
 the disposition to other similar actions, tendencies and 
 traditions, as it were, such as are to be found in persons 
 who have been well brought up, and who, for some time 
 at least, have remained faithful to the 'education they 
 have received and to the holy habits in which they have 
 been trained. We see persons who have even fallen into 
 sin keep up a sort of habit of prayer, or of outward 
 conformity to the customs of good people. They will 
 still carry about their rosaries and wear their scapulars, 
 and be seen at Mass on days of obligation, and although 
 their service to God does not go much deeper than the 
 exterior, still it is something which is not altogether 
 worthless, for it puts them into the occasion of seeing or 
 hearing what may bring them back to a better mind. 
 They have not entirely broken with their religion, and 
 there is yet some outward conformity on which hereafter 
 a more solid structure of good may be built. This may 
 be so much dust, as far as its intrinsic value is concerned, 
 but still it must be removed to make the soul a con- 
 venient receptacle for the proud enemy of God. In too 
 many cases the returning demon finds even this swept 
 away. And then there remains the further process, the 
 installation in the soul of what may answer to the 
 furniture and garnishment of a house for this new master 
 — habits of positive sin, bad connections, the freedom of 
 the passions, licence of the tongue, open violations of the 
 law of God indulged in without scruple, accumulated sins 
 and evil ways already in possession, which may make the 
 inspection of the soul by the evil one a happy and 
 pleasurable task, for he will find there everything that he 
 can require for a re-establishment of his dominion and for 
 a long and peaceable possession. It may seem to us a 
 marvel that God should allow the enemies of His honour 
 
The Returning Devil, 79 
 
 and the haters of His law to set themselves up as lords 
 in the souls and bodies of His creatures whom He has 
 made, and for whom He has been willing to take an 
 inferior nature and die on the Cross. But there is some- 
 thing still more wonderful in the reckless folly and 
 indifference to their own interests of some of these 
 poor creatures themselves, whose management of their 
 immortal souls is like nothing more than a continual 
 invitation to the devils to come and take possession of 
 them and a continual preparation to receive them if 
 they come, as a rejoicing city receives some great 
 deliverer or some monarch returning from victory. 
 There is this also contained in our Lord's words, which 
 seem framed for the purpose of signifying the part which 
 men themselves take in fitting themselves for the habita- 
 tion and dominion of the evil spirits. 
 
 ' Then he goeth, and taketh with him seven other 
 spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and 
 dwell there, and the last state of that man is made worse 
 than the first. So shall it be also to this wicked genera- 
 tion.' These words of our Lord Hft a veil from the 
 unseen world, and show us a little of the manner in 
 which it is governed by God, for all these things which 
 are done by the evil spirits are done by His permission, 
 and in consequence of His arrangements. It must be 
 remembered that the devils are fallen angels, and that 
 they are by nature now what God made them in the 
 beginning. The spiritual kingdom of God was organized 
 in a marvellous and most beautiful manner, the lower 
 angels depending on the higher, as the highest of all 
 immediately on God, and the natural powers of the 
 various orders of the several hierarchies being very 
 different, and increasing in magnificence and glory as 
 they rose higher and higher. It is believed that some 
 out of almost all the hierarchies fell in the revolt of 
 
8o The Returning Devil. 
 
 which Satan was the ringleader, and that thus there are 
 among the fallen spirits instances of all the various 
 gradations of natural gifts which exist also in the blessed 
 hierarchies of the faithful Angels in Heaven. Thus 
 among those dreadful enemies of mankind with whom 
 our warfare is, as St. Paul says in hi«; Epistle to the 
 Ephesians, there are to be found spirits of almost the 
 highest rank, as well as others. ' For our wrestling is 
 not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and 
 powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, 
 against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.' ^ 
 Words such as these are not used by the Apostle in vain, 
 and without a definite purpose, and he seems to be 
 looking into the ranks of his enemies, and discerning 
 the very individual powers, of various grades, against 
 which he and his companions have to fight, as a great 
 leader might calculate as far as he could the exact force 
 of the army arrayed against him. 
 
 It is but natural, and in accordance with the just judg- 
 ments of God, that when a man has been delivered from 
 the dominion of an evil spirit, and has again made him- 
 self worthy to become his prey, it should be permitted 
 that in the second instance that man should be placed 
 under the dominion and agency of spirits of evil, worse 
 and more powerful than any that had had influence over 
 him before. It is thought also by many of the Christian 
 commentators that there are certain demons which are, 
 as it were, allotted to certain particular temptations, such 
 as those to each one of the deadly sins, as we pray in the 
 Litanies, to be delivered " from the spirit of fornication," 
 and in the same way there may be a special spirit of 
 avarice, or of envy, or of anger, and the rest. Moreover, 
 our Lord's words about the kingdom of Satan seem to 
 imply, as has been said, that there is some kind of 
 1 Ephes. tL 12, seq. 
 
The Returning Devil. 8 1 
 
 tyrannical and wicked and cruel rule among the evil 
 spirits, probably the remains of that subordination which 
 prevails in Heaven, and which regulated the relations of 
 these false spirits with their brethren and with one 
 another while they were as yet innocent. And it seems 
 that, although they are full of hate one to another as to 
 themselves, still they league together and submit will- 
 ingly to discipline, for the sake of carrying on their war 
 against God and man, much in the same way that all the 
 sects outside the Catholic Church, however discordant 
 among themselves, will unite and concert measures and 
 false charges against her in the common interest of all. 
 And as the activity of the evil spirits and their sleepless 
 malice sometimes puts to shame the comparative indo- 
 lence and carelessness of the servants of God upon 
 earth, so also do these wicked enemies sometimes read 
 us a lesson of mutual harmony and combination. While 
 there are jealousies on earth as to who shall do this or 
 that good work, jealousies which sometimes do not stop 
 short of the prevention of much-needed good— for some 
 men would rather not see it done, if it is not to be done 
 by themselves — the evil servants of Satan combine, and 
 are glad to see their work shared and carried on by 
 others, not wishing to do it all themselves so long as it is 
 done by some one. It is impossible to imagine that there 
 is any love between these fallen spirits, or that they have 
 to one another any feelings but those of hatred and envy 
 and ill-will, but they are too deeply devoted to their 
 wretched task of marring the works and the designs of 
 God to allow these feelings to interfere with the object 
 which they all have in common. 
 
 * And they enter in and dwell there, and the last state 
 
 of that man is made worse than the first.' It is not 
 
 difficult to understand how this is so. In the case of 
 
 the far less dangerous domination of the evil one, which 
 
 G 7 
 
82 The Returning DeviL 
 
 consists in the giving over of a soul to sin, which may be 
 considered as representing in a manner the phenomena 
 of possession, strictly so called, of which our Lord is 
 speaking, it is well known from experience that one sin, 
 freely indulged in, leads to another, and that the kinds 
 of sin, such as those which are conmonly called the 
 deadly sins, are very kindred in character, the one 
 opening the door to the other in many cases, if not in 
 all. There is the same kindred character about the 
 virtues, meekness leads to purity, humility to charity, 
 and so on. So with the great sins, pride and anger 
 and envy, and lust and gluttony and slothfulness and 
 avarice. There is a family relationship between them, 
 and the soul that is delivered over to one may only 
 lack the opportunity or the temptation to become the 
 slave of the rest. It is therefore very much in accor- 
 dance with our ordinar}' experience that, in the more 
 dreadful case of demoniacal possession, the presence of 
 one evil spirit should be the introduction of others, and 
 our Lord's words give us a terrible picture of the rapidity 
 with which in the judicial providence of God, the 
 process advances, for He does not say that one devil 
 introduces one other, but seven others, and these more 
 wicked than himself. And it is only reasonable that 
 in the ordinary course of such possessions and obses- 
 sions, the state of the poor victim should be worse and 
 more hopeless, in proportion to the number and malice 
 of the demons who are allowed by God to haunt and 
 rule him. We find in the instance which occurs later 
 on in the history of the boy out of whom the Apostles 
 could not cast the devil, that there are some cases of 
 possession more difficult to relieve than others, and the 
 reason given by our Lord is that prayer and fasting were 
 required in the case of which He spoke. And if there 
 are some kinds of evil spirits more powerful in this way 
 
The Returning Devil. Zt* 
 
 than others, it is easy to see that the number of the 
 •devils possessing any one person may cause the same 
 relative difficulty in his case. 
 
 ' So shall it be also to this wicked generation.' Our 
 Lord is speaking of the wickedness of the Jews, who 
 were opposing Him, and it is not difficult to see in the 
 subsequent history of their opposition the proof of the 
 truth of His prediction. We may notice that if the 
 image is to be applied to them in its completeness, it 
 must be considered that in a certain sense they had 
 been first delivered from a devil who afterwards returned 
 to them with others worse than himself. And certainly 
 it is clear, that the whole of the marvellous Providence 
 of God in His addresses to them, first by the preaching 
 of St. John Baptist and then by that of our Lord Him- 
 self, was a dispossession of the devil of ignorance, and 
 blindness, and torpor, as to spiritual things, under whose 
 dominion they had been, and that the process of binding 
 of the strong armed man before the despoiling of his 
 goods, of which our Lord had just been speaking, was 
 in a most true sense a casting out of a devil from the 
 generation for whose benefit all this was done. We are 
 not bound to find the exact counterpart of the pheno- 
 mena of dispossession in this case, for the words of 
 our Lord only imply of necessity a parallelism between 
 the two cases. But in the history of their treatment 
 of Him we can well discern the successive stages of a 
 spiritual hardening and worsening, which corresponds 
 completely to the description of the man again possessed 
 by the devil who had been cast out. The preaching 
 of St. John found these men sunk in hyprocrisy and 
 evil living, while their position and calling obliged them 
 to maintain a decent and even a religious exterior in 
 the eyes of men, and, what was still more fatal, to be 
 constantly occupied with holy functions and with the 
 
84 The Returning Devil. 
 
 guidance and instruction of others, while all the time 
 their hearts were full of uncleanness. The general 
 state of the people was probably not very much higher 
 than that of their teachers, setting aside the peculiar 
 malice of the hypocrisy imposed on the latter by the 
 necessities of the case. The preaching of penance 
 had been the providential means of healing for them 
 all, ministers of religion as well the mass of the popu- 
 lation, and in a large number of instances it had been 
 successful, especially in the case of the multitude as 
 distinguished from the Scribes and Pharisees, under 
 which names, it must be always remembered, our Lord 
 and the Evangelists speak of the ecclesiastical order 
 in general, as if not wishing to bring out too pro- 
 minently the fact that the great opponents of the 
 Gospel were the priests, and above all the ecclesiastical 
 rulers. 
 
 Thus it might very truly be said that the devil had been 
 cast out, and the door opened for the enlightenment 
 and guidance unto peace of which the blessed Zachary 
 speaks in his Canticle. It is a part of the providential 
 ruling of God that He deals with nations and com- 
 munities as units, and that the action and policy of 
 the rulers is allowed to affect the mass of the people 
 under their guidance, as far as regards public and 
 common responsibility, and the manner in which such 
 communities are visited with punishment or reward in 
 this world. And now, in the case of the Jews, the 
 leaders were following a line of policy with regard to 
 our Lord which verified, in their case, the description 
 given here of the ever-increasing evilness of the state 
 of the man of whom our Lord speaks, while the people, 
 as a mass, were more or less distinctly following in the 
 wake of their leaders, at least so far as to become very 
 indifferent and inattentive to the Gospel teaching. But 
 
The Returning Devil. 85 
 
 in the near future our Lord could foresee far worse 
 things for them than mere indifference and dulness, 
 bad as those sins might be in the case of persons so 
 highly favoured. It has already been explained how- 
 it was impossible for persons in the position of the 
 Jewish rulers and their subordinates to maintain an 
 attitude of neutrality with regard to our Lord and His 
 teaching. They must either close with Him and make 
 Him their Lord and Master, or they must oppose Him, 
 and the gradual unfolding of the magnificent plan of 
 God, of which He was the administrator, made their 
 opposition necessarily more and more fierce and bitter, 
 day after day. He kept out of their way as much as 
 possible for Him, He retired before their malignity, 
 He gave them every chance of coming to a better mind. 
 It is probable that if we could trace out the whole of 
 His gracious condescension and forbearance in their 
 regard, we should have before us a history very similar 
 to that of His dealings with the apostate Apostle Judas. 
 But they were carried on by a fatal necessity from which 
 thing they could only deliver themselves by doing the one 
 they had determined not to do, that is, fairly to admit 
 the claims which were supported by so many Divine 
 attestations. Their course is very constantly repeated 
 in that of the heretical leaders and teachers of modern 
 times, who will let themselves be driven to every shift 
 of calumny and misrepresentation, rather than look in the 
 face the evidence for the Catholic Church. Such men 
 have been known, at the time they have been teaching 
 Catholic doctrines and introducing Catholic practices 
 which their own community had rejected and proscribed, 
 and which they themselves have solemnly abjured as 
 a condition of their office, to tell persons who were 
 desirous of going one step further than themselves in 
 the direction of Catholic Unity, that to acknowledge 
 
S6 The Retur7ting Devil. 
 
 the claims of the Church would be to commit this very- 
 sin against the Holy Ghost of which these Scribes and 
 Pharisees were now guilty. 
 
 The Jewish rulers went cii, then, from indifference 
 to opposition, from opposition to hostility, from hostility 
 to persecution, from persecution to calumny of the 
 blackest kind, from calumny to conspiracy against our 
 Lord's Hfe, to the subornation of false witnesses, and 
 so on, to the bribery of Judas and all the enormous sins 
 which make up their part in the story of the Passion. 
 The great triumph and miracle of the Resurrection, 
 the sign of the Prophet Jonas, of which our Lord here 
 speaks, fell on them without producing the slightest 
 effect, and as they had been the persecutors of our 
 Lord so also were they the persecutors of the Apostles 
 and the Church of Jerusalem after Him. The history 
 of that Church was a history of the most intense suffer- 
 ing, and it is easy to understand how extremely im- 
 portant it may have been for its rulers to exercise the 
 greatest possible prudence in not offending more than 
 was absolutely necessary the prejudices of their fellow- 
 countrymen. This truth throws much light on the history 
 of St. Paul. At last the malignity of that generation of 
 Jews was turned against themselves, they broke out into 
 rebellion against the all-powerful Roman Empire, and 
 the last scenes of the history are scenes of internal 
 discord, barbarity, and atrocity in every crime, as well 
 as of suffering and chastisement, such as the world never 
 saw before or since. 
 
 There are some instructive comments on this passage 
 among the writings of the Catholic expounders of Scrip- 
 ture which may be referred to in a few words before 
 we leave this subject. Some of these writers inquire 
 how far it is true that the present state of the Jewish 
 nation, as regards the sins of which it makes itself guilty^ 
 
The Retur7iing Devil. Z^j 
 
 is worse than the state of the same nation in the time 
 when our Lord was thus treated by its rulers. It is not 
 necessary to the inteUigence of what is here said by 
 our Lord to consider that He means to imply that the 
 worsening of the state of that generation was to be 
 continued of necessity to the end of time, when it is 
 believed that the Jews will be converted to the faith. 
 He speaks of that generation, which signifies in a broad 
 sense, the nation up to the time of its final punishment 
 for the sin of the Crucifixion. Since that time the Jews 
 have often been a persecuted race, and it would be hard 
 to find them guilty of the same kind of enormous crimes 
 of which the punishment was exacted at the time of 
 the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies. 
 But it must be remembered that the spiritual state, 
 whether of a single person, or of a generation, or of 
 a community, may be worse than before in more ways 
 than one. It may become worse by the prevalence of 
 a number of new sins or evil habits, as, to take the 
 case of individuals, a young man may grow worse and 
 worse as he becomes the victim of one vice after another, 
 and gives up more and more all attention to the voice 
 of his conscience. Or, again, it may become worse by 
 the greater adhesion of the perverse will to sin in any 
 form, as an old man may become forced by the advance 
 of age to abandon the grosser habits of licentiousness 
 to which he has been accustomed, only to cling with 
 greater intensity of malice to the indulgences of which 
 he is still capable. So, to take the case of a man 
 misled by heresy, he may, as time goes on, find out 
 more and more the comparative beauty of the Catholic 
 faith and religious practice, and he may adopt, on his 
 own authority, more and more portions of the system of 
 the Church, and in these respects he may seem to have 
 made and to be making progress towards the true faith 
 
88 The Retu7'ning Devil, 
 
 in its perfection and completeness. He may even plume 
 himself on having made greater advances in what may 
 be called the acclimatization of Catholic institutions on 
 a foreign soil than those who have preceded him, and 
 he may even point to these advances as to signs that he 
 must be in the right path. 
 
 And yet a man in this position may be really worse 
 and worse as time goes on, because his resistance to 
 the authority of the Church becomes more and more 
 intelligent, more and more conscious, more and more 
 resolute and obstinate, and so more and more sinful 
 and less and less excusable. And it is quite within the 
 range of experience in a country like our own, in which 
 God has undoubtedly been reviving, in many outside 
 the Catholic Church, those instincts of love for her 
 system which are the natural inheritance of all rightly 
 baptised souls, that there should be many persons, and 
 even bodies, or parties, who appear to draw nearer 
 and nearer to Catholicism in a number of points of 
 detail, whether of doctrine or of practice, while all the 
 time they are becoming more and more hopelessly 
 imbued with the heretical spirit, more and more reso- 
 lutely determined never to submit to authority and to 
 acknowledge the enormous sinfulness of wilful schism. 
 In cases of this kind it may be most truly said that the 
 last state of these men is worse than the first, because 
 they began in ignorance, and were led on by the native 
 beauty of the Catholic doctrine to lay aside one error 
 after another, while at the same time they have become 
 more and more consciously the leaders of parties and 
 practically the founders of sects. They have tasted the 
 sweets, miserable as they are, of personal influence over 
 the souls of others, a temptation never more dangerous 
 than in communities outside the Church, in which there 
 is practically no supervision by authority of the action 
 
Our Lord and His Disciples, 89 
 
 of individuals. They have exchanged the comparative 
 innocence of opponents of the Church who are not 
 responsible for their own position, for the malignity of 
 deliberate rebels, and even for the open hostiUty of 
 calumniators of the truth. And, if this deterioration is 
 possible in cases of this kind, where the sin consists in 
 obstinacy of the intelligence hardened by a perverse will, 
 which is not inconsistent with many moral virtues and 
 great activity in good works, it must be much more easy 
 in other cases in which the soul runs headlong in a 
 course of immorality. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Our Lord and His Disciples. 
 
 St. Matt. xii. 47 — 50 ; St. Mark iii. 31 — 35 ; St. Luke viii. 19- 21 ; 
 Vita Vitce Nostrce, § 57. 
 
 There is a tone of severity and sternness about the 
 whole of this teaching of our Blessed Lord, very natural 
 indeed, when we consider the very great provocation 
 which He was now receiving from the malice of His 
 enemies. We have noted the occasional gentleness of 
 His language, even in the midst of the denunciations 
 and threats of condign punishment which were drawn 
 from Him by the calumnies and blasphemies of which 
 He was obliged to speak. The Evangelists close their 
 narrative of this series of incidents with an anecdote 
 which has a far more tender and loving character, and 
 which serves to balance, so to say, the stern teaching 
 concerning idle words, and the miserable blindness and 
 obduracy of the men of that generation, very much in the 
 same way as we have seen the teaching concerning the 
 
90 Oicr Lord and His Disciples. 
 
 rejection of the wise and prudent and the severe judg- 
 ment that would be passed on the cities in which most 
 of His mighty work^ had been done, balanced by the 
 rejoicing of the Sacred Heart of our Lord over the little 
 ones whom His Father had chosen for Him, and by the 
 most loving invitation to come to Him, addressed to all 
 those who labour and are burthened. The reason for 
 which the anecdote of which we are now to speak is 
 related by the first three Evangelists seems to be clearly 
 this, that some anecdote should be given of the intense 
 love with which our Lord regarded those who listened 
 to Him faithfully, just at the time when the history 
 obliged them to relate the severe language which had 
 been forced from our Lord by the malignant and blas- 
 phemous calumnies of the Scribes and Pharisees from 
 Jerusalem. It is clear that at this time He had much 
 consolation in those who followed Him faithfully, and 
 that He seized the occasion afforded Him of expressing 
 it. 
 
 It is not absolutely certain that the anecdote of which 
 we are now to speak took place at the very same time 
 with the teaching of which the close has just been related, 
 namely, the teaching on the subject of the return of the 
 evil spirit to the m.an out of whom he had been cast. 
 But it seems most probable that so it is. St. Matthew 
 begins his account with the words, 'As He was yet 
 speaking to the multitudes,' as if for the purpose of 
 directly connecting the narrative with the passage imme- 
 diately preceding it. In ordinary cases this would be 
 enough to settle the connection beyond all doubt, but 
 this Evangelist is often so abrupt in his transitions, as 
 they appear to us with his work before us as one con- 
 tinuous whole, that we may be sometimes misled in 
 thinking that he intends immediately to connect the 
 several paragraphs, so to call them, of which his Gospel 
 
Our Lord a7zd His Disciples, 91 
 
 is really made up, and which may have been originally 
 written by him as memoranda of incidents which were 
 not closely connected in point of time. It is evident 
 that the great point on which St. Matthew means to 
 insist is that what is about to be related took place on 
 an occasion when our Lord was teaching the people, 
 and had not yet finished His discourse. This is the 
 chief point in the whole anecdote, and St. Matthew 
 might not mean more by the words with which he begins 
 than this, that the announcement as to the presence of 
 His Blessed Mother and of His brethren was made to 
 our Lord while He was engaged in teaching. But there 
 is nothing, on the other hand, to make it improbable 
 that the teaching on which He was engaged was that 
 very teaching about the last state of the man to whom 
 the devil had returned after being driven forth, the 
 record of which immediately precedes the anecdote. 
 The only thing that might make us hesitate as to this 
 would be that the doctrine about the returning devil 
 would belong rather to that kind of teaching which He 
 would address to the Scribes and Pharisees than to the 
 multitudes, made up mainly of faithful disciples of His 
 own. He might have passed from that terrible subject 
 to some teaching more directly practical for the crowds 
 who were listening to Him. But it seems in any case 
 certain that these things happened when our Lord was 
 drawing very near to Capharnaum on His return thither, 
 after His missionary circuit, or when He had actually 
 just reached the city, from which He was at no great 
 distance of time to retire, never to return to it again. 
 
 'As He was yet speaking to the multitudes, behold 
 His Mother and His brethren stood without, seeking 
 to speak to Him, and standing without, sent unto Him, 
 calling Him. And the multitude sat about, and one 
 said to Him, Behold Thy Mother and Thy brethren 
 
92 Our Lord and His Disciples. 
 
 stand without seeking Thee. But He answering him 
 that told Plim, sairl, Who is My Mother, and who are 
 My brethren ? And looking round on them who sat 
 about Him, and stretching forth His hand towards His 
 Disciples, He said, Behold My Mother and My brethren ! 
 For whosoever shall do the will of My Father Who is 
 in Heaven, he is My brother and My sister, and My 
 mother. My mother and My brethren are they who 
 hear the word of God and do it.' The occurrence may 
 have been accidental in the minds of the Blessed Mother 
 and the brethren of our Lord, that is, they may have 
 made their way to the place when He was teaching 
 without any knowledge that He was so occupied, and 
 without the least intention of interrupting Him in His 
 discourse. But it may have been ordained in the provi- 
 dence of God for some gracious purpose, and it is easy 
 to see how much we have gained by it, in the most 
 loving declaration of our Lord of His regard for His 
 disciples, for all who hear the word of God and do it, 
 as well as in the lesson which is conveyed in the example 
 here set by our Lord to all who are engaged in the work 
 of the ministry not to let the most powerful natural ties 
 and influences interfere with them in the slightest degree 
 in the discharge of their sacred duties. In this respect 
 the incident may have been ordained by God, in the 
 same way as the beautiful incident of the lingering of 
 our Lord in the Temple for three days, when He was of 
 the age of twelve years, and when Mary and Joseph were 
 allowed to remain in ignorance of the cause which had 
 kept Him away from their company, for the sake of the 
 lesson which His conduct was to convey for all time, 
 with regard to the absolute independence of children in 
 matters of Divine vocation. For it was a part of the 
 office in the Kingdom of God of our Blessed Lady and 
 her Spouse, to stand, in relation to our Lord, in the 
 
Our Lord and His Disciples. 93 
 
 position in which Christian parents are to stand in the 
 Church to their own children, and our Lord's conduct 
 to them is the type and model of the behaviour of 
 Christian children to their own parents. It follows from 
 this, that it was sometimes a part of the counsel of God 
 that He should act with the most perfect independence 
 of them, while it was also a part of the same Divine 
 counsel that He should in other matters be the perfect 
 pattern of filial obedience and reverence and humility. 
 And as it is impossible to see the slightest ground 
 for censure in the conduct of our Blessed Lady and 
 St. Joseph on the occasion of the remaining of our Lord 
 in the Temple, so also is it altogether foolish to imagine 
 any undue importunity or self-assertion on the part of 
 our Lady on the occasion before us. 
 
 If our Lord had just returned to Caphamaum sud- 
 denly, and if she had not as yet seen Him, that would be 
 a sufficient reason for her desire to seek Him out at once, 
 and it may have been permitted that He should protract 
 His teaching more than usual, or that in some manner 
 His engagement in teaching may have been novel at 
 such a time. But it is also easy to suppose that there 
 may have been some special reason for our Lady's loving 
 anxiety to speak with Him, Such a reason may have 
 been furnished, only too readily, by the malice of His 
 enemies, always more powerful to hurt Him when He 
 approached the towns in which He had been so well 
 known, and where He must necessarily be more in the 
 reach of the authorities, than while He was passing from 
 place to place in the country with large multitudes 
 following Him. The last thing we have heard of these 
 near relations of our Lord, who are called His brethren 
 in the Gospels, was an attempt of theirs to place Him in 
 some secure spot for the sake of defending Him from 
 the dangers which He seemed to court. So during His 
 
94 Oitr Lord and His Disciples. 
 
 absence from Capharnaum, they may have become aware 
 of the intentions of His enemies against Him, intentions 
 which, as we shall see. He had His own way of rendering 
 futile. For as a matter of fact, He gave them the least 
 possible opportunity of carrying out their designs. But, 
 in the present stage of the history, His ' brethren ' are 
 pictured to us in a few graphic touches by the Evan- 
 gelists, as not yet convinced of His Divine Personality, 
 and yet most eager, with all the eagerness of the most 
 devoted human affection, both for His safety and for 
 the greater publicity of His teaching. Such persons 
 would feel, so to say, a kind of property in Him, and 
 as our Blessed Lady resided for the present with 
 them, it is most natural that she should be with them 
 in their attempt to see and to warn Him. Another 
 reason also may have prompted something like anxiety 
 on the part of His Blessed Mother, for our Lord was 
 never satisfied with the time He spent in teaching, 
 and though He would work His greatest miracles to 
 save the crowd of those who followed Him from any 
 inconveniences from their distance from their homes, 
 He had no mercy on Himself, and was worn out with 
 fatigue before He would send the multitudes away. 
 Either of these causes may have been operating in the 
 mind of our Blessed Lady, but the Evangelists do not 
 pause to tell us how the matter really was. They were 
 simply intent on relating the words and actions of our 
 Lord, and they had a special intention for the consolation 
 of the faithful, and for the admonition of apostolical men 
 in recording the anecdote. And perhaps also those blessed 
 historians of our Lord, living in the full recollection and 
 tradition of His demeanour to His Mother, and of the 
 immense honour which was paid to her in the early 
 Church of Jerusalem, would not think it worth their 
 while to anticipate the possible comments that might be 
 
Our Lord arid His Disciples. 95 
 
 made to her disadvantage, in times when the glory of 
 her presence was not so fresh in the memories even of 
 the great mass of Christians. For it may be considered 
 certain that, to the devout Jews of the times of our Lord 
 and the Apostles, not only was the great figure of the 
 promised Messias most familiar from the prophecies, 
 but that also by the side of that figure there was another 
 scarcely less familiar, and scarcely less magnificent, that 
 of the promised Mother of the holy seed, the enemy of 
 the serpent from the beginning, the Virgin, of whose 
 conception and child-bearing Isaias and a score of other 
 prophets had prophesied, and that all who knew from 
 the Sacred Scriptures the dignity of the Son would not 
 be ignorant of the greatness of the Mother. 
 
 But whatever may have been the motives of the 
 Blessed Mother and of these near relations of our Lord 
 in this visit to the spot or house in which He was 
 teaching, the important matter for us is that they came 
 to the outskirts of the crowd, or to the door of the 
 house, while He was still engaged in teaching the people, 
 who were sitting round Him in a large circle, so that 
 the little party of which our Lady was the chief could 
 not reach Him. It was immediately known who she 
 was, and who were her companions, and the message 
 or tidings was carried from mouth to mouth among the 
 crowd, till it reached our Lord. This was what it was 
 in the counsels of God to bring about, and our Lord 
 took the opportunity of summing up His discourse in 
 the manner most consoling to His audience, and most 
 instructive to all who have to follow Him in the office 
 of teacher to all time. And no doubt if the subject 
 matter on which He was speaking was, as seems to be 
 implied in the words of St. Matthew, the same as that 
 of the teaching which has last been related, it must have 
 been a fresh joy of the Heart of our Lord to have the 
 
96 Ou7^ Lord and His Disciples, 
 
 occasion to close with words so full of love and tender- 
 ness. The Evangelists between them give us a complete 
 picture, how He first looked on the crowd and then 
 stretched out His hands to them, saying, Behold My 
 Mother and My brethren, and St. Matthew tells us that 
 He began by asking the question. Who is My Mother 
 and who are My brethren ? for whosoever shall do the 
 will of My Father that is in Heaven, he is My brother 
 and sister and mother.' As our Lord was so affectionate 
 and loving and gentle and yielding in His demeanour to 
 every one, the multitude must have been prepared to 
 find that He would not reject the application made by 
 His Mother and brethren in any discourteous way. But 
 at the same time it was fitting that the right balance 
 should be struck, between the claims of earthly and 
 family ties on the one hand, and those of spiritual 
 relationship on the other. It was right that our Lord 
 should leave behind Him this doctrine in His Church, 
 that carnal relationship is absolutely nothing by the side 
 of the links between the teacher and His spiritual child- 
 ren, and the other supernatural ties which bind us one 
 to another in His kingdom. It is as if He had said, I 
 have no mother, no kindred, no brethren, in the merely 
 natural order, the only ties I have are with those who 
 hear and do the word of God and the will of God. 
 Even His natural relation to His most Blessed Mother 
 was but the foundation on which His spiritual bond 
 with her was built, the natural tie between them had 
 been at once elevated and transformed by the over- 
 whelming gifts of grace which had fitted her for her 
 position as His Mother, and on that first great foundation 
 of graces another magnificent edifice had been raised, and 
 was daily mounting up higher and higher in the sight of 
 God, as her most perfect faithfulness to grace multiplied 
 her merits, and as she became ever nearer and nearer to 
 
Our Lord and His Disciples. 97 
 
 Him in the most perfect union of her heart and thoughts 
 and affections with His own. First, indeed, she was, 
 and had ever been and was ever to be, with Him, but 
 the grounds of her pre-eminent sanctity, and of His 
 pre-eminent love for her, were grounds of spiritual con- 
 formity and not of natural relationship, and if it were 
 true of any one that he or she who heard and did the 
 word of God was His mother, it was true of no one half 
 so much as of her who by nature was His Mother. 
 
 Thus, at the very time when He had been forced by 
 the malignity of the Scribes sent down from Jerusalem 
 to utter these awful words about the unpardonable sin 
 and the last state of the man which was worse than the 
 first, He was also enabled, by a seeming accident in the 
 providence of His Father, to speak these most loving 
 and consoling words concerning His disciples. And 
 thus this series of instructions ended more happily than 
 it began, for it ended in the declaration of the most 
 tender union between Himself and those who listened 
 to Him faithfully, whereas it had begun with the most 
 diabolical of calumnies against Him and the most fearful 
 words which He ever spoke against those who opposed 
 His teaching. 
 
 H 7 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Teaching by Parables. 
 
 St. Matt. xiii. i — 9 ; St. Mark iv. i-;-9 ; St. Luke viii. 4 — 8 ; 
 Vita VitcB NostrcB, § 58. 
 
 We now come to an important point in the Ministry of 
 our Lord, at which, in consequence, as we cannot doubt, 
 of the maUgnant form which the opposition of His 
 enemies had now taken, and of the disastrous influence 
 of that opposition upon the people, even on the crowds 
 who were still ready to listen to Him and who flocked 
 to Him for the sake of the miracles of mercy which He 
 wrought. He adopted the rule of not speaking to them 
 in public except in the form of parables. It has been 
 remarked, in the introductory part of this work, that it 
 cannot be reasonably thought that our Lord had never 
 adopted the parabolic form of instruction before this date. 
 His whole manner of teaching, if it was not directly 
 parabolic, was akin to that method, for He always spoke 
 in image and figure. He never laid aside this manner of 
 speaking, even at the very last. When He was on His way 
 to Mount Calvary with His Cross on His shoulders, He 
 spoke to the women of Jerusalem about the green tree 
 and the dry. And when He appeared after His Ascension 
 to St. Paul on the road to Damascus, He spoke to him 
 about * kicking against the goads.' If we find no direct 
 and formal parables before this time, there are abundant 
 instances of teaching, in which it is only the formal 
 enunciation of the similitude that is wanting to make 
 
The Teaching by Parables. 99 
 
 them parables. Such are many parts of the Sermon 
 on the Mount, such are the words in which, shortly 
 before this time. He put before the Pharisee Simon the 
 relative merits of the love shown to Him by Simon 
 himself on the one hand, and by the blessed Magdalene 
 on the other. And yet it is quite clear that His 
 adoption of this method at this time had an appearance 
 of novelty, and that it created some astonishment in the 
 minds of the Apostles, and therefore, we may suppose, 
 in the minds of the people themselves, that He should 
 have so far departed from His usual method on this 
 occasion. 
 
 We have already traced to some extent the gradual 
 increase of reserve on our Lord's part in His public 
 teaching. This increase was inevitable, if He was to 
 continue to teach at all. It was made inevitable by the 
 manner in which every word was watched by His adver- 
 saries, and, perhaps, much more, by the cause to which 
 He Himself, as we shall see, attributed it, the gradual 
 hardening of the hearts of H^s ordinary hearers. There 
 is indeed a great difference between the bright heavenly 
 openness of the Sermon on the Mount, and the more 
 mournful and solemn warnings of which a great part of 
 the Sermon on the Plain is made up. But there we 
 find, at least, exhortations to such beautiful virtues as 
 the forgiveness of injuries, the love of enemies, the 
 abstention from judgment of our neighbour, and the 
 like. If we ask ourselves what are the moral lessons 
 which are conveyed by the series of parables on which 
 we are now about to comment, we find indeed that 
 these lessons relate directly to practice, for they warn 
 us against the various hindrances to the acceptance of 
 the Word of God. It is quite true, and must not be 
 forgotten in the consideration now before us, that we 
 have only a certain portion of the Parables now delivered 
 
TOO The Teaching by Parables. 
 
 to the multitude. We are distinctly told by St. Mark 
 that our Lord at this time addressed ' many such 
 parables ' to the people. But it seems natural to think 
 that we can judge of the general import of His teaching 
 at this time from the specimens preserved to us. They 
 speak to us of the coming Judgment, of the rejection 
 of the bad members of the Church, they tell us of the 
 activity of the enemy of God and man, even in the field 
 cultivated by the ministry of the Church, they tell us of 
 the extreme preciousness of the graces which belong to 
 the Kingdom of Christ. All these things are most salutary 
 counsels. But their practical import is mainly confined 
 to the one most momentous point, the inculcation of 
 great diligence in hearing the Word of God and in using 
 our opportunities of grace. It is no longer this or that 
 special truth which is urged home, it is the one only 
 manner in which any truth can be received with profit. 
 And these counsels are all folded up, as it were, in 
 the mysterious garb of parables which not every one 
 can penetrate, nay, which, without the direct explanation 
 which has been vouchsafed of some of them by our 
 Lord Himself, we should have great difftculty in under- 
 standing, at least in all their details. We may well 
 imagine that the ordinary hearers of our Lord might 
 have been perplexed by this change in His teaching, and 
 might have felt it more difficult than before to grasp 
 the revelation which He came to make. 
 
 If this were indeed so, it is but a fresh confirmation 
 of a truth regarding the dealings of God with man which 
 has already been illustrated in this history of the Gospel 
 teaching. The opportunities of grace and light vouch- 
 safed to persons, or generations, or nations, are often 
 very short. They pass away, never to return, leaving 
 those to whom they have been addressed in some cases 
 far better than they were before, in other cases far worse 
 
The TeacktJig by Parables. loi 
 
 than they were before, but not often in the same con- 
 dition. Men have either accepted the message of God 
 and been marvellously bettered thereby, or they have 
 turned away from it and are wonderfully worsened there- 
 by. The process of hardening and of growing darkness 
 is not accomplished all at once, it has its stages and 
 degrees. This is the histor}^ not only of every presenta- 
 tion of the Gospel truths to generations or peoples which 
 have never before heard of them, but of occasions with 
 which we are in the present day much more familiar, 
 as when to a population already Christian is given a 
 fresh impulse to faith or devotion, by some Providential 
 action of God which is intended to prepare men for 
 some coming trial, to give them the opportunity of ward- 
 ing off some impending chastisement by penitence, or to 
 prepare them for the reception of some great spiritual boon. 
 At the beginning, there is a great outpouring of grace, 
 there are miracles of conversion, many heroic deeds 
 of self-sacrifice, many beautiful providences, making the 
 way smooth as well as making the path, clear. The 
 minds of the devout students of God's ways and works 
 will at once remember the great outpouring of Divine 
 mercy which followed on, or rather accompanied, the 
 preaching of St. John the Baptist and the first year of 
 the Ministry of our Lord in Galilee. But these seasons 
 of the triumph of grace were short, for St. John preached 
 only a few months, and our Lord's first teaching in 
 Galilee was not very much longer than the ministry of 
 St. John. In each case the hearts of men were soon tried 
 and the issue soon decided. While some were hesitating, 
 others struggling with themselves, others, who had at first 
 accepted the grace, turning back or growing lukewarm, 
 the moment passed, the occasion ceased, the heavenly 
 gift sped on its way elsewhere. 
 
 It seems, moreover, that these words of the Evangel- 
 
I02 The Teaching by Parables. 
 
 ists are not to be understood without some restriction, 
 drawn from the critical consideration of the remainder 
 of their narratives. We may gather from such a con- 
 sideration, that the words about not teaching them 
 without parables apply directly to the populations of 
 Galilee, and especially of the great cities like Caphar- 
 naum, where He had taught so much. As a matter of 
 fact, there is no other teaching of the people in these 
 parts recorded by the Evangelists, as publicly delivered 
 by our Lord, after this time, which is not parabolic. He 
 was soon to be seen no more in Capharnaum itself, and 
 it seems certain that the greater part of the last year of 
 His teaching was devoted to Judaea, Peraea, and Jeru- 
 salem. The teaching of which we have distinct record 
 after this, as having taken place in Galilee,^ is mainly 
 such as the great discourse in the synagogue of Caphar- 
 naum, after the miracle of the five loaves, which is 
 distinctly doctrinal in its character, and which seems to 
 have been addressed to an audience of scribes or well- 
 instructed men. And in the two earlier Gospels, in 
 which alone this series of parables, on which we are now 
 about to comment, is made a prominent feature, there 
 is after this no teaching of any kind to the people except 
 in parables, besides that which St. Matthew records as 
 having been delivered in Peraea, on the subject mainly 
 of what we call the 'counsels of perfection,' and that 
 great series of instructions delivered in the Temple itself 
 in the earlier days of the week of the Passion. ^ On the 
 other hand, a large portion of the Gospel of St. Luke 
 is devoted by him to a series of practical instructions 
 later than the period at which we have now arrived, and 
 delivered to the people, and this great series of instruc- 
 tions is by no means uniformly parabolical. But it has 
 already been pointed out, in the introductory part of 
 
 1 St. John vi. 25, seq. 2 St. Matt, xix.— xxiii. 
 
The Teaching by Parables. 103 
 
 this work, that St. Luke is there relating incidents and 
 instructions which belong to the Judsean, as distinguished 
 from the Galilean Ministry of our Lord, and we may 
 certainly gather, from the appearance in this course of 
 teaching of so much that is not parabolical, that it was 
 delivered to a population altogether or mainly different 
 in its elements from that which our Lord had at that 
 time left behind Him in Galilee.^ There is a great deal 
 in that portion of the teaching of our Lord which is a 
 repetition of what had already been set before the people 
 in the former scene of His labours, and it may even be 
 thought, without any great indulgence of fancifulness, 
 that the proportion of parabolical teaching which occurs 
 in this series of instructions increases as time goes on, 
 as if there also our Lord had gradually become less 
 explicit in His direct teaching. The teaching in the 
 Temple and perhaps elsewhere in Jerusalem, of which 
 we have so much recorded to us in the last half of the 
 Gospel of St. John, belongs to another category among 
 the discourses of our Lord, because He is there mainly 
 engaged in disputing with the Jewish doctors on matters 
 concerning His own mission and office.* Thus we can 
 trace in the whole Gospel narrative, taken together, the 
 influence of this law of the gradual increase of reserve 
 in setting forth Divine truths to those who were proving 
 themselves unworthy of them by their negligence in 
 receiving them, first in Galilee, and later on in Judaea 
 itself In each case our Lord begins with a largeness 
 and freedom of communication, which He is afterwards 
 compelled to restrict on account of the hardness of 
 the hearts of those to whom He is addressing Himself. 
 And, finally, after having taught in a more reserved 
 way. He goes on to withdraw from them His teaching 
 altogether. 
 
 3 St. Luke ix. 51 — xviii. 14. ^ gt. John vii, i — xi, 54. 
 
I04 The Teaching by Parables, 
 
 We see the prevalence of the same law of Provi- 
 dential action in all ages, as in the occasional move- 
 ments of renovation and revival which God sometimes 
 vouchsafes, either to parts of the Church in which 
 fervour has grown cold, or to communities outside 
 Catholic unity in which there are many good elements 
 overgrown by falsehood and corruption. A very short 
 time is enough for men to show what is in their hearts. 
 If they show themselves well disposed, there is no limit 
 to the graces which God is prepared to pour out upon 
 them. Men are quickly tested as to what is in their 
 hearts, how far they will let themselves be led on towards 
 higher truths, the perception of which may involve great 
 sacrifices, or at least require great attention and purity of 
 heart. If they show themselves determined to remain 
 in the false liberty of heresy and schism, the Word is 
 withdrawn from them, and though they may manifest a 
 considerable amount of religious activity, build churches, 
 organize missions, and parody a dozen beautiful portions 
 of the Catholic system, for the sake of keeping up the 
 appearance of life, it is easy to see through the false 
 show of foliage without fruit, and to anticipate for that 
 community or generation the fate of the barren fig-tree. 
 The process of illumination is stopped, the growth in 
 spirituality is stunted. All opportunities of grace are not, 
 indeed, withdrawn, for the Catholic Church remains, as 
 she ever is, the witness to the truth which is addressed to 
 all, the city set on a mountain, which cannot be hidden. 
 But a veil descends between her and them, they lose their 
 •power of discerning the signs of the times, the Provi- 
 dential action in the arrangement of events around them, 
 which is designed by God to open their eyes to the 
 falseness of their own position, finds no response in their 
 intelligence because their hearts are hardened, and it is 
 not unusual for them even to turn on the messengers of 
 
The Teaching by Parables. 105 
 
 God with fresh fury, as the Jews ultimately turned upon 
 our Lord and brought about His death. 
 
 Moreover, the Divine reason for the adoption of a 
 more reserved manner in dealing with men who have 
 already been for some time under the influence of the 
 Gospel teaching, may be found, not only in the condition 
 of their hearts as manifested by their treatment of the 
 Word of God as far as it has been presented to them, 
 but in this combined with another element, that of the 
 character of the truths which it is now time for them to 
 receive, as a supplement to those which have been already 
 set before them. We find this principle illustrated in the 
 Episde of St. Paul to the Hebrews, in which it is the 
 object of the Apostle to unfold the great doctrine of the 
 Priesthood of Christ. 'Of Whom,' he says, Sve have 
 much to say, and hard to be intelligibly uttered, because 
 you are become weak to hear. For whereas, for the 
 time, you ought to be masters, you have need to be 
 taught again what are the first elements of the words 
 of God, and you are become such as have need of milk, 
 and not of strong meat. For every one that is a partaker 
 of milk, is unskilful in the word of justice, for he is a 
 little child. But strong meat is for the perfect, for those 
 who by custom have their senses exercised to the discern- 
 ing of good and evil. Wherefore, leaving the word of 
 the beginning of Christ, let us go on to things more 
 perfect, not laying again the foundation of penance from 
 dead works, and of faith towards God, of the doctrine 
 of baptisms, and of imposition of hands, and of the 
 resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.'^ 
 This state of things in the mass of a population may 
 make it necessary that the doctrines which belong to 
 the class of which St. Paul speaks as things more perfect, 
 should be imparted to them with much reserve and 
 
 5 Heb. V. II — vi. 2, 
 
io6 The Teaching by Parables. 
 
 caution, and in such cases it is easy to see that the 
 most natural method of meeting the requirements of the 
 moment may be the use of a kind of teaching which is 
 more intelHgible to the advanced than to others, and 
 which may instruct those who are capable of instruction 
 without opening to others truths for which they are not 
 yet fit. And where the difference between two classes 
 of hearers is caused by the hardening of the hearts of 
 some to the influences of Divine grace, the same kind 
 of teaching may be adopted with the view of withdrawing 
 certain great subjects from the gaze of the many, while 
 the explanation of the same subjects is continued in such 
 a way as to be understood by the few. The reasons for 
 which our Lord, at this particular time, may have felt 
 Himself almost forced to become more reticent with 
 the people at large on certain great points of Divine 
 truth, which were always very near to His Heart and 
 constantly on His lips, has been treated of in another 
 portion of this work, and perhaps little apology is needed 
 for the insertion, in this place, to which the considera- 
 tion properly belongs, of what has already been said 
 elsewhere. 
 
 * There is certainly abundant ground for considering 
 that our Blessed Lord, to speak of Him after a human 
 manner, felt Himself full of knowledge concerning God 
 and His ways with His creatures, which He burned to 
 impart to those to whom He was sent, but which they 
 were not fit to receive. At the outset of His history 
 we have an account of His conversation with Nico- 
 demus,^ to whom He spoke about the necessity of a new 
 birth in Baptism with a plainness and openness which 
 are surprising to us when we compare them with many 
 parts of His subsequent teaching. There is the same 
 directness of instruction to be remarked in the conver- 
 
 <» St. John iii. i, seq. 
 
The Teaching by Parables, 107 
 
 sation which follows, in St. John, between our Lord and 
 the woman of Samaria. When He said to her about 
 the Messias, "I Who speak unto thee am He,"^ He 
 made a direct assertion which He made at no other 
 time, except when adjured by Caiaphas to declare 
 whether He were the Christ, the Son of the Blessed. 
 But to Nicodemus He used words of complaint, as if 
 He were surprised at the dulness of his perception of 
 spiritual truth — "Amen, amen, I say to thee, that we 
 speak what we know and we testify what we have seen, 
 and you receive not our testimony. I have spoken unto 
 you earthly things, and you believe not, how will you 
 believe if I shall speak unto you heavenly things?"^ 
 We need not draw out here the whole that might be 
 said concerning this difficulty, which our Lord ex- 
 perienced almost universally, and to the very end of 
 His Ministry, in meeting with hearts and minds capable 
 of receiving His Divine doctrine. But these considera- 
 tions prepare us to find that, when the time had come 
 for Him to teach the people more fully about God, and 
 especially about that great revelation of Himself which is 
 contained in His Providence and in the arrangement 
 of His Kingdom, in the widest sense of that word. He 
 found Himself constrained to adopt this particular mode 
 of teaching more exclusively, by means of which the 
 mystery of the Kingdom might be enshrined in the most 
 familiar form, a form which can hardly escape the 
 memory after that faculty has once taken it in, and yet 
 be so enshrined therein as not to be thrust upon the 
 notice of those incapable of understanding it, while 
 at the same time it invited the thoughtful pondering 
 of those whose hearts were already to some extent 
 enhghtened concerning it. If we might be so bold as 
 to compare what passed in our Lord's Sacred Heart with 
 
 7 St, John iv. 26. 8 St. John iii. ii, 12. 
 
io8 The Teaching by Parables, 
 
 what is noblest and best in the workings and productions^ 
 of the most gifted of men — 
 
 Those whose hearts are beating high 
 With the pulse of poesy — 
 
 we may venture to say that He was fain to pour forth, 
 in some form analogous to the highest song, the thoughts 
 to which the possession of all the knowledge concerning 
 God with which the Sacred Humanity was endowed gave 
 birth. The knowledge thus given to Him, like the other 
 graces and treasures which were received at the time of 
 the Hypostatic Union, were given, not for Himself alone, 
 but for us — for the children of the Church throughout 
 all ages ; and we may consider those instructions of His, 
 which the Providence of His Father had determined 
 should come down to us in the Gospel narratives, as 
 having been framed for us as well as for those to whom 
 they were immediately addressed. The revelation of 
 the Father, which it was His commission to make to 
 mankind, was thus made independent of the unworthi- 
 ness and dulness and hardness of heart of those by 
 whom He happened to be immediately surrounded 
 during so large a portion of His teaching. If we are 
 to apply to the Sacred Heart the rule which our Lord- 
 Himself gave, and say that out of the abundance of the 
 heart the mouth speaketh, so that we may judge of His 
 habitual thoughts by the subjects that are always upon 
 His lips, we must certainly say that the character and 
 perfections of the Father were ever His darling subjects 
 of contemplation. When the heart that was most near 
 and most like unto His own, the heart of His Blessed 
 Mother, poured itself out in her holy canticle of thanks- 
 giving, it was in a strain that spoke of one wonderful 
 perfection of God after another — His Lordship, His 
 Providence in Redemption, His Condescension to the 
 humble, His Power, His Sanctity, His Mercy, His Faith- 
 
The Teaching by Parables. 109 
 
 fulness in His promises, and that law of His Kingdom 
 whereby the proud are confounded, the lowly exalted, 
 the hlingry filled, and the rich sent empty away. We 
 cannot, then, be far wrong if we venture to approach 
 the parables of our Lord with this thought in our minds 
 — that they contain more, perhaps, than any other part 
 of His teaching, His description of His Father in His 
 dealings with those who belong to Him. Let us allow 
 ourselves to suppose that to these applies, at least as 
 fully as to any other of His discourses, the text already 
 quoted from St. John — "The only-begotten Son, Who 
 is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." 
 
 * We shall perhaps find that this view of the parables 
 will bring their signification more into a harmonious 
 whole than any other, and that, on the other hand, we 
 hardly require a more complete system of teaching as to 
 God and His Providence than that which is here con- 
 tained. No doubt, a number of them refer immediately 
 to the Church; but the Church is one great manifes- 
 tation or fruit of God's Fatherly Love, and the laws on 
 whicTi He has acted in respect to the Church have not 
 been confined in their operation to what immediately 
 concerns her. No doubt the far greater number of 
 them, again, are meant to convey some distinct moral 
 or practical lesson, such as the necessity of vigilance, 
 or of Christian prudence, or the law of charity or of 
 mutual forgiveness of injuries; but these lessons are 
 pointed in the parables by distinct reference to some- 
 thing in God's character or ways of dealing with us, 
 which is the more immediate subject of the picture. 
 And, perhaps, it may also be found — and this is the last 
 argument for which there is room in the present paper — 
 that this particular view of the general scope of the 
 teaching by parables may explain some features in them 
 which are otherwise the occasion of difficulties more or 
 
no The Teaching by Parables, 
 
 less serious. Nor would it materially interfere with this 
 view as to the general purport of the teaching by 
 parables, if we find that our Lord now and then used 
 the same form with another object, such as we can 
 hardly help seeing, for instance, in the Parable of the 
 Two Sons,^ which He Himself explained as applying 
 to the conduct of the priests and scribes on the one 
 hand, and of the publicans and harlots on the other, 
 with respect to the baptism of St. John. Nor, again, 
 must it be urged against us that some of the parables, 
 as that of the Labourers in the Vineyard, and the Un- 
 merciful Servant, are undoubtedly addressed to the most 
 intimate followers of our Lord. All these parables speak 
 of great laws of God's Kingdom — and this is the main 
 point on which we insist. 
 
 ' When we consider Who God is, and how infinitely 
 His attributes and nature are above our comprehension, 
 it must be obvious at once that His government of the 
 universe must be, as a whole and in its parts, very far 
 above the ken of our mental faculties, though at the 
 same time it is equally true that in nature and in 
 Providence, as well as in the supernatural order, He 
 distinctly reveals Himself, and intends us to learn about 
 Him from His works and ways. He is the one great 
 object of the study and contemplation of all created 
 intelligent beings, and at the same time He must, as 
 it were, break the knowledge of Himself to us tenderly, 
 He must raise us on high and add fresh power to our 
 eyes before we can gaze on Him. If we could fully 
 understand Him and His ways. He would not be our 
 God ; if we could know nothing about Him and about 
 them, we should not be the creatures He has made us, 
 and our life here would not be a preparation for the 
 blessedness which He intends for us hereafter, and of 
 
 » St. Matt. xxi. 26—32. 
 
The Teaching by Parables, ill 
 
 which we even now enjoy the partial foretaste. The very 
 first thing that we know about Him is a mystery to us, 
 in the common sense of the word. For the first great 
 mystery in the Providence of God — in which we may 
 include the creation as well as the government of the 
 world — is that permission and tolerance of evil which 
 follows as a necessary consequence from the planting of 
 free creatures in a state of probation. Let us never 
 underrate this. It has its answer, but not all can see it. 
 Those familiar with the difficulties which practically 
 beset and bewilder no inconsiderable number even of 
 Christian and Catholic souls to whom the world is a 
 puzzle and a riddle, will hardly question the importance 
 of this difficulty, which pushes itself, if we may say so, 
 in so many different directions, making men at one 
 time question the justice of the decree which has loaded 
 them with the responsibility of a choice whose issue is 
 eternal, at another time doubt of the love which can 
 create beings whom it foreknows shall be everlastingly 
 miserable, or again, at another, rise up against the 
 sentence which visits the rebellion of a weak and sorely 
 tempted creature with a punishment so great as that 
 which awaits the wicked in the next world. Or again, 
 the difficulty takes the form, as we see in some of the 
 Psalms, to quote no other example, of an inability to 
 understand the prosperity of vice, the apparent impunity 
 in this life of the enemies of God, and the afflictions 
 and calamities which befall the just. Or, again, the 
 thing which is unintelligible seems to be that God's 
 work is so much marred and fettered in the world, that 
 there is so little result for so great an expenditure of 
 love, labour, and sacrifice, and that mischief is allowed 
 to flourish even in the very home of good, and to con-upt 
 those who would otherwise serve God in innocence and 
 faithfulness. 
 
1 1 2 The Teaching by Parables, 
 
 ' Such are some of the difficulties of which we speak, 
 and they all have their answer in the knowledge of God 
 and of His character, His attributes, and His ways with 
 men, and most of them are touched by the remark of 
 St. Augustine, that God chooses rather to bring good 
 out of evil than not to permit evil. Others, again, are 
 met as St. Paul usually, in the first instance, meets 
 difficulties about Providence and predestination, by a 
 consideration of the absolute lordship and dominion 
 of God over His creatures, whom He may place under 
 whatever conditions He will, consistently, as whatever 
 He wills must be consistent, with His justice and His 
 holiness. And after this consideration of the absolute 
 authority and ownership — so to speak— of a Creator over 
 His creatures, there naturally follow others which are 
 required also for difficulties of another kind, as well as 
 for those of which we have spoken — considerations of 
 God's immense and boundless goodness. His tender care 
 over His own, His mercy and long-suffering and indul- 
 gence to those who oppose themselves to Him, His 
 ever-ready grace. His fatherly attention to prayer, and 
 the like. Another great head of what we may call in 
 general the mystery of God's government, contains the 
 whole chain of His dealings with man in respect of his 
 fall and redemption, the arrangements made for his 
 recovery, the manner in which it is brought about, and 
 the special laws of the new kingdom which is its organ, 
 and through which its blessings are administered. Here 
 we come to what in a more restricted sense may be 
 considered as the "mystery" of God's Kingdom— the 
 Divine "economy" of grace which is worked out through 
 the Incarnation by means of an exquisite system, full 
 of beauty, gentleness, and tenderness, the principles and 
 many of the details of which will be found, on close 
 inspection, to be figured in the parables. All these 
 
The Teaching by Pai^ables. 
 
 things are what they are in detail on account of some- 
 thing which may be known and reflected on concerning 
 God, and they cannot be understood and valued unless 
 with respect to Him, and as reflecting His goodness or 
 holiness, or mercifulness or justice. 
 
 -This is a very imperfect as well as a very general 
 description of the sort of truths which may be conceived 
 as forming the more substantial points in the teaching 
 by parables — the points to which other things are sub- 
 ordinated, and with reference to which those other things 
 are best to be understood. '^^ 
 
 It may be added here, what is obvious from the con- 
 sideration of the great object which was now occupying 
 the mind of our Lord, that is, the formation of the 
 Apostles for the special work in His Kingdom for which 
 they were designed, that the subject matter of the first 
 series of parables, on which we are now engaged, has a 
 most distinct and important reference to the duties and 
 conditions of the Christian Apostolate as such. It is true 
 that these parables contain most important warnings to 
 the hearers as well as to the teachers in the Divine 
 Kingdom of the Church, and for that purpose it is most 
 probable that it was that they were not addressed to 
 the Apostles exclusively. But it is also true, that the 
 parables, especially those of this series, set forth the 
 most vital principles of the government of God with 
 reference especially to this work of the salvation of men 
 by means of the Word, and on this account they are 
 quite as full of teaching for the rulers of the Christian 
 people, the guides of souls, and administrators of the 
 means of grace, as for those who are to be the subjects 
 of those ministrations. 
 
 It should also be remarked that the parables of which 
 
 10 The Theology of the Parables. This Essay will be found at the end 
 of the first volume of The Life of our Life. 
 
 I 7 
 
114 ^^^ Teaching by Pa^^ables, 
 
 we speak are carefully divided by St. Matthew — who gives 
 them all but one, which one is inserted by St. Mark — 
 into two portions, the first of which was delivered by 
 our Lord to the people, and afterwards more or less, 
 explained by Him to the Apostles in private, the second 
 part being addressed, as it seems, to the Apostles alone 
 in the house, after some of the former parables had been 
 expounded to them. To the first of these classes belong 
 the Parable of the Sower, that of the Wheat and the 
 Cockle, that of the Seed cast into the Ground, that of 
 the Grain of Mustard Seed, and that of the Leaven. 
 At the termination of this first portion of the series 
 St. Matthew places his declaration, that our Lord spoke 
 all these things to the people in parables, and did not 
 any longer speak to them without parables. Then he 
 subjoins the explanation, by our Lord, of the two first 
 parables just now enumerated. And after this explana- 
 tion he adds three more, as to which it seems that we 
 are to gather that they were addressed especially to the 
 Apostles. These are the parables of the Merchant 
 seeking precious pearls, of the man who finds a Treasure 
 in a field, and of the Draw-net, which is emptied on the 
 shore. After this second series, our Lord asks His 
 disciples whether they understand these things, and on 
 their answering that they understand them, he subjoins 
 the remark, 'Therefore every scribe instructed in the 
 Kingdom of Heaven is like to a man who is a house- 
 holder who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things 
 and old.' There is a certain difference and even a 
 certain contrast between these two series, of which it 
 will be well to speak hereafter. 
 
 The scene of the parables of which the Evangelists 
 now speak is probably near Capharnaum, if they were 
 not delivered on the sea coast in front of the city itself. 
 Travellers tell us that the scenery of the first parable, 
 
The Teaching by Parables. 115 
 
 that of the Sower, is to be found in many spots in that 
 neighbourhood, where the road runs near the sea, and 
 where the rocky ground and thornbrakes intrude upon 
 the fields of good soil.^^ But the language of the Evan- 
 gelists seem to fix the spot close to the city. 'Jesus, 
 going out of the house, sat by the seaside. He began 
 to teach by the seaside, and a great multitude was 
 gathered together unto Him, so that He went up into 
 a boat and sat in the sea, and all the multitude was 
 upon the land by the seaside. And He taught them 
 many things in parables, and said to them in His doc- 
 trine or teaching. Hear ye. Behold, the sower went out 
 to sow, and when He soweth, some fell by the wayside, 
 and the birds of the air came and ate it up. And other 
 some fell upon rocky ground, where it had not much 
 earth, and it shot up immediately because it had no 
 depth of earth. And when the sun was risen, it was 
 scorched, and because it had no root nor moisture it 
 withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the 
 thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. 
 And some fell upon good ground, and brought forth 
 fruit that grew up and increased and yielded, one thirty, 
 
 11 Dean Stanley tells us, of a spot near the approach to the Plain of 
 Gennesareth, ' A slight recess in the hill-side, close upon the plain, 
 disclosed at once, in detail, and with a conjunction which I remember 
 nowhere else in Palestine, every feature of the great parable. There 
 was the undulating cornfield descending to the water's edge. There 
 was the trodden pathway running through the midst of it, with ito fence 
 or hedge to prevent the seed from falling here and there on either side 
 of it, or upon it ; itself hard with the constant tramp of horse and mule, 
 and human feet. There was the ' good ' rich soil, which distinguishes 
 the whole of that plain and its neighbourhood from the bare hills else- 
 where descending into the lake, and which, when there is no interruption, 
 produces one vast mass of corn. There was the rocky ground of the 
 hill-side protruding here and there through the cornfields, as elsewhere 
 through the grassy slopes. There were the large bushes of thorn— the 
 Nahk, that kind of which tradition says that the Crown of 1 horns was 
 woven^springing up, like the fruit-trees of the more inland parts, in 
 the very midst of the waving wheat' {Sinai arid Palestine, c. xiii. p. 426). 
 
Ii6 The Teaching by Parables, 
 
 and another sixty, and another a hundred. And He 
 said, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear.' 
 
 St. Matthew subjoins to this parable the statement 
 that His disciples came to our Lord and asked Him the 
 reason for His adopting this new method of teaching, 
 and he also gives our Lord's answer. Then he gives 
 us the explanation which our Lord gave, not only of 
 His reasons for speaking in this way to the multitude, 
 but also of the ^ parable itself. After this St. Matthew 
 inserts the second parable, that of the Wheat and Cockle, 
 as well as others. The other two Evangelists lead us 
 to suppose that the parables were given, in the order in 
 which they stand, to the people, and that the explana- 
 tions — for our Lord explained the second parable as well 
 as the first — were given afterwards to the disciples in the 
 house. The difference is very easily explained. It 
 is very likely indeed that St. Matthew, who is fond of 
 the order of ideas rather than the order of time, passed 
 naturally to the question of the Apostles and the explana- 
 tion of the first parable before going on to the second. 
 This would be quite in harmony with the method of the 
 first Evangelist, of which we have already had so many 
 examples. 
 
 But this explanation of the apparent difference in this 
 place is not necessary, and it is well worth our while to 
 examine the statements of the Evangelists more closely. 
 It is clear that the Apostles asked our Lord two distinct 
 questions, the first of which related to the manner of His 
 teaching, while the second had reference to the meaning of 
 the parables. The answer to the first question is contained 
 in the passage about the hardness of heart of the Jews, 
 and the answer to the second is found in the detailed 
 explanation of the Parable of the Sower and, afterwards, 
 in that of the Parable of the Cockle. It is very natural 
 to think that the first question may have been put 
 
The Teaching by Parables. 1 1 7 
 
 immediately upon the occurrence which caused the 
 surprise of the Apostles, and that the other may have 
 occurred later. It is also quite possible that our Lord 
 answered both questions at the same time, that is, after 
 He had dismissed the multitude and was alone with 
 His Apostles in the house to which He used to retire 
 for the night after His teaching. Or He may have given 
 an answer to the first question at the time it was first 
 put, that is, while He was yet teaching, though He 
 repeated it at the later time, when He was alone with 
 the disciples. If this be supposed, it will be seen that 
 there are several minor differences in the language of 
 the various Evangelists, St. Matthew on the one hand, 
 and St. Mark and St. Luke on the other, which are most 
 readily explained by this difi'erence of the two occasions 
 to which their narratives relate, and for this reason it 
 seems better to follow this explanation of the apparent 
 difficulty. * And His disciples came to Him, and said 
 to Him, Why speakest Thou to them in parables ? Who 
 answered and said to them. Because to you it is given to 
 know the Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to 
 them it is not given. For he that hath, to him shall be given 
 and he shall abound, but he that hath not, from him 
 shall be taken away that also which he hath. Therefore 
 do I speak to them in parables, because seeing they 
 see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they 
 understand. And the prophecy of Isaias is fulfilled in 
 them, who saith, By hearing you shall hear and shall 
 not understand, and seeing you shall see, and shall not 
 perceive. For the heart of this people is grown gross, 
 and with their ears they have been dull of hearing, and 
 their eyes they have shut, lest at any time they should 
 see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and under- 
 stand with their heart, and be converted, and I should 
 heal them. But blessed are your eyes, because they see, 
 
ii8 The Teaching by Parables. 
 
 and your ears, because they hear. For, Amen, I say to 
 you, many prophets and just men have desired to see 
 the things that you see, and have not seen them, and to 
 hear the things that you hear, and have not heard them.'^^ 
 
 This is our Lord's account of the reason why He 
 spoke in Parables. It is clear from the whole form of 
 the passage, in which He is evidently giving a reason 
 which is founded upon His past experience of the people 
 of whom He speaks, that it is something in their past 
 conduct and manner of dealing with Divine truths which 
 has brought upon them, as a kind of judgment or chas- 
 tisement, this new method of His in the imparting the 
 Gospel mysteries. It follows from the form of our 
 Lord's words that, if they had treated Him differently in 
 the past, He would not now be teaching them in this 
 comparatively obscure and difficult way. In the same 
 way, the words which are quoted from Isaias speak of 
 the conduct of the people as the reason for our Lord's 
 way of dealing with them. They have gone on hearing 
 without hearing, or understanding, their heart has grown 
 gross, their ears have become dull, they have shut their 
 eyes, as if they had determined on preventing that 
 blessed influence of His addressing Himself to them, 
 which would have ended in their conversion and in their 
 heaUng by our Lord. Thus the parabolic teaching is 
 adopted as a more reserved way of communicating 
 Divine knowledge to those who have not availed them- 
 selves of the more open and easy way in which they 
 were first addressed. There is no difficulty in under- 
 standing this in the obvious meaning of our Lord's 
 words. 
 
 On the other and later occasion on which language so 
 very similar to this is used by our Lord, the interpre- 
 tation is not so easy. This occasion was immediately 
 12 Isaias vi. 9, 10. 
 
The Teaching by Parables, 119 
 
 after the termination of the first series of the parables, 
 at least of those which were certainly delivered in 
 public. Then again our Lord gave His reason, and 
 again He quoted the words of Isaias, though without, 
 this time, mentioning the name of the Prophet. It is 
 more accurate, perhaps, to say that He adopted the 
 words of the prophecy for the purpose of emphasizing 
 His own language. ' They came to Him,' the Evange- 
 list tells us, ' to ask Him the parable ' — meaning the 
 Parable of the Sower. Pie gives them the fullest and 
 most detailed explanation, but He prefaces this explana- 
 tion by words which, as has been said, are almost a 
 repetition of those of which we have been speaking. 
 * And He said to them, to you it is given to know the 
 mystery of the Kingdom of God, but to them that are 
 without, all things are done in parables, that seeing they 
 may see and may not perceive, and hearing they may 
 not understand, lest at any time they should be con- 
 verted, and their sins should be forgiven them.' Here 
 then the teaching by parables is said to have been 
 adopted for the sake of hiding from the hearers outside 
 the Mystery of the Kingdom, that they might not under- 
 stand what they heard. Before He had said, that because 
 they did not understand, the new kind of teaching had 
 been used, and now He says that it is used in order that 
 they may not understand. The cause in the one 
 sentence becomes in the other the end aimed at. He 
 teaches in parables because men do not understand Him, 
 and He teaches in parables in order that men may not 
 understand Him. 
 
 Moreover, it is to be remarked that our Lord, in the 
 first of these passages, gives a twofold reason for the 
 adoption of this form of teaching, while in the second 
 passage He only gives, as such, a single reason. In the 
 first passage He begins His account of the motives on 
 
I20 The Teaching by Parables. 
 
 which He is acting by a reference, not to the multitude, 
 but to the disciples. ' Because to you it is given to know 
 the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it 
 is not given.' And He ends the passage, in the first 
 instance, with words which are not repeated in the 
 second instance. ' But blessed are your eyes because 
 they see, and your ears because they hear.' And He 
 goes on to speak of the many prophets and just men 
 who have desired to see the things that they see, and 
 have not seen them, and the rest. It is plain that 
 language of this kind was very natural, when our Lord 
 had been speaking of the dulness of the multitudes as 
 the cause of His adopting the more reserved way of 
 teaching, but that it is less in place when He has been 
 speaking of the reserve which He has adopted as a 
 judicial measure on the people wlio would not attend to 
 Him. It is as if He had said, I act as I am acting 
 because they are not able to understand the mysteries 
 which you can understand, and very blessed indeed you 
 are because you can understand them. The time is come 
 for Me to speak of these wonderful features in the 
 government of My Father, and you can understand 
 them, and so lose nothing by having them in parables, 
 and the others cannot grasp them, and could not do so 
 even if they were put before them more plainly. At that 
 time the disciples did not, as St. Matthew implies, ask 
 our Lord the meaning of the parable itself. But on the 
 second occasion they did ask the meaning of what they 
 had heard, and He explained it to them, but only in a 
 manner which seemed to signify that they might have 
 been able to understand Him, even without explanation. 
 For ' He saith to them. Are you ignorant of this 
 parable ? and how shall you know all parables ? ' And 
 again, at the close of the explanation which He gave 
 them, He added some words about a candle being 
 
The Teaching by Parables, 121 
 
 meant to be put on a candlestick, and not under a bushel 
 or a bed, about the manifestation of everything which is 
 hidden, and the like, and subjoined His teaching on the 
 necessity of carefulness in hearing. ' In what measure 
 you mete, it shall be measured to you again, and more 
 shall be given to you ... for whosoever hath, to him 
 shall be given, and whosoever hath not, that also which 
 he thinketh he hath shall be taken away from him.' It 
 is, therefore, quite certain that there is a decided varia- 
 tion, on the part of the Evangelists, in these two reports 
 of words which seem to be similar, if not identical — a 
 variation which cannot be simply explained by supposing 
 that they are only giving different versions of the same 
 words uttered by our Lord at the same time. 
 
 It would not be difficult to show that this is no true 
 ground for questioning the perfect accuracy of the 
 accounts of the several Evangelists. On the contrary, it 
 may be truly said, that any complete account of the action 
 of God in cases such as that of the people of whom 
 our Lord is speaking, requires the double statement 
 which is conveyed by the two accounts of our Lord's 
 words put together. Our Lord is speaking of the reve- 
 lation of God's truths, and of the imparting of His 
 grace in harmony with that revelation. This is a great 
 gift of God, and one for which a great account has to be 
 given here and hereafter. As is shown by the parable 
 itself which elicited these questions of the Apostles, the 
 knowledge of the truth is like seed scattered broadcast 
 on the ground of various kinds, and the failure or 
 success of which depends upon the ground. But the 
 ground on which ordinary seed is cast cannot make 
 itself good, or free itself from stones or thorns, or secure 
 for itself moisture, or drive away the birds of heaven. 
 It is helpless and blameless, if failure follows on the 
 sowing. It is without a claim for moral praise if fruitful- 
 
122 The Teaching by Parables. 
 
 ness follows. It is not so with the human soil on which 
 the Word of God falls. If the ear is dull, or the eye 
 dimmed, or the heart gross, it is because of moral 
 defects in the persons to whom these remarks apply. 
 They might be punished by a direct withdrawal of the 
 Word. It might pass on to others, who might receive 
 it better. This was the way adopted by the Apostles 
 afterwards, when the Jews rejected their witness con- 
 cerning our Lord. They turned to the Gentiles, telling 
 the Jews that their blood was on their own head. But 
 our Lord did not at once adopt this extreme measure of 
 shutting Himself off altogether from the sheep of the 
 House of Israel, to whom He was especially sent. He 
 adopted the method of teaching them in a less open 
 way. The punishment, in so far as it was a punishment, 
 was exactly proportioned to the fault which called it 
 down. They took no heed to the light, and the light 
 was at least partially withdrawn. Blindness was the 
 punishment of negligence, and of the hardness of heart 
 which made them so inattentive to the word which 
 might have saved them. And then in turn, the punish- 
 ment became the cause, or the occasion, of further blind- 
 ness. They chose to be blind, and they were treated in 
 a way to make them still blinder. Their opportunities 
 were curtailed, the light that was vouchsafed them was 
 made dim. They had chosen not to see, and they 
 became unable to see. When the time came for the 
 deeper mysteries of the kingdom to be imparted, they 
 were set forth in a way the Jews could not understand. 
 
 It is very remarkable how this doctrine of the blinding 
 of the Jews meets us again and again in the New Testa- 
 ment. We have seen how it is put in its mildest form in the 
 first Gospel, that of St. Matthew, in which the simple fact 
 is stated that the people would not see. In the Gospels 
 of St. Mark and St. Luke the other words of our Lord 
 
The Teaching by Parables. 
 
 are chosen which speak of their bUndness as brought on 
 them as a judgment. In the Gospel of St. John the 
 same passage of the Prophet is quoted, not indeed with 
 reference to the teaching by parables, but at the end of 
 the history of our Lord's preaching in Judaea, where 
 St. John gives a sort of summarv^ account of their 
 unbehef 'Whereas He had done so many miracles 
 before them, they believed not in Him, that the saying 
 of Isaias might be fulfilled which he said, Lord, who 
 hath beheved our hearing? and to whom hath the arm of 
 the Lord been revealed ? Therefore,' this Evangelist 
 goes on, 'they could not believe, because Isaias saith 
 again. He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their 
 hearts, that they should not see with their eyes, not 
 understand with their heart, and should be converted, 
 and I should heal them. '^^ The same mournful strain 
 strikes our ear as we close the volume of the history of 
 the Acts of the Apostles. There it is the great Apostle 
 St. Paul, so burning with love for his people, for whose 
 sake he was ready to make himself 'anathema' from 
 Jesus Christ. ' Well did the Holy Ghost speak to our 
 fathers by Isaias the Prophet, saying. Go to this people 
 and say to them, with the ear you shall hear and shall 
 not understand, and seeing you shall see and shall not 
 perceive. For the heart of this people is grown gross, 
 and with their ears they have heard heavily, and their 
 eyes they have shut ; lest perhaps they should see with 
 their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with 
 their heart, and should be converted and I should heal 
 them." ' 1* These were the words of St. Paul at the close 
 of that memorable interview which St. Luke relates as 
 having taken place immediately on the arrival of the 
 Apostle at Rome, with some of the chiefs of the Jewish 
 colony there. But in these words the great Apostle was 
 
 13 St. John xii. 37—41. ^^ Acts xxviii. 25—27. 
 
124 The Teaching by Parables. 
 
 repeating what he had already written in his Epistle to 
 the Roman Church, in which he goes at length into the 
 great question of the reprobation of the Jews and the 
 vocation of the Gentiles to the faith in their place. The 
 doctrine of St. Paul in that Epistle is necessary for the 
 completion of our view of this passage in the Gospels. 
 The great counsel of God in the rejection of what had 
 hitherto been his own peculiar people was, as it were, 
 begun in its execution at so early a date in the very life 
 of our Lord, as this occasion of the opening of the 
 teaching by parables. In the eleventh chapter to the 
 Romans St. Paul had already quoted this same passage 
 of Isaias which is, as it were, the classical text in the 
 Old Testament with reference to this counsel of Divine 
 Providence. 'As it is written, God hath given them 
 the spirit of insensibility, eyes that they should not see 
 and ears that they should not hear unto this present 
 day, and David saith. Let their table be made a snare, 
 and a trap, and a stumbling-block, and a recompense 
 unto them. Let their eyes be darkened, that they may 
 not see, and bow down their back always.' ^^ 
 
 The whole explanation of the action of God in this 
 withdrawal of the opportunities of full light from the 
 Jews, who had so badly availed themselves of those 
 opportunities as far as they had been already offered to 
 them, is thus seen to be conveyed by the two passages 
 which convey the two versions of the words of our Lord 
 presented to us by the several Evangelists. The two 
 versions do not seem to relate to the same actual conver- 
 sation, and they certainly explain, and confirm, and 
 supply one the other, instead of showing any contradic- 
 tion. 
 
 If we are to suppose that these words were severally 
 spoken on two different occasions, we are able to set 
 
 15 Rom. xi. 8 ; Psalm lxviii.23. 
 
The Teachutg by Parables. 125 
 
 before ourselves a more distinct picture of the whole 
 time occupied in this first series of the parables of our 
 Lord. The whole time was not long — perhaps two or 
 three days at the most, and there are evident signs in 
 the narrative of the reserve in which our Lord now 
 enfolded Himself, such as seem to explain and comment 
 upon the alarm which was manifested by our Blessed 
 Lady and His nearest relatives at this time. He had 
 lately arrived in the neighbourhood, and the multitudes 
 at once collected, as of old, to welcome Him, and to 
 profit by the mercifulness which He was always ready to 
 show in the case of those diseased or possessed by the 
 devils. But we hear of no cures as connected with the 
 parabolic teaching at this time. The first two Evangelists 
 tell us that on this occasion again our Lord went up into 
 a boat, and taught the multitudes therefrom, while they 
 stood round the little bay on the shore. This was not 
 now done for the first time, but there may still have 
 been some idea of greater precaution on this occasion. 
 
 Our Lord began to teach them as usual, but with the 
 great difference that He used only the parabolic form of 
 instruction. He taught them ' many things in parables,' 
 but, as has been said, we have only preserved to us by 
 the Evangelists some few of these instructions, for the 
 parables which we have in the Gospels could not have 
 taken very long to deliver, unless some comments and 
 explanations were added, and this supposition seems to 
 be precluded by the circumstances of the case. Soon 
 after the beginning of the instruction, at all events 
 before the close, when He retired to the house with His 
 disciples, they asked Him their first question concerning 
 the method which He was now adopting for the first 
 time exclusively, and then He answered them in the 
 words recorded by St. Matthew, saying that to them it 
 was given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of 
 
126 The Teaching by Parables. 
 
 God, but not to others. It was the rule of the Kingdom 
 that it should be given to him that had, and he should 
 abound, and that from him that had not should be taken 
 away even that which he had. He spoke to the people 
 in parables, because seeing they saw not, and the rest. 
 The prophecy of Isaias was fulfilled in them, which He 
 went on to quote. But blessed were the eyes and ears 
 of the disciples, for they saw and heard. Many prophets 
 and kings had longed for the things of which they had 
 the privilege to be partakers. Then, as it appears, He 
 went on to add the Parable of the Cockle among the 
 Wheat to that of the Sower, and this was followed by 
 that of the Seed which grows of itself, and by two 
 others, that of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven. This 
 seems to be all of the teaching delivered to the people 
 of which we have any record, and it is clearly not 
 enough to have filled up the time of a single day, even if 
 we were to add to it the other three parables of which 
 the Evangelists make mention, those of the Pearl and 
 the Treasure and the Draw-net. 
 
 In the evening, when our Lord was alone with His 
 disciples, they asked Him to explain the Parable of the 
 Sower first of all, and then, as St. Mark and St. Luke 
 tell us. He repeated to some extent what He had already 
 said about the reason on account of which He spoke in 
 parables. This time He put it in a different way, telling 
 them that it was given to them, and not to those without, 
 to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God, but to 
 others these things were done in parables, that seeing 
 they might not see, and the rest. This method of 
 putting the truth, of which He had before spoken, 
 contains the tacit suggestion that they might have under- 
 stood the parable without requiring the explanation from 
 Him. He added, ' Are you ignorant of this parable ? 
 And how shall you know all parables ? ' As if He had 
 
The Teaching by Parables. 127 
 
 many more in store, and as if they ought to be by this 
 time sufficiently trained to discernment not to require 
 His commentary on these parables. Then He added 
 the explanation of the Parable of the Sower and the 
 Seed. It was then also that He spoke the works already 
 referred to, that a candle was not to be put under a 
 bushel, or under a bed, implying that His doctrine was 
 not to be kept secret. There was nothing hid that was 
 not to be made manifest, neither was it made secret but 
 that it might come abroad. ' He that hath ears to hear 
 let him hear.' He bade them take heed how they heard, 
 they would be dealt with according to the same measure 
 with which they would mete in their deaUngs with God, 
 and He repeated the words about him that hath being 
 further enriched, and about the taking away from him 
 that hath not, even that which he thinketh he hath. 
 
 After this, as it appears, our Lord explained to the 
 disciples the Parable of the Cockle, and added the three 
 last of the series, as already named, the Parables of the 
 Treasure, of the Pearl, and of the Net Lastly, He 
 asked them whether they now understood these parables, 
 and on their answering that they did understand them, 
 He said, as St. Matthew tells us, ' Therefore every Scribe 
 instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven is like to a man 
 that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his 
 treasure new things and old.' The same Evangelist tells 
 us that after finishing these parables our Lord ' passed 
 from thence.' But St. Matthew, for purpose connected 
 with the wonderful order in which his Gospel has been 
 arranged, has inserted in a much earlier part of his work 
 the incidents which followed on the conclusion of the 
 parabolic teaching, while the other two historical Evan- 
 gelists tell us how closely these incidents were connected 
 with that conclusion. 
 
 It may also be here observed in general, before we 
 
128 The Teaching by Paj^ables. 
 
 proceed to the explanation of the parables in detail, that 
 there is something in the subject-matter of the teaching 
 which seems to be especially referred to in the words of 
 our Lord, when He speaks of the mysteries or mystery 
 of the Kingdom of God as being hidden from the Jews 
 in general by the parabolic form of teaching now 
 adopted, while at the same time they are not hidden 
 from the disciples. It is as if a great step had been 
 gained in the fact that there was now a body of men 
 capable of understanding how the Word of God was to 
 be received, and what was to be expected by those 
 whose business it would be to disseminate it. For 
 the direct teaching which we gather from the series 
 of parables taken together, is certainly connected with 
 the reception which the Divine seed of the Word 
 is to meet with at the hands of men in general. 
 It is therefore directly practical in the sense that it 
 contains a warning to us, in the case at least of the first 
 parable, to be very careful, as our Lord said in the 
 course of this teaching, how we hear. The moral 
 teaching of the Parable of the Wheat and Cockle is 
 something different, but it refers also directly to the 
 issue of the great work of God's mercy which consists in 
 the sowing of the good seed in the field of the Church. 
 Now these two items of teaching have a particular 
 importance, as is evident, for those who are to be 
 employed, as the Apostles, in the sowing of the good 
 seed. Such persons are warned in the first parable to 
 expect the very partial growth of the seed which they 
 sow, and in the second parable they are warned not to 
 be too hasty in anything that may correspond practically 
 to the rooting up of the cockle before the time. These 
 are instructions most important to Apostolic men, and as 
 such they are quite in their place in this period of our 
 Lord's Ministry, when, as has so often been said. He 
 
The Teaching by Pa^^ables, 129 
 
 was especially occupied in the formation of the Apostles 
 for their great work in His Church. It is not difficult to 
 see that the other parables of this series, that of the 
 seed which grows night and day of itself, that of the 
 Grain of Mustard Seed, and that of the Leaven, are, like 
 the tu'o others, direct prophecies and descriptions of 
 what was to be in the Kingdom of the Gospel. These 
 truths are important to all, but they are more important 
 to Apostolic men than to others. In this sense they are 
 specially mysteries of the Kingdom, they relate to the 
 conditions under which God is content to work on the 
 hearts and souls of men, the lavishness of His offers of 
 grace in comparison to their success, the principle in 
 accordance with which He values the thirty fold, or the 
 sixty fold, or the hundred fold of some, as a compensa- 
 tion for the loss of so many more, the principle on which 
 He allows of scandals and failures without immediate 
 vengeance on the guilty, the principle of the silent work- 
 ings of grace, of the magnificent external expansion of 
 the Church, and also that of her leavening influence 
 on the society which her presence, as it were, assimilates. 
 These heads of teaching are very different indeed in their 
 practical import from the precepts and counsels of the 
 Sermon on the Mount or the Sermon on the Plain. 
 
 J 7 
 
\ 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Parable of the Sower. 
 
 St. Matt. xiii. 18—23 I St. Mark iv. 10—25 ; St. Luke viii. 9—18 ; 
 Vita Vitce Nostrce, § 61. 
 
 Enough has already been said to explain the general 
 purpose of our Lord in the parabolic teaching, the first 
 instances of which must now be made the subject of 
 more particular study by us. We shall see how very 
 wide is the range of this teaching, and how it can easily 
 be understood that not all that the Apostles and disciples 
 might learn from it was naturally to be proposed, without 
 some reserve, to the people at large. Our Lord has 
 been at the pains, not only to explain the first parable 
 at considerable length Himself, but to leave behind Him 
 in the Gospels this explanation, as if to furnish us with 
 certain principles of interpretation for other similar cases, 
 in which we are more or less left to ourselves in the study 
 of His Divine words. It will be seen that the subject 
 matter of the whole of this series of parables is more or 
 less the same, and, when we come to try to unfold the 
 great treasures of doctrine which it contains, we shall 
 perhaps be no less astonished at the amount of truth 
 which is here condensed and compressed in so small a 
 space, than at the details of the parabolic teaching in 
 themselves. In fact, it would require many volumes to 
 . set forth the whole of the riches of Christian truth that 
 suwere here handed over to the devout consideration of 
 \Lohe Christian student in words so few and so simple. 
 
The Parable of the Sower. 131 
 
 It -will be easily remembered that the first parable 
 describes the fate, so to say, of the Divine seed of the 
 AVord of God, under the image of the issue of an actual 
 sowing, in the case of which there were four several 
 kinds of seed, or rather, four several results of the com- 
 mittal of the seed to the ground. In the first case, the 
 seed had not been allowed to remain in the ground at 
 all. In the second case, it had sprung up for a short 
 while, and then had withered away. In the third case, 
 it had sprung up and been choked. In the fourth case 
 alone had it come to maturity and produced its expected 
 fruit, thirty fold, sixty fold, a hundred fold. The causes 
 of failure in the first three cases had been various. In 
 the one it had been that the seed had fallen by the 
 wayside or on the footpath, where it had been trodden 
 under foot or snatched away by the birds of the air. In 
 the second case it had fallen on stony ground without 
 depth or moisture, and had not been able to withstand 
 the scorching rays of the sun in consequence. In the 
 third case it had grown up in the midst of thorns, which 
 had sprung up and choked it, depriving it of the moisture 
 and support from the soil which it required. Here, then_, 
 is a sufficient variety of causes of failure, and on the 
 other hand there is the counterbalancing description of 
 the good soil, the fruitfulness of which is enough to 
 compensate for more failures than those which have been 
 spoken of. At the same time it is obvious that a hearer 
 who had only very imperfectly perceived the drift of the 
 parable in our Lord's mouth must have been stimulated 
 to much anxious questioning as to the several causes of 
 unfruitfulness of which he had heard, and have been 
 eager to know what was represented by the wayside, what 
 by the fowls of the air, what by the stony ground, what by 
 the thorns, and how he could secure for the Divine Word, 
 which was represented by the seed, that happy reception 
 
132 The Parable of the Sower. 
 
 in his own heart which was figured in the prolific return 
 of the good soil. And, as it must be remembered that 
 the Apostles were now in the course of formation by 
 our Lord, for that holy Ministry among the souls of men 
 for which they were destined, it is easy to imagine that 
 they also must have been full of speculation and surmise 
 as -to the precise meaning of the short but most pregnant 
 parable which they had just heard. There need be no 
 doubt that the parable was but a simple adaptation to 
 Divine purposes of what was passing before their eyes, 
 perhaps at the very time when the words of our Lord 
 were spoken. The seed time was now come, in what we 
 should call the early winter season, the work of husbandry 
 was in full course, and many of those who listened to 
 the discourse must have had practical acquaintance with 
 the details of which our Lord spoke. There was no 
 difficulty about understanding so simple a figure, as far 
 as the figure itself went — but what were the verities 
 concealed behind these commonplace details? 
 
 There are points, as we shall see, in the Divine 
 economy or way of action, to parts of which the present 
 parable refers, which our Lord did not draw out even 
 for the instruction of the disciples. He did not tell 
 them, for instance, how it is that God has chosen, in 
 imparting His truths to men, to act as a sower of seed, 
 rather than in any other manner. He might, for instance, 
 have acted as the planter of trees. He might have planted 
 just as many as he wished to grow. Or He might have 
 acted as a builder, according to an image which we 
 find used of Him elsewhere in Scripture, Who provides 
 all the material of His edifice, and wastes none of it. 
 Again, our Lord spoke here of the ground as having this 
 or that quality, on which He makes the success of the 
 process depend, and He says nothing of the good quali- 
 ties of the seed itself, or of the sunshine and rain and 
 
The Parable of the Sozuer 
 
 air which, as a matter of fact, have so large a part in 
 the production of the fertile harvest. He is describing 
 the various causes of failure, and He does not describe 
 the causes of success except so far as they are left to be 
 inferred from the effects of their opposites. Still less 
 does our Lord here draw out the very important truths 
 connected with the possible improvement or deterioration 
 of the particular kinds of soil of which He speaks, as 
 how the stony ground may become moist and deep soil, 
 or how the thorns may be weeded out, or how. the good 
 soil, in its turn, may be turned into the barren. That 
 there may be changes thus wrought in the conditions 
 under which the seed is received, is implied both in the 
 giving of the parable itself and in the words which our 
 Lord subjoins, * Take heed how you hear,' and the rest. 
 But it is the principle of the parabolic teaching, that 
 various truths belonging to the same great subject are 
 kept for treatment in several and successive parables, 
 and not often combined in one. The truth on which 
 our Lord insists, in particular, relates to the various 
 dangers which beset the good seed when it is sown, as 
 it is sown ordinarily, by being scattered broadcast over 
 the world. 
 
 It may also be remarked in the outset, that the con- 
 ditions of which the parable speaks increase in badness 
 and goodness in an inverse measure — that is, that the 
 first condition of the seed which is unfruitful is the worst 
 of all, that in which the prospects of a favourable issue 
 is altogether taken away, for the seed by the wayside is 
 caught away from the heart by the evil spirit. The 
 condition which comes next in order is that of the seed 
 which grows up and is then withered by the burning heat 
 of the sun, and in that case also, though there has been 
 some progress towards fruitfulness, the further hope is 
 altogether defeated. The seed thrown among the thorns 
 
134 The Palpable of the Sowe7\ 
 
 is in a less unfavourable condition, because there might 
 be a hope of its fruitfulness if the thorns are removed 
 In the case of the seed sown on the good soil, the first 
 increase is of thirty fold, the second of sixty fold, and 
 the last of a hundred fold. Thus, our Lord seems to 
 imply that all the dangers must be avoided successively, 
 and not one alone — the pathside, the fowls of the air, 
 the unprepared soil, the choking thorns, and that even 
 when the seed is fruitful it may become more fruitful, 
 the thirty-fold become sixty, the sixty a hundred-fold. 
 Again, it may be remarked that it is not fairly to be 
 gathered from this parable that the greater part of 
 the seed is wasted. Although there are three out of 
 the four conditions in which this waste takes place, 
 yet they are not conditions which could not naturally 
 be expected to be verified in the case of the greater 
 part of the seed sown by the sower. In all ordinary 
 circumstances, the great majority of the seed would 
 be thrown on the good and fertile ground, and not on 
 the stony soil or among the thorns, or by the wayside. 
 And the return of the good seed as stated by our Lord 
 is never less than thirty fold, while in other cases it 
 reaches as much as a hundred fold — far more than 
 enough to reward the labour and expenditure of the 
 husbandman, even if he loses some of his grain among 
 the thorns and in the other ways mentioned in the 
 parable. So far, then, the effect of this parable is not 
 such as generally to discourage the Apostolic labour- 
 ers for God, though it is certainly such as to cause 
 great carefulness and fear among those who have the 
 opportunity of listening to the Word of God. For 
 even though the number is not to be so very great 
 of those who hear- the Word of God altogether in vain, 
 still there are all the dangers to be escaped of which 
 our Lord speaks under the various images of the 
 
The Parable of the Sower. 135 
 
 wayside, the shallow soil, and the ground occupied by 
 the thorns. 
 
 With this preface, we may now proceed to the expla- 
 nation of the Parable of the Sower, as it is given to us 
 in the three Evangelists. ' The parable is this ; He that 
 soweth, soweth the Word. The Seed is the Word of 
 God. When any one heareth the Word of God and 
 understandeth it not, there cometh the wicked one, 
 and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. 
 As soon as they have heard, immediately Satan cometh 
 and taketh away the Word that was sown in their heart, 
 lest believing they should be saved. This is he that 
 received the Word by the wayside.' This is the first 
 part of the parable, and it corresponds to the few words 
 with which it had begun — ' The sower went out to sow 
 his seed, and some fell by the wayside and the birds of 
 the air came and ate it up.' St. Luke adds one detail 
 more, namely, that the seed was trodden down before it 
 was eaten up. The Sower, then, is our Lord Himself, 
 and the Seed that He sows is His own, not the word 
 of another, and whether it be this or that person who, 
 having his commission from our Lord, sows the seed, 
 it is our Lord's Word and He is the principal Sower 
 of it. 
 
 The whole language of the parable seems to suggest 
 that our Lord is mainly speaking of the sowing of the seed 
 by means of the ordinance of preaching, for in this case 
 it is that it is most common for seed to fall by the way- 
 side, and to be scattered broadcast over the audience, 
 as it were. But still it must be remembered that the 
 Divine Word and the grace of God may be offered to 
 men in many different ways and by many different 
 means, such as example, or conversation, or reading, or 
 that kind of contact with the truth in the persons and 
 characters of those with whom we live, which but i^^N 
 
136 The Palpable of the Sower. 
 
 people can be altogether without experiencing. If all 
 these kinds of the sowing of the seed are not directly in- 
 cluded in the scope of the parable, it is certainly true 
 that the words of the parable may be easily accommo- 
 dated to them. The explanation given by our Lord of 
 that which He says takes place when the seed is cast by 
 the wayside or trampled under foot, is that men hear the 
 Word of God and do not understand it. There are 
 many causes of want of understanding in men, some of 
 them intellectual and some of them moral, and we must 
 suppose our Lord to be chiefly speaking of the latter. 
 It is a part of the faithfulness of God, as our Creator 
 and Lord and Provider, not to make the Word 
 or the doctrine of salvation too difficult for men to 
 understand if they choose. But it is also a part of His 
 wisdom and justice to require attention, on their part, 
 to the message which is delivered to them in His Name. 
 The sensual man, St. Paul tells us, perceiveth not those 
 things which are of the Spirit of God, for it is fooHshness 
 to him, and he cannot understand.^ And it is in this 
 part of this great parable that we must look for the case 
 of those who do not understand because they do not 
 attend, and who do not attend because their hearts and 
 minds are full of other things, other interests, other 
 desires, which bind them down to things of earth and 
 of sense. The pure holy Word of God, speaking to the 
 heart about the value of the soul and of the law of 
 conscience, and of eternity, and of judgment, can be, in 
 a thoroughly sensual worldly heart, only like a grain of 
 delicate seed which has fallen out of the hand of the 
 sower on to the common pathway, where many a foot 
 is sure to pass in the course of a short space of time, 
 which will infallibly crush it and destroy its life and 
 power of fructification. The images of sin and self- 
 1 I Cor. ii. 14. 
 
The Pa7'able of the Sower. i;^j 
 
 indulgence on which such hearts delight to dwell, and 
 the blasts of passion, of lust, of anger, of pride, of envy, 
 and the like, which sweep over them from moment to 
 moment, are like so many ironclad heels to trample 
 down the tiny seed which has fallen there as if by 
 chance. This is a different case from that to be men- 
 tioned presently, of the cares of the world and the like 
 which choke the seed. The heart entirely engrossed 
 with passion, pleasure, vanity, and frivolity does not take 
 in the Word at all, any more than the trodden pathway 
 receives the seed into its soil. 
 
 But our Blessed Tord dwells chiefly upon another 
 feature, in the case of such hearts as these, which it is 
 even still more important to have continually before our 
 minds. He tells us of the activity of Satan in snatching 
 the seed as it is sown. It is not enough for him that 
 the heart is hard, it is not enough for him that men are 
 their own tempters, their own enemies. He must exercise 
 his hellish vigilance and malice, in taking care that there 
 shall be no chance left of the germination which is still 
 possible as long as the seed remains in the heart. He 
 must catch it away, as the birds of the air pick up the 
 stray seeds which they find on the highway. Here is a 
 point in the parable which we should not, perhaps, have 
 suspected, if our Lord had not Himself drawn our atten- 
 tion to it — that what seems simple forgetfulness or in- 
 difference or dulness is often the direct result of the 
 action of Satan on the soul. It is the experience of all 
 who try to pray or to meditate, that they are visited 
 with a swarm of distractions and interior troubles at such 
 times, of which they do not find themselves the victims 
 at other times. And so it is certainly, in the case of 
 those who hear the Word of God in the administration 
 of the ordinance of preaching. 'Wonderful,' says an 
 old writer on the parables, 'is the envy of the demon 
 
138 The Parable of the Sower. 
 
 and the hatred of Satan against those who hear the Word 
 of God. It is then that he brings on sleep, it is then 
 that he introduces the twittering of swallows, that is the 
 inopportune words of those who neither listen themselves 
 nor will let others listen, the cries of infants, the barking 
 of dogs. It is his wont then to bring up the thought 
 of our domestic cares, of law suits, and the like, which 
 may hinder the attention, or he sets people to judge of 
 the preachers, so as to complain of the length of their 
 sermons, or of their too great subtlety, or their dryness, 
 or their obscurity. He makes them pass sinister inter- 
 pretations on their language, or the loudness of their voice, 
 or on their reproofs of those whom they address. In 
 short, in every way possible he makes it his aim, either 
 that what is said may not be heard, or that if it is heard, it 
 may not be understood, or that if it is understood, it may 
 slip away from the memory, or at all events may not be 
 put into practice. '2 
 
 And it would certainly be a great gain to many souls, 
 if they would more carefully realize the doctrine which 
 is contained in this passage from our Lord's own lips, 
 namely that the Word of God preached from the Chris- 
 tian pulpit is, indeed, our Lord's own word and not the 
 word of man, and that, on the other hand, the common 
 temptations which ordinarily hinder the great mass of 
 men either from frequenting sermons or from profiting 
 by them, are nothing more or less than the work of the 
 devil. He knows what we do not realize, that the Word 
 of God, when preached by His appointed ministers, has 
 the promise of the assistance of Divine grace in the 
 hearts of those who listen to it as the Word of God, 
 and therefore it matters comparatively little, whether the 
 preacher be eloquent, or learned, or adorned by the gifts 
 which make up the great orator. For what is required for 
 
 ' Salmeron, in loc. 
 
The Parable of the Sower. 
 
 the cooperation of grace, is the right intention on the 
 part of the preacher, and the right and docile disposition 
 on the part of the hearer. And as we constantly hear 
 of some of his emissaries, in comitries where the sect 
 is established which makes it a rule not to call in the 
 assistance of the Church, whether in life or in death, 
 straining every nerve to prevent the sinner who is on 
 his death-bed from having the opportunity of making 
 his peace with God by means of the Catholic sacraments, 
 and for this diabolical end watching day and night by 
 the side of the poor dying man lest he should repent, 
 so do these words of our Lord describe the malignant 
 activity of the evil one in shutting out, if he can, every 
 chance or hope of the access of the Divine Word to the 
 soul of the hearer. 
 
 It must not be supposed that in this part of his war- 
 fare against souls Satan acts in any different manner from 
 that in which he ordinarily acts. He prefers to make 
 men their own tempters, and he does not interpose in 
 his own person, with any of his more violent assaults, 
 unless there be need. The evil spirits have no need to 
 show themselves prominently in the case of men who are 
 already to a great extent their slaves, by having given 
 themselves over to the bondage of their passions, and 
 there is even less need for the intervention in any preter- 
 natural way of those enemies of mankind, in the case of 
 persons who are thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of 
 the world, which breathes a heresy more subtle, and more 
 universally destructive and exclusive of the movements 
 of grace, than the mere brutalities of lust or anger. But 
 at the same time that this is true, it is very well to be 
 reminded, .as we are by this point of the teaching of our 
 Lord, that what appear to be little accidents and annoy- 
 ances, trifles in themselves, and of no account at all, 
 except that they are as successful and powerful as the 
 
1 40 The Parable of the Sower. 
 
 most serious impediments that can be imagined in 
 diverting the attention of the mind or the heart from the 
 word of God, are in truth the devices of the evil one, 
 who knows as v/ell as any most skilful general that in war 
 nothing is to be despised. The saints of God think 
 nothing too minute as a precaution for securing the calm 
 and uninterrupted leisure of the mind which has either to 
 pray to God or to listen to God, and it is not wonderful 
 that those who hate the intercourse of the human soul 
 with its Maker and Lord as much as the saints and the 
 angels love it, should avail themselves of every little 
 thing for the sake of hindering the blessed seed, which 
 has in itself a power of fructification so marvellous, from 
 lighting on a soul in which the wonders which it may 
 work are unlimited. It has been said more than once, 
 that it is a feature in the saintly mind to discern the 
 action of the evil spirits in the slightest and commonest 
 incidents of daily life, and certainly this doctrine of our 
 Lord tends to confirm this instinct of His saints. 
 
 In the case of this seed which falls by the wayside, 
 the hope of its success is ended when the birds of the 
 air have done their work and taken the seed away. The 
 second instance of failure in the seed, of which our 
 Lord goes on to speak, is in some respects not quite so 
 fatal, and in other respects it is more lamentable. In 
 the case of which we are now to speak, the good seed of 
 the Word is taken in with a certain amount of readiness 
 and avidity, but the shallowness of the soil prevents its 
 striking its roots deep into the soil. ' And these likewise 
 are they that are sown on the stony ground, who when 
 they hear the Word immediately receive it with joy, and 
 they have no root in themselves, but are only for a time, 
 and when tribulation and persecution ariseth because of 
 the Word, they are presently scandalized, they believe 
 for a while, and in time of temptation they fall away.' 
 
The Parable of the So we 7^. 141 
 
 It must frequently happen in countries like those in 
 which these parables were spoken, that the scorching 
 'sun of the summer soon withers up the shoots, which 
 have sprung up in ground which has" not moisture or 
 depth sufficient for the strong nourishment which is 
 required under such conditions of atmosphere. Our 
 Lord uses this circumstance as an illustration of another 
 form of danger to the good seed of the Word of God. 
 That Word is so congenial to the needs of human souls, 
 it is so full of the sweetness and wisdom of God, and of 
 the beauty which naturally belongs to all His works, it 
 comes to men when they are so exhausted with futile 
 efforts to find out the truth for themselves, and to 
 provide in some sort of way for the craving after what 
 is true and beautiful and holy which belongs to them as 
 His intelligent creatures, it breathes peace and hope and 
 security, and answers so perfectly the questions by which 
 men are ordinarily tormented, that it is not wonderful 
 that it should be welcomed at first by many souls which 
 yet have not the strength to undergo trial for its sake. 
 
 At the time when this parable was spoken, our Lord 
 must have had before His mind many cases to which the 
 description of the seed sown on the stony ground would 
 apply. The Gospel teaching had been presented to the 
 populations of Galilee with a charm and attractiveness 
 quite unexampled. He had been Himself the Preacher, 
 and He had recommended the beautiful doctrines which 
 He delivered by His own ineffable graciousness . of 
 manner, as well as by hundreds of miracles of mercy. 
 He had been received with enthusiasm, and at first there 
 was no opposition to His teaching and no hostility to 
 His Person. It was but natural that men should flock 
 to such a Teacher, and that the Divine doctrine which 
 He scattered around Him, as the sower scatters his 
 seeds, should have been eagerly caught at by thousands. 
 
142 The Parable of the Sower. 
 
 But even as He was speaking, the scorching sun of 
 adversity was in the air above Him, and we have already 
 heard of the plots against His life, and of the extreme 
 malignity of the calumnies against Him. It was not to 
 be a transient storm. Things were to go on as they had 
 begun, and the persecution was soon to pass on from 
 Himself to those who believed in Him, till at last he 
 was to die by the hands of His enemies on the Cross, 
 and the mere fact of being His adherent was to be 
 enough to mark .any one out for the most cruel treat- 
 ment at the hands of His own nation. It was soon to 
 be a matter of experience, that the seed which was to 
 spring up from the sowing of the Gospel teaching would 
 need deep roots and a soil in which it could fasten itself 
 securely, for that it would be tried most severely by 
 adversity and persecution. 
 
 The persecution which awaited the faithful disciples of 
 our Lord in that country and nation was but a type and 
 figure, so to say, of the difficulties which would always 
 beset the following of Jesus Christ. For many centuries 
 the world continued outwardly hostile to the Church, 
 but even after that state of things ceased, and after the 
 foundation of the Christian system of society, it was to 
 be the same. That is, the practice of the precepts of 
 our Lord, and much more of His counsels, could not be 
 carried out without strong and well-grounded virtue, 
 without the gifts of the Holy Ghost in the intelligence 
 and in the heart, without charity and the love of God 
 mastering the soul. The number, so to say, of skin-deep 
 Christians may be greater or less, under particular states 
 of external conditions in the Church, according to the 
 relation in which she finds herself to the powers of the 
 world, as it is easier to be a Catholic in England now 
 than in the reign of James I., or to be a Christian in 
 Japan now than in the reign of Taicosama. But the 
 
The Parable of the Sower, 143 
 
 external conditions of the Christian communities make 
 little difference in the opposition between the spirit and 
 the body, in the battle between sense and conscience, in 
 the attractiveness and seductiveness of the world, in the 
 charms of wealth and of earthly success, and in the 
 poison of the cup of pleasure. The Christian must take 
 up his cross, whether he lives in the days of persecution 
 or in the days of peace, and as long as this remains true 
 so long will it be true that many a seed is cast on stony 
 ground, which will be infallibly withered by the scorching 
 rays of the sun. 
 
 But when the seed has escaped the danger which is 
 signified in the parable by the stony ground on which it 
 has yet fallen, there yet remain other perils before it can 
 be as fruitful as the intention and the care of the sower 
 require. ' Others there are who are sown among thorns ; 
 these are they that hear the word, and the cares of the 
 world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts after 
 other things, entering in, choke the Word, and it 
 becometh fruitless.' They are choked with the cares and 
 riches and pleasures of this life, and yield no fruit. It 
 appears that the thorns which are here spoken of are 
 more probably brambles and briars, such as are used for 
 hedges, as marks for the limits of property, and for the 
 defence of the soil devoted to the good grain, and 
 though perhaps cut down each year, they would spring 
 up again at the ordinary time, and being of strong and 
 rank growth, would soon outstrip the good grain and 
 overtop it. Then such plants have a way of interlacing 
 their shoots, so that at length they would form a sort of 
 cage, under which the good seed would be stifled. This 
 is the image which our Lord here uses for the description 
 of that very large class of Christians who render to the 
 good Sower so little return for the seed He has sown at 
 so much cost, because their hearts are filled with the 
 
144 ^^^^ Parable of the Sower. 
 
 cares and pleasures and ambitions and aims of this 
 world. The description is in itself so graphic and so 
 true as scarcely to require any further commentary, 
 although one of the Fathers has said, that we should 
 never have hit on the interpretation of the thorns which 
 compares them to riches and pleasures, because these 
 things have not in themselves anything that pricks like a 
 thorn. Yet true experience shows how all these things are 
 full of anxiety, when the mind dwells on them as objects 
 of desire, and spends itself in schemes and contrivances 
 for acquiring them. Our minds are too small to be 
 occupied with many things at once, and therefore the 
 mere devotion of our attention to these worldly matters 
 is enough to hinder us from giving ourselves to the 
 things of God, and this is the case even when men of 
 high virtue find themselves in posts of importance, and 
 obliged, by the duties of their state of life, to give the 
 greater part of their time to such duties. And again, 
 there is nothing soothing or satisfying even in the posses- 
 sion of these things, a possession which is always beset 
 by uncertainty, always liable to a thousand dangers, and 
 is a constant fret to the soul which has to attend to it. 
 
 But it is much more commonly the case that the cares 
 of the world lead the soul actually away from God, 
 because they tend to fix the affections and the desires of 
 the heart upon these false goods, they tend to lead to 
 unlawful aims and unlawful means of gaining those 
 aims, to injustice, to fraud, to violence, to falsehood, 
 and when these earthly goods have been acquired, they 
 tend to fill the mind with pride and licentiousness, and 
 so to the blinding and degradation of the soul by lusts 
 of all kinds. Our Lord sketches the evil with a light 
 hand, and spares the full details of the consequences of 
 worldliness on the spiritual character. By doing this 
 He sets before us the great truth, namely, that it is 
 
The Parable of the Sower. 145 
 
 sufficient for the heart and mind to be occupied with 
 worldly things, in order to hinder the growth and fertility 
 of the good seed. Even if these things could be made 
 the chief objects of life without leading to positive 
 violations of the law of God, the simple occupation of 
 the mind with them would act as the network of briars 
 acts on the shoots of wheat that are inclosed and stunted 
 beneath it. Our Lord has before Him the whole fruitful 
 range of the Christian virtues, the manifold fertility of 
 the gifts of grace and of the Holy Ghost in the human 
 soul, that immense richness of yield of which our nature 
 is capable under the influences of grace, and He warns 
 us that this fertility cannot be under the circumstances of 
 which He is speaking. ' The Word becometh fruitless, 
 they yield no fruit ' — terrible words indeed for the Chris- 
 tian to hear concerning himself, when he has the faith 
 which tells him of the endless glories and riches of the 
 eternal kingdom, all of which are to be acquired here 
 and now, and can never be acquired at all unless the 
 precious seed of which our Lord is the Sower takes deep 
 root and fructifies in the heart. 
 
 Finally, our Lord turns to the other side of the 
 picture, the side which was to His Sacred Heart the one 
 sufficient consolation for all the disappointments of 
 which He has before spoken. ' These are they who are 
 sown on the good ground, who hear the Word and 
 receive and understand it and keep it, and bring forth 
 fruit in patience, and yield the one thirty, another sixty, 
 and another a hundred.' The circumstances which are 
 here mentioned with regard to the good soil seem to be 
 selected with reference to the other instances already 
 mentioned in which the seed has not been fruitful. To 
 hear the word, to receive and to understand it, is just 
 what has not been the case with the first class of the 
 careless and inattentive hearers, out of whose hearts it is 
 K 7 
 
146 The Parable of the Sower, 
 
 the office of Satan to snatch the Word before it has a 
 chance of becoming fruitful. Those who receive it and 
 bear fruit, and those who are said to keep it and receive 
 it, as St. Luke puts the words, ' in a good and very good 
 heart,' are those in whom there are not that shallowness 
 and want of solidity which are figured in the stony soil, 
 nor those external hindrances to fruitfulness which are to 
 be found in the ground in which the briars and thorns 
 spring up alongside of the grain. 
 
 And again, beyond this distinction between the good soil 
 and the bad, there is in the language of our Lord a very 
 clear indication of the great variety of degrees in which 
 the fertility of the good soil, as such, shows itself. For 
 He says that one yields thirty, another sixty, and another 
 a hundred-fold, and that all these bear fruit in patience, 
 that is under the discipline and exercise of affliction and 
 of the cross. It is clear that every word of this parable 
 is meant to have its design, meaning, and importance, 
 and that short as it is, it is intended to sketch for us to 
 all time the variety of the results of grace, and especially 
 of the apostolic preaching of the word. In the case of 
 the fertility of the seed to which the Word of God is 
 compared, it may be said that there is difference between 
 seed and seed, not that all is not seed, but that one 
 grain may have a more rich power of fructification than 
 another, and in the same way, there may be differences 
 even between one portion of earth and another, as to 
 richness and fertility, and there may also be differences 
 between the advantages of rain and sun and air, and the 
 like external helps, in one case and in another. In the 
 same way it may be with the souls of which our Lord 
 speaks. The Word of God may fall on one favoured 
 soul with an extraordinary power of light and influence, 
 for God is not bound to give to all equally, but to all 
 sufficiently. On the other hand, there may be differences 
 
The Parable of the Sower. 147 
 
 in the readiness of the will, in the thorough generosity 
 with which the soul surrenders itself to the influences of 
 grace, or the vigour and energy which it applies to the 
 cultivation in itself of what it has received. And again, 
 there may be differences in the external conditions under 
 which various souls correspond to the graces which they 
 have received, conditions which depend on the good 
 providence of God, as when one person has the advant- 
 age of living in the company of a saint, or in a home 
 where every evil influence is carefully shut out, or where 
 there are greater opportunities of profiting by the 
 common means of grace, the sacraments of the Church, 
 the preaching of the Word, and the like. In all these 
 ways one good soul may have greater opportunities or 
 greater faithfulness than another, and thus it is that the 
 Kingdom of God is to be adorned by the fruits and 
 flowers of sanctity not only in various kinds, but also in 
 various degrees within the same kind. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Parable of the Cockle amid the Wheat. 
 
 St. Matt. xiii. 24—28, 36—53 ; Vita VitcB Nostrce, § 59—62. 
 
 Of the series of parables of which we are now speaking, 
 there are two only which have been explained for us 
 at length by our Lord Himself. These are the two 
 first in order, and, as we may fairly conclude, those 
 which He thus explained may have been considered by 
 Him as of the very highest importance. Taken together, 
 and with the rest, they present a very complete view of 
 the conditions under which the Gospel teaching has to 
 be carried on in the world, and they explain the prin- 
 ciples of the Divine government in that teaching in a 
 manner which it would have been difficult to ascertain 
 so clearly, if we had not this distinct interpretation of 
 the figures by our Lord Himself It is well, therefore, 
 to subjoin at once this parable, with its explanation, to 
 the Parable of the Sower, and the interpretation of that 
 parable given by our Lord. ' Another parable He pro- 
 posed to them, saying, The Kingdom of Heaven is 
 likened to a man that sowed good seed in his field. 
 But while men were asleep, his enemy came and over- 
 sowed cockle among the wheat, and went his way. 
 And when the blade was sprung up, and had brought 
 forth fruit, then appeared also the cockle. And the 
 servants of the good man of the house coming said to 
 him, Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? 
 whence then hath it cockle ? And he said to them, 
 
The Parable of the Cockle. 149 
 
 an enemy hath done this. And the servants said to 
 them, Wilt thou that we go and gather it up? And 
 he said, No, lest perhaps gathering up the cockle, you 
 root up the wheat also together with it. Suffer both 
 to grow until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest 
 I will say to the reapers. Gather up first the cockle, 
 and bind it into bundles to burn, but the wheat gather 
 ye into my barn.' 
 
 This parable, then, was delivered to the multitudes, 
 as well as to the disciples, and afterwards explained 
 to the latter alone. ' Then having sent away the multi- 
 tudes, He came to the house, and His disciples came 
 to Him, saying. Expound to us the parable of the cockle 
 of the field. Who made answer, and said to them, 
 He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man. 
 And the field is the world, and the good seed are the 
 children of the Kingdom, and the cockle are the children 
 of the wicked one. And the enemy that soweth them 
 is the devil. But the harvest is the end of the world, 
 and the reapers are the angels. Even as cockle there- 
 fore is gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it 
 be at the end of the world. The Son of Man shall 
 send His angels, and they shall gather out of His 
 Kingdom all scandals and them that work iniquity, and 
 shall cast them into the furnace, there shall be weeping 
 and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the just shine as 
 the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. He that hath 
 ears to hear, let him hear.' 
 
 In the Parable of the Sower, our Lord had described 
 Himself as content with a good deal of failure in the 
 beneficent work which He had undertaken for mankind. 
 He had intimated that He knew that much of the good 
 seed which He came to sow would be wasted, and He 
 had described the various manners in which that waste 
 would be brought about. In some cases the seed was 
 
150 The Parable of the Cockle. 
 
 to be snatched away by the devil, as the seed by the 
 pathside is snatched up by the birds. In other cases, 
 the seed was to fall as it were on stony ground, and 
 wither away, the hearts in which it had been sown 
 being too shallow and weak to give it strength enough 
 to withstand temptation and trial. In other cases the 
 souls in which the seed was sown would be engrossed 
 by worldly cares and ambitions, by the love of riches 
 and other temporal things, unsatisfying in themselves 
 and unable to supply the soul with true happiness, but 
 still attractive and deceitful enough to occupy the mind 
 and heart to the exclusion of the true goods. In these 
 cases the good seed would be stifled and made un- 
 fruitful. On the other hand. He was to find His reward 
 and the recompense of His labours in the good seed 
 which would spring up and return Him thirty for one, 
 or sixty for one, or even a hundred for one. 
 
 Here, then, our Lord had said but litde of the action 
 of the evil one on the world. It is true He had given 
 a most important lesson as to that action, for He had 
 pointed out that the utter forgetfulness and inattention 
 with which so many careless persons come to lose their 
 opportunities, and to be as if they had never heard 
 the good word, were due, not simply to their own 
 recklessness, but to the direct action of the devil, taking 
 the seed out of their hearts, whether by direct action 
 on their memories, or by filling their minds with other 
 thoughts and aff'ections which were sufficient to exclude 
 the thoughts of faith and religion and the work of grace. 
 But for the remainder of the mishaps which were to 
 prevent the fruitfulness of the seed, our Lord said 
 nothing which could hint at the positive activity of the 
 spirit of evil in the field which was sown by the word 
 of God. There remained, therefore, these two great 
 features in the description to be added by a new parable. 
 
The Pm^able of the Cockle. 151 
 
 The first of these was the further action of the evil one 
 which our Lord would permit, according to the general 
 law^s on which the universe is now governed, and the 
 second was the manner in which God acts with regard 
 to this action of His enemy. These two great features, 
 then, form the special subject of this second parable. 
 
 In the Parable of the Sower, it will have been re- 
 marked that there is a transition from one point to 
 another, in the use of the image, from the seed sown, 
 to the persons in whose souls the seed is sown with so 
 many diversities of issue, as to fruitfulness or the reverse. 
 The seed is, the word of God, and yet the seed sown 
 or dropped by the wayside are the heedless hearers, 
 the seed sown among the thorns or on the stony ground 
 are those who fail in this or that way to profit by 
 the grace of God. So in the parable now before us, 
 the seed is said to be the children of the kingdom and 
 the children of the wicked one respectively, while the 
 Son of Man sows the first and the evil one sows the 
 other. This transfer of the image is necessary in this 
 second parable, for in this there is question of the 
 manner in w^hich God will treat those who are occasions 
 of evil and scandal in His Kingdom. The parable deals 
 with persons rather than with things. But for the strict 
 interpretation of the parable according to the lines of 
 theological truth, we must remember the language of 
 the Parable of the Sower, in which the seed is in the 
 first instance the word of God, and in the second 
 instance the persons in whom the word of God is sown. 
 The devil has no power to create evil, and our Lord 
 in His dealings with the world gives or offers graces 
 to all. He does not create good souls, and leave evil-, 
 souls to be created by His enemy. The parable speaks 
 of the result of the action of our Lord on the one hand 
 and of the action of Satan on the other, as being good 
 
152 The Parable of the Cockle, 
 
 and evil men, but in the truth to which the parable 
 corresponds the evil are not purely and originally evil, 
 nor so absolutely corrupted as to be beyond hope of 
 recovery, and the good are not so good as to be pre- 
 served from the possibility of becoming evil, although 
 wheat cannot become cockle nor cockle wheat. What 
 is permitted to the devil is to ape and imitate, as well 
 as to thwart as far as lies in his power, the action of 
 God. 
 
 Our Lord looked for\vard prophetically to the history 
 of the Church — nor had He far to look, when He knew 
 already that among His own chosen disciples there was 
 one who would turn out a true child of the wicked one — 
 and He saw that which would always be the marvel 
 of His saints and the special cross of His dearest friends, 
 that the field in which the Gospel seed was to be sown 
 would, when the time came for the fruits of the sowing 
 to become manifest to the outward eye, be found to be 
 full of a growth which certainly was not of the Gospel. 
 This is a phenomenon for which no account was furnished, 
 as has been said, in the former parable, and our Lord 
 represents it as a matter of surprise and complaint to the 
 servants of the good master of the field. Who these 
 servants are we are not distinctly told by our Lord, but 
 the fact that the angels -are said in the end of the 
 parable to be the reapers is hardly sufficient to make 
 us conclude that the angels are not also these good 
 and zealous friends of their Master, Who would fain 
 purge His field at once of the weeds which had so 
 suddenly appeared. The unfolding of the Divine plan 
 of the government of the world, and especially of the 
 Church, is spoken of in Scripture as the great study 
 of the angels, who have not by nature the knowledge 
 of the future, and to whom the beautiful wisdom of 
 God reveals itself gradually in the course of events. 
 
The Parable of the Cockle. 153 
 
 And besides the angels, God has always among His 
 servants on earth many who spend their days and nights 
 in the prayerful contemplation of the progress of events 
 in the world and in the Church, and to such also, far 
 more even than to the angels, the phenomena of human 
 history, and especially of that part of it which concerns 
 the fortunes of the Catholic Church, are the subject and 
 occasion of continual amazement and wondering surprise. 
 The angels, no doubt, would willingly, if it were the 
 will of God, exert their wonderful power in the des- 
 truction and removal at once of all scandals in the 
 Church. And the chosen saints and servants of God yet 
 upon earth, must burn with zeal at the sight of so much 
 evil and so much mischief, and would gladly call down 
 fire from Heaven, as Elias did, and as the two Apostles, 
 the sons of Zebedee, would have done on an occasion 
 mentioned in the Gospel history itself. For the deso- 
 lation and ruin produced in the fair field of the Church 
 by the evils of which our Lord speaks, are certainly 
 enough to make the hearts of the friends of God boil 
 over with indignation, and with desire for redress. 
 
 It is remarkable that in the parable itself the answ^er 
 which our Lord puts into the mouth of the good house- 
 holder is not simply, as might be supposed from the 
 common version, 'an enemy hath done this,' but *a 
 man who is an enemy hath done this.' And when our 
 Lord comes to explain the figure which He has used. He 
 says simply the enemy is the devil. It may be that we 
 are meant to understand, even from the language used 
 by our Lord, that though the arch enemy and the 
 principal agent in the attempted ruin of the fair harvest 
 is the devil, still he acts mainly through the instru- 
 mentality of men. Another tmth which may be con- 
 veyed by this language is, that the evil agencies are 
 always posterior in date to the good agencies. The devil 
 
154 ^-^^ Palpable of the Cockle. 
 
 sows over the ground which has already been sown by 
 the Son of Man, he follows the lines and works over 
 the work of God. The Fathers are very fond of under- 
 standing this parable, in a particular manner, of heresies, 
 rather than of other evils, which proceed, like heresies, 
 from the evil spirit and his subordinates, and according 
 to this interpretation, it is very easy to see the force 
 of this remark about the manner in which the evil one 
 acts in spoiling the work of God. For all heresies are 
 perversions of the truth, they require the truth of the 
 Catholic doctrine as their foundation, they have no 
 originality in themselves, and the devil their author has 
 no creative power, he can but mar and distort and pull 
 to pieces. But it is not necessary to confine the meaning 
 of this great parable, in which the agency of the devil is 
 described, to that single department of his work which 
 issues in the production of heresies, and what is so 
 plainly true of his procedure in this one part of his work, 
 is also true of his work in other ways. He is essentially 
 a copyist, a mimic of God, as if his insane thought that 
 he would be as God was always repeating and forcing 
 itself upon him, as the poor animals who ape man in 
 his ways, are never quiet or happy, while they see him 
 do anything, without attempting themselves to mimic 
 him. The intense malignity of the character of Satan 
 must not make us forget this feature in the same 
 character — the feature of the most insane and foolish 
 vanity, a feature very remarkable in those who have 
 sold themselves to do his work in the world. One of 
 the surest tests of the heretical spirit is the unwillingness 
 to acknowledge mistakes and misrepresentations, when 
 they are pointed out, and this unwillingness is founded 
 on personal vanity. It may safely be said that a writer 
 on the side of heresy or schism who shows any eagerness 
 to acknowledge and correct the errors in statement into 
 
The Parable of the Cockle. 155 
 
 which he has fallen, is already half converted. And yet 
 the want of this simple honesty is one of the commonest 
 characteristics of heretical controversialists, and it shows 
 most clearly the spirit by which they are guided. 
 
 Another point may here be noticed. As God in His 
 dealings with mankind acts according to His own infinite 
 wisdom and knowledge of human nature, and so of all 
 that it requires and of all that is adapted to influence it, 
 and to supply its wants and cravings, the plan which He 
 has followed in His Kingdom must of necessity cover 
 the whole ground and penetrate every department of 
 humanity. It is the plan of the enemy, therefore, to 
 proceed on his own work of mischief wherever God has 
 extended His own beneficent operations, and thus the 
 work of the evil one is aptly described as the sowing 
 of bad seed over the good seed which God has sown. 
 This is said in the parable to have been done while 
 men slept, and if this particular also is to have its 
 counterpart in the truth, we must understand that our 
 Lord refers to the necessity of the utmost vigilance on 
 the part of those who are responsible for the good 
 estate of the field sown by Him, and to the truth that 
 the beginning of the activity of the evil influences is 
 to be traced, more or less, to the want of watchfulness 
 on the part of the rulers of the Church. This, how- 
 ever, may perhaps be pressing the figure too far, for 
 nothing is said in the explanation of the parable by 
 our Lord of this want of vigilance. It may be that 
 He means us to understand that there is always a great 
 deal going on in the unseen world around us, and with 
 direct reference to ourselves and to the welfare or ruin 
 of our souls, of which we can have no more perception 
 than men can have of what goes on in the hours in 
 which they are naturally wrapt up in sleep. 
 
 These few words, then, of our Lord, ' an enemy hath 
 
156 The Parable of the Cockle. 
 
 done this/ contain the whole of what He tells us here 
 of the ever active and most malicious exertions of the 
 evil one and his emissaries for the purpose of destroying 
 the good work which God has begun in the world. As 
 the enemy passes over the field in which the footsteps 
 of the sower of the good seed have gone before him, 
 and leaves no part of that field unvisited and, as far as 
 lies in him, unspoiled by the seeds of evil, such we must 
 suppose our Lord means us to consider is the activity of 
 the enemy in scattering his evil influences wherever our 
 Lord has left behind Him the principles of good. Alas ! 
 it is but too true that there is no part of the field to 
 which Satan is forbidden to penetrate. Nothing is too 
 sacred for him to befoul. It is natural enough to expect 
 his work in those regions of society which are more 
 especially under his influence, which we call, by pre- 
 eminence, 'the world,' the mass of those who worship 
 temporal goods and aims, and regulate their conduct by 
 the maxims of time and not by those of eternity. But 
 the work of the enemy is not only here. It is to be found 
 in the sanctuary itself. The Church of God is pro- 
 vided by the care of its Founder with an admirably 
 organized hierarchy, a complete army of selected souls, 
 vowed especially to the service of the altar, to the life 
 of prayer, to the ministration of the sacraments, to the 
 government of the general body, to the defence of the 
 true doctrine, and to the preaching of the Word of God. 
 It is Satan's chiefest joy and greatest triumph when he 
 can sow seeds of evil in the sanctuary and around the 
 altar of God, and though he has never been allowed for 
 long together, or to any overwhelming extent, to corrupt 
 the ruling body and fill the sees of Christendom with 
 prelates who might be described as legitimate successors 
 rather of Annas and Caiaphas, than of the Twelve 
 Apostles, still he has not been altogether without his 
 
The Parable of the Cockle. 157 
 
 successes in this most vital assault on the good work 
 of God. Incalculable as have been the services to the 
 Church of God of the great majority of her chief rulers, 
 her history would be different indeed from what it is if 
 the world had never been able to intrude its own children 
 into their ranks. Pride, vanity, worldliness, personal 
 ambition, jealousy, avarice, nepotism, an indolent and a 
 luxurious life — if such scandals as these had never been 
 in the sanctuary of the Church, she might not at this 
 moment have to lament the falling away of so many fair 
 kingdoms which once owned her gentle sway. As a 
 matter of fact, the greater number of heresies and schisms 
 in the Church have had their origin in the clerical order 
 itself, and in many cases they have arisen among eccle- 
 siastics of the highest rank. 
 
 If Satan has been allowed to see the evil shoots mani- 
 fest themselves in the very highest orders of the hierarchy, 
 it is not wonderful that in other parts of the field of the 
 good householder the same miserable enjoyment should 
 not have been denied to him. The enclosed garden of 
 religious life, the cultivated retreat in which evangelical 
 counsels are made the rule of daily practice under the 
 sanction of vows, this also has been invaded by the 
 malignity of the evil one, and the souls most immediately 
 consecrated to God have sometimes been the occasions 
 of the greatest triumphs to His enemy. As the ecclesi- 
 astical state has its own peculiar temptations, such as 
 those which have been enumerated, so also are there 
 found, among the religious communities, the seeds of 
 evil particularly fatal in their case. So again it has been 
 in that other garden of beauty and fruitfulness in virtue, 
 the holy domestic life of the Christian family, formed 
 on the model of the holy home at Nazareth, and the 
 cares of a household and the lawful worldly callings to 
 which the members of such families are naturally de- 
 
158 The Parable of the Cockle. 
 
 voted, have been the occasion of a thousand seductions 
 and of a thousand instances of forgetfulness of God. 
 Not a calHng, not a profession, not a pursuit, from the 
 most laborious scientific investigations to the simplest 
 relaxations and recreations, into which some evil seed 
 has not been cast, as it were, to occupy the ground. 
 The whole of society may be looked on as a field sown 
 by the hand of God and intended to return to Him 
 the fair fruit of obedience to His law and glorification 
 of His bounties and benefits to man. And yet every 
 department has its evil traditions and examples and 
 principles asserted against those of God and of our Lord, 
 nor can there be any truer picture either of the natural 
 society of man or of the supernatural kingdom of the 
 Church, than that which our Lord here gives, the picture 
 of a field covered with two growths of seed side by side, 
 the one good, the other evil. 
 
 This, then, is the chief part, so to say, of the parable, 
 the declaration on the part of our Lord as to what was 
 to be expected in the field in which the evangelical 
 labourers were to spend their work — a picture true 
 indeed of the history of the world before He came and 
 before the foundation of the Gospel kingdom, but far 
 more true prophetically, as a forecast, for the benefit and 
 warning of the Apostles and those who were to come 
 after them in their work for God. For the true picture 
 of the state of the world before the times of redemption 
 might perhaps have more properly been said to be that 
 of a field in which there was but, here and there, a faint 
 trace of the Divine culture, a few shoots of good wheat 
 among a forest of shoots of cockle. But it was all the 
 more surprising, after the work of our Lord and after 
 the establishment of His Church, that even in that 
 chosen field so carefully cultivated and fenced round, 
 there were still to be these many shoots of the evil seed 
 
The P affable of the Cockle. 159 
 
 in every department and in every corner. Our Lord 
 knew what was in man, as it is said of Him by St. John. 
 He did not need the experience, even of His own 
 reception at the hands of the chosen nation, to show 
 Him what was to be expected by His Church at the 
 hands of the world. But He knew also what was in 
 Satan, and He knew how intense would be the fresh 
 activity into which the enemy of God and man would 
 be roused by his defeat and by the destruction of his 
 kingdom and power in the world. He knew how he 
 would fasten on all the weak points in man, and work 
 all the lower influences of his nature against his own 
 good, all the more zealously because he would see, in 
 the new creation of the Church, a world capable of giving 
 far more glory to God than that former natural world 
 which he had been allowed to deface and to turn into 
 a dominion of his own. And the whole process of the 
 efforts of Satan in the Church and their issue is summed 
 up in these few words of our Lord, 'an enemy hath 
 done this.' 
 
 The enemy, then, of God and man will not be ex- 
 cluded from making his malignant attempts on the fair 
 field of the Church, as he was not prevented from 
 assailing the beautiful and innocent creation of God 
 ^vhen man was first made. The evil which sin has 
 introduced into man remains in the Kingdom of God 
 as long as the time of probation lasts, that is, the 
 conflict of the flesh and the spirit is to go on even in 
 regenerate man, although immense forces of grace have 
 been supplied to him for his easy victory in the conflict. 
 And so neither is the activity of the evil spirits fettered 
 or put an end to, though men are wonderfully stronger 
 for resistance against these deadly enemies than they 
 were before the coming of our Lord. As a consequence 
 of these two truths, the field of the world in which the 
 
i6o The Parable of the Cockle. 
 
 good seed has been sown is to be still what it always 
 was, a field in which good and evil grow up side by 
 side, nor is there to be any part of it in which the 
 work of the evil one is not to be rewarded by a kind 
 of miserable success of its own. But then, the question 
 rises up — it must certainly have risen up in the minds 
 of the angels as they watched the progress of the Gospel 
 Kingdom — how will God deal with the evil shoots which 
 have covered so large a space on this field which He 
 has sown and is to be continually sowing? When evil 
 sprang up in Heaven, God did not tolerate it. The 
 evil shoots were uprooted at once and cast away. Even 
 in the history of His dealings with man, the principle of 
 swift vengeance and extermination has not unfrequently 
 been followed. Once the whole race of man was des- 
 troyed, except eight persons, and there had been other 
 instances of summary chastisements, only less signal than 
 that. What is to be the law of God's action in the 
 government of His Church, or of the world into which 
 He has sent forth His Church ? 
 
 The answer to this question is contained in the reply 
 of the householder to the servants who volunteer to go 
 at once and root up the cockle. ' Wilt thou that we go 
 and gather it up ? And he said, No, lest perhaps gather- 
 ing up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together 
 with it. Suffer both to grow together till the harvest, 
 and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers. 
 Gather up first the cockle, and bind it in bundles to burn, 
 but the wheat gather ye into my barn. The harvest is 
 the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels. 
 Even as cockle is therefore gathered up, and burnt with 
 fire, so shall it be at the end of the world. The Son 
 of Man shall send His angels, and they shall gather out 
 of His Kingdom all scandals, and them that work ini- 
 quity, and shall cast them out into the furnace of fire ; 
 
The Parable of the Cockle. 1 6 1 
 
 there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then 
 shall the just shine as the sun in the Kingdom of their 
 Father.' 
 
 It is remarkable, in the first place, as to this answer 
 of the householder in the parable, that our Lord in His 
 explanation does not give any commentary which answers 
 directly to the words, * lest gathering up the cockle you 
 root up the wheat also together with it.' He dwells 
 mainly on the final separation, and on the fate of the 
 cockle, gathered into bundles to be burned, as if it was 
 more important to enforce on the minds of His hearers 
 the truth of the final chastisement of the scandalous 
 and the wicked, than that other truth of their tolera- 
 tion in His Kingdom, and of the reason which is given 
 for that toleration. He seems almost to take it for 
 granted as a thing not to be wondered at, that there 
 should be scandals which are not at once eradicated, 
 and to wish to point more forcibly to the future destruc- 
 tion of all offences and the thorough purgation of the 
 Kingdom. For the toleration of evil is a principle 
 akeady established in His government of the world, 
 and therefore it was not to be expected that any change 
 in this principle should be made as long as that human 
 world goes on in its present provisional state. But in 
 the former parable He had said nothing of the future 
 judgment. He had spoken simply of the various causes 
 of the sterility or failure or fertility of the good seed, as 
 if there had been no responsibility for all these various 
 issues on the part of those m whose hearts the seed had 
 been sown. This new feature in the whole picture, there- 
 fore, was yet to be supplied. But in the second place, 
 although our Lord's own commentary seems thus to 
 leave aside the reason assigned for the refusal of the 
 householder to consent to the immediate rooting up of 
 the cockle, it cannot be wrong for us to suppose that 
 L 7 
 
1 62 The Parable of the Cockle. 
 
 there are Divine reasons for that toleration of the evil 
 shoots which is the characteristic of the present provi- 
 dence of God. Thus we find the Fathers of the Church 
 explaining for us in more than one way the words of 
 the householder on which we are now engaged. 
 
 We may insist, however, so far on the silence of our 
 Lord, with regard to the meaning of this first part of the 
 answer of the householder, as to see in it the truth that 
 one prominent reason for the forbearance which is incul- 
 cated on the servants, lies in the certainty of the future 
 retribution on all that can cause scandal or offence in the 
 Kingdom of God. The punishment is only delayed, the 
 perfect purgation of the field of God is only put off for 
 a while. That being the case, it remains for the prudent 
 householder to deal with the cockle as he thinks best in 
 Tiis own interest, that is, in the interest of the wheat. 
 For the sake of the wheat it is that the cockle is to be 
 spared awhile. If the cockle is rooted up, the wheat 
 may suffer. It may be rooted up with the cockle. In the 
 growth of which the seed is the Word of God, in the 
 growth in which the good seed are the children of the 
 Kingdom, it is quite clear that a reason exists which 
 cannot be expressed in the same image which is here 
 used by our Lord. For cockle cannot become wheat, 
 nor can wheat become cockle. But the good can become 
 bad, and the bad can become good. Thus, the imme- 
 'diate rooting up of the cockle might have cost our Lord 
 Tthe souls of such saints as St. Magdalene and St. Paul. 
 And it is a part of the chief duties of the servants of 
 God in the Apostolical ministry to be constantly 
 labouring, in the spirit of the Good Shepherd, to turn 
 the cockle into the wheat. 
 
 But, apart from this reason, one which could not be 
 ■expressed in this parable by our Lord without a change 
 of imagery, there are sufficient reasons assigned by the 
 
The Parable of the Cockle. 163 
 
 Fathers for the toleration of the cockle by the side of the 
 wheat, even if the cockle is never, by conversion, to 
 become the wheat. For the existence even of scandals 
 and heresies and divisions among the subjects of the 
 Church is of use, as the Apostle says,i in order to the 
 manifestation of the faithfulness of those who are faithful. 
 Too many bright examples of suffering heroically for the 
 sake of God would be lost, if He were to interfere by an 
 exercise of His power in the destruction of the rebellious 
 and the schismatical. Again, the presence of the wicked, 
 and even of the scandalous, in the body of the faithful, is 
 a constant stimulus to the virtue of the faithful. It gives 
 them great objects to pray for, and to toil for before 
 God. It also makes them watchful over themselves, and 
 so must secure their virtue in many cases in which they 
 might fall through negligence if there were nothing to 
 warn them. Again, the wicked and the authors and 
 abettors of heresies, are often singularly active and 
 devoted in the pursuit of the objects which they have at 
 heart, and in this way also they serve as spurs and 
 examples to the children of the Kingdom. In another 
 w^ay also the tolerance of the wicked on the part of God 
 is of immense use to the children of the Church. For 
 if it were not so ordained in His Providence that those 
 who sin against Him should be spared, it would follow 
 that all who are spared are in a state of grace, and might 
 feel confident of their own safety. Nothing would be 
 more mischievous than this, for it would breed immense 
 and false security, as much almost as if people could feel 
 certain beforehand of their own perseverance, and of 
 their dying a good death. These things are left uncertain 
 by God for the sake of the elect, and if He did not 
 leave the cockle in the field until the end this merciful 
 design of His would be defeated. 
 1 I Cor. xi. 19. 
 
164 The Parable of the Cockle. 
 
 Our Lord is speaking of the Providence of God by 
 which the economy of redemption is governed, and 
 which can afford to wait for the time of inflicting punish- 
 ment, because it has all times at its disposal. This seems 
 to be the answer to the objection against the discipline 
 of the Church, which has sometimes been founded on 
 this parable, as if it were contrary to the rule here laid 
 down by our Lord for the rulers of the Church to punish, 
 in the manner in which punishment is within their 
 power, those who give public scandal in the Church, or 
 in other ways violate her laws. The discipline of the 
 Church is both corrective of the offenders whom she 
 punishes, and also wisely ordered for the common 
 benefit. Our Lord Himself gave instructions as to those 
 who would not obey the Church, that they were to be 
 treated as heathens and as publicans. ^ St. Paul forbade 
 the Corinthians to hold intercourse with those Christians 
 who were guilty of certain sins, and enjoined on them 
 the excommunication of the incestuous person.^ In his 
 First Epistle to St. Timothy he mentions Hymeneus and 
 Alexander, whom he says he has delivered to Satan, 
 that is, excommunicated.* And in those early times it 
 seems to have been no uncommon thing for excommuni- 
 cated persons to have been actually possessed by the 
 devil after the sentence of the Church. And there are 
 other passages in the New Testament which seem to 
 bear witness to the very early introduction of the salu- 
 tary discipline of which we speak. The uprooting which • 
 is, in this parable, deferred by the order of the house- 
 holder is that which is to take place inevitably in the 
 Last Day. And as the last day to each soul is the day of 
 its own death, it may in particular cases be anticipated by 
 the infliction of sudden death by the judgment of God. 
 
 2 St. Matt, xviii. 17. 
 3 I Cor. V. 4, II. ■* I Tim. i. 20, 
 
The Parable of the Cockle. 165 
 
 Such was the case with the first great scandal in the 
 Church, in the instance of Ananias and Sapphira, who 
 were slain by the visitation of God as soon as St. Peter 
 had passed on them his sentence of condemnation. 
 
 The question of the punishment of heretics by a 
 Christian state is not the same as that of the ecclesi- 
 astical use of disciplinary punishment. For in the Chris- 
 tian system of civil government, the crime of heresy is a 
 crime against the common good, and not only against 
 the spiritual order. The arguments drawn from this 
 parable against the Donatist and Novatian heretics by 
 the Fathers who were engaged in those controversies, 
 cannot be questioned. But they only go to prove that 
 the visible Church contains the evil as well as the good, 
 which was what those sectaries denied, not that there is 
 no such crime as heresy or schism which may be pun- 
 ished by the Church as treason and rebellion are pun- 
 ished by the State. It is still true that, even in the 
 administration of these remedies in the cases just now 
 mentioned, the Church is extremely careful lest the one 
 great end of the benefit of the faithful should be endan- 
 gered. For she often forbears to use her powers, when 
 she sees that the use of them may do harm rather than 
 good, and provoke a more formal rebellion instead of 
 correcting an evil which is but in its infancy. This is 
 probably one reason why formal excommunications are 
 so comparatively rare in modern times, when the autho- 
 rities of the Church have reason for thinking that the 
 mass of the population in some Catholic country will not 
 be able to take its own part in carrying out the sentence. 
 For in that case others, besides the direct offenders against 
 whom the sentence is hurled, will be involved in sin 
 from which they would otherwise be free. In such cases 
 the Church is fain to dissemble, and be as if she did not 
 hear or see, rather than hurry on a catastrophe which 
 
1 66 The Parable of the Cockle. 
 
 may involve thousands of her children in the danger of 
 the loss of their souls by disobedience to her plain 
 commands. 
 
 Some things remain to be noticed by way of con- 
 clusion with regard to the explanation of this parable by 
 our Lord. In the first place, He describes the angels as 
 sent forth by the Son of Man, who are to gather out of 
 His Kingdom all scandals and them that work iniquity. 
 For whether the field in which the seed is sown be 
 considered as the world or as the Church, as it may be 
 considered to be either, in different aspects of the same 
 truth, it is in each case the Kingdom of the Son of 
 Man, the Kingdom w^iich belongs to Him by virtue of 
 His Incarnation, the Kingdom which He has conquered 
 back to Himself by His Passion, and which has been 
 given to Him in His glorious Resurrection. Thus, even 
 if it were true that at the end of time the scandalous and 
 the workers of iniquity were to be found the majority, 
 still they would be gathered out of His Kingdom as 
 intruders and invaders, and the just would remain therein 
 as in their true home and heritage. Thus we need not 
 press too far the apparent argument which may be drawn 
 from these words as to the comparative numbers of the 
 just and the unjust. The words of our Lord seem to 
 refer to His former words in the Sermon on the Mount, 
 where He had said that He would say in the Last Day 
 to many who would claim to have prophesied in His 
 name, and in His name cast out devils and done many 
 wonderful works, that He knew them not, ' Depart from 
 Me, you that work iniquity.' 
 
 Again, it is clear that He here distinguishes between 
 two kinds of evil which shall be alike eradicated in His 
 Kingdom, the evil of open scandal and the evil of the 
 working of iniquity, which may not be open to the eyes 
 of men but which is open to the eye of God. Such was 
 
The Parable of the Cockle. 167 
 
 the case of the workers of iniquity of whom He had 
 spoken in the Sermon on the Mount, as just quoted. 
 Again, it has been noted by some writers on this parable^ 
 that the cockle is to be bound in bundles to be burnt, as 
 if our Lord would turn our thoughts to the accurate 
 discrimination, even in the punishments as in the 
 rewards of the next world, and to remind us that sinners 
 of similar kinds will be punished together, as they are 
 represented in the great Christian poem of the middle 
 ages. And it is also remarkable that our Lord adds to 
 the description of the burning of the wicked in the 
 furnace of fire, the words, ' then shall the just shine as the 
 sun in the Kingdom of their Father.' Such words imply- 
 that in the future state of blessedness there shall be no 
 concealment of virtue and spiritual beauty, whereas in 
 the present state of things we are not only unable to see 
 such glories as are interior to the soul, but also we are 
 hindered, by the companionship of the bad with the 
 good, and the consequent corruption of public opinion, 
 from recognizing even those excellencies and perfections 
 in virtue which would be not altogether beyond the ken 
 of the discernment of which we are at present masters, 
 if it were not for the overclouding of the good by the 
 presence of the bad. 
 
 But the greatest cause of that manifestation of the just 
 and of their spiritual beauty, which will then take place, 
 will be the new state and condition in which all will live 
 who have a share in that blessed Kingdom of the Father. 
 For in that state there will be no longer any conceal- 
 ment of hearts and minds, but the whole interior of the 
 soul of each one of. the citizens of Heaven will be laid 
 open to all. This manifestation will have begun at the 
 Day of Judgment, one of the great features of which 
 will be the opening of all consciences and of all lives, 
 as well as of the dealings of God with all and the gifts 
 
1 68 The Parable of the Cockle, 
 
 which He has bestowed upon each. This itself will be 
 enough to furnish the blessed dwellers in Heaven with 
 matter for thanksgiving to God and for perpetual con- 
 templation and enjoyment. It will be the laying open of 
 the full knowledge of an universe far more splendid and 
 magnificent and various in its beauties than the physical 
 universe, the knowledge of which is capable of imparting 
 to us intellectual enjoyments of the rarest and highest 
 kind. It is not surprising that the Sacred Heart of our 
 Lord should have led Him here to touch on this point, 
 which must be the source of endless delight to Him. 
 He seems to touch on it here, rather for the purpose of 
 encouragement, and as if to promise to those who shall 
 remain faithful under the disadvantages of the present 
 mixture of evil with good in the world, a reward which 
 will more than compensate to them for all they may 
 have had to endure. And perhaps the words also 
 include the thought that the splendours of the virtue 
 of the just in the future Kingdom of God, will be 
 enhanced rather than diminished by the obscuration 
 and persecution which they have had to undergo, for 
 their virtue will have been made perfect in patience and 
 thus the glory of their crowns increased. There is 
 something of the same connection to be observed in 
 the passage in the Prophet Daniel, which was probably 
 in the mind of our Lord as He spoke this parable. 
 '■ Many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth shall 
 awake, some unto life everlasting, and others unto 
 reproach, to see it always. But they that are learned ' — 
 that is, just — * shall shine as the brightness of the firma- 
 ment, and they that instruct many to justice as stars 
 for all eternity.' ^ And our Lord seems to have wished 
 to lead the Apostles, to whom He was explaining the 
 parable, to dwell much in thought on the great reward 
 
 5 Daniel xii. 3. 
 
The Light on the Candlestick, 169 
 
 thus promised to them, and to make the glory of the 
 blessed, both in body and soul, a great motive for 
 exertion and faithfulness in their service to His Father. 
 For He adds here again, as if for them specially, His 
 familiar exhortation, ' He that hath ears to hear, let him 
 hear.' 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Light on the Candlestick. 
 
 St. Mark iv. 21 — 25 ; St. Luke viii. 16 — 18. 
 
 It has been well to subjoin the explanations given by 
 our Lord of the two great parables of the Sower and of 
 the Cockle, to the parables themselves. But as a matter 
 of fact, the explanations were not given at the same 
 time with the parables. And it is not certain that other 
 parables, of which the explanation is left to ourselves 
 in the Gospel history, were not delivered to the people 
 by our Lord before the time came when He was alone 
 in the evening with His disciples. The order of St. 
 Mark, which is usually so accurate in point of chrono- 
 logical sequence, leads us to think that some words of 
 our Lord to His disciples, spoken after the explanations 
 on which we have been dwelling, are to be considered 
 in this place, rather than at the end of the whole account 
 of the first series of parables. And we may therefore 
 pause at this point for the sake of so considering them, 
 although it cannot be a matter, either of great certainty 
 or of the utmost importance, that the words in question 
 were spoken just at this point. They have their own 
 importance in showing us still more clearly the desire 
 of our Lord to make the truths of which He had been 
 
170 The Light on the Candlestick. 
 
 speaking sink very deeply into the minds of the disciples. 
 Thus they are most valuable, from the connection which 
 they have with the main object of our Lord in this stage 
 of the formation of the Apostles for their great work in 
 the Church. 
 
 'And He said unto them,' we are told by St. Mark, 
 'Doth a candle come in to be put under a bushel, or under 
 a bed, and not to be set on a candlestick? No man 
 lighting a candle covereth it with a vessel, or putteth 
 it under a bed, but setteth it upon a candlestick, that 
 they who come in may see the light. For there is 
 nothing hid, which shall not be made manifest, neither 
 was it made secret, but that it may come abroad. If 
 any man have ears to hear let him hear.' These words, 
 like so many other sayings of our Lord, would be a 
 parable, if only the parabolic form had been given to 
 them. And they were spoken, not to the multitudes, 
 but to the disciples in their intimate communion with 
 Him. They may be considered as conveying a lesson 
 which follows naturally on the parables already delivered, 
 but is addressed especially to those chosen friends who had 
 been privileged to hear the explanation of those parables 
 from His own lips. They .speak clearly of the duties 
 of the Apostles with regard to these truths set forth in 
 the parables. They had the mysteries of the Kingdom 
 explained to them, or rather, we may say, in the first 
 intention of our Lord, they had been considered as 
 capable of perceiving them for themselves, through the 
 parabolic veil which made them less intelligible to 
 others. For when our Lord began to explain the 
 parables to them, He expressed a kind of surprise that 
 the explanation was needed by them. But they were 
 not to suppose that the truths thus explained were for 
 themselves only, or that they had a right to any esoteric 
 doctrines of the Kingdom, which were to be denied 
 
The Light on the Candlestick, 171 
 
 to others less favoured. The instructions which they 
 received were not imparted to others, for the reasons 
 already given, namely, that they were unfit for their 
 reception, and had brought on themselves the punish- 
 ment of being treated with greater reserve in the teaching 
 of the Gospel truths. If they had been fit for these 
 truths which were now veiled from them, though not 
 entirely denied to them, the truths would have been 
 set before them without the parabolic veil. The Apostles 
 had been instructed more fully. But this was not for 
 themselves alone. It was that they might communicate 
 to others in due time the truths which were to be veiled 
 from the populations of Galilee and afterwards of Judaea. 
 Thus, if our Lord explained these parables to them, 
 it was for the sake of others as well as of themselves, 
 for the sake of the thousands and millions of Christians 
 all over the world, who were to be their spiritual children 
 throughout successive generations. He speaks as if He 
 were contemplating His own work in them, rejoicing 
 in it, and explaining it to them that they might under- 
 stand it and cooperate with it better. 
 
 He then it is Who has lighted up the candle of the 
 knowledge of the mysteries in the Apostles. He 
 certainly has not done this for the sake of hiding it, 
 putting it out of the way, as a thing is put away in 
 houses where there is little room to spare, under a 
 bushel measure, which would easily hold useless articles, 
 or under a bed where old lumber is often stored. No, 
 the object which He has had in lighting it is that all 
 who come in may see the light. He had already spoken 
 of them as the light of the world, in the Sermon on 
 the Mount. But there, as it seems, he had more directly 
 in His mind the light which they would give by their 
 example, in the practice of the virtues of the Beatitudes. 
 Here He is speaking of them rather as the doctors and 
 
172 The Light on the Candlestick, 
 
 teachers of the world. For He goes on to assure them 
 that all that He has told them in private is for the 
 public good. There is nothing hid which shall not be 
 made manifest, neither was it made secret, but that it 
 may be known and come abroad. The Christian 
 religion has no hidden secrets, as such, although there 
 are in it many mysteries which are not to be forced 
 on those who are unfit to receive them. The only 
 reason against the immediate publication of all that it 
 contains to all, lies in the danger which arises from 
 the unfitness of so many for Divine truths. Now as to 
 this He had already given His precept, that the holy 
 things were not to be given to dogs, nor the pearls cast 
 before swine. But the time might come when men 
 would become more fit, and if some are unfit, others 
 may be turned to who are fit. And thus the whole 
 beautiful system of spiritual truth is to be revealed and 
 proclaimed, not kept hidden and jealously guarded, 
 according to the precept which He was to give to the 
 Apostles very soon after this occasion, and in which 
 the words of this passage are repeated : ' Nothing is 
 covered that shall not be revealed, nor hid that shall 
 not be known. That which I tell you in the dark, 
 speak ye in the light, and that which you hear in the 
 ear, preach ye upon the housetops.'^ 
 
 It is easy to see that there might have been incon- 
 venience or danger in setting before the people at that 
 time these very mysteries of the Kingdom which are 
 conveyed in these two first Parables. In the first place, 
 they referred to the ill-success of much of the Gospel 
 preaching on account of certain defects in the hearers, 
 or in their circumstances. There was the danger of the 
 ceaseless activity of the evil spirits, the danger of the 
 shallowness and frivolity of many, the danger of the 
 1 St. Matt. X. 26, 27. 
 
The Light on the Candlestick, 173 
 
 cares and interests of worldly pursuits and engagements, 
 even though not blameable in themselves, the danger 
 of riches, and the like. The Gospel Kingdom was not 
 to march on from triumph to triumph, without labour 
 or danger to those who were its children. Nay, it was 
 to be a Kingdom in which evil men were to be mixed 
 up with good men, in which it would be difficult to 
 discern evil from good, in which an immense amount 
 of good would be hindered, or at least stunted, by the 
 contact of its contrary. This picture might be too dis- 
 couraging for weak souls. As a matter of history, the 
 great failures and miseries of the Church have always 
 come from the worldliness or unfitness of her children, 
 whether laymen or ecclesiastics, from their want of 
 fervour, their want of charity, their mutual jealousies, 
 their hateful selfishness, and consequent divisions. The 
 failure of Christians to correspond to the graces of 
 their vocation is the one most fruitful cause of the 
 comparative ill-success of the Church in her work in the 
 world. It prevents her work of conversion, it encourages 
 doubts as to her Divine mission. It is on account of 
 this that the heathen turn away from the Gospel, that 
 sinners die unreconciled, that revolts abound against 
 authority, that heresies flourish, that schisms tear the 
 seamless robe of unity. It is a mischief especially 
 dangerous to those young in the faith and weak in virtue. 
 It is a wound over which saints mourn in silence, and 
 which the most devoted children of the Church would 
 fain conceal, at the cost of their blood, even when they 
 cannot alleviate it. No wonder, then, that our Lord 
 did not proclaim it to the people. He more than once 
 disclosed the pain which it gave to His Heart. But 
 His words on this subject are few, and carefully tender. 
 It was very necessary that the founders of the Church 
 should be aware of this great danger, but it was not as 
 
174 ^^^ Light on the Candlestick, 
 
 yet to be spoken of. The preaching of the moral 
 doctrine involved in these two first parables would 
 require great authority and fearlessness on the part of 
 the teachers, and a readiness on the part of the hearers 
 to receive stern admonitions and the whole doctrine of 
 the Cross. 
 
 There is no point, however, of this moral and spiritual 
 doctrine which we do not find developed by the Apostles 
 in the later books of the New Testament. The activity 
 of Satan and the evil spirits in frustrating the growth of 
 the good seed is described in more than one passage 
 by St. Paul, to whom Satan is ' the prince of the power 
 of this air,'- and his associates, 'the rulers of the world 
 of this darkness, the spirits of wickedness in the high 
 places,'^ and he draws out a magnificent picture of the 
 Christian armament against them. St. Peter changes 
 the image, but only for another which represents the 
 devil as ' a roaring lion who goes about, seeking whom 
 he may devour.'* The heedlessness of so many in 
 whose souls the Word can take no root is most graphi- 
 cally described in a few words by St. James. ' If a man 
 be a hearer of the Word, and not a doer, he shall be 
 compared to a man beholding his natural countenance 
 in a glass, for he beheld himself and went his way, and 
 presently forgot what manner of man he was.'^ 
 
 There are many passages in St. Paul in which he 
 warns us against levity and shallowness, which was a 
 fault in the Corinthian Church. But nowhere does he 
 more plainly remind us of these parables than when he 
 is warning the Hebrew Christians against the danger of 
 apostasy, on account of the trials to which they were 
 subjected. 'For the earth that drinketh in the rain 
 which cometh upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet 
 
 « Ephes, ii. 2. ^ Ephes. vi. 12. * i St. Peter v. 8. 
 
 5 St, James i. 23. 
 
The Light on the Candlestick. 175 
 
 for them by whom it is tilled, receiveth blessing from 
 God, but that which bringeth forth thorns and briars is 
 rejected, and very near to a curse, whose end is to be 
 burnt. '*^ It would almost seem as if there was here a 
 distinct reference to our Lord's words about those who, 
 when tribulation and persecution arise because of the 
 Word, are scandalized and fall away. There are traces 
 throughout the whole history of the Acts, and in many of 
 the Epistles, trials akin to those to which the Christians 
 of Jerusalem were exposed. St. Paul speaks in more 
 than one place of his own persecuting fury, and we 
 gather from his words that many Christians were put to 
 death, others imprisoned and beaten in the synagogues, 
 and others compelled to blaspheme."^ It is clear from 
 the whole tone of the Epistles to the Hebrews that there 
 was much danger of apostasy among those to whom it 
 was written. Here, then, we have the prediction con- 
 tained in one part of the parable of the Sower fulfilled 
 to the letter. Nor can there be any more plain 
 commentary on our Lord's words about the deceit- 
 fulness of riches, than the words of the same Apostle 
 to St. Timothy. ' They that will become rich fall into 
 temptations and into the snare of the devil, and into 
 many unprofitable and hurtful devices, which drown 
 men in destruction and perdition, for covetousness is 
 the root of all evils, which some desiring have erred 
 from the faith, and have entangled themselves in many 
 sorrows.' ^ 
 
 Lastly, the whole history of the Acts, and a great 
 many passages of the Epistles, bear witness to the 
 importance of the doctrine inculcated on the future 
 rulers of the Church by our Lord, with reference to the 
 existence of heresies, of parties in the Church, and the 
 mixture of evil with good even within the fold. At 
 ^ Heb. vi. 7, 8. ' Acts xxvi. ii. ^ x Timothy vi. 9, 10. 
 
176 The Light on the Candlestick, 
 
 the distance of time from the foundation of the Church 
 at which we live, and with the history of the Christian 
 centuries before us, we take these things as natural and 
 inevitable in the Church and in Christian society. But 
 it does not follow that they were not surprises to the 
 first generation of Christians, or that the Apostles had 
 not the greatest possible reason for rejoicing in the 
 warnings to them conveyed in this part of our Lord's 
 teaching. It must be remembered that the whole 
 system of the Gospel preaching was something new in 
 the world. There had been nothing like it before, and 
 the conditions under which it was to be carried on 
 were consequently unknown. When these conditions 
 came to be ascertained by experience, as was the case 
 within the lifetime of the Apostles themselves, it was 
 very profitable indeed for those who had to administer 
 the system to be able to recognize the perfect fore- 
 knowledge of them which was here manifested by our 
 Lord, implying, as it did, a direction to them to turn 
 their efforts to the obviating or removing of the various 
 evils on which He set His mark. 
 
 There seems to be good reason for thinking that when 
 our Lord speaks of all that is hid being made known, 
 He was more directly thinking of moral and practical 
 instructions — such, for instance, as the Evangelical 
 Counsels, and the like. Still His words naturally extend 
 to the office of the Church, under the guidance of the 
 Holy Ghost, of unfolding, more and more fully, as time 
 flows on, the treasures of dogmatic truth which are 
 contained in the original deposit of the faith. This is 
 the chief sphere and field of the great principle of 
 development in the Church. Our Lord does not say 
 that all things are to be made manifest, and preached 
 on the housetops, at once, but that all the details, 
 whether of practical or dogmatical instruction, which 
 
The Light on the Candlestick. 177 
 
 have been confided to the Church are, in the end, each 
 at its due time, to be made known in the hght of day. 
 . It is impossible to think otherwise, when we remember 
 that at the very time when He was using this image of 
 the candlestick, and insisting on the manifestation of 
 all secrets, He was setting forth a large number of most 
 important truths in such a manner, and with the avowed 
 purpose, that they might be understood by some of His 
 hearers and not understood by others. The passage, 
 therefore, before us, taken together with the circum- 
 stances of our Lord's teaching at this time, bears clear 
 witness to the principle of the gradual unfolding of 
 Christian truths, whether practical or dogmatical, by 
 the prudence and charity of the Church. And perhaps 
 it may have been with the design of leading them to 
 thoughtful reflection on the application of this principle 
 that He again added His warning precept, ' If any man 
 have ears to hear, let him hear.' 
 
 Our Lord goes on to add some precepts as to the 
 carefulness with which the Apostles were to avail them- 
 selves of the precious privileges which it was their lot 
 to enjoy, of hearing His teaching. He said to them, 
 *Take heed what you hear, take heed therefore how 
 you hear.' The ears by means of which the mysteries 
 of the Kingdom were to be received, were the spiritual 
 ears of the soul, strengthened and quickened by special 
 graces for the reception of these hidden truths. Nothing 
 could be more miserable than to have gifts of this kind, 
 and not to use them. And yet our Lord's warning 
 could not be unnecessary. For Judas was among these 
 favoured twelve. So in all ages of the Church there 
 must have been a large number of souls, highly favoured 
 by God, who have nevertheless, through their own care- 
 lessness and want of correspondence to grace, or by 
 dallying with some dangerous temptation, failed to catch 
 
 M 7 
 
178 The Light on the Candlestick. 
 
 the Divine message by which they might have dehghted 
 and edified the Kingdom of God on earth. The 
 prophet Balaam, in the Old Testament, who speaks of 
 himself as ' the hearer of the words of God, who hath 
 beheld the vision of the Almighty,'^ fell as Judas fell, 
 t)y the sin of avarice. This was a case of a man who 
 had ears to hear, not caring to hear, on account of an 
 evil passion. But our Lord's words further imply the 
 injunction of a twofold diligence, first, the considera- 
 tion of what it is that is revealed in His Divine doctrine, 
 that is, of the dignity and sublimity of the truths which 
 are imparted to us, and then, also, of the manner in 
 which these heavenly boons are to be received, the 
 reverence, the humility, the attention, the purity of 
 motive, with which they are to be listened to and 
 taken into the heart, there to be cherished and fed 
 upon by meditation. 
 
 And He adds further, that in this subject-matter also 
 there will be room for the application of that most just 
 principle of God in His dealings with us, that with what 
 measure we mete, it shall be measured to us again. 
 This principle He had, not long before, insisted on in 
 the Sermon on the Plain, as, in an earlier stage of His 
 teaching, in the Sermon on the Mount. There it had 
 been applied to our dealings with others, whether in 
 judgment or in action, and now we are told that it will 
 be used also with reference to our conduct in the 
 xeception of Divine truths. If we receive them faith- 
 fully, intelligently, diligently, other higher and further 
 revelations will succeed to them. As soon as we have 
 made one series of truths our own, another more beau- 
 tiful and grander will be offered to us. And on the other 
 hand, God will not go on imparting His lights to us, 
 unless we use reverently what He has already bestowed 
 
 ^ Numbers xxiv. 
 
The Light on the Candlestick, 179 
 
 upon us. This was exactly the reason why the people 
 of Galilee in general were to be treated with greater 
 reserve for the future by Him, because they had not 
 mastered the teaching which they had already received. 
 The disciples, and all those whom they represented in 
 the Church, were to be warned lest the same thing 
 should befall themselves. * For he that hath, to him shall 
 be given, and he that hath not, that also which he hath, 
 which he thinketh he hath, shall be taken away.' There 
 is, then, no more sure method of obtaining greater 
 spiritual lights and favours, than faithfulness in the use 
 of those which we already have. There is no limit to 
 the riches of God, nor is there any Hmit to His desire to 
 impart them to us according to His own good pleasure. 
 Nothing delights Him more than to give us great gifts, 
 and though all souls are not equal in their natural 
 capacities, the capacity of each is immense. But there 
 are but few who do not hinder God, by their own 
 carelessness and folly, from giving to them far more 
 largely than they receive. 
 
 And, on the other hand, our Lord's concluding words 
 show us another truth. This is that it is possible to 
 have and not to have at the same time, that is, to have 
 in one way, and yet as to all profit from the possession, 
 not to have, or only to seem or think to have, in another. 
 For a truth may lie in the memory unheeded and 
 unused, the relic of a former state of greater fervour 
 and enlightenment, and thus the soul may be said to 
 possess it and yet not to possess it. It may be said, 
 that as long as it is there at all, it may possibly still 
 be made profitable, though at the last. So it is with 
 many a poor soul who has been educated religiously, 
 and then abandoned the practice of religion, to fall into 
 a state of chronic sin. In such cases there is often a 
 wakening up of old feelings and religious instincts which 
 
i8o The Light on the Candlestick. 
 
 have almost died out, and by means of that dormant 
 truth the soul is able to make its peace with God before 
 it is too late. There are many such souls indeed, by 
 the good mercy of God set in motion by the power of 
 prayer. But it cannot but be true that for one case 
 of this kind, there are many more in which the truths 
 which the soul has received in Christian or Catholic 
 education are altogether inefficacious at the last, even 
 when death is plainly at hand, and the world and its 
 false goods are seen to be vanishing away. The dying 
 sinner, it may be, was once a Catholic child, and as 
 such he knew of old how to set his conscience in order, 
 to grieve for and confess his sins, to seek the aid of 
 the Church in the last sacraments. All in vain ! he 
 dies as he has lived, no ray of light penetrates the 
 darkness of his soul, that little which he had or thought 
 he had — for such persons, in life, often delude them- 
 selves by the promise that they will make all right at the 
 last — that little is taken away from him. We often hear 
 of the cases in which God has been so wonderfully 
 merciful, as to give the habitual sinner, or the confirmed 
 heretic or rebel against the Church, grace of conversion 
 at the last. We hear of many, and there must be many 
 more of which we do not hear. But who can count up 
 the cases in which even that which such persons seem to 
 have is taken away from them ? 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The Seed growing of itself. 
 
 St. Mark iv, 26—29 I ^^^"^ Vitce Nostra, § 60. 
 
 The Parable of the Cockle, of which we have last been 
 speaking, is related by no one of the Evangelists except 
 St. Matthew, who is, of the four, by far the most full in 
 his reports of this kind of teaching on the part of our 
 Lord. The reason of this is that he is far more full than 
 the others in his reports of the teaching of our Lord in 
 general, as distinguished from His miracles on the one 
 hand, and from His disputations on the other. But even 
 St. Matthew has omitted the parable of which we have now 
 to speak, which followed next in order on the last. This, 
 then, we owe to the faithful memory of St. Peter, under 
 whose guidance the second Gospel was put together by 
 St. Mark. There is something about the teaching of 
 this particular parable which may have struck congenially 
 on the peculiar temperament of the mind of the chief 
 Apostle. For it was in his mind above all others that the 
 gradual process of enlightenment went on, under the 
 guidance of the good providence of the Father, which 
 issued, in no long period of time after this, in his memor- 
 able confession of faith in the Divinity of our Lord. The 
 gradual ripening and unfolding of the good seed in his 
 heart may fairly be cited as an instance of that power of 
 fructification in the Word of God, of which our Lord is 
 here speaking. And thus we might consider that St. Peter, 
 in his care to preserve this particular parable for the 
 
1 82 The Seed growing of itself . 
 
 Church of all generations, was instinctively putting on 
 record the blessed process which had gone on in his own 
 loyal heart. 
 
 In any case, the parable which is now to be given 
 follows most naturally and beautifully on the two already 
 explained by our Lord Himself. For it may be said, 
 indeed, to grow out of the second parable as that had 
 grown out of the first. For, in the Parable of the Sower 
 our Lord had only hinted at the action of the evil one 
 in the world, saying that it was he who caught away the 
 good seed out of the hearts of the careless hearers, and 
 then He had gone on, in the second parable, to say a 
 great deal more about the positive action of the evil 
 spirit in directly propagating his wicked teaching, and 
 the manner in which this action of his was dealt with by 
 God. In this second parable our Lord had spoken of 
 the seed as cast into the ground, and then, after a time, 
 coming up and showing whether it was good wheat or 
 only cockle, and He had described the growth of the 
 two, side by side, until the harvest, without speaking of 
 any exertions on the part of the husbandmen to aid it 
 in its growth. Now He takes, as it were, this one 
 circumstance, and makes it the subject of a special 
 parable. 
 
 * And He said, so is the Kingdom of God, as if a man 
 should cast seed into the earth, and should sleep and 
 rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow 
 up whilst he knoweth not. For the earth of itself 
 bringeth forth fruit, first the blade, then the ear, after- 
 wards the full corn in the ear. And when the fruit is 
 brought' forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, 
 because the harvest is come.' This parable has no 
 special explanation given to it in the words of our Lord. 
 For the images of the seed and of the harvest are already 
 familiar to the hearers of the former parables, and there 
 
The seed growing of itself. 183 
 
 are no persons brought in in this, as in the Parable of 
 the Cockle, whose work or words might require explana- 
 tion. The point of the parable therefore is in that cir- 
 cumstance on which our Lord may be supposed specially 
 to insist, because it is a circumstance which has not been 
 made prominent in the other parables of the same series. 
 This circumstance is the gradual and spontaneous growth 
 of the seed under the ground. This circumstance would 
 not have applied, to recur to a former illustration, if our 
 Lord had represented Himself, or His Father, as building 
 a temple or a house, instead of sowing seed. For in that 
 other image it would have been impHed that the work 
 was carried on from the beginning to the end by the 
 same hand and the same industry. For, if a builder 
 relaxes his labour, the building is at once stopped. And 
 if He had spoken of the planting of trees, it could not be 
 said that the growth of the tree would be imperceptible. 
 But the Kingdom of God, that is, the progress of the 
 work of grace in the soul, proceeds by the innate powers 
 of the seed sown and of the soil in which it is sown. Each 
 of these is endowed with elements of fertility which fit 
 in the one to the other, the powers of the Divine Word^ 
 and the powers of intelligence and volition which belong 
 to the soul. Then, by the cooperation of these two sets of 
 elements, the process of fructification proceeds, even if 
 there be no more work brought to bear on the part of 
 the sower, after he has deposited the seed in the soil, 
 that is, the Word of God in the soul. There is some- 
 thing which appears like an anticipation of this parable 
 in the Book of the Prophet Isaias, where God says,, 
 *As the rain and the snow come down from Heaven,, 
 and return no more thither, but soak the earth and water 
 it, and make it to spring, and give seed to the sower and 
 bread to the eater, so shall My word be, which shall go 
 forth from My mouth. It shall not return to Me void. 
 
184 The Seed groijuing of itself. 
 
 but it shall do whatsoever I please, and shall prosper in 
 the things for which I sent it.'^ 
 
 Although our Lord speaks of the earth as bringing 
 forth of itself, still the parable, taken as a whole, contains 
 the double doctrine, of the vital power of the seed and 
 of the fertilising power of the earth to which it is com- 
 mitted. He says that the seed springs and grows up 
 whilst the sower knows not, as well as that the earth of 
 itself brings forth fruit, first the blade, then the ear, after- 
 wards the full corn in the ear. The earth requires the 
 seed and the seed requires the earth, and, if nothing is 
 said of the other genial influences, as of the rain, and 
 the sunshine, and the air, and the like, it is probably 
 because the influences which correspond in the spiritual 
 order to these elements in the growth of the corn are 
 taken for granted in all the works of God for the benefit 
 of souls. For grace is never inoperative, never denied 
 in cases in which no impediment is put in its way. This 
 parable seems intended by our Lord to place before us 
 two truths in a kind of contrast. The first of these is 
 the truth that God requires the service and work of the 
 sower of the seed up to a certain point. This work is 
 indispensable, and without it there can be no growth 
 and no fertility. It is as St. Paul says, ' How shall they 
 believe Him of Whom they have not heard, and how 
 shall they hear without a preacher, and how shall they 
 preach, unless they be sent ? ' ^ The condition of faith, 
 which is exacted by God, renders the office of the 
 preacher, or teacher, or witness, or messenger of God, 
 essential. But our Lord goes on to tell us that this 
 office is not essential after the seed has been deposited, 
 the word delivered, the message made known. The 
 husbandmen go away and turn their hands to other 
 things, to the sowing perhaps of other fields, and they 
 
 1 Isaias Iv, 10, 11. 2 Rom. x. 14, 15. 
 
The Seed growing of itself , 185 
 
 are not wanted again until the harvest time, when the 
 full corn has to be gathered in. This is one truth that 
 is set forth in this parable. The other truth is the 
 counterpart of this, and it is required by this in order to 
 complete it and make it perfect. The truth is, that God 
 has given a marvellous power of growth and fertility to 
 the word which has been delivered by His ministers, 
 and as it were sown in the souls of their hearers. Our 
 Lord draws out this in the few words in which He seems 
 to linger with so much delight over the gradual expan- 
 sion and progress of the seed sown. He describes the 
 earth as bringing forth of itself, and the seed growing up, 
 and the like, and the appearance of the blade first, then 
 of the ear, then of the full corn in the ear. He might, 
 as has been said, have added in other details, for He 
 might have spoken of the office of the sun, or of the rain, 
 and the like, but all these natural forces are on the same 
 side of the comparison or contrast, so to speak. They are 
 not the work of the sower or the husbandman, although 
 he reaps the fruit of them all, and although the work of 
 each of them is, in its way and degree, necessary to the 
 happy result to which he looks forward. All these things 
 come under the head of the work of Nature, that is, in 
 the truth which is represented in the parable, under the 
 head of the work of God and His grace. It is what 
 St. Paul speaks of when he says, perhaps with this 
 parable in his mind, 'I have planted, Apollo watered, 
 but God gave the increase.' ^ 
 
 The first point in this comparison is one on which 
 long meditations might be made. Although God alone can 
 read the human heart, and although He can at will act 
 upon it by the illuminations and powerful movements of 
 His grace, yet it has not pleased Him to deal imme- 
 diately with soul after soul in the communication of that 
 
 3 I Cor. iii. 6. 
 
i86 The Seed groiving of itself . 
 
 revelation of Himself which He has made to man, and 
 in the administration of the ordinary means of His grace 
 in the Church, which He has founded and placed in the 
 world as the witness of His truth and the mistress and 
 instructor of mankind. He can flood the soul with light 
 and grace when it pleases Him, but He has ordained 
 that men are to learn of Him from men, and that they 
 are to receive the sacraments and the vital truths of 
 faith from others like themselves. Thus the Word of 
 God is like the seed which is sown by man, and which 
 will never spring up unless it is so sown. But the seed 
 is to be sown, as well as received, in faith. That is, the 
 sower has to be content to labour without seeing the 
 immediate fruit of his toil, he has, to use another similar 
 image which we find in the Book of Ecclesiastes, to 'cast 
 his bread upon the running waters, which he will find 
 again after a long time.'* This doctrine holds good of all 
 the various ways in which the Divine Word may be 
 communicated, though perhaps it is intended more 
 specially to apply to the method of preaching. For the 
 preacher does not know the souls of those to whom he 
 addresses himself, nor the dispositions in which they 
 come to listen to the Word of God, and these are in 
 truth very different in one person and in another at the 
 same time and in the same place. Nor does he know 
 on whom it is that his words have taken effect, nor 
 which of his words have had the most effect. He knows 
 often that what he sets most store by himself, has been 
 the least fruitful part of his instruction. And he finds out 
 that some almost chance expression or illustration has 
 struck home, when the passages which seemed to himself 
 the most important have not been so successful. And 
 above all, which is the point most plainly set forth in 
 this parable, he has to go his way to other work and 
 * Eccles. xi. I. 
 
The Seed growing of itself. 187 
 
 other scenes of labour, and it is only after a long time 
 that he may find out that his words have sunk into the 
 hearts of men, and have there been fruitful. 
 
 This truth holds good in other instances. Such is that of 
 the Christian writer who devotes himself to the illustration 
 of Scripture or of the dogmas of the faith, or any other 
 similar head of instruction. He cannot tell by whom 
 his words are read, or what is their effect on any soul in 
 particular. But, after a long time, it may be, that he is 
 rewarded by seeing the truths which he has been setting 
 forth taking possession of a number of minds, and he 
 may meet with this or that person who tells him that he 
 owes the conversion or the advancement of his soul to 
 him. What he writes is adopted by others, and thus he 
 may preach without being a preacher, and may reach the 
 souls of large assemblies and multitudes, while he spends 
 his own days in retirement and study. Much the same 
 may be said of the effect of good example, of the con- 
 sistent courageous practice of the Christian virtues in the 
 daily walk of life in which men are called to serve God. 
 Such persons may bear a perpetual silent witness to those 
 around them, shining, as St. Peter says, like lights in the 
 world, without thinking of anything beyond the discharge 
 of their duties in their several vocations. Yet it may be 
 reserved for them in the great day of account, to see, 
 with happy thankfulness, that they have benefited hun- 
 dreds of souls, while they thought themselves the most 
 unobserved and the least conspicuous of men. And so, 
 in whatever other way it may be our duty or our privilege 
 to be witnesses to the truth, whether it be in the region 
 of doctrine or in that of practice, it is always true that 
 we do not see the effects of what we may have to do or 
 to say at the time, we have to go on our way and leave 
 the result to God. It is well therefore always to be 
 earnest in prayer, that we may be guided, day by day, to 
 
1 88 The Seed growing of itself. 
 
 say and to do what is right and most likely to be profit- 
 able to others, and then, when all due pains have been 
 taken, to exercise the utmost confidence and reliance on 
 God for the issue of our poor efforts. 
 
 The truth which is contained in the other branch of 
 the parable is not less important or consoling than that 
 of which we have been speaking. Why is it that the 
 earth brings forth fruit of itself, why is it that the seed 
 springs up while the husbandman knows not and thinks 
 not of it ? It is on account of the innate powers of the 
 seed itself, and on account of the nourishing and 
 developing elements in the earth. But not on account 
 of these only, but also on account of the harmony and 
 fitness which makes them congenial one to the other, the 
 intrinsic powers of the seed cooperating with, and being 
 unlocked by, the forces and influences which are supplied 
 by the earth, and also on account of those other con- 
 ditions under which the happy fruitfulness is developed, 
 the bright and warm sunshine, the gentle breezes, the 
 rains which make the earth fruitful and furnish to the 
 seed the moisture which it requires. Man does his part, 
 and it is soon done. The part of nature comes next, 
 and it is a work which never rests or pauses till the fruit 
 is ready for the sickle. The whole of human life, in the 
 richest regions of the world, is simply kept up by the 
 fertility with which God has blessed the soil of the earth. 
 Without speaking of the marvellous treasures of the 
 mineral creation, which are the productions to man of 
 the soil on which he lives, the simple productive power 
 of the earth in the ordinary returns which it makes year 
 after year to cultivation, yields riches to the human race 
 of which the sum total might seem something fabulous. 
 And the bountifulness of nature, as we call it, is still 
 more enhanced when we consider the immense variety of 
 fruits and vegetables with which the bosom of this 
 
The Seed growing of itself, 1 89 
 
 common mother teems, the very large multiplication of 
 the seeds and roots which are committed to it, and the 
 immense fruitfulness with which it enriches us even 
 without cultivation, while it supports also the tribes of 
 the animal world for our use and consumption as well as 
 man himself. 
 
 Thus it is that the wealth of the human race which 
 is drawn from the earth alone is ever on the increase, 
 notwithstanding the enormous consumption by which the 
 life of the race is sustained. But it is well to remember 
 that no fruitfulness of the teeming earth, of which the 
 poets have sung, is to be compared in beauty and mag- 
 nificence to the fertility of which the soul of man is 
 capable, under the influences of divine grace, and when 
 the good seed has been duly deposited in it by the minis- 
 tration of the Word of God. Thoughts, conclusions, 
 speculations, affections, resolutions, contemplations, 
 imaginations, are the fruits of which the fertile mind 
 and heart of man is, as it were, the soil. And in their 
 multitudinous variety and rich beauty these far surpass 
 the productions of the earth on which we live, in the 
 richest regions which man can inhabit. The mind is 
 never at rest, the will and the heart are always choosing 
 and loving or hating, and the result of the productive- 
 ness of each may be the whole world of the most 
 glorious acts of the highest virtues, internal and external, 
 the noblest aspirations which soar in a moment up to 
 the very throne of God. Such, at least, they may be. 
 But they may also fathom the depths of Hell and people 
 the world with foulness and loathsomeness beyond 
 all description. The grandest splendours of Heaven 
 throughout all eternity may be the issue of the 
 workings of a single soul, and the same may alas be 
 said of the lowest degradations of Hell. 
 
 What is required for the production of this glorious 
 
190 The Seed growing of itself, 
 
 result is nothing but the presence of the good Word of 
 God in the soul, and the result of which we are speaking 
 is the issue of the combination of the two forces of the 
 soul of the word. For the soul of man is made for the 
 reception of the eternal truth, as the soil is created for 
 the placing in it of the good seed, and the Word of God 
 is fitted, because it is His Word, for the soul which He 
 has made for it, as, in creating the physical universe, He 
 has fitted the soil for the welcome seed which it has 
 power of making so productive. These are the divinely 
 conjoined elements in the production of the spiritual 
 harvest, the richness of which as far transcends the rich- 
 ness of earthly fields as heaven itself is above earth — the 
 soul, with all its faculties of intelligence and choice on 
 the one hand, and the word by which God addresses 
 Himself to the soul on the other. We have every reason 
 for thinking that the full result of which the Divine 
 culture is capable is seen but in a comparatively small 
 number even of the saints of God, and it is certain that 
 we have but the faintest appreciation, under our present 
 circumstances and with our present power, of the true 
 glories of the spiritual kingdom as far as they exist. But 
 we know enough to be able to understand that no yield 
 of earthly soil, however rich and prolific, can be com- 
 pared with the treasures of spiritual beauty which reward 
 in the Kingdom of Heaven the tender love and fatherly 
 care for souls of the great Householder. But whatever 
 these glories and riches may be, they are nothing but the 
 legitimate issue of the fertilizing power of the Divine word 
 in its abode in the soul, which yields itself to its influ- 
 ence, without let or hindrance. 
 
 What our Lord seems then to wish to tell us is that all 
 this wealth of result is something which transcends the 
 power of the husbandman who casts the seed into the 
 ground. That is, the work of grace and spiritual growth 
 
The Seed g7' owing of itself, 191 
 
 goes on under the good hand of God Himself, as the 
 fructification of the seed in the ground goes on under 
 the influences of natural causes ordained by God. It is 
 not that man has nothing to do with the guidance and 
 continual cultivation of the souls in which the holy seed 
 has been deposited. He may have much to do, but it 
 is a work, in the first place, altogether distinct in itself 
 from that of the first implanting of the word, and it is a 
 work, in the second place, the whole power of which is 
 in the hands of God. He it is that giveth the increase, 
 though it may have been Paul who planted and Apollo 
 who watered. And here too also He may speak 
 historically, and He may have had in His mind the 
 thousand instances in which the soul which has caught 
 the good seed into itself, is left altogether independent 
 of further teaching, but is nevertheless enabled to 
 develope the fruitfulness of the word by the silent action 
 of grace. For there is no Word of God which has not 
 in itself this fertilizing and multiplying power, no particle 
 of Divine truth which has not an intrinsic affinity with all 
 that is good in the soul into which it falls, which has not 
 the intrinsic power, not to be checked except by some 
 positive hindrance, of awakening the soul into pro- 
 ductiveness and fertility. Nor is there any soul of man 
 which has proceeded from the hand of the great Father 
 and Creator of souls, which has not been gifted by Him 
 with the forces and faculties which are necessary for the 
 unfolding in itself of the whole beautiful series of the 
 Christian virtues, when it has once been touched by the 
 gentle and life-giving presence of ' the engrafted word,' 
 to use the beautiful expression of St. James,^ who may 
 have had in his mind as he used it this very parable of 
 his Lord and Master. The doctrine which is here 
 implied is that the immense fruitfulness of the spiritual 
 
 5 St. James i. 21. 
 
192 The Seed growing of itself. 
 
 life, as it is seen in the case of the saints of God, is not 
 anything in itself extraordinary, in the sense that it 
 requires special and unusual treatment on His part in 
 favour of those whom He so much loves, but that it is 
 the natural and legitimate result of the combination and 
 conjunction of the powers of the Divine seed on the one 
 hand, and of the powers of the soul on the other, under 
 the influence of His grace. Grace is to them what the 
 atmosphere and the sunshine and the genial rains are to 
 the grain cast into the earth and to the earth itself 
 
 Thus, when we read of the power of the Word of God 
 in its greatest manifestations, as in the effect of the 
 Divine word in the conversion of large bodies of men at 
 the preaching of the great Apostolic saints of the Middle 
 Ages, or again, when we read of the fruitfulness of some 
 single truth in the heart of one of the servants of God, 
 as in the cases of St. Antony of Egypt or of St. Francis 
 of Assisi, or of the effect of the thought of eternity on 
 St. Stanislaus or St. Teresa, and the like, it is not 
 to be supposed that the effects produced could not be 
 produced, without an extraordinary influence of grace, on 
 thousands of other souls, if only there were in them no 
 hindrances to the full reception and welcoming of the 
 word. The reason of the difference between the fruit- 
 fulness of the saints, and the comparative sterility of the 
 word in the case of others, lies rather in the manner in 
 which the word is received in the several cases, than in 
 any diversity in the word itself, or in the powers of the 
 souls to which it is addressed. 
 
 A very important conclusion is involved in these 
 truths. This is, the truth of the immense and unique 
 importance of the preaching and the hearing of the Word 
 of God. This is a truth very much indeed ignored 
 by those who consider that, if they or others say their 
 prayers and frequent the sacraments, they may dispense 
 
The Seed growing of itself. 193 
 
 themselves from attendance on sermons, and other 
 occasions when the Word of God is offered to them 
 in the church, or, again, by those who think that the 
 Christian community can ever be in a flourishing state 
 without the constant and vigorous preaching of the 
 Word of God, even to well-instructed persons. Much 
 more is this truth ignored by others, who would have 
 the ministers of the Gospel desist from preaching the 
 truth on account of the little apparent fruit which 
 results from their labours. Our Lord here describes 
 the process of the fertilization of the soul, and He 
 certainly does not exaggerate the part of the preacher 
 or teacher, for He says he may go his way when his 
 part of the work is done, and leave it to God and 
 His grace to bring about the rest. But He does 
 certainly say that the sowing of the seed is the one 
 essential condition of the fruitfulness of the soul, and He 
 encourages us to hope that fruitfulness will follow, by and 
 bye, even in cases in which there is no present hope 
 of it. Experience teaches us that a word of Scripture, 
 or the saying of some good man, or something heard 
 by chance in a sermon, may lie dormant, so to say, 
 in the mind for years and yet at last wake up, as it 
 were, and bring about a conversion. There is nothing 
 so congenial to the soul of man as the truth of God. 
 On the other hand, if the Christian preacher or minister 
 of the altar holds his tongue, out of shyness or human 
 respect, his forbearance may be of little matter for the 
 moment, because at that particular time the soul of the 
 other may be unfitted to close with the truth which 
 might have been presented to it for acceptance. But 
 it does not follow that he has not done harm which 
 may be immensely mischievous in the future, for the 
 seed might have been taken in, notwithstanding the 
 reluctance of the will at that moment, and the time 
 
 N 7 
 
194 ^^^ Seed growing of itself, 
 
 might have come hereafter when the soul would have 
 been in better dispositions, and when the circumstances 
 of the moment might have urged home the truth with 
 irresistible power. 
 
 St. Paul illustrates this truth when he so strongly urges 
 St. Timothy to ' preach the Word, be instant, in season 
 and out of season, reprove, rebuke, entreat, with all 
 patience, for there shall come a time when they will not 
 endure sound doctrine.'^ As if to say that sound doctrine 
 must be preached when it can, even though it seem 
 to be out of season, because sometimes there will be 
 no opportunity of preaching it at all, and then men 
 will be the better, and have a greater chance of salvation, 
 by having had it preached to them before, even when 
 they have not attended to it. Thus it is a matter of 
 constant experience that men who have been well 
 instructed in their youth, and have afterwards left off 
 the practice of their religion and fallen even into 
 enormous sins, are open to conversion on their death- 
 bed, if God gives them the opportunity. Other sinners, 
 less guilty on account of their want of knowledge, are 
 less within the reach of the influences of grace, as they 
 have to be instructed before they can be converted. 
 And the sects who make it their miserable rule to do 
 all they can to make men live and die without any 
 relations with the Church and her ministrations, show 
 their consciousness of this truth by the diabolical activity 
 they evince, in surrounding the death-beds of their most 
 hardened associates with every possible barrier against 
 the access of the priest or of the sacraments. What 
 they are afraid of is the innate power of the truths of 
 religion, the seed which has been sown in their hearts 
 while yet they were young, and which has never yet 
 been allowed to put forth its life-giving powers. 
 
 7 2 Tim. iv. 2, 3. 
 
The Seed growing of itself, 195 
 
 We find many things in the commentaries of the Fathers 
 and writers of the Church which may well be referred 
 to before we quit the subject of this beautiful parable. 
 We have been speaking of the sower of the seed, as 
 if by him were signified all those who have in any way 
 the office of witnessing to the truth, whether as appointed 
 ministers of the Church, or as having the duty of what 
 has been called Apostolical conversation incumbent on 
 them, or simply as all Christians are bound to advance 
 the knowledge of the law of God in their intercourse 
 with their neighbours, or in their own families. The 
 chief sower, however, in many of the commentaries of 
 the Fathers, is our Lord Himself, and there can be no 
 reason against this interpretation, which does not exclude 
 the truth, that what is said of our Lord, according to 
 the doctrine of this comment, may also be said of those 
 who serve Him in the work of which the parable speaks. 
 In that case our Lord may be said to speak of His 
 own departure to Heaven, leaving the word which He 
 has sown in the world behind Him, to work its way 
 with the hearts of men. But it would be a loss to us 
 if we were to be deprived of the application of the 
 doctrine of this parable to others besides our Lord. 
 Then, again, it could not but be that the Fathers would 
 fasten on the picture, so to call it, which is here drawn 
 of the gradual growth of the seed committed to the 
 ground, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full 
 corn in the ear. It was natural of them to see in this 
 description the three grades or degrees in the spiritual 
 life, that of the beginners, that of the proficient, and 
 that of the perfect. The blade is the tenderest, the ear 
 is stronger than the blade, and the corn in the ear is 
 the perfection and complete growth of which the seed 
 is capable. Others tell us that the blade signifies those 
 who by faith and fear give up evil things, the ear those 
 
196 The Seed growing of itself , 
 
 who rise higher and higher by love of eternal things, 
 and the corn in the ear represents those who are perfect 
 and full-grown in charity. Or again, as S. Gregory says, 
 good desires are the casting of the seed into the earth, 
 the beginning of good works is the blade, proficiency 
 in them is the ear, and perfection in them is the full 
 corn. And once more, they see in this gradual growth, 
 as described by our Lord, a warning against the im- 
 prudence which aims at doing everything at once, and 
 at working the works of the higher stages of the spiritual 
 life, before we have made ourselves familiar with those 
 which belong to the lower. 
 
 There is yet another manner of understanding this 
 parable and its application which has much to recom- 
 mend it, on account of its position in the series of these 
 first parables descriptive of the Kingdom of God. 
 According to this method of interpretation, our Lord 
 has before His mind, not so much the working of the 
 Divine seed of the Word of God in soul after soul, 
 individually, as the progress and accomplishment of the 
 great work of the Church in the world as a power and a 
 kingdom. This interpretation begins by supposing that 
 our Lord Himself is the Sower in the first instance, and 
 that He goes away, as is said in the parable, and leaves 
 the seed to work of itself. Not that our Lord is ever 
 absent from the Church, for He has promised to be 
 with her even to the consummation of the world, but 
 that His visible presence is withdrawn, and He leaves 
 the work which He Himself began, to be carried on and 
 perfected by others, under His own continual guidance 
 and protection. And then, at the end of time, He is 
 to come again. * When the fruit is brought forth, im- 
 mediately He putteth in the sickle, because the harvest 
 is come.' These last words have not so plain a meaning 
 in those interpretations of the parable in which the 
 
The Seed growing of itself. 197 
 
 sower is the minister of the word or the ordinary 
 Christian, for with them, in many cases, the harvest 
 never comes in this world, and it is the principle of 
 the Kingdom, so to say, as our Lord has expressed it 
 elsewhere, that one soweth and another reapeth. The 
 word of truth or grace which is sown by one comes 
 up at last to be gathered in as it were by another, when 
 the first labourer is in his grave. It is not of course 
 impossible to explain the reaping in that sense of which 
 the former interpretations are the result. For the words 
 may be understood of the evangelical preacher or 
 labourer, who continues the work he has begun, by 
 receiving the sinner to penance, or the converted un- 
 believer to baptism, or the heretic to the unity of the 
 Church, or the dying man to the full privileges of the 
 Christian death-bed. And our Lord's words may be 
 an expression of the joy of heart of such as have this 
 blessing, of seeing at last, after many labours and long 
 delays, the fruit of all their toil. 
 
 But the words seem most naturally to refer to that 
 accomplishment of the work of the Divine Word in the 
 world at large, which will be the occasion for the Second 
 Coming of the Son of God, when the number of the 
 elect is accomplished and the truth has been witnessed 
 to over the whole world, when every nation has had its 
 trial, and the full course of the great counsel of God 
 with the human race has worked itself out. Then at 
 last will the harvest be, the last persecution will be over, 
 the evil one finally conquered, the regeneration of all 
 things at hand, the creation itself to share in the glori- 
 fication of the Sons of God in soul and body, in the 
 new heavens and the new earth in which justice dwells. 
 And in this sense the parable before us forms the best 
 possible introduction to the others which immediately 
 follow it, in which the Kingdom of Heaven is described, 
 
198 The Parable of the Mustard Seed. 
 
 first as a grain of mustard seed cast into the ground, 
 which grows up and becomes a great tree and spreads 
 out its branches for the fowls of the air to take shelter 
 in, and in which the progress of the Kingdom to so 
 high a state of external magnificence and influence is 
 described. And then the same progress is compared 
 to the gradual leavening of a large mass of meal with a 
 small quantity of leaven. In this way our Lord first of 
 all, in the present parable, describes the patient growth 
 of the Church until the harvest. Then He speaks of its. 
 visible magnificence and imposing presence in the world,, 
 under the image of the mustard seed, and lastly of the 
 method of its assimilation to itself of the society inta 
 which it was sent forth, under the image of the leaven. 
 
 CHAPTER XH. 
 
 The Parable of the Mustard Seed. 
 
 St. Matt, xiii. 31, 32 ; St. Mark iv. 30 — 32 ; Vita Vitce Nostrce, § 60^ 
 
 The two parables which follow in order on that of the 
 seed growing of itself, are so placed by the two first 
 Evangelists, who alone relate them, as to make it appear 
 that they were delivered, if not at the same time, at least 
 to the same audience, as those which have been already 
 examined by us. For the account of them is followed 
 by the declaration of the Evangelists that our Lord 
 spoke these things and other things to the people in 
 parables as they were able to bear them, and that with- 
 out parables He did not speak to them. There are 
 yet, as we shall see, three others, which belong to this 
 time, but as to which we are not told that they were 
 
The Parable of the Mustard Seed. 199 
 
 uttered to the people, and are rather led to think that 
 they were addressed to the disciples only. Our present 
 business is with the first of the two, as to which it is 
 undoubted that they were addressed to the multitudes. 
 
 ' Another parable He proposed to them, and He said,, 
 to what shall we liken the Kingdom of Heaven? and 
 to what parable shall we compare it? It is like to a 
 grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed 
 in his field, which when it is in the earth, is less than 
 all the seeds that are in the earth, the least of all seeds,- 
 and when it is grown, it groweth up and becometh 
 greater than all herbs, and becometh a tree, and 
 shooteth out great branches, so that the birds of the 
 air come and dwell in the branches under the shadow 
 thereof.' 
 
 The points of the comparison are easily seized. The 
 seed sown is very small, chiefly in comparison with the 
 bulk which it attains, for there may be other seeds 
 actually not larger than that which is spoken of. It 
 grows up to a size and height quite out of proportion, 
 and becomes, although not a large tree among trees,, 
 still larger than others of the same class to which it 
 belongs, so as to be a tree rather than a herb. It puts out 
 branches, and in these branches and under its shade the 
 birds of the air are content to dwell. Thus this parable 
 may be said, as has been the case with others, to spring 
 out of the preceding parable. There our Lord had 
 dwelt on the marvellous power of fructification possessed 
 by the seed of corn, when it was once deposited in the 
 ground, a power which it displayed without the labour 
 of the sower, owing it only to its own innate vigour 
 and to the elements in the earth and other circumstances 
 which make it fruitful. Now our Lord passes on to 
 another comparison, and it is no longer the seed of 
 corn that springs up as if the earth brought forth of 
 
200 The Parable of the Mustard Seed. 
 
 itself, first the blade, then the ear, and then the full 
 grain in the ear. Another image is required to set forth 
 the magnitude which is attained by the growth of the 
 spiritual seed, and this image is to be that of a seed 
 which becomes at last nothing less than a tree, larger 
 than the rest of its class, and capable of giving shelter 
 to the fowls of the air. In the former parable the point 
 was that the seed should grow at all by virtue of its own 
 powers, and in this the point is the size and magnitude 
 which it attains and the shelter which it affords. 
 
 The first question raised as to this parable is that 
 which relates to the image here used by our Lord. It 
 is not quite certain that the plant of which He speaks 
 is that which we now call the mustard plant, and which 
 in these countries we are not accustomed to see growing 
 to any great size. It seems of little importance whether 
 we can exactly identify the plant, and there is in the 
 East a plant called Khardal, which is said to resemble 
 mustard in everything, and to be considerably larger in 
 growth. But the most simple explanation seems to be 
 that the plant is what we call mustard, but that in the 
 East, and in other warmer countries than our own, it 
 reaches a much larger size than among ourselves. 
 Maldonatus says that in Spain its branches are used 
 for heating ovens, and that flocks of birds collect in its 
 boughs without breaking them down. There are other 
 similar statements which seem to take away all difficulty 
 as to the interpretation of the image. Our Lord, as has 
 been said, does not choose this particular plant to 
 represent the Church or the Kingdom of Heaven 
 because there are no trees of larger size, but because 
 in this particular case the seed is very small, and the 
 growth very large in comparison. There are plenty of 
 instances in Sacred Scripture in which the image of a 
 tree is applied to a Kingdom, as in the dream of 
 
The Palpable of the Mustard Seed, 201 
 
 Nabuchodonosor, and in the description of the Assyrian 
 Empire in the Book of Ezechiel.^ But the trees there 
 spoken of are larger and more magnificent, and it 
 cannot be doubted that, with these images before Him, 
 our Lord dehberately altered the particulars so as to 
 make His tree a mustard tree. 
 
 It is also asked whether we may consider that the use 
 made of the mustard tree in particular by our Lord is 
 meant to set us considering what are the peculiar 
 qualities of this plant, in contrast to others, and outside 
 the special point of the smallness of the seed in com- 
 parison to the growth. Are we to endeavour to find in 
 them some correspondence with the special characteristics 
 of the Kingdom of Heaven to which it is compared? 
 There are several passages in various Fathers in which 
 this idea is followed out, and it can hardly be fanciful 
 to think that the principle on which these commentaries 
 are founded is legitimate, if not certainly true. Thus 
 the mustard seed is said, in a sermon attributed to 
 St. Ambrose, to be small and of little value, to have 
 no savour or odour which attracts and pleases, to require 
 crushing or pounding before it gives out its taste, and 
 then to show its pungent and biting qualities, to burn 
 and sting like no other plant of the same order, as if 
 a great power of fire had been enclosed in its small 
 compass. In these qualities some of the Christian 
 writers have seen the humility and insignificance, whether 
 of the Gospel teaching itself, or of the means of grace, 
 the powers of the Word, though set forth by humble 
 instruments, and the burning and stinging effects of 
 grace on the soul which receives it into itself, having 
 been accustomed to the softness and unwholesome 
 sweetness of the world, the languor and torpor of 
 sensuaUty, the smooth deceits of the effeminate life, and 
 the like. 
 
 1 Ezechiel xxxi. 3 — 9. 
 
202 The Parable of the Mustard Seed. 
 
 There can be no difficulty in following out this line of 
 interpretation, and there is no reason for thinking that 
 our Lord may not have had the qualities of the mustard 
 seed before His mind, when He spoke this parable. 
 But the main point of the similitude seems to be that 
 of the size and importance to which the mustard plant 
 grows, having begun from so small a seed. Thus it would 
 seem also that our Lord is directly pointing to the 
 space which the Church would fill in the world, or, again, 
 to the manner in which the influences of grace would 
 fill the life of the soul and engross all its energies. 
 The Church itself was, when He left it at His Ascension, 
 but an almost imperceptible germ in the midst of the 
 great human society. Its numbers were very small, its 
 members were altogether without influence, station, 
 repute, and power. An enemy of our Lord, such as 
 Caiaphas or Annas, might have said to himself, within 
 a few days of Pentecost, that the evil seed sown by 
 the Nazarene Prophet had been indeed trampled under 
 foot. Even the beginnings of the Church attracted little 
 notice, at first, from those watchful foes who had brought 
 about the death of our Lord, and it was thought by 
 them sufficient, when their attention was at last aroused, 
 to scourge the Apostles and forbid them to teach in 
 the Name of the Lord. It was in their sight a thing 
 insignificant in itself, and one of which there was no 
 reason to fear the success. It did not appear to have 
 any vitality, or any considerable inherent power of spread- 
 ing itself and gaining a hold on the world. What was 
 there in it to promise anything of the kind ? 
 
 And so also there was nothing about the Church to 
 attract the attention or raise the alarm of the politicians 
 around the throne of the Caesars at Rome. The Par- 
 thians or the Germans or the Dacians on the borders 
 of the Empire, gave them ten times the amount of 
 
The Parable of the Mustard Seed. 203 
 
 anxiety. A revolt of the Gauls or a sedition in Alexandria 
 was far more in their eyes than the preaching and 
 miracles of the whole Apostolic band. The religion, 
 of the Christ was not worth meeting on its own ground, 
 the ground of argument. It was quite sufficient to treat 
 it as a detestable and unreasonable superstition, and 
 drown it in the blood of its fanatical adherents, who 
 were in their proper place as the prey of the wild beasts 
 of the amphitheatre. Even while it was gradually filling 
 the world and conquering silently all the better parts 
 of the pagan society, it was still contemptible. It had 
 no men of mind, no famous rhetoricians, no generals, 
 no claimants to the purple. But at last it came to 
 fill the sky and its greatness could not be questioned, 
 and then the powers of the world and the rulers of the 
 nations began to discover in the Church an influence 
 which might afford a shelter and a sustaining protection 
 for themselves. They began to see how the Church made 
 men the best citizens in this life as well as the heirs 
 of the life to come, how law had no foundation so secure 
 as conscience, how the public service was never so safe 
 as in the hands of those who sought a heavenly kingdom, 
 how all that is good and noble and fruitful, in the natural 
 order, was fostered and developed and magnified and 
 endowed with a new life, by the breath of the Divine 
 Spirit of the Kingdom of the Incarnation, how philosophy 
 became fixed and rooted in immutable and unquestion- 
 able truth, how science received fresh wings to soar to 
 Heaven, and fresh keenness of perception to unlock the 
 treasures and the secrets of nature, how art became 
 heavenly, instead of the reflection of the lower passions, 
 how the world, the inheritance of man, was laid open to 
 him at last to enter and take possession of it, and how 
 the civilization and elevation of the whole race into one 
 great and enlightened brotherhood became no longer an 
 impossible dream. 
 
204 The Parable of the Mustard Seed, 
 
 All these truths are included under those simple words 
 of our Lord, that ' the fowls of the air came to dwell in 
 the branches thereof.' It may well be that the powers of 
 the Church for the enlightenment and elevation of man- 
 kind in the natural order have never as yet been fully 
 developed, and that the future history of the world may 
 proceed on the same lines as that of the last centuries, 
 in which the Church has been losing rather than gaining 
 on the allegiance of the nations, which is the necessary 
 condition of the accomplishment of this work. But 
 our Lord speaks of results that have been fulfilled, 
 though they might have been more gloriously fulfilled 
 than they have been. He does not use the whole 
 glowing language of the evangelical prophet, for in the 
 prophecies of the latter there are more lofty things said 
 concerning the dominion of the Church than are con- 
 tained in the comparatively modest image of the mustard 
 tree. Indeed, this contrast is remarkable between the 
 language of the prophetical passages which our Lord 
 must have had in His mind, as He uses in some 
 particulars the very words of those prophets, and His 
 own humble prediction, for prediction it is, concerning 
 His Kingdom. He seems to tell us that the Church 
 is to be conspicuous for its wonderful growth and also 
 for its protective power. But He does not say that 
 that growth shall fill the whole world, nor that the whole 
 natural order of society shall take refuge under its shade. 
 Ezechiel had said, in describing the ultimate glories of 
 the Church, 'I myself will take of the marrow of the 
 high cedar and will set it ; I will crop off a tender twig 
 from the top of the branches thereof, and I will plant it 
 on a mountain high and eminent. On the high moun- 
 tains of Israel will I plant it, and it shall shoot forth 
 into branches and shall bear fruit and it shall become a 
 great cedar, and all birds shall dwell under it, and every 
 
The Parable of the Mtistard Seed. 205 
 
 fowl shall make its nest under the shadow of the 
 branches thereof.' ^ There is His own humility in the 
 way in which' our Lord has adapted this image to 
 the circumstances of the history of the Church. But, on 
 the other hand, looking back to that history as it has 
 unfolded itself, before angels and men, during nineteen 
 centuries, we cannot fail to be struck with the exactness 
 of the fulfilment of the prediction of our Lord, modified 
 as it is from the more glowing language of His Prophet. 
 
 What is true of the history of the Church in the 
 accomplishment of its work, is also by a kind of 
 necessity true of the working of Divine grace in the 
 single individual soul. It may not only most truly be 
 said, that the unhindered working of grace in any single 
 heart produces immense results, out of all proportion 
 to its beginnings. This may be seen in considering the 
 work of sanctification in a soul such as that of St. Paul 
 or St. Mary Magdalene. It is also true that there is in 
 such cases something which may be considered as an- 
 swering to the result of which our Lord speaks, when He 
 says that the fowls of the air take refuge in the branches 
 of the mustard tree. In itself, the progress of a soul 
 to perfection, as far as that progress can be traced as 
 ordinarily following any general law, is a work and a 
 growth of very great magnitude in the moral and spiritual 
 order. The seed that is first sown is the love of God, 
 or the desire of His grace and friendship in some way 
 or degree, whether it takes the form of a flight from the 
 miseries of the world and of a life of sin, or of that 
 desire of higher things which our Lord wished to arouse 
 in the heart of the rich young man, when He bade him, 
 after keeping the commandments from his youth up, to 
 go and sell what he had and give to the poor and come, 
 follow Him. It is a great thing, that earnest and vigorous 
 2 Ezechiel xvii. 22, 23. 
 
2o6 The Pm^able of the Mustard Seed, 
 
 turning away from past sins in confession and contrition, 
 with which the process of the purgation of the soul is 
 commenced. It is a great thing, that holy self-hatred 
 in which those who are to be led on to perfection fly 
 from the occasions of sin, as St. Peter did when he went 
 out and wept bitterly, and which vents itself in the 
 affliction of the body, as the instrument of sin, in the 
 penances of the saints of which we read so much as the 
 first step in their conversion. This work of satisfaction 
 is a great triumph over nature, the severe poverty, the 
 abandonment of earthly goods, the seeking for contempt, 
 the vengeance on themselves to which they are so often 
 guided. This self-affliction lasts often more or less in 
 various degrees during their whole life, though bodily 
 infirmities, or other causes of prudence, may interfere in 
 regulating its measure. The saints have not only to get 
 rid of their sins and of the penalties of their sins in 
 confession. They have to root out the bad habits which 
 have fastened themselves on the soul as weeds upon the 
 soil of some neglected garden. The long list of the 
 seven deadly sins and their children, as they are called 
 by spiritual writers, remains for perfect extirpation and 
 conquest, evil roots ever ready to spring up, the moment 
 the watchfulness of self-discipline is relaxed. Then 
 comes the equally long and arduous process of the 
 subjugation of the affections and passions, the con- 
 cupiscent and irascible principles in the soul, which 
 are not to be exterminated like the seeds of vice, but 
 to be reduced to proper order and rule, so as to be useful 
 under the guidance of mortification, until the firm peace 
 of the interior kingdom is established. 
 
 This peace requires the long, but the blessed and happy 
 labour, of the planting in of the Christian virtues after 
 the example of our Lord, humility, the contempt of the 
 world, human honour and glory, the willing subjection 
 
The Parable of the Mustard Seed, 207 
 
 of themselves to others, obedience, ready to undertake 
 any toils and exertions which may be enjoined upon it, 
 the abnegation of self-^vill and judgment, the love of 
 suffering, patience, readiness under contumely, joy in 
 adversity and humiliation after the pattern of Christ in 
 His Passion, the perfect practice of purity, the banishing 
 of sensual images and thoughts from the soul, which 
 is gradually taken possession of even as to its imagi- 
 nations and fancies by the spirit of holy devotion, and 
 the representations which belong to it. This region of 
 the virtues is a glorious world, into which the love of 
 God and of perfection leads the soul. And it soon 
 becomes aware that there is nothing which can put it 
 in possession of this new Kingdom but the life of prayer, 
 as the same life is also the surest weapon for the con- 
 quest of the passions and the acquisition of interior 
 peace. 
 
 A soul thus occupied by the spirit of prayer is raised, 
 in one sense, to a heavenly life. But in another the world 
 is laid open to it as a matter of study and anxiety, 
 because it becomes sensible of the vast range covered 
 by the interests of God and the work of our Lord in 
 the world around it. Contemplation opens to such a 
 soul the miseries of the world, the whole series of the 
 Life and actions of our Lord, the beauties of the souls 
 of His Blessed Mother and of the Saints, the benefits 
 by which God has enriched His creatures, the Divine 
 perfections, and the mysteries hidden in the Sacred 
 Scriptures. Such a soul is moved to weep over the 
 blindness of men, the miseries and calamities of which 
 sin is the parent, its own daily defects and past offences. 
 It is kindled with fresh desire for virtue, it learns the 
 power of the intercession of our Blessed Lady and of 
 the Saints of God, it rejoices in the union with God 
 which it is already allowed to attain, it pours itself out 
 
2o8 The Parable of the Mustard Seed. 
 
 in prayer for the conversion of sinners and unbelievers, 
 and the exaltation of the Name of God. It finds a 
 holy joy in the perfection with which that Name is 
 already honoured by the good, it melts in praise of His 
 majesty and glory, it closes more and more entirely 
 with His will in all things regarding itself and others, 
 and becomes more and more altogether one with Him. 
 
 A soul that has learnt to live in prayer, after passing 
 through the stages already enumerated, is indeed a plant, 
 in the garden of the Lord, of marvellous growth and 
 magnificence. It may require the eye of Heaven to 
 discern all its beauties, and so far it may not perfectly 
 answer to the image which is here used by our Lord, 
 which seems to be in the main an image of external 
 growth. But the development of the holy seed in it 
 completely corresponds to the v/ords of the parable. 
 The mind is pure, if not from all slight; defects, at least 
 from wilful and serious irregularities. The casting away of 
 temporal things is complete, for the heart is filled with 
 the untold treasures of the spiritual world, and to such 
 a heart there is no room for the love of the things of this 
 world. The appetites are reduced to peace under the rule 
 of charity. The tongue has been tamed to perfect circum- 
 spection. The thoughts are well-ordered, all pure and 
 clean, not simply from the foul images and desires of the 
 lowest appetites, but even from all that is idle and vain, 
 frivolous and inordinate, unworthy of the eye of God. 
 The desires are indeed impatient with a holy impatience, 
 longing for the works and the services of the children of 
 God with an eagerness which surpasses in intensity and 
 force the ambition of the worldling, the craving for greed 
 of the avaricious, the sensual yearnings of the voluptuary, 
 and the baneful desires of revenge which torment the hearts 
 in which hatreds and animosities reign. In such souls as 
 these all the works are beautiful, not only in aim and 
 
The Parable of the Micstai^d Seed. 209 
 
 intention, in substance and in character, but in com- 
 pleteness and integrity, in the absence of all flaw and 
 inattention and wavering or uncertainty of purpose, of 
 all self-complacency or vanity to mar them after they are 
 accomplished. In such souls, moreover, there is not 
 only the robust activity which issues in the whole range 
 of virtues, as opportunity for exertion is afforded. There is 
 also the patient endurance of adversity and hardship, the 
 joy in tribulation and trial, the constancy in the midst of 
 the fires of temptation, which mark the consummate per- 
 fection of the imitators of our Lord. In them indeed 
 the grain of mustard seed, to revert to the original image 
 used in this parable, reveals its qualities when crushed 
 and beaten down. Such men 'possess their souls in 
 patience,' as our Lord elsewhere says, and their gentle- 
 ness and sweetness are most fully manifested under the 
 sharp trials of persecution, and the perpetual friction of 
 the imperfections of those among whom they live. 
 
 It is needless to speak of the other internal perfections 
 which grow out of the full work of grace in these perfect 
 souls, the manner in which their charity binds all their 
 faculties to a continual occupation on their one best 
 object, that is on God, how their will is so united to 
 His as to be moved by it as the Umbs of the body are 
 moved by the soul, how they are, in the sense in which 
 the Apostle speaks, transformed into God, nailed together 
 with Christ to the Cross, so that not they live, but Christ 
 liveth in them. But these thoughts are enough to show 
 how large and powerful and fruitful is the growth of grace 
 in the faithful soul, which opposes no hindrance to the 
 work of God within it. It indeed becomes a great tree, 
 and fills the wide heaven of the soul in which God has 
 chosen to dwell. And, if we are to seek, in this applica- 
 tion also of the parable, for something which may answer 
 to the latter part of our Lord's description, when He 
 o 7 
 
2IO The Parable of the Mtistard Seed. 
 
 rsays that the birds of the air come and make their nests 
 in the branches of this blessed tree, we may find this in 
 a twofold consideration. In the first place, the process 
 ^of sanctification and of growth in perfection of which 
 we have been speaking, affects indeed directly the 
 •spiritual faculties and the moral life of the soul, but 
 it has also its most precious though indirect effects on 
 the intellectual and mental faculties also. It perfects 
 the will, it developes the mind, it regulates and trains 
 the imagination to flights and achievements for which 
 it would otherwise have no capacity. The whole man 
 is ennobled and elevated, he is more truly a man, made 
 after the image of God. Just as vice degrades and 
 enfeebles and endarkens and lowers and makes childish, 
 even the men who are most wonderfully gifted with 
 intellectual endowments, so does union with God and 
 the constant presence of His grace, acting on the soul, 
 raise men above the tottering and stammering and 
 dreamy and purposeless imbecility in which the life of 
 worldliness and pleasure consists. That life has its 
 cruel and malignant side, for it is essentially the wor-* 
 ship of self. But, measured by an intellectual standard 
 only, it is the life of the lower animals led by beings 
 who are the heirs of His Heavenly Kingdom, and yet 
 who never rise to the level of their gifts and destinies, 
 .any more than the children who die in the cradle, or the 
 idiots who grin and chatter throughout a life, long in 
 years, which yet can never be truly called a life. 
 
 And again, in another sense, there is a grand result of 
 the growth of perfection in a single soul which benefits 
 others, and which therefore may be considered as a 
 fulfilment of this part of our Lord's parable. For no 
 one is good and virtuous and holy and perfect in his 
 union with God and in the ripe maturity of His spiritual 
 gifts, who is not of immense service to all around him. 
 
The Parable of the Leaven. 211 
 
 The interior peace and light and strength of these pure 
 souls fall on those who come across them, in patience, 
 and meekness, and charity, in wise and holy counsels, 
 in bright examples, breathing courage and hope on all 
 who see them, and in the power of a lifelong prayer. 
 The saints are the true supports of the world, the guides 
 of the ignorant, the beacons of the wanderer, the comfort 
 of the lonely and broken hearted. Their wisdom leads 
 the Church in her. pilgrimage, their prayers are the 
 strength and the light of the champions of the faith. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The Parable of the Leaven. 
 
 St. Matt. xiii. 33 ; Vita Vitce Nostrce, § 60. 
 
 The two parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven, 
 which appear to have been the last of this series which 
 were delivered to the people by our Lord, are supple- 
 mentary the one to the other. It seems as if our Lord 
 had intended to set forth two great truths concerning 
 His Church, the Kingdom of the Incarnation, and the 
 working of the Gospel grace in the world, and had 
 chosen two separate images, one for each of these great 
 truths. We have already spoken of the Parable of the 
 Mustard Seed. Although that parable admits of more 
 than one interpretation, it seems most directly intended 
 to foreshadow the large space which the Church was to 
 occupy in the world, the extent of her dominion, and 
 the large range of her influence over things which do 
 not exactly belong to or form part of her. An image of 
 this kind might be applied to any large visible kingdom 
 
212 The Paj^able of the Leaven. 
 
 or institution in the world. It might be applied to an 
 empire such as that of Rome or England, it might be 
 applied to the religion of Mahomet or of Buddha. But 
 there was something pecuhar to the Gospel kingdom 
 which was not to be found in any other, and which could 
 not be so well expressed in the image of the grain of 
 mustard seed. This is the assimilating and transforming 
 power of the Gospel truths, which work within the minds 
 and hearts of those who receive them, to such an extent 
 as to make this interior process the characteristic means 
 by which the Church was to attain her great power and 
 influence in the world. This was something altogether 
 different from the growth of a small seed into a large 
 tree. Many important truths concerning the Gospel 
 were folded up in this figure, and our Lord therefore 
 subjoins it immediately to the other, contained in the 
 Parable of the Mustard Seed. 
 
 * Another parable He spoke to them. The Kingdom 
 of Heaven is like to leaven, which a woman took and 
 hid in three measures of meal, until the whole was 
 leavened.' The image here set forth is one of the 
 change of a large mass, without any external alteration 
 in its shape or form, and without the application to it 
 of any power from without. The meal remains meal, 
 but it has been penetrated by a new influence, which 
 has affected every particle of it. Nothing has been 
 destroyed, nothing has been removed, no new element 
 has been introduced which constitutes a fresh and inde- 
 pendent substance or portion. The leaven is in the 
 whole mass, and in every atom of it. It has been 
 absorbed, or it has changed the quality of every part 
 to which it has penetrated, and it has penetrated the 
 whole. It has lost, so to say, its independent existence, 
 and in exchange for that it has qualified all around it. 
 
 It is natural that the Christian commentators should 
 
The Parable of the Leaven. 213 
 
 have found particular applications for every single word 
 of this short parable. A man takes the mustard seed, 
 and plants it in his garden. A woman takes the leaven, 
 and hides it in three measures of meal. Each sex there- 
 fore has its share in the work of God in the Gospel 
 kingdom. The woman is either our Blessed Lady or 
 the Church, or the preaching of the Word. Our Lord, 
 or the knowledge of our Lord, is the leaven. Our Lord 
 is full of the fervour of charity, He is burning with the 
 desire of drawing all to Himself, especially those who 
 labour and are heavily burthened, He has filled the 
 whole earth with His knowledge. He has raised our 
 nature to Heaven, He has drawn the hearts of men 
 from earthly things to things celestial, from perishable 
 goods to eternal, and so He has made us pleasant and 
 tasteful to God, whereas we had before been like the 
 accursed dust which the serpent was condemned to eat. 
 We are capable of pleasing God by our faith, of gaining 
 His commendation by our works, and by the same 
 earning from Him eternal rewards. Our Blessed Lady 
 was the first to receive this Divine leaven, and in this 
 she was prefigured by Sara, to whom Abraham said, 
 when he received the visit of the Angels, ' Make haste, 
 temper together three measures of flour, and make cakes 
 upon the hearth. '^ First in her heart, and then in her 
 pure womb, she received this leaven. The Divine Word, 
 the Soul of Jesus, and His Body were there commingled 
 or united. St. Bernard may give us a specimen of this 
 method of application. * Here you have,' he says, ' three 
 kinds of power. That which was not, is created, that is, 
 the soul. That which had perished, was repaired, that 
 is, the flesh. That which is above all, is made a little 
 lower than the Angels. These are the three measures 
 of meal in the Gospel which are leavened that they may 
 
 1 Gen. xviii. 6. 
 
214 The Parable of the Leaveii, 
 
 become the bread of Angels, of which man may eat^ 
 the bread that strengtheneth man's heart. Happy that 
 woman, blessed among women, in whose chaste womb 
 this bread is prepared, the fire of the Holy Ghost coming 
 upon her. Happy, I say, that woman, who into these 
 three measures of meal hath put the leaven of her faith, 
 since by faith she conceived, by faith she brought forth.' ^ 
 Then again, we are told of the spread of this leaven. 
 Our Blessed Lady was first of all leavened, and then she 
 sped at once into the mountain parts of Judaea, that 
 St. John Baptist and his parents, Zachary and EHsabeth, 
 might be leavened also. The voice of her salutation 
 filled them ^vith the Holy Ghost, and made them pro- 
 phets. Then St. John began to collect disciples, and by 
 preaching and baptism to prepare them for Christ. Then 
 our Lord drew to Himself the Apostles, by means of 
 whom He leavened the whole world. 
 
 Other Fathers draw out this point, of the communica- 
 tion of the leavening power to those who are already 
 themselves leavened. St Ambrose tells us that whoever 
 has joined himself to the leaven of Christ, becomes 
 leaven himself, not only useful to himself, but profitable 
 to all. He is secure of his own salvation, and also that he 
 will gain others. But this must be at a certain cost. The 
 leaven that is to be spread throughout the mass of meal 
 must be as it were broken, crushed, scattered, and must 
 lose its own cohesion, in order that it may bind into one 
 mass the whole quantity of meal, make it into one body, 
 having been before only a heap of particles, without body 
 or solidity. So also our Lord, Who is the leaven of the 
 world, is broken, torn, and crushed to pieces by various 
 sufferings. His Blood is shed that it may be the cause 
 of the binding together of the whole race of men into 
 one, whereas before that there was no cohesion between 
 2 St, Bern. Serm, dc tribus mixturis. 
 
The Parable of the Leaven, 215 
 
 them. Something of the same kind must happen to all 
 who are to be, in their turn, leaven to others. Thus the 
 Apostles, who became the leaven of the world after the 
 Day of Pentecost, were a few unknown, persecuted, 
 afflicted men, who yet had the power, by the sacrifice of 
 themselves, to raise men from earthly to heavenly things^ 
 and make them acceptable to God. 
 
 To others the woman is the Divine Wisdom by^ 
 which the whole dispensation of the Gospel Kingdom 
 is arranged. The three measures of meal are the three 
 continents known to antiquity, or the three races of 
 men descended from the sons of Noe, or the three Laws,, 
 the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Evangelical, in alt 
 of which it was possible to gain and use profitably the 
 grace of God. The chief point of the parable seems to 
 lie, not in the circumstances of the application of the 
 leaven, but in the manner itself in which the leaven^ 
 works, and in the effects which it produces. This image 
 first of all teaches us that the action of grace, whether in. 
 the individual soul or in society, is nothing violent^ 
 nothing destructive, nothing subversive. Grace finds^ 
 so to say, a congenial soil in the soul of man, and it 
 does not eject or cut down any part of our nature. In 
 the action of the Church on society the same truth is. 
 remarkably evident. The Church takes human nature 
 and human society as she finds them. In their origin 
 both are divine works, and there is no essential element 
 in them that is bad. The Church takes the family, the 
 community, the State, and qualifies them by her own 
 divine power for the ends for which they were originally 
 established. So it was historically. She worked from 
 within, using personal influence and example and com- 
 munication as her great human instruments, rather than- 
 preaching to large masses, which was impossible, or the 
 power of literature, in which she had few very great 
 
2 1 6 The Parable of the Leaven. 
 
 champions in the earlier centuries. The same process 
 is always going on in the gaining of souls to God, 
 whether it be to a higher life, a more perfect observance 
 of the precepts, the embracing of the Evangelical coun- 
 sels, or, again, the conversion of heretics and schismatics 
 and unbelievers. 
 
 The natural principle, therefore, on which all action 
 of this kind rests, is the similarity or congeniality be- 
 tween the influence or the person which acts as leaven, 
 and the substance or the person on which it so acts. 
 No amount of such influence can make a substance into 
 another substance altogether different, as a stone into 
 bread, or wood into flesh. The leaven fastens on that 
 which is kindred to itself and so open to its influence. 
 Thus the Church has never conquered a nation or a 
 community, as it were, from without. She has gathered 
 up all the fragments of truth that were scattered over 
 the world, disengaged them from the coating or setting 
 of error in which they were imbedded, brought them 
 together, arranged them in harmony, and so she has 
 given life to each particle and to the whole system in 
 which they have naturally coalesced under her benign 
 influence. In the application of this principle of her 
 action, which is so beauitifully illustrated by some of 
 her early writers, who had to deal with the heathen 
 systems of religion, philosophy, and social life, lies the 
 secret of the success of the ApostoUcal work, especially 
 that part of it which is devoted to the reduction of 
 heretics and the conversion of nations who have never 
 before heard of the Church. In all false systems — and 
 every soul of man with whom the Apostolical worker has 
 to deal has a system, so to call it, of his own — in all 
 such systems there is a grain of truth, probably many- 
 large fragments. There is a point in the intellectual road 
 up to which the false system simply follows the true, 
 
The Parable of the Leaveii. 217 
 
 and after which it diverges from it. The process of 
 persuasion must begin from this point, and when men's 
 faces are once set in the right direction instead of the 
 wrong, the path of error is left farther and farther 
 aside as the onward march proceeds. The whole of 
 the doctrine taught by the most prudent and experienced 
 saints for the reclaiming of sinners by persuasion, is 
 summed up for us by our Lord Himself in a few words 
 in this Parable of the Leaven. There we have the most 
 perfect picture, in all the series of these parables, of the 
 power of personal contact and intercourse, and of the- 
 manner in which our opportunities of these are to be 
 made profitable, by fastening on what is already good 
 and true in the souls of those who are in error, or in 
 rebellion against the law of God. 
 
 It is curious, as has been noticed by some writers, 
 that the image of leaven is often used in Scripture for 
 something bad, rather than for something good. These 
 writers, some of whom have been enemies of the Church, 
 have seen in this parable a kind of prophecy of the 
 many evils which, as they suppose, have been introduced 
 into her system, ending, in the opinion of these heretics, 
 in the entire corruption of her body. If it were necessary 
 to refute such strange doctrines, an answer to them 
 would be found in the words of our Lord, Who is 
 speaking here also of the Kingdom of God. But the 
 truth is that the image of the leaven is in itself one 
 capable of a twofold interpretation, for it may express 
 the manner in which either truth or evil, either what 
 is good or what is bad, may be propagated and spread. 
 Besides this, the image had a peculiar significance to the 
 holy people, on account of the injunction to put away 
 all leaven at the time of the great feast of the Pasch, 
 in commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt, an in- 
 junction which was always observed, and which was 
 
2 1 8 The Parable of the Leaven, 
 
 connected with a special ceremony in every household 
 at the time when the Paschal Supper was celebrated. 
 With regard to the image itself, it is quite clear that 
 evil as well as good may be communicated in this way, 
 although there is a sense in which it may be said that 
 evil and falsehood are never congenial to the human 
 soul and mind, in the same way that goodness and truth 
 are congenial thereto. All evil and all falsehood are 
 perversions, distortions, corruptions, and such things 
 have not the natural force of consistent and systematic 
 growth. But, as a matter of experience, the evil which 
 follows from contact with evil is as rapid and extensive 
 in its propagation, as the good which is communicated by 
 the intercourse with the good. 
 
 We have the authority of our Lord and St. Paul for 
 this use of the image, and we may consider their use of 
 it in an evil sense as conveying to ourselves a salutary 
 warning. There are three leavens mentioned by our 
 Lord, against which, at various times. He warned, not 
 the people only, but also the Apostles. Not long after 
 the delivery of these parables, He warned the disciples 
 to take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees 
 and Sadducees. In the account of the same incident 
 in St. Mark, it is said that He mentioned the leaven 
 of Herod. At a later period of His preaching, St. Luke 
 tells us, that when great multitudes stood about Him, 
 so that they stood one upon another, He began to say to 
 His disciples, beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, 
 which is hypocrisy.^ Here we have three kinds of 
 evil, one of which is interpreted to us by our Lord as 
 hypocrisy. That was the leaven of the Pharisees, a 
 leaven to which the teachers of any religion are liable, 
 especially when the people flock to their ministrations. 
 This leaven begins to work, as soon as ever our practice 
 3 St. Matt. xvi. 6 ; St. Mark viii. 15 ; St. Luke xii. r. 
 
The Palpable of the Leaven. 219 
 
 becomes inconsistent with our profession, as soon as 
 ever our acts of religion become devoid of the spirit 
 which ought to animate them. This is, in truth, a leaven, 
 a mischief which gradually spreads over the whole Hfe, 
 destroying prayer, piety, devotion, energy in good, 
 hopefulness, trust in, and familiarity with, God, and 
 opening the door to every vice, according to the temp- 
 tations to which any soul may be exposed. There 
 may have been a possibility of this leaven beginning to 
 work, even among the Apostles, at the time when our 
 Lord warned them. And if it was so with them, how 
 can any one, however deeply engaged in the service of 
 God, hope to be free from it? 
 
 The other leavens our Lord does not name, but by 
 characterizing them as the leavens of Herod and of 
 the Sadducees, He seems to point to the danger of 
 worldliness in the one case, and of self-indulgence and 
 sensuality in the other. The leaven begins by small 
 encroachments in every case, and it had probably 
 already begun to work in the soul of Judas, one of the 
 Apostolic band, who was nevertheless infected with that 
 amount of worldiness which is involved in fondness for 
 money. This vice may be concealed under the most 
 holy appearances, and it may begin by the simple but 
 excessive eagerness for money for good works, or the 
 maintenance of those who are working for God. 
 Worldliness is always accompanied by selfishness, and 
 thus the latter, in the most subtle forms, is a sure sign 
 of the presence of the former in the soul. Thus we 
 often see persons who are engaged in good works, active 
 and unscrupulous in outrunning and outwitting others 
 who are similarly occupied. There is not merely an 
 honourable emulation in the service of God. There is 
 a positive ambition to be first and to stand forward as 
 the most successful in the public eye. Then, to secure 
 
2 20 The Parable of the Leaven. 
 
 this kind of success, that men may obtain for themselves 
 the best opportunities of distinction, and the Hke, there 
 is often a pettiness and a meanness in scheming for such 
 objects of which even worldlings would be ashamed, and 
 which they are very quick in detecting when those who 
 profess not to be worldlings are so foolish as to use 
 them. Indeed, worldliness in the sanctuary is one of 
 the greatest evils that can infect the Church, a mischief 
 which may often work more fatally than some grosser 
 sins. This may be considered as the leaven of Herod. 
 
 It remains to say a few words on what our Lord may 
 have meant by the leaven of the Sadducees. The 
 Sadducees were the materiaUsts of their day, the men 
 who cut down the range of certain truths to the lowest 
 possible standards. Their doctrines led them, as it 
 seems, directly to a disregard of the sanctions of the 
 moral law, by destroying the entire belief in the future 
 existence of the soul, or indeed, in its existence inde- 
 pendently of the body. But it must not be supposed 
 that the Sadducees made any open profession of these 
 consequences of their own principles. For such a pro- 
 fession would have ruined their credit in the eyes of the 
 people. But it is most likely that their lives were in 
 accordance with their opinions, and if these did not lead 
 them to an open disregard of the moral law and of 
 conscience, at all events they must have opposed a very 
 feeble barrier against practical self-indulgence, and the 
 indolent pursuit of comfort and ease of every kind that 
 was not reprobated by public opinion. It is not easy 
 to see how any Christians can hold the opinions of the 
 Sadducees. But it is a matter of daily experience that 
 many lives may be practically guided by principles no 
 higher than theirs, as soon as the habit and spirit of 
 prayer have died away. If our Lord thought it well to 
 warn the Apostles against this leaven also, it cannot 
 
The Parable of the Leaven. 221 
 
 be supposed that it is a light danger, or a danger 
 which can only assail men of very little faith. When 
 St. Paul used this image to the Corinthians, he was 
 remonstrating with them most severely upon their toler- 
 ation of open, excessive, and enormous license in the 
 matter of impurity. 'Know you not,' he said, 'that 
 a little leaven corrupteth the whole lump? Purge out 
 the old leaven, that you may be a new paste, as you 
 are unleavened.' ^ This is enough to show that there 
 may be a great danger of the spread of this last-named 
 leaven, even among Christians. And this danger may 
 be particularly rife in ages of luxury, refinement, material 
 progress, when ancient severity is laid aside, even by 
 those who very frequently approach the sacraments, and 
 the prevalence of a certain kind of culture serves as a 
 disguise for a large amount of softness and effeminacy. 
 Constant efforts are now made, in the most Christian 
 countries in the world, to bring back the state of social 
 corruption in the midst of which the Corinthians lived, 
 and from which they had just been dragged by their 
 great Apostle. These efforts are most forcibly aided by 
 the prevalence of sceptical and material views in philo- 
 sophy and religion. To say this is almost the same 
 thing as to say that we live in a society in which the 
 leaven of the Sadducees is actively at work. 
 
 * I Cor. V. 6, 7. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 TJie Parables of Asaph. 
 
 St. Matt. xiii. 35 ; Vita VifcB NostrcE, § 60. 
 
 This parable of the Leaven seems to have been the last 
 which our Lord, on this occasion, dehvered to the people. 
 St. Matthew, whose Gospel, as has already been said, is 
 the fullest of all in relating this kind of teaching, adds, 
 at this point, a statement about our Lord's method, 
 which he, the Evangelist, as is so usual with him, 
 illustrates from the Old Testament, ^AU these things 
 Jesus spake to the multitudes in parables, and without 
 parables He did not speak to them, that it might be 
 fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will 
 open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden 
 from the foundation of the world." Thus St. Matthew 
 finds, in the adoption of this form of teaching by our 
 Lord in His dealings with the multitude, another trait of 
 that resemblance to the picture of the promised Messias 
 which had been drawn by the prophets of the Old 
 Testament. He sees here also a fulfilment of prophecy. 
 It is therefore interesting to examine the particular 
 passage to which he refers, for the purpose of comparing 
 the anticipation with the fulfilment. 
 
 At first sight the fulfilment adduced by the Evangelist 
 seems to rest mainly on the use of the word parable in 
 the passage which he quotes. The passage is not from 
 the prophetical books in the strictest sense, but from the 
 Psalms, so many of which are full of predictions con- 
 
The Parables of Asaph. 223 
 
 cerning our Lord. The words do not occur, however, 
 in any of the Psalms which are commonly considered as 
 prophetic. They occur at the opening of the long and 
 very beautiful Psalm of Asaph, the seventy-seventh in 
 the whole collection. This psalm forms part of the 
 series of what are called the Asaphic psalms, which make 
 up the greater part of the third book into which the 
 whole collection is divided. They may not all be the 
 production of Asaph himself, who was a contemporary 
 of David, for he left a school or choir behind him, and 
 the spirit of the psalms which he himself wrote may have 
 been taken up by members of this choir at later periods 
 of the history, when events occurred of import similar 
 to that of those events which he commemorated. The 
 distinguishing character of these psalms of Asaph is that 
 they dwell on the Providence of God over His people, 
 whether in chastisement or in protection. They are not 
 personal psalms, like so many of those of David. The 
 earliest of these psalms, in the order in which we now 
 possess them, is that which is the forty-ninth in the 
 Vulgate. It is a ^salm describing "the judgments of God 
 in general, though probably not without reference to the 
 circumstances of the day in which it was written. This 
 is in the second book of psalms. The third book opens 
 with a mournful psalm, the seventy-second of our col- 
 lection, in which the author describes himself as sorely 
 tempted against faith in Providence, on account of the 
 prosperity of the wicked. It may perhaps have been 
 written by Asaph during and after the short-lived triumph 
 of Absalom. The next in the series describes the 
 destruction of the Temple by the Chaldeans, and must 
 therefore have been simply prophetic, if it was written 
 by Asaph himself, but not so if it is the composition of 
 a later author. Then follows a short psalm of triumph 
 for the overthrow of the proud enemies of God, and 
 
2 24 The Parables of Asaph, 
 
 this may have been occasioned by the famous overthrow 
 of the Assyrians in the time of Ezechias. This seems 
 certainly to be the subject of the next in order, the 
 seventy-fifth of the Vulgate. The next of these psalms 
 is directly historical, the writer finding comfort, under 
 the afflictions of the people in his own days, by the 
 record of the great doings of God for them in the 
 deliverance from the Egyptians. ' Thy way is in the sea 
 and thy paths in many waters, and thy footsteps shall 
 not be known. Thou hast conducted Thy people like 
 sheep, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.' 
 
 Thus we are led on to the great psalm from which 
 St. Matthew quotes the words on which we are engaged, 
 which carries on the history to its second great point, 
 the elevation of David and of the tribe of Judah in his 
 person. Thus the psalm embraces the whole second 
 period of the history of the people as a nation, the 
 period of the predominance of the tribe of Ephraim, 
 when the Tabernacle was at Silo, the predominance 
 which was afterwards to some extent restored by the 
 revolt of the ten tribes under Jeroboam from the house 
 of David. But there is a special strain of reproach in 
 this psalm, which recounts not only the manner in which 
 God had had mercy on His people time after time, but 
 also how He had been again and again rewarded by 
 their apostasy or rebellion. This strain may have been 
 in the mind of the EvangeUst when he spoke of the 
 chastisement of the people of Galilee, by the comparative 
 withdrawal of the full light of the Gospel teaching, at 
 the point of time when the parabolic form of teaching 
 was exclusively followed by our Lord in His addresses 
 to them. 
 
 With this thought in our minds, we shall find it very 
 interesting to follow the various * movements,' so to 
 speak, of which the psalm, like some wonderful piece 
 
The Parables of Asaph. 225 
 
 of sacred music, is made up. The purport of the whole 
 psalm, as has been said, is to reproach the people with 
 their continual ingratitude to the favours of God, and 
 to show also how God has, over and over again, borne 
 with them with exceeding patience, and overcome, so 
 to say, their evil by His own ineffable and inexhaustible 
 mercy. The psalm begins by declaring how God had 
 decreed that His dealings with His people should be 
 remembered and handed on from generation to genera- 
 tion, * that they may put their hope in God and may not 
 forget the works of God, and may seek His command- 
 ments. That they may not become like their fathers, 
 a perverse and exasperating generation, a generation that 
 set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not 
 faithful to God. They kept not the covenant of God, 
 and in His Law they would not walk, and they forgot 
 His benefits, and His wonders that He had shown 
 them.' 
 
 Asaph then relates the marvels of their deliverance 
 from Egypt, the Exodus, their guidance by God in the 
 desert, the water given them out of the rock, and the 
 rest. Then again comes in the refrain, 'They added 
 yet more sin against Him, they provoked the Most High 
 to wrath in the place without waters.' He speaks of 
 their murmuring against God for their want of food. 
 God was angry with them, but still He provided for 
 them. ' He had commanded the clouds from above, 
 and had opened the doors of heaven, and had rained 
 down manna upon them to eat, and had given them the 
 bread of heaven. Man eat the bread of angels, He sent 
 them provisions in abundance.' He mentions also the 
 quails which were sent for their food, and their subse- 
 quent rebellion. ' As yet the meat was in their mouths, 
 and the wrath of God came upon them. In all these 
 things they sinned still, and believed not for His 
 p 7 
 
2 26 The Parables of Asaph. 
 
 wondrous works, and their days were consumed in 
 vanity, and their years in haste.' But their chastise- 
 ments brought them to repentance. 'When He slew 
 them, then they sought Him, and they returned, and 
 came to Him early in the morning, and they remembered 
 that God was their helper, and the Most High God their 
 Redeemer.' But still it was a hollow, or at least not 
 a lasting repentance. 'They loved Him with their 
 mouths, and with their tongues they lied unto Him, but 
 their heart was not right with Him, nor were they 
 counted faithful in His covenant.' 
 
 Nevertheless, Asaph continues, God was again merci- 
 ful. 'He is merciful, and will forgive their sins, and 
 will not destroy them. . . He remembered that they 
 are flesh, a wind that goeth and returneth not. How 
 often did they provoke Him in the desert, and move 
 Him to wrath in the place without water?' Then the 
 Psalmist goes back again to the wonders of the deliver- 
 ance from Egypt, and of the chastisements of God on 
 the enemies of His people. He goes on to the mercies 
 shown in their introduction into the promised land. 
 * He brought them into the mountain of His sanctuary, 
 the mountain which His right hand had purchased. And 
 He cast out the Gentiles before them, and by lot divided 
 to them their land by a line of distribution, and He 
 made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tabernacles.' 
 But still they behaved with Him as before. ' Yet they 
 tempted and provoked the Most High God, and they 
 kept not His testimonies. . .' The long series of their 
 infidelities, up to the time of their enslavement to the 
 Philistines, from which they were delivered by Samuel, 
 Saul, and David, is passed over in a few mournful verses. 
 'He put away the tabernacle of Silo, the tabernacle 
 where He dwelt among men, and He delivered their 
 strength into captivity, and their beauty into the hands 
 
The Parables of Asaph. 227 
 
 of the enemy. . .' But after this there was again a 
 return of His mercy. 'The Lord was awaked as one 
 out of sleep, and Hke a mighty man that hath been 
 surfeited with wine.' The psalm ends with recording 
 the choice now made by God of Juda instead of 
 Ephraim, Jerusalem instead of Silo, '• the tabernacle of 
 Joseph,' and of David instead of Saul. 
 
 Thus we find that the passage quoted by St. Matthew 
 as containing a prophecy of the adoption of the para- 
 bolic method by our Lord in His teaching, refers us to 
 the whole subject of the dealings of God with His 
 people, and more especially to that part of those dealings 
 which consisted in His chastisement of them for their 
 perversity, and the continual returns of His mercy. It is 
 enough, perhaps, for the explanation of St. Matthew's 
 use of the words which he quotes, that they speak of 
 parables and deep sayings, things 'hidden from the 
 foundation of the world.' For St. Matthew is so keen 
 in his perception of the anticipations of the New Testa- 
 ment which are to be found in the Old, that the mere 
 words of Asaph in the psalm before us would be enough 
 to arrest his attention. Still, it is not straining the 
 meaning of Scripture too far to see in the words of the 
 Evangelist something deeper than this. It is the method 
 of St. Matthew, as we have seen more than once, to 
 point to whole contexts of Scripture by the citation of a 
 few words from those contexts. If we ask ourselves 
 what are the parables which Asaph pours forth in the 
 great psalm of which we are speaking, we can find no 
 better answer than this — that they are contained in the 
 dealings of God with His people, which have a signifi- 
 cance beyond that of simple historical narrative, inas- 
 much as they are in themselves the representations and 
 exemplifications of great principles which regulate the 
 whole course of His action towards those whom He 
 
228 The Parables of Asaph. 
 
 chooses to favour. He was acting on these principles 
 in the very matter before us, of the withdrawing from 
 the people of the full light of our Lord's teaching, and 
 the parables now delivered were in themselves the ex- 
 position of many of these principles. 
 
 We have the authority of St. Paul for this interpreta- 
 tion of the Scripture history, and St. Paul may be taken 
 as representing the best school of prophetical interpreta- 
 tion among the doctors of Jerusalem in the time of our 
 Lord. St. Paul uses the history of the chosen people, 
 in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, in this way, for 
 the purpose of warning the new Christians against pro- 
 voking God as the Israelites of old had provoked Him. 
 'I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our 
 fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through 
 the sea, and all in Moses were baptized in the cloud and 
 in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual food, and 
 all drank the same spiritual drink, and they drank of 
 the spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock 
 was Christ' Here is a spiritual interpretation of those 
 marvels of which so much is said in the beautiful Psalm 
 of Asaph. The Apostle continues, ' But with the most 
 of them God was not well pleased, for they were over- 
 thrown in the desert' This is the other strain, so to 
 speak, of the same Psalm. ' Now these things were 
 done in a figure of us, that we should not covet evil 
 things, as they also coveted. Neither become ye 
 idolaters, as some of them . . . neither let us commit 
 fornication, as some of them committed fornication, and 
 there fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither 
 let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted, and 
 perished by the serpents. Neither do you murmur, as 
 some of them murmured, and were destroyed by the 
 destroyer. Now all these things happened to them in 
 a figure, and they are written for our correction, upon 
 
The Parables of Asaph. 229 
 
 whom the ends of the world are come.'^ There is con- 
 siderable correspondence between the actual events 
 selected by Asaph and those selected by St. Paul. But 
 the most important point is the principle of interpretation 
 adopted by the Apostle, which is like that which he uses 
 in his Epistle to the Galatians in the famous comparison 
 of Sara and Agar to the two covenants. ^ But if we may 
 suppose that the Psalmist meant to point to this repre- 
 sentative and typical character of the events on which he 
 was to dwell, by the words which he uses at the opening 
 of his poem — for a most beautiful poem it is — we are 
 able to see in St. Matthew's application of his words, a 
 fresh and a deeper meaning. 
 
 The great subject of the psalm, as has been said, is 
 the manner in which God deals with His people, cor- 
 recting them, chastising them, and then again forgiving 
 them and defending them. The psalm ends with the 
 introduction of David, to whom the guidance of the 
 people is committed. ' He chose His servant David, 
 and took him from the flocks of sheep. He brought 
 him from following the ewes great with young, to feed 
 Jacob His servant, and Israel His inheritance. And he 
 fed them in the innocence of his heart, and conducted 
 them by the skilfulness of his hands.' David, especially 
 in his kingly character, and, it may be added, especially 
 in the character of a good shepherd of the people of 
 God, is a type of our Lord and of those who represent 
 Him, in successive generations, as the pastors of the 
 universal Church. This would be enough to attract the 
 attentive devotion of a mind like St. Matthew's. But it 
 may be said without straining, that the subject-matter of 
 this series of parables, taken as a whole, is much the 
 same as that which, if we follow the line of interpretation 
 suggested by St. Paul, is suggested by the series of 
 1 I Cor. X. I— II. 2 GaL iv. 
 
230 The Parables of Asaph. 
 
 historical events in the Psalm of Asaph. The only- 
 difference between the two is the difference naturally 
 caused by the different spirit of the two covenants. The 
 scattering broadcast the seed of the Word, the patience 
 with which so many failures are tolerated, caused by the 
 perverseness of thqse to whom the Word is addressed, 
 the permission of evil even in the kingdom of the 
 Church, the chastisements which in the New Covenant 
 are so constantly deferred till the end of the world 
 instead of being at once inflicted, the marvellous con- 
 stancy of God in bringing about His work as instanced 
 in the two last parables, represent to us what we may 
 call an Evangelical version of those very rules of conduct 
 on the part of God which are instanced, in a more severe 
 exemplification, in the narrative of Asaph. The chas- 
 tisement which is inflicted on the people of Galilee is 
 not anything that can be compared in external severity 
 to the miseries which were allow^ed to fall on the 
 Israelites of old, and yet, in truth, it is something more 
 terrible, because it is a spiritual chastisement. It is the 
 captivity of sin and darkness, the withdrawal of light, 
 the handing them over to enemies more savage and 
 relentless than Egyptians or Philistines. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Parables of the Treasure a?id the Pearl. 
 
 St. Matt. xiii. 44 — ^46 ; Vita Vitce Nostrce, § 62. 
 
 Two things might have been expected, in the case of 
 the paraboHc teaching of our Lord. The first of these 
 would be that, after having proposed His parables to 
 the people, in the presence of His disciples, He should 
 explain to the latter, as far as He deemed it necessary,, 
 that meaning of the instructions which was more or less 
 veiled from His ordinary hearers. He did not do this- 
 in all cases, as far as we can gather from the Evangelists. 
 It was more in accordance with His usual method with 
 souls, that He should furnish the Apostles with just 
 sufficient guidance as to the meaning of particular 
 parables, and as to the general principles in accordance 
 with which they were to be interpreted. He always left 
 a great deal to the process of consideration, reflection, 
 meditation, the comparison of one truth and one state- 
 ment with other truths and other statements. This 
 process was always going on in the minds of His atten- 
 tive and faithful followers, who were thus led on by 
 the silent teaching of His Father. They were students 
 in His school, not simply hearers and learners, and He 
 preferred, as He always prefers, this method for the 
 mastering of the truths which it is His desire to see 
 deeply rooted in souls. This was the process by which 
 our Blessed Lady was ever more and more illuminated, 
 although to her the mysteries and the truths of her 
 
232 The Parables of the Treasure 
 
 kingdom must have been made manifest with the utmost 
 freedom and largeness of revelation. There is much 
 that is analogous to this in the gradual unfolding of the 
 treasures of doctrine which our Lord committed, once 
 for all, to His Church. He has preferred that their 
 fuller exposition, according to the needs of successive 
 generations, should be the work of the Christian Doctorate 
 under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, rather than that 
 every single detail and item should have been written 
 down from the beginning. The office of the Holy Ghost, 
 the everliving authority of the Church, the ministrations 
 of the different orders of her heaven-gifted children and 
 servants, are thus provided for in His Kingdom. We 
 have already noted that our Lord did not give even 
 those explanations of the parables which we possess, 
 without expressing some surprise, almost some disap- 
 pointment, that the Apostles had not, of themselves, 
 penetrated His meaning. We may suppose that these 
 blessed companions of His gathered so much light from 
 the explanations of the Parables of the Sower and of 
 the Cockle, as to be easily able to understand the 
 remaining parables without special explanation. 
 
 Another thing which we might expect to find in the 
 Gospel accounts of this great series of instructions, would 
 be that there were certain points of doctrine thus con- 
 veyed, which might be addressed to the Apostles alone, 
 and not also to the people. In any system of Divine 
 truth such as that conveyed in the parables of the first 
 series, it is natural to expect that there should be some 
 truths altogether reserved for a time, as well as some 
 truths set forth to the multitude in a manner which 
 would render them intelligible only to the studious and 
 diligent hearers. It is not, therefore, surprising, if we 
 find that the three last parables of the series before us, 
 of which it now remains to speak, seem not to have 
 
and the Pearl, 233 
 
 been delivered to the people at all, but only to the 
 Apostles. 'The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a 
 treasure hid in a field, which a man having found, hid 
 it, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he 
 hath, and buyeth that field. Again, the Kingdom of 
 Heaven is like to a merchant, seeking good pearls. 
 Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went 
 his way, and sold all that he had, and bought it.' ' Again, 
 the Kingdom of Heaven is like to a net cast into the 
 sea, and gathering together of all kind of fishes, which, 
 when it was filled, they drew out, and sitting by the 
 shore, they chose out the good into vessels, but the bad 
 they cast out. So shall it be at the end of the world. 
 The Angels shall go out, and shall separate the wicked 
 from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace 
 of fire : there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' 
 We may reserve this last of the three parables for another 
 chapter, and devote the present chapter to the considera- 
 tion of the parables of the Treasure and the Pearl. These 
 two parables have so much in common, that it may be 
 well to take them together. There is a difference, 
 indeed a kind of contrast, between them on one or two 
 points, but the similarity is greater than the difference, 
 and the subject-matter of each is the same. 
 
 Before, however, we examine the parables in them- 
 selves, it may be well to point out the manner in which 
 they are contrasted to the series which had preceded 
 them. In the former parables, then, the work of God 
 in the Church, in the preaching of the Word, in the 
 spreading of the truth throughout the world, in the 
 conversion and sanctification of the individual soul, had 
 been spoken of as an enterprise or undertaking pro- 
 ceeding according to the usual laws of nature. As to 
 the recipients of the word or the seed, the process seems 
 almost impersonal. We know that in the case of those 
 
234 ^'^^ Parables of the Treasure 
 
 who are like the seed by the wayside, or Hke the seed 
 cast on stony ground, or in the midst of thorns, or 
 again, of those who are as the cockle, the result of fruit- 
 fulness or sterility does actually depend very mainly on 
 the will and choice of each single soul. Those who 
 are as the seed on the good soil, those who are the 
 growth of the good seed in the midst of which the cockle 
 is oversown, are what they are by their own faithful 
 cooperation with the grace of God and the opportunities 
 afforded to them by His Providence. Yet the des- 
 criptions in the parables almost ignore this truth. Our 
 Lord is more intent on tracing the action of His Father 
 and Himself. In the same way, He speaks of the seed 
 springing up of itself while men sleep. He speaks of 
 the grain of mustard seed sown in the field, and of the 
 leaven put into the measures of meal by the woman. 
 Not much has hitherto been said of the human side in 
 the good growth, of the readiness or eagerness to hear, 
 of the desires of grace, the thirst for peace with God, 
 the burning fire of longing for the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 Nothing has even been said of that hunger and thirst for 
 our salvation and beatification which was the moving 
 power of His own Life, nothing of the love of God for 
 souls which made Him give His only-begotten Son that 
 whosoever believe in Him may not perish, but have 
 everlasting life. We are told indeed of the prospect 
 of the harvest in the case of the householder in the 
 Parable of the Cockle, and of the time when the sickle 
 is put forth in the Parable of the Seed. But this other 
 side of the picture is now made the prominent feature, 
 and this constitutes the main point of contrast between 
 these and the former parables. 
 
 The Kingdom of Heaven, in these two parables, is 
 represented as the motive of great sacrifices, whether on 
 the part of the man who has found the treasure, or of 
 
and the PearL 235 
 
 him who has found the one valuable pearl. It may 
 indeed, be doubted, whether in the language in which 
 our Lord spoke, the words would not go beyond the 
 more limited meaning of the Greek, in which, if it be 
 strictly taken, the Kingdom of Heaven is first likened 
 to the treasure, and not to the finder of the treasure, and 
 then not to the pearl, but to the merchant. It seems 
 more easy and more accurate to understand the words 
 as a simple declaration, that in the Kingdom of Heaven 
 certain things take place, which resemble, in the first 
 place, the action of the finder of the treasure, and in the 
 second place, the action of the finder of the pearl. So 
 it seems to be in other comparisons of our Lord, as 
 when He said to Nicodemus, ' The Spirit breatheth 
 where He will, and thou hearest His voice, but thou 
 knowest not whence He cometh, or whither He goeth, 
 so is every one who is born of the Spirit.' ^ He did not 
 mean that every one born of the Spirit had these qualities^ 
 but that that was what took place whenever any one was 
 bom of the Spirit. And, in the next parable, when He 
 says * the Kingdom of God is like to a net cast into the 
 sea,' He means, in like manner, that there shall be in 
 the Kingdom something which is faithfully represented 
 by the incidents which follow when the net is drawn to 
 shore. If this is so, it is not so much here that the 
 Kingdom is the treasure or the pearl or the finder or 
 the merchant, but that it is a Kingdom in which the 
 greatest and most absolute sacrifices are joyfully made 
 for the sake of that good which is found without being 
 sought, or found after being sought. This is the chief 
 new point, then, in the instruction, that the Kingdom of 
 Heaven is a Kingdom of immense sacrifices for the 
 acquisition of immense treasures. There is that in this 
 Kingdom which answers to the treasure and the pearl 
 
 1 St, John iii. 8. 
 
236 The Parables of the Treasure 
 
 in value, but more than that, there is that in this 
 Kingdom which is fitly represented by that appreciation 
 of the treasure and of the pearl which leads to the 
 parting with everything for the sake of their possession. 
 
 If this be taken as the principal point of these two 
 parables, it is easy to see that a very wide range of 
 application is laid open to us. In many respects the 
 principal agent in the earlier parables is God Himself, 
 or our Lord, and it seems natural, in the first instance, 
 to carry on the same line of interpretation, and to con- 
 sider that here also there is conveyed to us a repre- 
 sentation of that infinite and ineffable love of God for 
 the human soul, which brought about the whole con- 
 descension of the Incarnation, and all its consequences, 
 in time and in eternity. For God so loved the world 
 as to give His only-begotten Son for it, as we are told 
 in the discourse of our Lord with Nicodemus. And 
 our Lord so loved the human soul as to give for its 
 purchase the whole that He had, for He sacrificed His 
 own most beautiful life, His Sacred Humanity, which 
 was destroyed on the Cross, for the purchase of that 
 which He so highly appreciated. It is not difficult to 
 carry out this interpretation into detail. The treasure 
 hid in the field may be considered as the soul of man 
 encased in the corruptible body, or as the Church of 
 the elect hidden in the mass of the human race, and 
 the like. This treasure is hidden by Him Who finds 
 it, for God leaves things as they are to outward appear- 
 ance. His Kingdom, in many respects, is an internal 
 Kingdom, and the whole action of His mercy, by which 
 the redemption of the world was brought about, was 
 quiet and unostentatious, such as to escape the eyes of 
 the world itself, and to deceive, by its humility and 
 lowliness, and weakness, the inveterate and most watch- 
 ful malice of the enemies of God and man. And again, 
 
and the Pearl, 237 
 
 our Lord hid the Church in the world of human society, 
 He left it as a very small germ indeed, which the power- 
 ful and learned of the world could hardly think worthy 
 of notice, and yet He made Himself, notwithstanding, 
 master of all by means of it. 
 
 These are some of the appHcations of this line of 
 interpretation, which are common to both of these 
 parables, and we need not strain ourselves to find in 
 them something answering to the distinction between 
 the two images. In the first it is represented to us as 
 if the finder of the treasure came on it unawares, without 
 being on the search for it, while in the second parable 
 he is represented as seeking for pearls and at last finding 
 one of conspicuous value. In the first parable the 
 merchant buys not only the treasure, but the whole field 
 containing the treasure, in the second he buys only the 
 pearl which he desires to become possessed of. Are 
 there any truths in the purchase of our poor race by 
 God and our Lord, which correspond to these details 
 in the images which He uses ? We may suppose that, 
 in the first place, the treasure is not desired so much 
 for itself, for gold and silver are not in themselves 
 capable of giving us half the satisfaction and enjoyment 
 which they are capable in other ways of purchasing for 
 us. Their great value lies in this, that they are the 
 commodities by means of which we are put in possession 
 of anything, whatever it may be that we desire. We 
 cannot clothe ourselves with them, or feed upon them, 
 nor will they heal our diseases, or alleviate pain, or be 
 to us luxuries and comforts or enjoyments in themselves. 
 They do all these things for us, on account of their 
 value as the current medium of society, and if that were 
 not so, they would be utterly useless to us, at least far 
 less useful to us than iron or stone or wood. Now there 
 is something answering to this in the value of human 
 
238 The Parables of the Treasu7^e 
 
 nature, in the eyes of God. It was not in itself any- 
 thing very great and supremely valuable in His creation, 
 certainly it was not so noble in itself as the Angelic 
 nature. But it was, in the first place, the one creature 
 which He had made that belonged to both the two 
 different kingdoms into which creation had been divided 
 by Him, the visible and the invisible, the spiritual and 
 the material. Thus, if He conceived the design of 
 infinite condescension, of taking to Himself the creation 
 which He had made by means of His own union with 
 it, the human nature alone of all presented itself to Him 
 as the central point, so to say, in which both creations 
 met, and which therefore might enable Him to unite 
 Himself to the whole, by uniting Himself to it. 
 
 Again, this may be said to be something like a dis- 
 covery or finding on the part of God. For the act and 
 decree of Creation is something distinct from the further 
 decree and act of the union of Himself with Creation, 
 something not involved in the former act, something 
 which arose out of the contemplation of the capacities of 
 human nature, in the way of which we have been speak- 
 ing. Thus, in the Scriptural account of the Creation, 
 as we have it in the opening chapters of Genesis, it is 
 represented to us as if the formation of Eve out of the 
 side of Adam was a second thought, as if it had been 
 occasioned by the fact that Adam had no companion, 
 and that it was not well for him to be alone. In this 
 way the act of God in choosing human nature for the 
 point at which He would ally Himself with the whole 
 of His Creation, may be represented to us in the parable 
 of which we are speaking by the detail of the man 
 finding a treasure in a field, and then for the sake of 
 the treasure purchasing the whole field in which it was 
 contained. And if we go on further in the history of 
 this immense condescension of God, we find other 
 
and the Pearl, 239 
 
 details which answer to something in the parable. For 
 our Lord has purchased to Himself again the whole 
 creation, by virtue of His Incarnation. For even the 
 material universe is to share in the regeneration, which 
 is to be the fruit of the manifestation of the sons of God. 
 Again, He has purchased to Himself the whole human 
 race, although the Church of His elect will not comprise 
 the whole race of Adam. All things that He does are 
 for the sake of the elect, but these are the few, rather 
 than the many among the children of men. Thus, in 
 the first parable He is not represented as seeking all that 
 He buys, as is the case in the second. For He seeks 
 primarily, and in the first instance, only those who are 
 to be His throughout eternity, although in another sense 
 it is most true that He seeks all. For He has paid the 
 price for all. He has opened the blessings of salvation 
 to all, and He most sincerely desires that all should be 
 partakers of those blessings. 
 
 But, in the second of these parables, the details are 
 varied, and yet it is as easy to see great truths concerning 
 our Lord's love for the human soul in this, as in the 
 former parable. In the first place, here it is a merchant 
 seeking precious pearls, and not one who comes, as it 
 were, unexpectedly, on a treasure of which he at once 
 appreciates the value, and sacrifices everything to be- 
 come its owner. That indeed is done, in this image 
 also, but here our Lord seeks in the first instance what 
 He finds. That which He seeks, then, is that which 
 He purchases, neither more nor less, and what is it that 
 He becomes the possessor of, except the soul of man, 
 cleansed from all imperfection, and made glorious and 
 radiant by His grace, in His eternal Kingdom ? What 
 is it but that Church, of which St. Paul speaks, when he 
 says, that * Christ loved it, and delivered Himself up for 
 it, that He might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of 
 
240 The Parables of the Treasure 
 
 water, in the word of life, that He might present it to 
 Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, 
 or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without 
 blemish ?'i For as the Apostle says, the Lord knoweth 
 those who are His, and in the contemplations of the 
 Sacred Heart, as well as in the Divine foreknowledge, 
 these are the jewels which give to Him perfect delight, 
 as far as He can receive such from anything outside 
 Himself And our Lord had all the souls of His 
 elect, as well as each single soul, most clearly in His 
 mind and Heart in the moment of His great sacrifice, 
 when He gave all that He had to purchase each, not all 
 in a mass, but one by one. And if He delighted to 
 sacrifice Himself for all the race, even for the souls of 
 those who He foreknew would not correspond to His 
 grace, it was a special joy to Him to think of the souls 
 that were to be His treasures throughout all eternity, by 
 means of their own cooperation to the work which He 
 was doing for them. And the soul of one single saint 
 is a far more precious possession to Him, than many 
 souls of others who do not love Him so much. 
 
 The most usual interpretation of these parables, how- 
 ever, is certainly that in which the treasure or the pearl 
 that is found, represents something spiritual which men 
 like ourselves find or seek, and then acquire at the price 
 of all that they have. The spiritual good may be vari- 
 ously considered, whether as the faith, or the grace of 
 God, or the knowledge of our Lord, or the salvation of 
 the soul, or the religious vocation, or the practice of 
 prayer and familiarity with God, or perfection, or any 
 other great treasure of the same kind. In truth, it is not 
 so much one particular spiritual blessing which our Lord 
 seems to wish to set before us, as the object of the 
 utmost desire, and so of the greatest sacrifice. It is 
 1 Ephes. V, 25—27. 
 
and the Pearl. 241 
 
 rather that He seems to tell us that, for whatever it may 
 be that is the one thing necessary for us, whether in the 
 way of salvation or in the way of perfection, we must be 
 ready to give all we have, and make whatever sacrifice 
 may be required, if we are to be fit for the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. But He represents it as found by some without 
 seeking, and as sought by others before it is found. For 
 there is, in the Providence of God, each of these ways 
 by which spiritual goods are to be acquired. To some 
 they are not present as objects of desire before they are 
 found, and yet they are at once secured by some great 
 sacrifice. And on the other hand, there are many who 
 have to seek long, and with great perseverance, before 
 they have the blessing of finding them. 
 
 Thus the faith of Christ was, as it were, suddenly 
 found by St-. Paul, and by others, such as the blessed 
 martyr, St. Justin, it was sought for before it was found. 
 In the history of conversions to the faith, and in that of 
 vocations to religious life, or to the practices of perfec- 
 tion, there is constantly this variety in the dealings of 
 God with the souls whom He wishes to make His own. 
 Some find the truth like a treasure that suddenly appears 
 before their feet, while they are thinking of something 
 else, and others have to spend long laborious years in 
 trying, first this and then that, and finding no satisfaction, 
 until at last they come on that which is meant for them 
 in the counsels of God. There are all these differences 
 in the manner in which different souls come to the know- 
 ledge of that which it is the will of God for them to do, 
 whether, for example, in embracing the faith, which they 
 had not before, or in serving Him in the religious voca- 
 tion, instead of in the world, or in the single state rather 
 than in married fife, or in the dedication of themselves 
 entirely to the practice of prayer or of some particular 
 kind of good work, as missionary labour, or labour in 
 Q 7 
 
242 The Parables of the Treasure 
 
 the instruction of the young or the ignorant, or such a 
 calling as that of St. Benedict Joseph Labre, or any 
 other. These differences are represented in the parables 
 by the different antecedents, of the finder of the treasure, 
 and of the finder of the pearl. 
 
 But again, on the other hand, there is no difference at 
 all in the condition which is set forth in the parable 
 before us, namely, that the good, when found, must be 
 purchased at the cost of all. To some this law involves 
 the acquirement of something more than the thing itself, 
 which is contained in it, as when a man has to join the 
 visible body of the Catholic Church as the means of 
 gaining the faith and the grace of God, or to enter 
 religion for the sake of living in continence, or to acquire 
 a great amount of human learning, in order to teach the 
 ignorant, or to guide souls to perfection. In such cases 
 the parable of the treasure hidden in the field has its 
 application, while in others it is the precious pearl alone 
 which has to be acquired at the cost of all, as when men 
 already in the true fold are called to perfection, or souls 
 already pledged to our Lord in religious life are called to 
 the life of prayer. In these cases, and in others like 
 them, the price must be paid. And surely we may under- 
 stand our Lord here also as prophesying what shall be in 
 the Church. We may suppose Him to mean that His 
 Kingdom is to be one in which these great sacrifices are 
 to be common and continual. And thus, putting together 
 these two lines of interpretation, that which refers the 
 search and the sacrifice to God, and that which refers 
 them to men, we have a complete picture of one great 
 characteristic of the Kingdom. It is one in which God 
 gives immensely, and, to speak in human language, 
 makes great sacrifices, for the sake of gaining the human 
 soul, or the Catholic Church, or the race of man, one in 
 which, on the other hand, the blessed infection of sacri- 
 
and the Pearl, 243 
 
 fice spreads, far and wide, among those who are the 
 objects of this love of God. They too are able by His 
 grace to give their all willingly and heroically for the 
 sake of His boons, or promise to accomplish His will in 
 themselves, to gain some great spiritual good. Thus the 
 Apostles, when our Lord asked whether they could drink 
 His chalice, said boldly, We can. And there is no hint 
 in either of these parables that the sacrifices thus made 
 are ever repented of, or that perseverance and constancy 
 are ever lacking in those who have once begun the life of 
 entire service to God which has been shown to be so 
 precious. 
 
 Indeed, the parables themselves help us, in some 
 measure, even here. For if we ask ourselves, in conclu- 
 sion, how we are to secure this blessed gift of persever- 
 ance, how to prevent ourselves from ever retracting our 
 sacrifices, and thus casting away our pearl or losing our 
 treasure, the answer seems to be conveyed in a consider- 
 ation arising from the parables themselves. The man 
 who finds the treasure, and the merchant who seeks the 
 pearl, begin by having a right estimate of the value of 
 that for which they give so much. It is the appreciation 
 of the value of their purchase that makes their conduct 
 reasonable, and the same appreciation which prevents 
 them from ever regretting what they have done in 
 making the purchase. In the case of any of the spiritual 
 treasures which have been purchased by the sacrifices 
 which we have to make, it can only be by the dying out 
 in our minds of the sense of the value of these blessings, 
 of the value of salvation, or of perfection, or of the life 
 of prayer, and so of other things, that we can lose our 
 fervour and become so unreasonable as to cast our pur- 
 chase away. It is a well-known characteristic of spiritual 
 goods, that they do not pall on the appetite of those 
 who have them. That is what always happens in the good 
 
2 44 ^^^- Treastire and the Pearl. 
 
 things of this world. They are objects of great desire 
 while they are not yet attained, but when they have been 
 attained they are found to weary the heart instead of 
 satisfying it. They are not the goods for which we are 
 made, nor are they made to give satisfaction to the needs 
 and desires of our nature. But spiritual goods are so 
 made, and we are made for them, and so it is that the 
 more they are known, the more they are desired, and the 
 more they are possessed, the more hungry we become 
 after them. And thus, even the silence of these parables 
 as to any wearying of the purchaser of the treasure or 
 the pearl, may not be without a Divine meaning. For it 
 may be intended to show us, that, fickle and inconstant 
 as we are, and surrounded by temptations, we shall still 
 never regret the ventures we have had to make in giving 
 ourselves most entirely to God. For the goods which 
 are won by those ventures will be in themselves the 
 constant cause of ever greater delight and satisfaction to 
 those who have so purchased them. And, finally, the 
 simple consideration of this truth suggests to us the 
 means which we are to use to keep alive in ourselves 
 the fervour which first led us to any sacrifices we have 
 made. The continual contemplation and recollection 
 of the preciousness of our treasure or our pearl should 
 be enough for this purpose. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The Pafable of the Seine. 
 
 St. Matt. xiv. 47—50 ; Vita Vita; Nostrce, § 62. 
 
 The parables of which we have hitherto spoken formed, 
 no doubt, in the intention of our Lord, a great chain or 
 series of truths, full of importance both to the preachers 
 and teachers of the Gospel, and also to those to whom 
 their ministrations are addressed. If we cannot hope to 
 penetrate to the depths of the Divine meanings which 
 are contained in this succession of teachings, we may at 
 least feel that, by means of the interpretations of some of 
 the parables by our Lord Himself, and further, by the 
 light thrown on the rest by those interpretations, and by 
 the commentaries of the Christian writers, we have been 
 able to gain a considerable insight into the lessons which 
 we are intended to learn from them. The series begins 
 with the account of the various fortunes of the Divine 
 seed of the Word in various hearts, and the difference is, 
 in the first place, attributed to the dispositions and 
 characters and circumstances of various classes of hearers. 
 These are explained carefully by our Lord, and the 
 explanations convey to us warnings, of the greatest 
 importance, against those several things which are named 
 by Him as hindrances, either to the successful sowing of 
 the seed, or at least to its perfect growth. But that first 
 parable left out of consideration, except in one instance, 
 the action of the evil one on the field which is cultivated 
 by the ministers of the Word, and it gave no account, 
 
246 The Parable of the Seme. 
 
 moreover, of any growth in the field except that of the 
 good seed, whether partially or fully fruitful. 
 
 In the second parable, this other element is added by 
 our Lord, and we are told of the activity of the devil, 
 not only in hindering the reception of the Word of God, 
 but also in oversowing his own evil seed in the same 
 field, an evil seed which grows up, and manifests itself by 
 the side of the good growth. This parable contains 
 another most important lesson, for it tells us that it is the 
 rule of God's action not to proceed at once to the extir- 
 pation of all that is evil, whether in doctrine or in morals, 
 in the field of the world and of the Church, and it bids 
 us consider the extreme gentleness and forbearance with 
 which He waits for the evil seed to become, perhaps, the 
 good, and so spares it from destruction for the sake of 
 the good seed by its side. The third of these parables 
 illustrates the Divine power of the seed once sown, a 
 power of fructification and prolific growth, to know of 
 which is the greatest possible consolation to the evange- 
 lical labourer, who does not at once see the fruit of his 
 many toils. It is 'Paul that planteth,' as the Apostle 
 says, *and Apollo that watereth, but it is God that 
 giveth the increase.' But there are two elements in the 
 growth of the Divine seed which require separate expla- 
 nation, and these are the subjects of the next two 
 parables. In the Parable of the Mustard Seed our Lord 
 describes the magnificent outward development of the 
 seed, whether in the individual soul, or in the world at 
 large, in the growth of virtues and good works which 
 present a great show, even to the outward eye, and in 
 the formation of a mighty and conspicuous power, which 
 serves even as a refuge and protection for the rulers of 
 the world and of society, which also is the work of God. 
 In the Parable of the Leaven, our Lord describes the 
 interior working of the seed, or of the Christian element, 
 
The Parable of the Seine, 247 
 
 in the world or in the soul, its process of assimilation, 
 the manner in which it does not set up, as it were, a new 
 kingdom for itself altogether, without relations with and 
 influences on what already exists, but rather contenting 
 itself with affecting by its own influences the mass into 
 which it is put by the wisdom of God. 
 
 The Parables of the Treasure and of the Pearl, as- 
 has been said, carry on the description of the kingdom a 
 step further, for they set before us the truth of the 
 immense goods, and the immense sacrifice made for the 
 sake of those goods, which are to be found in the 
 Kingdom of Heaven. The whole story of Christian 
 heroism is contained in these parables, and it might 
 seem that, having taken us thus far, our Lord might 
 hold His hand, and leave us in the contemplation of 
 the lofty vocations of which the Kingdom of which He 
 speaks furnishes so many examples, and the great prices 
 at which those vocations have been bought. And we 
 closed the last chapter by the remark, that our Lord has 
 not added anything to hint that it might be possible for 
 men to weary of the prizes which they may have once 
 acquired, by means of faithfulness to the guidance of 
 God in the following of some high vocation, because, as 
 it appeared, the spiritual treasures of the Kingdom are 
 too precious, and too continually growing upon the taste 
 of those who possess them, for there to be any danger of 
 failing courage, and of generous perseverance in their 
 pursuit. 
 
 But, if this were the doctrine of these two last 
 parables, it might be one which is contradicted by the 
 experience of the Christian centuries. It would come ta 
 this, that a sacrifice once made might be enough for a 
 life, and that human frailty was not frail enough to cause 
 ruin in many souls which have once taken up the best 
 part. Our Lord is always warning us that it is not so. 
 
248 The Parable of the Seine. 
 
 He said more than once, when He had been speaking of 
 the highest vocations in His Church, that many that are 
 first shall be last, and the last shall be first. It seems as 
 if this was in His mind in the last of this series of 
 parables, which now remains to be explained. That is, 
 it seems as if He had intended to end the series by 
 setting forth this truth, that among all orders of men in 
 the Church, and therefore, even among those who have 
 outwardly been the most heroic in their sacrifices for 
 Him, there would be found some who would not in the 
 end be worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is the 
 burthen of the parable of the Seine cast into the sea, of 
 which we have now to speak. 
 
 ' Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like to a net cast 
 into the sea, and gathering together of all kind of fishes. 
 Which, when it was filled, they drew out, and sitting by 
 the shore, they chose out the good into vessels, but the 
 bad they cast forth. So shall it be at the end of the 
 Avorld. The angels shall go out, and shall separate 
 the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them 
 into the furnace of fire ; there shall be weeping and 
 gnashing of teeth.' At first sight, this parable seems 
 almost a repetition of that of the Cockle sown in the 
 midst of the wheat, and it requires some explanation to 
 distinguish the peculiar point of each from that of the 
 •other. It is obvious, however, that in the former parable 
 one great point, at least, is the principle of toleration, so 
 to call it, on which the master of the field acts, in 
 permitting the cockle to grow in the midst of the wheat. 
 This is done deliberately, it is perhaps a departure from 
 the natural line of action, and is the more noticeable on 
 that account. For it is very conceivable that a good 
 husbandman might weed his field of useless plants even 
 before the harvest. But in the case of the net or seine 
 let down into the sea, which is then dragged along the 
 
The Parable of the Seine. 249 
 
 bottom, so as to enclose all the fish that are in that part 
 of the waters, the presence of bad fishes is what is to be 
 expected, as well as that of good fishes. Again, in the 
 Parable of the Cockle, the evil seed is deliberately intro- 
 duced into the field by the action of an enemy, whereas 
 there is nothing of this kind in the facts of the parable 
 before us. The separation made by the reapers, that is, 
 by the angels, in the former parable, is a measure taken 
 to repair, in a certain sense, tlie toleration before ex- 
 tended to the evil seed. The object is to set right the 
 mischief which may have been done by that toleration. 
 In the case cf the net, the division is rendered necessary 
 by the conditions under which the original process of 
 fishing is carried on, which fills the net with fishes both 
 bad and good. The division is the principal feature in 
 the second parab'je; it is the necessary complement of 
 the principal feature in the first. 
 
 In the Parable of the Cockle there are but two kinds 
 of grain gathered in it the harvest. The good grain is 
 that which is left afttr the cockle has been removed. 
 But in this Parable of the Seine we have the net 
 collecting, as it is drawn on towards the shore, fishes of 
 every kind. It is no longer one kind that is good and 
 another kind that is bad. All are equally within the 
 compass of the net, all are drawn together to the shore. 
 We have thus a different picture from the former in this 
 parable. We have the picture of a great variety of kinds 
 of fishes, and there are presuiiably good and bad of 
 every kind. Some kinds are bet';er than others, but even 
 of the best kind there will be worthless fishes. The 
 ultimate division is not made by any external mark of 
 difference, as that between the cockle and the wheat, but 
 by the qualities of each individual feh of whatever kind 
 it may be. It is an important doarine, as has been 
 remarked by some of the Catholic co^nmentators on the 
 
250 The Parable of the Seine. 
 
 passage, that there is no nature bad in itself, no class, no 
 vocation, no race, no lineage, no blood, no condition of 
 life and work, which is either a passport to salvation or 
 an exclusion from the pale of salvation. The Church 
 includes all kinds, all races, all conditions of men, and 
 the final division is to be ruled by the goodness or bad- 
 ness of the individual, and not of the race, or the nation, 
 or the vocation, or the position in the Church itself, which 
 may belong to this or that person. Here then is a prin- 
 ciple which adds a new truth to those which have been 
 already set forth in the parables, and which comes, more- 
 over, most opportunely after the teaching of the last pair 
 of parables, those of the Treasure and of tiie Pearl. 
 
 These two last parables, as has been said, have carried 
 us on to the doctrine of the great sacrifices and high 
 vocations which are characteristic o^ the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. And as was also said, they leave out of sight 
 the possibility of the purchasers 0/ the treasure or the 
 pearl failing in perseverance and becoming wearied of 
 the blessings which have been purchased by them. At a 
 later period of His teaching ve shall find our Lord 
 delivering the great parable of the Labourers in the 
 Vineyard, immediately after He had assured the Apostles 
 of the very great reward which they are to have, who 
 have left all things and fcllowed Him. After making 
 them the magnificent promise which He then made, and 
 extending it to all who should leave the things most dear 
 to them for His sake, He added that there were to be 
 first who should be last, and last who should be first. 
 And then He delivered that famous parable, as if for the 
 especial purpose of varning them, that even the highest 
 vocations might be forfeited, and that the gifts of grace 
 were not always to correspond, in their distribution, to 
 the order or comparative excellence of the vocations in 
 the Church. 
 
The Parable of the Seine, 251 
 
 In the parable before us this doctrine, which is also 
 the doctrine of the Parable of the Virgins, delivered still 
 later on, is conveyed in the image of the fishes drawn to 
 the shore by the net. There are to be in the Church 
 people of every kind. There are to be ecclesiastics and 
 religious, there are to be hermits and holy virgins, there 
 are to be those vowed to the hfe of contemplation, or 
 the life of active charity, those who have the awful 
 powers of consecration of the Blessed Sacrament, and of 
 applying the merits of the Precious Blood for the 
 cleansing of souls from sin. Some are to preach the 
 Divine Word, some are to be the pastors of souls, some 
 are to be the rulers of the Christian people. And by 
 their side in the great net there are to be those who have 
 been ruled and guided by them, the married and the 
 dwellers in the world, the soldiers and the statesmen 
 and the artisans and the poor labourers, those whom the 
 proud Pharisees of our Lord's own day would have 
 looked down on as the publicans and sinners. But the 
 selection and division to be made at the end of all 
 things, will be governed by no other principle than that 
 of the goodness or the badness of the individual soul, 
 >vhatever may have been its position in the external 
 kingdom of God on earth. Neither religion, nor the 
 ecclesiastical calling, nor the glory of the pastoral office, 
 nor the honourable state of continence, nor the priest- 
 hood, nor learning employed in the service of the 
 Church, nor zeal in works of charity, nor the labours of 
 the missionary, nor anything else of that order, is of 
 itself sufficient to ensure the salvation of the soul. All 
 these things are not incompatible with great unfaithful- 
 ness, and in all these positions death may find the soul 
 unprepared, and with the stain on it of secret and unre- 
 pented sin. This is one side of the peculiar lesson of 
 this parable. 
 
252 The Parable of the Seine, 
 
 We learn also, on the other hand, that when death 
 strikes men down in the pursuit of some earthly and 
 worldly calling, on the battlefield, or on the sea, or in the 
 mart, or in the law-courts, when it gleans its victims from 
 cottages or palaces, or falls on them suddenly in the 
 street, in the midst of the strain of political conflicts, or 
 far away from the means of grace and the ordinary con- 
 solations of the dying soul, it does not follow that those 
 thus called to their account are among those who are to 
 be rejected from the treasures of God. He alone knows 
 the heart of man and the state of the soul, and it will be 
 by that knowledge that the judgment will be adminis- 
 tered and the lot of each child of Adam decided for all 
 eternity. This then seems to be the special meaning of 
 this parable, with which the series is closed, to signify 
 that although in the Church there are so many various 
 vocations and conditions of life, so many differences 
 between the outward circumstances and opportunities of 
 men with regard to the means of grace themselves, yet 
 still the selection of souls for the heavenly kingdom will 
 not be made according to these, but that the only certain 
 passport to these eternal joys will be faithfulness and 
 purity of conscience, and that by the application of this 
 rule it will be possible for the lowest to be raised on 
 high, and for the highest to be rejected altogether. 
 
 One other feature of the parable has been fastened on 
 by the Catholic commentators, of which it may be well 
 to say a word. In this parable it is said that the good 
 fishes are gathered into vessels, while the evil are thrown 
 promiscuously away. In the Parable of the Cockle, on 
 the other hand, it is said that the cockle is gathered into 
 bundles to be burnt, and the wheat is gathered into the 
 barns of the great Householder. In the case of the 
 cockle it has been thought that the gathering into 
 bundles signified the truth that the sinners of each par- 
 
The Palpable of the Sei7ie. 253 
 
 ticular kind of sin would be punished hereafter together, 
 the avaricious with those Hke them, the proud with the 
 proud, the lascivious with the lascivious, and the rest. 
 So, in the present parable, it is thought that the gathering 
 of the good fishes into vessels may signify the special 
 character of the rewards of Heaven, which are to be 
 apportioned, like the chastisements of the place of tor- 
 menr, in strict correspondence to the deserts in each 
 case. The circumstance in question in each of these 
 parables is perfectly natural, as a line in the general 
 picture, and thus it might have been added by a human 
 author merely for the purpose of embellishment, for it is 
 as natural to bind the cockle in bundles as it is to gather 
 the good fishes into baskets or other vessels. But we 
 have good reason for thinking, from the manner in which 
 our Lord has explained those parables of which we have 
 direct and detailed explanations from Him, that no 
 circumstance is added in these Divine pictures, without 
 some specially intended meaning, and on this account it 
 is safer to think that in the cases before us the explana- 
 tion of the details in question may not be too far- 
 fetched. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Scribes of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 St. Matt. XV. 51, 52 ; Vita Vita; NostrcB, § 62. 
 
 St. Matthew subjoins to his account of these last 
 parables, which, as he tells us, were delivered by our 
 Lord to the disciples, after He had sent away the multi- 
 tudes, a few words which are remarkable and important, 
 as seeming to convey to us something not said before 
 concerning the whole series of instructions which were 
 thus closed. 'Have you understood all these things? 
 They say to Him, Yea. He said to them, Therefore 
 every Scribe instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven is 
 like to a man who is a householder, who bringeth forth 
 out of his treasure new things and old.' 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that by the scribes instructed 
 in the Kingdom of Heaven, our Lord meant the 
 Apostles, and those who were in any degree or manner 
 to share and inherit their office of teaching in the 
 Gospel Kingdom. He seems also to signify that He 
 considered the instructions of which He had now come 
 to the close as containing in themselves some sufficient 
 amount of knowledge to justify the statement, that those 
 who had heard and understood them were thereby quali- 
 fied for the office of teacher in the Kingdom. If they 
 understood the things which He had been setting 
 before them, they might be called Scribes instructed 
 in the Kingdom of Heaven. If this be so, then there 
 must be in the parables now delivered a series of 
 
The Scribes of the Kingdom of Heaven. 255 
 
 teaching for the benefit of teachers, as distinguished from 
 those who are to be taught by them. And He adds, 
 concerning this teaching, as it appears, that its sufficiency 
 lay in this, that it would enable them to discharge com- 
 petently their office of teachers, not simply by the repeti- 
 tion of what they had now been taught, but by the appli- 
 cation of the instruction conveyed to them in a way of 
 their o\vn, a way which He compares to the action of a 
 householder who supplies the wants of his household, as 
 they arise, from the stores which he has provided, now 
 one thing, now another. The language reminds us of 
 other words of our Lord recorded by St. Luke,^ ' Who, 
 thinkest thou, is the faithful and wise steward, whom his 
 lord setteth over his family, to give them their measure 
 of wheat in due season ? ' And the words now before us 
 seem to convey the thought that the office of the scribe 
 or teacher of the new Kingdom is one which has much 
 responsibility, because much is left to it, and it requires 
 much prudence and discretion in its exercise. 
 
 Our Lord uses the words * new things and old ' as it 
 
 seems, almost proverbially, as if to signify whatever may 
 
 be required at the moment, whether new things or old, 
 
 just that which it is opportune and according to the 
 
 needs of the moment to put forth. For it is certain that 
 
 harm may be done, both by setting forth what is true at 
 
 an inopportune moment, or by not saying what is 
 
 required, as well as by saying less or more than is 
 
 required. Our Lord has Himself warned us against 
 
 giving that which is holy to dogs, and casting pearls 
 
 before swine, in which case harm is done instead of 
 
 good. And the prudent teacher will know just how to 
 
 balance the new and the old, how to combine them, and 
 
 how to withhold what may be dangerous, as well as how 
 
 to set forth what is salutary. He will draw the new out 
 
 1 St. Luke xii. 42. 
 
256 The Scribes of the Kingdom of Heave7t. 
 
 of the old, he will put the new in such a light as to 
 show that it is old as well as new, he will set forth 
 the old in such a manner as to show that it is not 
 obsolete, but in perfect keeping with the requirements 
 and characteristic modes of thought which belong to 
 the present time. As to this there can be no diffi- 
 culty. All those who are the subjects of Apostolical 
 instruction come to it with certain truths already fixed in 
 their minds, although the truths they hold may be but 
 partially understood, and not yet seen in their true con- 
 nection, or even, more or less, overlaid by concomitant 
 error. It is the office of the true Scribe, to use the 
 name given by our Lord to the preachers and teachers 
 of His Word, to seize on the truths which his hearers 
 already hold, and from that to lead them to the new 
 truths which are connected therewith. Thus He sets the 
 old in new light, and He adds to it the new. Again, 
 the state of mind in which people come to listen to the 
 Word of God, whether it be preached or set forth in the 
 humbler mode of teaching and instruction, is very 
 various, and it must be for the Scribe to discern whether 
 he should first of all proceed to the simple intellectual 
 task of developing the old truth into the new, by showing 
 the connection between them, or whether there may not 
 be in the hearers some prejudice or some moral obstacle 
 to the reception of the truth, which should first be 
 removed before they can hear the Word with any fair 
 hope of profit. In both these points, and in others, there 
 may be great room for the discretion of the teacher, 
 and as to this also there can be no question. What 
 seems to be fair matter for inquiry is, whether our Lord 
 means us to understand that the parables, as explained 
 by Him, and as understood by the Apostles, contains 
 anything which directly bears on this subject of the 
 enlightened discretion of the Scribe, whether they con- 
 
The Sf rides of the Kingdom of Heaven. 257 
 
 tain such a body of general rules and principles con- 
 cerning the delivery of the Word of God, as may serve 
 for the necessary armament of the Christian teacher on 
 this most vital point? If so, this is something very 
 much beyond the simple meaning of the parables as we 
 have considered them. 
 
 In answer to this question, it may first be said, that 
 the parables on which we have now been so long 
 dwelling do not contain any body of Christian doctrine 
 or of practice, which can be considered as a summary 
 of that which is to be the subject-matter of Christian 
 teaching. The ordinary Christian teaching ranges over 
 the commandments of God or the Church, over the 
 Articles of the Creed, over the duties of various states 
 of life, the theological and moral virtues, the use of 
 prayer and of the sacraments, and the like. If we turn 
 to the parables before us, we do not find much directly 
 on any of these points. They are descriptions, in general, 
 of the conditions under which the Word of God is 
 preached, the manner in which it is received, the innate 
 power of the Word, the way in which God will deal, 
 whether in this or in the next world, with those in whom 
 the Word has been fruitful or unfruitful. These are all 
 general matters, and their teaching holds equally true 
 whatever be the particular head of Christian doctrine on 
 which the teacher has been engaged. For instance, let 
 the truth which is represented in the Parable of the 
 Sower, or of the Seed that grows by itself, or of the 
 Treasure and the Pearl, be either the importance of the 
 soul, or the certainty of death, or the necessity of pen- 
 ance after sin, or the judgment, or the duty of obeying 
 the Church, or anything else taken from the large range 
 of Christian instruction. It may be any one of these, 
 and yet the lesson of the parables in question will be 
 exactly the same in any particular case. It will still be 
 R 7 
 
258 The Scribes of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 true, that is, that the truth will be received differently by 
 different hearers, that it will produce wonderful results, 
 all things else being favourable, in the souls in which it is 
 planted or sown, that it is worth any sacrifice that may 
 be made for it by any one who understands its value. 
 Each Christian truth has in reality a double source of 
 power, in that it is a truth, which therefore has a neces- 
 sary affinity to the soul of men in which it is sown, and 
 in the second place, in that it is not only a truth, but 
 that it is the Word of God administered by His own 
 •chosen ordinance of Christian preaching or teaching. 
 And thus, what is true of one particle of that which 
 may be made, under different circumstances, the Word 
 of God, by any particular preacher in the discharge of 
 his office, is true of any other. And all these parables 
 differ from such a series of instructions as those con- 
 tained in the Sermon on the Mount, or in the Evan- 
 gelical Counsels, or in other parables, such as that of the 
 Unmerciful Servant, that they are not instructions on 
 this or that particular point of duty or of truth, but 
 general principles and teachings which apply to the whole 
 body of Christian truths and each part of that body. 
 
 In the second place, these parables apply in this 
 general manner to the whole system of truths which 
 may be made the subject matter of Christian instruction, 
 not simply as a system of truths, but as a system any 
 part of which may be addressed by the teacher to the 
 hearers whom he may have to instruct. The parables 
 jelate to the Word of God as preached or taught to 
 men by men who have the commission to teach. The 
 parables are thus mainly addressed to the teachers, 
 rather than to their hearers. It is the knowledge which 
 they convey to the teachers, as to the conditions under 
 which men receive or do not receive the Word of God, 
 and the rules of His Providence concerning truths so 
 
The Scribes of the Kingdom of Heaven. 259 
 
 addressed, that makes our Lord's words so true and 
 opportune, when He speaks of the Scribes well instructed 
 to the Kingdom of God, who bring forth out of their 
 treasure things new and old. The first thing that would 
 be done by a husbandman who acted on the truths 
 used as images, for instance, in the first parable, would 
 be to endeavour to clear his field of thorns, to remove 
 the stones where they could be removed, to frighten 
 away the birds of the air, and, as far as possible, take 
 care that none of his seed fell on the roadway or any- 
 where but on the good ground. Just so a preacher, 
 with the lesson of that parable in his mind, would en- 
 deavour to dispose the souls of his audience in such a 
 way as to remove from them the obstacles signified by 
 those things in the parable. He would begin by seeking 
 to rivet the attention of the careless and thoughtless, he 
 would endeavour to deepen the sense of responsibility 
 and seriousness in frivolous hearts, he would seek to 
 wean the souls of others from the cares of this world, 
 and the deceitful love of riches. It would be the same 
 as to this, whatever particular point of doctrine he had 
 to teach. In this way he would profit by the lesson of 
 the Sower, rather than by repeating to his audience the 
 exact lessons of the parable, in so many words. It 
 would be easy to carry out this thought by tracing the 
 practical import of each one of the succeeding parables 
 in influencing the choice of the preacher in the arrange- 
 ment of his materials. And if the parables are con- 
 sidered in this light, the words of our Lord on which 
 we are commenting become very full indeed of divine 
 meaning. We may almost take them as a promise that, 
 in these few instructions of His, we shall always find 
 what we want in the way of guidance for the selections 
 that have to be made, what to avoid, what to keep back, 
 what to insist on in the first instance, how to win the 
 
26o The Scribes of the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 
 heart before the mind is addressed, when to appeal to 
 fear, when to hope, and also how confident we may be 
 in the powers of the Word of God faithfully administered 
 in the ordinance of preaching. 
 
 It does not, of course, follow from this that the 
 parables have no direct importance as addressed to 
 those who are in the place, rather of the crowds who 
 understood them not, than of the Apostles to whom they 
 were explained. Certainly no one can even read over 
 such a parable as that of the Sower or of the Cockle in 
 the field, or of the Treasure, or of the Seine, without 
 finding many things which directly address themselves 
 to his conscience. But this address is made in a dif- 
 ferent way from that which we find in the case of other 
 teachings of our Lord. When we read the parable of 
 the Unmerciful Servant, for instance, we feel at once 
 that it has the particular and direct intention of striking 
 at our slowness in forgiving one the other, our slight 
 and trivial ^\^:ongs. When we read of the wise and 
 foolish Virgins, we feel at once that we are touched on 
 the point of our want of preparation for our Lord. In 
 the series of parables before us, we are touched not on 
 our behaviour to this or that particular truth or point of 
 duty, but generally on that of the manner in which we 
 receive or have received the Word of God which is 
 brought home to us in so many different ways. Thus 
 these parables in general are calculated, it may be said, 
 to guide the teachers in their setting forth of what they 
 have to teach, and to prepare the hearers to profit by 
 it by receiving it in the only way in which it can be 
 received with profit. For, in the Providence of God, 
 these two things must go together, and the grace by 
 means of which the Word of God is rightly and prudently 
 administered and set forth, must be met, as it were, by 
 the grace which enables the hearers of the Word to 
 
The Scribes of the Kingdom of Heaven. 261 
 
 receive, as it ought to be received, that divine gift. 
 There is scarcely any truth that is contained in these 
 parables for the guidance of the teachers of the Gospel, 
 which has not also its great importance and pertinence 
 to the hearers. It is well that they also should know of 
 the many obstacles which may hinder the fruitfulness in 
 their souls of the Word of God. It is well that they 
 should understand that there may be in any Christian 
 community, those who are there but on sufferance, and 
 because the eye of the Great Householder sees in them 
 the possibility of a future amendment and conversion, or 
 for other causes of the same kind. They may well learn 
 the powers of the engrafted word, as St. James speaks, 
 and the heavenly doctrines contained in the parables of 
 the Mustard Seed, the Leaven, and the rest, and cer- 
 tainly they cannot but profit by the warnings contained 
 in the images of the Treasure and the Pearl, and the 
 Seine or draw-net. 
 
 The influence of this body of teaching of our Lord's 
 may be traced, without any great difficulty, through the 
 course of the Apostolic preaching and teaching, as we 
 have it preserved in the later books of the New Testa- 
 ment. The practical instructions of the Apostles, in the 
 first place, of which we have so many scattered through 
 the Epistles, are developments of the teaching of the 
 first of the parables, that of the Sower. They are 
 all, more or less, the securing of a good soil for 
 the Divine seed of the Word of God. The same 
 teaching is used by St. Paul in his Pastoral Epistles, 
 in his instructions to his two chosen sons, St. Timothy 
 and St. Titus. The teaching of the Parable of the 
 Cockle is the foundation of a great body of magnificent 
 instructions on the part of the same Apostle, as well as 
 of St. Peter and St. John, the burthen of which is to 
 warn their disciples against the devices of the evil one. 
 
262 The Scribes of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 That great passage to the Ephesian priests, in St. Paul's- 
 Epistle to their Church, in which he begins by reminding 
 them that their wrestling is not against flesh and blood, 
 is an instance of this.^ For the practical import of the 
 second parable goes far beyond the precise point of the 
 existence side by side, of the good seed and the bad. It 
 extends certainly to the precept of the most careful 
 vigilance on the part of the pastors of the flock against 
 the approaches of the adversary who goes round about 
 seeking whom he may devour. So also we see in the 
 indulgence accorded by St. Paul to the incestuous 
 Corinthians, in his second Epistle to that Church, the 
 principle on which the toleration of the evil seed is 
 allowed in the Church, namely, that it can be corrected 
 and converted into the good. The whole lives of the 
 great Apostles in their devotion to the ministry of the 
 Word, is a commentary on the teaching of the third 
 parable. They have gone forth, and preached every- 
 where, as St. Mark says at the end of his Gospel, 
 precisely because they had the conviction that the good 
 seed would be cared for by God, and would grow, as 
 it were, of itself. 
 
 Nor can we find anywhere in the Gospels, except, 
 perhaps, in our Lord's last discourse to the Apostles 
 before His Passion, any more perfect illustration of the 
 great doctrine of the Church as insisted on by St. Paul, 
 than the truths contained in the image of the grain of 
 mustard seed. In His last discourse our Lord uses the- 
 image of the Vine and the branches, rather than that of 
 the mustard tree, and we must remember that He spoke 
 those words immediately after He had instituted and 
 administered the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, 
 which would naturally suggest the image of the Vine. 
 But the whole doctrine of the Unity of the Body of 
 
 ^ Ephes. vi. lo — 18. 
 
The Scribes of the Kingdom of Heaven, 263 
 
 Christ may be drawn as well from the image of the 
 mustard seed, as frbm that of the vine. For there can in 
 each case be but one root, one tree, and to be separated 
 from the one tree is to be cut off and doomed to 
 destruction, after a short existence of sterility. St. Paul 
 found it more useful for his purpose to use the image of 
 the human body, for he had to insist on the mutual 
 relations of the members one to the other, of the vital 
 function which was committed to each part, and other 
 truths for which that image was more opportune. This 
 change of image, in setting forth the same doctrine, for 
 the sake of giving prominence to some point of truth 
 for which another image is less suited, is a perfect illus- 
 tration of that prudent discretion of the Scribes of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven which is depicted in our Lord's 
 words about the new and the old. 
 
 Again, St. Paul's discourses at Athens and elsewhere 
 to the Gentile audiences, which he addressed from time 
 to time, as well as those of St. Peter in the Acts of the 
 Apostles, as to the Jews on the Day of Pentecost and on 
 other occasions, or to Cornelius and his friends when 
 they were to be admitted to the Church, are perfect 
 illustrations of the practical application, by skilful scribes, 
 of the principle of the Parable of the Leaven. The same 
 may be said of the arguments of St. Paul, in the Epistles 
 to the Galatians, or to the Romans, or to the Hebrews. 
 Always there is the fastening on that which he has in 
 common with those to whom he is writing, the bringing 
 out new truths from the old truths which they already 
 possess, so that in the end they seem to have received 
 afresh what they knew^ before, only in a new application 
 and development. On the other hand, such Epistles as 
 those of the Captivity, written when St. Paul was at 
 Rome for the first time, uncertain as to his chance of 
 escape from the tribunal of Nero, are full of the spirit 
 
264 The Scribes of the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 of the Parables of the Treasure and of the Pearl. The 
 Gentile Christians, in particular, are like the man who 
 came on the treasure unexpectedly, and they are care- 
 fully instructed as to its immense value. The warnings 
 contained, for instance, in the earlier chapters of the 
 Apocalypse of St. John, as well as those addressed by 
 St. Paul even to his beloved disciples to whom the 
 Pastoral epistles were written, may be considered also 
 as practical applications of the teaching of the last of 
 these parables, the Seine, which gathered fishes of every 
 kind, which were afterwards most carefully sorted on 
 the shore, and all that were unworthy cast away. Thus 
 St. John, in our Lord's name, bids St. Timothy *be 
 mindful whence thou art fallen, and do penance, and do 
 the first works,' ^ and the messages to the other bishops 
 of the seven Churches are seldom devoid of some such 
 warning. 
 
 Thus it may be seen how very rich and fruitful in 
 instruction, for the special use of the teachers of the 
 Gospel truth, is this great series of parables. In order 
 to draw out their full fruitfulness, in order to catch the 
 manifold variety and great extent of their teaching, it 
 may indeed be necessary to look beyond that one direct 
 and immediate point which is set forth, as it seems, as 
 the main truth of each parable. It may be necessary, 
 that is, to consider how to obviate the various evils which 
 prevent souls from receiving duly the Word of God, as 
 well as to know what those evils are. This remark 
 suggests many very fruitful lines of instruction in con- 
 nection with the first parable. It may be neces- 
 sary to consider, in reference to the second parable, the 
 whole of the very large subject of the activity and wiles 
 of the evil one, and how they are to be met and coun- 
 teracted, though all that is said about him is contained 
 3 Apoc. ii. 2. 
 
The Scribts of the Kingdom of Heaven. 265 
 
 in the words, * An enemy hath done this.' This use of 
 these parabolic pictures may be exactly that which our 
 Lord intends us to make of them. He may have given 
 them to His Church for all time, as containing, in their 
 pregnant brevity and many coloured wisdom, instructions 
 to be drawn out to meet a thousand difficulties and to 
 guide us through all the continually shifting snares which 
 are devised by the enemies of the truth. The principles 
 which they contain have to be applied every day, to ever 
 new complications, and even conditions ever fresh. 
 They are like the rules of navigation to the mariner, 
 or the tactical or strategical principles of the scientific 
 soldier. Thus it is most true to say that their practical 
 use is like the bringing out of a store things new and 
 old. And, again, it may be considered that the very 
 form, in which these general teachings were cast by our 
 Lord, may have been meant by Him as an indication 
 of the value of the parabolic method in itself as an 
 exposition of spiritual and moral truths. It is not 
 simply, as it is sometimes said, an Oriental method. 
 It is a method adapted to the instruction of all races, 
 and all stages of society. The saints have constantly 
 used it. Nowhere can we find a more pointed illus- 
 tration of this truth than in so simple and pregnant a 
 book as the Spiritual Exercises, in which we find 
 St. Ignatius having recourse to the parables of the 
 Kingdom of Christ, of Two Standards, of the Three 
 Classes, and in which he describes the devil as a 
 seducer from virtue, the general of an army, and a 
 scolding wife. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to point out, in conclusion, how 
 much this view of these first eight Parables agrees with 
 what has so often been said, as to that which, at this 
 period of His teaching, was the main object on which 
 our Lord's Sacred Heart was bent. The time had not 
 
266 The Scribes of the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 
 yet come for Him to prepare directly for the Passion, or 
 to preach the doctrine of the Cross. He was now mainly 
 occupied in the formation of the Apostles. He was very 
 soon to launch them forth, for a time, on their first essay 
 in Evangelical preaching, when He was to send them 
 away from His side, to go forth two and two, throughout 
 a part of Galilee. Now, then. He was giving them, in 
 this series of instructions, some guiding principles and 
 rules of conduct for such work as that on which they 
 were to be occupied, which they were to take up again 
 after His own removal from them, and which was to be 
 carried on by themselves and their successors to the end 
 of time. And as long as the Church lasts in the world, 
 so long will these eight parables remain the storehouse of 
 guidance for her preachers. Nor will the treasures here 
 contained be ever exhausted, or the practical wisdom 
 of the parables become old and unavaiHng, as long as 
 human nature remains what it is, and the malice of the 
 devil, the deceitfulness of the world, and the all-powerful 
 grace of God, remain what they are. 
 
 And lastly, it is well to repeat here what has already 
 been said elsewhere of the Parables of our Lord in 
 general, including those of which we have been speaking. 
 The parables are full of divine and practical wisdom, 
 and yet are, almost more than anything else, a great 
 revelation of God and of His ways with men, imparted 
 to us by our Lord. The principles and maxims which 
 they contain are as true as they are, because He is Who 
 He is, and because He has willed, in His dealings with 
 men, to act on these principles. The time will come, 
 after the consummation of all things, when the good seed 
 has at last been gathered in the great harvest, when the 
 cockle has been committed to the flames and the wheat 
 garnered in the barns, when the sickle has been put 
 forth, when the growth of the mustard-tree has reached 
 
The Followej^s of the Son of Ma7i, 267 
 
 its utmost height, and all the three measures of meal 
 leavened by the leaven, when the treasure and the pearl 
 are safe for ever, and the fishes gathered in the net have 
 been finally divided. Then the praises of Angels and men 
 will break, like the waves of a sleepless sea, before the 
 throne of God, because His Goodness and His Mercy 
 and His Power, and His HoHness, and His Wisdom, have 
 been manifested in His dealings with His creatures in 
 a long and marvellous history, the whole principles of 
 which were sketched by our Lord nineteen hundred 
 years ago as He spoke to the people and to His Apostles 
 by the Lake of Gennesareth. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 TJie Followers of the Soft of Man. 
 
 St. Matt. viii. 18—22 ; Vita Vitce Nostrce, § 63. 
 
 St. Matthew places, as it seems, at this point of the 
 narrative, a small number of similar incidents which may 
 have taken place almost at any moment during the 
 period of the Public Life of our Lord. This Evangelist, 
 as is well known, does not follow the order of time, and 
 he has transposed the incident of the night voyage on 
 the lake, of which we shall have to speak in the next 
 chapter, in order to place it among a number of other 
 instances of miraculous power, immediately after his 
 account of the Sermon on the Mount. We learn from 
 St. Mark and St. Luke, whose notes of time are very 
 carefully given, that this voyage, and the storm which 
 arose while our Lord was asleep in the vessel, followed 
 on the teaching by parables of which we have now been 
 
268 The Followers of the Son of Man, 
 
 speaking for several chapters. There cannot be any diffi- 
 culty to those who have studied the Harmony of the 
 Gospels on right principles, in accounting for the trans- 
 position as made by St. Matthew. It might therefore be 
 unnecessary to connect the incidents of which we shall 
 speak in the present chapter with the parables on the 
 one hand, and with the storm on the lake on the other 
 hand, especially as St. Luke places these, or incidents of 
 the same kind, at a later period of his history. There is 
 only a single reason for the connection here, namely, that 
 St. Matthew has placed the two incidents presently to be 
 mentioned, between the account of the embarcation of 
 our Lord and that of the storm on the lake. But there 
 can be no reason for this in St. Matthew, unless there 
 was some connection of time. For the insertion of these 
 incidents here is a kind of digression on his part from 
 the main course of his narrative, which consists here of a 
 chain of miracles of various kinds. There is therefore 
 good reason for considering these incidents in this place. 
 We know from St. Mark and St. Luke that the voyage 
 took place at this time, that is, after the teaching of the 
 people by our Lord in the form of parables, and we may 
 therefore, on St. Matthew's authority, consider here the 
 incidents by which it was preceded. 
 
 The first and the third Gospels contain altogether 
 three incidents of the kind of which we are to speak. 
 They are so similar in character that it is natural to 
 suppose that the Evangelists have grouped them together, 
 as far as this has been done, for the sake of collecting in 
 one place the teaching of our Lord on the point to which 
 these incidents refer. This may account for the different 
 points of the history at which they are mentioned by 
 St. Matthew and by St. Luke respectively. It is probable 
 that one occasion of an occurrence of this kind was where 
 they are placed by St. Matthew, and that another and 
 
The Followers of the Son of Man. 269 
 
 later occasion of an occurrence of the same kind took 
 place where they are placed by St. Luke. Each Evangelist 
 joined the other incident or incidents to the one which 
 he mentioned, St. Luke finding, as was his wont, an 
 anecdote resembling what St. Matthew had mentioned 
 and not absolutely identical with it. In this manner 
 there is no difficulty as to the explanation of the apparent 
 divergence between the narratives. The anecdotes are 
 two in St. Matthew, and three in St. Luke. The proba- 
 bility is that, in this as in other cases, the Evangelists 
 had a large number of very similar anecdotes to choose 
 from, the same thing happening with a number of 
 persons, and our Lord using to them all the same pro- 
 verbial answer. Not only must our Lord have had to 
 settle the same questions, over and over again, in the 
 same way, but the incidents were such as were certain 
 to occur to the Apostles at a later time, and to the 
 directors of souls over and over again in all ages of the 
 Church. Thus their value and importance are easily seen, 
 for the principles which our Lord sets forth in His answers 
 on these occasions have to be applied almost daily in 
 dealing with questions raised by vocations, either to the 
 religious life or to the sacred ministry in the Catholic 
 Church. Thus it may be said that the Gospels would be 
 incomplete without these anecdotes — almost as incom- 
 plete as they would be if they contained nothing about 
 what are usually called the Evangelical Counsels of 
 Perfection. 
 
 * And a certain Scribe came and said to Him, Master, 
 I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest. And Jesus 
 saith to him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the 
 air nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His 
 head. And another of His disciples said to Him, Lord, 
 suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said 
 to him, Follow Me, and let the dead bury their dead.' 
 
2 70 The Followers of the Son of Man. 
 
 Another similar answer of our Lord is added to those 
 two by St. Luke, when he comes to insert, in its proper 
 chronological place, the incidents which he gives, exactly 
 parallel to those which are put first and second by 
 St. Matthew. It will be enough here to speak of those 
 words of our Lord which are recorded for us by the first 
 Evangelist. It is these words of His which constitute 
 the main value of the anecdotes. The Evangelists show 
 us this, by not even telling us how our Lord's answers 
 were received in each case. In order more completely 
 to understand the circumstances, it must be remembered 
 that our Lord had been absent from Capharnaum for a 
 considerable time, occupied in His Apostolical circuit of 
 Galilee, and changing the spot at which He was to be 
 found almost day by day. Then He had come back 
 suddenly to Capharnaum and its close neighbourhood. 
 It was a place of danger to Him, on account of the 
 determination of His enemies to kill Him, and we know 
 that a league for that purpose had been actually formed 
 between the Pharisees and Scribes on the one hand, and 
 the officials of the Tetrarch Herod on the other. The 
 knowledge of this probably occasioned the immediate 
 visit of our Blessed Lady and His brethren to the place 
 where He was teaching the people. After a very short 
 period of teaching indeed, therefore, we find our Lord 
 departing, as we shall see in the next chapter. Even 
 while He did teach. He took the precaution of remaining 
 in the boat a little distance from the land, and it was 
 now that He began that veiled and parabolic teaching of 
 which we have lately had to speak so much. It would 
 therefore not have been easy for individuals to come to 
 Him with their personal requests or private difficulties at 
 this time. This may explain how it is that the first 
 incident belonging to the present chapter occurred when 
 it did occur. 
 
The Followers of the Son of Man. 271 
 
 ^ And a certain Scribe came and said to Him, Master, 
 I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest ! ' If this 
 was said in the presence of others, as is probable from 
 the place in which, as has been said, St. Matthew inserts 
 the story, there may have been a certain amount of 
 display and outward profession of loyalty and devotion 
 which might jar upon our Lord's Heart. When a true 
 vocation to the closer following of our Lord has been 
 addressed to the soul, it is not the manner of the Holy 
 Ghost to vent it in public demonstrations, which only 
 serve to expose the precious germ to the cold air of 
 common life, to waste the force of the Divine impulse, 
 and even to expose it to the perversion of a false motive. 
 Our Lord checked this person, as He afterwards checked 
 the young man who came running to Him, and calling 
 Him Good Master, asking what he should do to possess 
 eternal life. Moreover, from the answer here given by 
 our Lord to the proposal of this Scribe, it would seem 
 that His all-piercing Eye discerned in him some human 
 motives of ambition, the hope of distinction and earthly 
 gain or earthly glory. It is not wonderful tliat there 
 should have been many in whose hearts the triumphant 
 progress of the new Kingdom might wake up ambitions 
 of this kind. The Jewish ideas of the coming King 
 were ordinarily carnal and worldly, and up to this time 
 our Lord had not begun to preach the doctrine of the 
 Cross. By the good Providence of His Father, He and 
 His immediate followers were already objects of dislike, 
 suspicion, and persecution to those in power, but this 
 need not have been patent to the eyes of every one. 
 Moreover, the miraculous powers which had been dis- 
 played by our Lord seemed to place within His reach 
 any earthly success whatever to which He might aspire. 
 We find, at a much later period than this, that the 
 favoured Apostles and near relatives of our Lord, 
 
272 The Followers of the Son of Man, 
 
 St. James and St. John, the sons of Zebedee and 
 Salome, could entertain projects of ambition as to their 
 own places in the future Kingdom. It is not therefore 
 any rash supposition that motives of this kind may have 
 had some share in this action of the Scribe. He came 
 uninvited, uncalled, he volunteered his allegiance almost 
 as if it were a great thing for him to give, or as if he 
 conferred a favour by his proffer of it. 
 
 *And Jesus saith to him, The foxes have holes, and 
 the birds of the air nests, but the Son of Man hath not 
 where to lay His head.' Thus He spoke directly to the 
 heart of this man, touching him on his wound to the 
 quick, as He afterwards touched the hidden weak place 
 in the heart of the rich young man. The Scribe had 
 said nothing about riches, or possessions, or home, or 
 honour, or repute among men, all which things are able 
 to secure their possessor from poverty, want, friendless- 
 ness. His words, indeed, included a readiness to be 
 exposed to the want of all resources and comforts of 
 every kind, for he had said that he would follow our 
 Lord whithersoever He might go. But our Lord saw 
 that his ideas of that following were not at all those of a 
 man who looks forward to actual privation, destitution, 
 contempt, danger. So He answered him with all the 
 Divine prudence which the case required. His words 
 are not, what they may sound to us if they are taken out 
 of their context, a kind of complaint of the hardships of 
 His daily life, and the great ingratitude with which all 
 His exertions for the salvation of souls were met. He 
 did not mean to blame those who left Him homeless and 
 shelterless, for all the privations of His ApostoHcal life 
 were very dear to Him, chosen by Him for the sake of 
 those for whom He laboured, and still more for the sake 
 of those who were to join Him in those labours, or to 
 follow in after times along the same glorious path. But, 
 
The Followers of the Son of Man. 273 
 
 just because they were so dear to Him and so profitable 
 to them, He was bound, in His infinite charity, to set 
 before this light-hearted and self-confident aspirant to 
 the honours of the Apostleship, the severe external con- 
 ditions, the hardships and mortification which that life 
 involved. If they were taken away from the life which 
 His immediate followers had to lead, that life would lose 
 its beauty, its power, its fruitfulness. 
 
 Thus we see that our Lord here puts His finger, so to 
 speak, on at least two of the great impediments which 
 have, in all times of the Church, stood in the way of the 
 perfect following of His example in the Apostolic life, 
 and which have also prevented those who have followed 
 Him imperfectly from producing any large fruit in souls. 
 These two impediments are, first, inconsiderateness and 
 want of reflection in taking up the obligations, whether- of 
 religious life, of the sacred ministry, or of the specially 
 Apostolic career, as is the case with missionaries to the 
 heathen, and, in the second place, anything that savours 
 of ambition and self-interest, the love of being first, even 
 in those successes and honours which belong to Apostolic 
 men, and, much more, the readiness to serve the altar or 
 to preach the Gospel for the sake of earthly gains. Our 
 Lord spoke of this inconsiderateness at a later stage of 
 His teaching. ' Which of you, having a mind to build a 
 tower, doth not first sit down and reckon the charges 
 that are necessary, whether he hath wherewith to finish 
 it ? lest, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able 
 to finish it, all that see begin to mock him, saying, This 
 man began to build, and was not able to finish.' ^ Our 
 Lord did not say this to the Scribe on this occasion 
 because, perhaps. He saw that his inconsiderate proffer 
 of service was made, not only without due reflection on 
 his own powers and capacities of endurance, but also 
 
 1 St. Luke xiv. 28, 29. 
 
 s 7 
 
2 74 '^^^ Followers of the Son of Man. 
 
 under the influence of an entirely false calculation as to 
 the character of the life which he would have to lead. 
 So He began with correcting this false impression, that 
 from the consideration of the truth as to the circum- 
 stances of the Apostolical life, he might be led on to a 
 more serious self-examination as to his own powers. So 
 He only said, ' The foxes have holes and the birds of the 
 air nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His 
 head,' thus simply setting before him, as it is right to do 
 in all such cases, the difficulties and hardships of that 
 for which he volunteered, rather than the immense 
 advantages and consolations. He could have spoken 
 of these, indeed, as He hinted at them in His words to 
 the rich young man afterwards, when He told him that 
 he should have treasure in Heaven, and, above all, when 
 He invited him, ' Come, and follow Me ! ' — for in that 
 invitation, to those who could understand it, was 
 contained the promise of the sweetest happiness, even 
 on earth, that the human heart is capable of enjoying. 
 But to the Scribe, in His Divine wisdom, He contented 
 Himself with the simple, cold, bare declaration of the 
 hardships he would have to undergo. 
 
 A very little familiarity with the lives of the saints and 
 the annals of religious orders is enough to explain this 
 conduct on the part of our Lord. The religious life, or 
 the life of a priest, or the life of a missionary, may have, 
 in the Providence of God, to last on for many decades of 
 years, and such an edifice, to use the image of our Lord, 
 cannot possibly be carried on to its final perfection and 
 •completeness unless it have a very solid foundation. The 
 •glow of enthusiasm, with which such lines of life are 
 sometimes taken up, soon fades away. Nothing is strong 
 enough to carry the soul on through years of labour, 
 obedience, privation, often, too, of disappointment and 
 of great loneliness, but the conviction of the will of God 
 
The Followers of the Son of Man. 275 
 
 in the first instance, and the constant vigilant practice of 
 self-conquest in the second. On the other hand, a true 
 call from God will enable a manly soul to triumph over 
 the discouragement and difficulties which are set in its 
 path. When our Lord, a little after this, said to the 
 Apostles, Will you also go away? St. Peter answered 
 Him, to Whom should we go ? Thou hast the words of 
 eternal life. So it would have been with this Scribe, if 
 the impulse which made him offer himself to our Lord 
 came, in truth, from God. Let it be, he would have 
 said, that the Son of Man has not where to lay His 
 head — where He is, there also let His servant be. The 
 call comes from One Who is able to accomplish His 
 own work in me. 
 
 The other instance of a similar reply given by our 
 Lord in this passage of St. Matthew touches a different 
 point, so to say, in the dealings of God with regard to 
 high vocations. The two cases mentioned by St. Luke, 
 further on, are exactly identical in principle with these 
 two in St. Matthew. 'And another of His disciples 
 said to Him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my 
 father. But Jesus said to Him, Follow Me, and let the 
 •dead bury their dead.' In this case, then, the man who 
 makes the application to our Lord is already a disciple. 
 He is, indeed, more than an ordinary disciple. For he 
 feels himself bound to ask leave from our Lord to go 
 and bury his father. He must therefore have been 
 -already bound to our Lord by some tie of close com- 
 panionship, if not by that kind of obedience which a 
 religious subject owes to his Superior. Thus, in this 
 case, there is no question of his joining himself to our 
 Lord for the first time. He has already received and 
 obeyed the vocation to the Apostolical life. But he has, 
 as he conceives, a good reason, of duty, or at least of 
 •charity, for leaving that life for a time, to go and bury his 
 
276 The Follozuers of the Son of Ma7i. 
 
 father. It is not certain whether the father was already 
 dead, in which case the request was merely that he might 
 take his part in the mourning and in the funeral, which 
 could not be long. Or the father may have been an old 
 man, aiHng and in need of the assistance of his son, and 
 the request may have been for leave to live with and 
 tend him until his death. In this case, the delay would 
 have been of indefinite length. There is no reason for 
 thinking that the plea alleged was a false plea. This, 
 then, is the second incident of this kind set before us by 
 St. Matthew. 
 
 Our Lord meets the case directly on its own merits, in 
 order, we cannot doubt, to leave behind Him in the 
 Church a clear and unmistakeable instruction, which 
 would extend to all such cases. So He does not say that 
 the father is already sufficiently provided for, or anything 
 of that kind, although His words may perhaps imply that 
 it was so. It is not on that that He rests the refusal 
 of the leave which is asked of Him. ' Follow Me, and 
 let the dead bury their dead.' These words, like others 
 in which our Lord spoke of the divisions which He had 
 come to cause in families, the sword He was to send on 
 the earth rather than peace, and the like, sound harshly 
 on the ears of many, almost as if there was in them some- 
 thing inconsistent with the gentleness and tenderness of 
 the Sacred Heart. The contrary is the truth. Words 
 such as these come from the Sacred Heart, precisely on 
 account of its intense sweetness and love, which make it 
 shrink from all false glosses on the rights of God, or the 
 supremacy of our duties to Him, or the inferiority of all 
 human claims, and from all concealment of the immense 
 miseries which we may incur by allowing the softnesses 
 and delicacies of human affection to come in the way of 
 the sacrifices which we may be called on to make for 
 Him — sacrifices certainly fraught with immense rewards 
 
The Followers of the Son of Man. 277 
 
 and blessings, not only to ourselves but to those whom 
 we may seem to wound by making them. Our Lord 
 would not have called this man to follow Him, if his 
 care had been, in truth, necessary to his father. When 
 He calls one out of a family, a son or a daughter from 
 the side of a parent, a brother from a number of sisters 
 dependent on him, and the like, He does so with the 
 fullest consideration for those who are left behind. He 
 takes them into His own special care, for, if He takes 
 away from them what is their natural prop and resource, 
 He is bound f by so doing to supply the gap which He 
 makes, and although He may supply it in ways which 
 they do not at once recognize, He is certain to supply it 
 in His own manner of overwhelming and transcendent 
 magnificence. Where, then, there is a true call, as in the 
 case before us, that call must be attended to at once, 
 because it is the call of Him Who is the Sovereign Lord 
 of all souls and of all lives. The supreme authority of 
 our Lord at once cancels the claims of any minor duty. 
 And, far more than that, as He is infinitely wise, infi- 
 nitely good, and infinitely powerful, there can be no doubt 
 at all but that what He does in this way will certainly 
 turn out to the immense good of those who seem to 
 suffer by it, and thus the only reason that could be 
 adduced in defence of disobedience is at once removed. 
 Nor are there any' more miserable parents in the world, 
 than those who have succeeded in prevailing on their 
 children to be inattentive to the call of God for their 
 sakes. They are sure to suffer, even in this life, from 
 the very children whom they have kept back from God. 
 
 The concluding words of our Lord, ' Let the dead 
 bury their" dead,' must contain a truth of their own, for 
 the sake of which they were spoken. All the more must 
 this be so, because at first sight these words may appear 
 to sound harsh and unfeeling. It cannot be truly so 
 
278 The Followers of the Son of Man, 
 
 with any words of our Lord. But that He should use 
 words which may appear severe, is a proof that He had 
 before His mind reasons which made it both wise and 
 tender and most loving, to warn us against a great danger 
 which might present itself to many souls under the garb 
 of natural affection, piety, and dutifulness. The dead 
 may be understood in various ways. Our Lord may 
 mean those who are dead in sin, or He may mean 
 those who have not the faith, or He may mean those 
 whom we have once for all left and parted from as if 
 death itself had divided us. The first of these three 
 meanings, if applied here, might involve the condemna- 
 tion of the family of this disciple as being sinners. 
 The second interpretation might seem to imply that the 
 faithful have no duties at all to those who have not the 
 faith. In each case the meaning would seem to involve 
 a greater amount of severity than the occasion de- 
 manded. Our Lord sometimes, as we shall see, sent to 
 their homes those who offered to cast in their lot with 
 Him as His companions. But here He refuses to allow 
 one of His companions to go to his home, on an occasion 
 when he might naturally be expected there to discharge 
 a holy duty. The reason for the refusal is most naturally 
 to be found in the truth, that this man was called to the 
 preaching of the Gospel, that for all such it was to be a 
 law of the Kingdom that they must be entirely free from 
 family ties and home duties, and, in the last place, that 
 for this particular soul the desire to go home was a snare 
 which might entangle him, and lead him in the end to 
 lose his high calling. If this be so, then the third 
 meaning seems the best. The * dead ' were those whom 
 he had quitted once for all, not because they were sin- 
 ners or because they were faithless, but because God had 
 called him to leave all and follow our Lord alone. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 The Storm on the Lake. 
 
 St. Matt, viii, 28 — 34 ; St. Mark v. i — 21 ; St. Luke viii. 26 — 40 ; 
 Vita VitcB NostrcB, § 64. 
 
 We now come to the history of one of those miracles- 
 of our Lord which are more than miracles, because they 
 have evidently a purpose in His Sacred Heart beyond 
 that of the simple exhibition of supernatural power for 
 the relief of human distress or need, thereby to accredit 
 the Divine mission which He was discharging on earth- 
 It has already been said, that many of these parabolic 
 miracles, so to call them, were connected with the Lake,. 
 which had been to His disciples a kind of second home^ 
 in the days when they were but poor fishermen, sup- 
 porting themselves and their families by the sometimes 
 dangerous and always venturesome occupation from, 
 which He called them to become fishers of men.. 
 These miracles of the Lake have also a kind of pro- 
 phetic import, as they represent, as we cannot but 
 think, certain features in the coming history of the 
 Church, which was to be founded on the Apostles. 
 Thus there is a threefold meaning about the incidents 
 of this class in the Life of our Lord, and if they are 
 taken together and arranged in a series of Divine mani- 
 festations, it is easy to see how wonderfully they have 
 been ordained, and how mercifully they have been 
 recorded, for all generations in the Church. This 
 threefold meaning of miracles of this class enables us 
 
28o The Sto7^m 07i the Lake. 
 
 very easily to divide our considerations concerning them 
 into heads corresponding to these meanings, dealing with 
 them first as belonging to the chain of miracles, then 
 as having a parabolic import, and lastly in their pro- 
 phetical relation to the history of the Church, which 
 resembles in so many ways the fortunes of a ship tossed 
 about on a raging sea, which our Lord is able to calm 
 by a word. 
 
 'And sending away the multitudes, they take Him 
 as He was in the ship.' This is the account of the 
 accurate St. Mark. The two other Evangelists speak 
 more generally, beginning the account of the incident 
 at an earlier moment in the day, before they had sent 
 away the crowds who had been gathered round the 
 shore to listen to our Lord. 'And when He entered 
 into the boat. His disciples followed Him.' 'And it 
 came to pass on a certain day, that He went up into 
 a boat with His disciples, and He said to them, let 
 us go over to the other side of the Lake.' The fact 
 seems to have been, that, on ordinary occasions when 
 our Lord taught from the poop of the boat, the Apostles 
 were not always with Him on board, but some of them, 
 perhaps, with the multitudes on the shore, where they 
 may have been useful in arranging the crowd, and in 
 other ways. On this occasion they either accompanied 
 our Lord, in the first instance, into the boat, so as to 
 be ready, when the instruction was over, for the sail 
 across the Lake, or they joined Him, in the boat, when 
 the instruction came to an end, and when the crowds 
 were dismissed. Our Lord's motive in thus crossing 
 the Lake without returning to the town, when the day's 
 work was at an end, may perhaps have been in' part, 
 one of precaution, on account of the very watchful and 
 insidious manner in which His steps at this time were 
 haunted by His enemies. There were two great reasons 
 
The Storm on the Lake, 281 
 
 for the precautions which He habitually took at this 
 period. One of these was the simple securing of His 
 personal safety, for His time was not yet come, and He 
 was, in a manner, bound not to neglect the ordinary 
 care requisite under such circumstances. The other 
 reason was one of charity, and, we see it very powerful 
 in its operation ori His conduct at this time, and 
 perhaps it had even more influence in the direction 
 of His movements than the other. This reason was 
 founded on His great reluctance to provoke His enemies, 
 who had now reached the stage of desperate hostility to 
 Him, which made them hesitate at no sin, when it was 
 required by their opposition to His influence. We can 
 see from the manner in which the Evengelists mention 
 the repeated blasphemies against the Holy Ghost, of 
 which these men ran the risk whenever there was no 
 other way open to them of denying the argument from 
 His miracles, that our Lord hated so much this detest- 
 able sin of theirs as deliberately to avoid, as far as 
 possible, anything that might occasion it. He could 
 not now be in the midst of populations like that of 
 Galilee, where His miraculous power was so well known, 
 and where He had so often exerted it for the benefit 
 of sufferers of every kind, without being constantly 
 exposed to the demands made on his charity by ever 
 fresh appeals to Him for relief of this kind. But as 
 soon as He wrought any conspicuous miracle, the Scribes 
 and Pharisees were there, ready with their calumny that 
 He cast out devils by means of the Prince of the devils. 
 Thus He had this further reason for continually with- 
 drawing Himself from the public gaze at this time. 
 
 'And there were other ships with Him. And they 
 launched forth. And when they were sailing. He slept, 
 And there came down a storm of wind upon the Lake, 
 a great tempest arose in the sea, so that the boat was 
 
282 The Storm on the Lake, 
 
 covered with waves, and the waves beat into the ship, 
 so that the ship was filled, and they were in danger. 
 And He was in the hinder part of the ship, sleeping 
 upon a pillow.' The words of the several Evangelists 
 describe what was not uncommon on the Lake of 
 Galilee. The Lake is deeply sunken in the land, and, 
 on one side at least, it has ranges of mountains broken 
 by several valleys running down to the shore. The 
 consequence of this is that its waters are liable to 
 frequent and sudden gusts of violent winds, rushing 
 down the valleys and causing furious storms, of which 
 there is often no warning. Boats are often caught un- 
 awares and lost in such tempests. It seems that the 
 storm of which the Evangelists speak was of this kind, 
 though it may have been raised by some special action 
 of diabolical hatred to our Lord and His disciples, or 
 permitted by Him for the sake of the miracle which He 
 intended to work, and of the lesson which it was to 
 convey. * And they came and awakened Him, and say 
 to Him, Master, we perish, doth it not concern Thee 
 that we perish ? Lord save us, we perish ! And Jesus 
 saith to them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith ? 
 And rising up He rebuked the wind and the rage of the 
 water, and said to the sea, Peace, be still. And the 
 wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He com- 
 manded the winds and the sea, and there came a great 
 calm. And He said to them. Why are you fearful, 
 have ye not faith yet? Where is your faith? And 
 they feared exceedingly, and the men wondered, and 
 they said one to another, Who is this, think you, what 
 manner of Man is this, that He commandeth both the 
 winds and the sea, and they obey Him ? " 
 
 The order of the incidents is tolerably clear, from a 
 comparison of the narratives of the several Evangelists. 
 It seems that our Lord rebuked the disciples, both 
 
The Storm on the Lake, 283 
 
 before He spoke to the winds and waters, and also 
 after He had done so. His first rebuke was in answer 
 to their appeal to Him, after they had awakened Him, 
 and then He repeated His rebuke after the waves and 
 winds had ceased their violence. In order to under- 
 stand how far the disciples deserved the reproach of 
 want of faith, we must remind ourselves of certain truths 
 as to the Sacred Humanity of our Lord. We read 
 in the Gospels of His being hungry, and wearied, and 
 thirsty, and the like, as we read here of His sleeping. 
 It must be remembered that these natural sufferings and 
 weaknesses, were not with Him as with us. With us 
 both are the necessities of nature, from which no one 
 can be exempt except by some special favour or dis- 
 pensation. In the case of our Lord, it was not as 
 with us. The rights of His Body, had He used them, 
 might have exempted Him from all weaknesses, from 
 the necessity of food, sleep, rest, and the like. But when 
 He took on Him a passible Body, it does not seem that 
 He absolutely exempted it from all natural needs of 
 every kind, although the sufferings possibly consequent 
 on all such needs were not with Him, as with us, 
 necessary and independent of His will in each case. 
 When He is said to have hungered or been thirsty or 
 weary, and the rest, He is said so, because He then took 
 on Him, for that time or occasion, and for some Divine 
 purpose, the particular pain or effect of which mention is 
 made. Further, we cannot think that with Him the 
 time of sleep was that same time of inaction or re- 
 laxation of the intellectual consciousness and self- 
 mastery of the soul which it is in us. The Spouse 
 says in the Canticles, Ego dormio, cor autein meum 
 vigilatj and we are told of some of the saints of God 
 that, even in their sleep, they have been able to continue 
 their attention to Him and their prayer. It is only 
 
284 The Storfu on the Lake. 
 
 natural to think that this was ordinary with our 
 Lord.i 
 
 It is not meant by this that our Lord did not usually 
 sleep or take food, and the like. For if this had not 
 been so, there might have been a doubt raised as to 
 the reality of His Human Nature, and thus it must be 
 thought that He was constantly giving evidence in this 
 way that He was a man like other men. But the know- 
 ledge of this truth is of importance to us, and it is even 
 required for the full intelligence of what passed on this 
 occasion. For a lively and full faith, on this point, 
 would have been enough of itself to prevent the Apostles 
 from awakening our Lord, as if He was less able to hear 
 them and to help them, less powerful over the elements, 
 while asleep than while awake. We may remember how 
 the Prophet Elias ridiculed the false God of the priests 
 of Achab and Jezebel, on the occasion of the sacrifice 
 on Mount Carmel, when no answer came to their prayer 
 — *Cry with a louder voice, for he is a God, and perhaps 
 he is talking, or is in an inn, or on a journey, or perhaps 
 he is asleep and must be awaked.' ^ Where there was 
 a true and perfect faith in the Divinity of our Lord, 
 there would certainly have been a reverent reluctance 
 to arouse Him from the sleep which He had chosen 
 to allow Himself, as if He and those with Him could 
 be lost while He was with them, whether sleeping or 
 waking. In the case of the Ark of God, in the times 
 of David, Oza was struck dead for putting out his hand 
 to save, as he thought, the Ark from falling from the 
 carriage in which it was conveyed.^ And there might 
 have; been something of the same want of reverence in 
 
 1 We follow here the opinion of Toletus, to whom Cornelius a Lapide 
 refers his readers. See Toletus, In Luc. c. viii, and also see his 
 Enarratio in Sununam S. Thomcr, p. 111, qu, xiv. seq. 
 , 2 3'^ Kings xviii. 27. 
 
 3 2_ Kings vi. 7. 
 
The Storm on the Lake. 285 
 
 rousing up our Lord prematurely, but that the faith 
 of the Apostles, or of the men with them in the boat, 
 was so infirm, and that the sudden danger might be 
 their excuse for their want of perfect consideration. 
 And we cannot doubt that our Lord's words to the 
 Apostles convey a kind of complaint as to their back- 
 wardness in this perfect faith, to which He had been so 
 long leading them on by means of their constant inter- 
 course with Himself and the revelations concerning Him 
 of which the Providential dealings of His Father were 
 so full. It can hardly be that He meant to reproach 
 the other mariners in the ship with incredulity, for 
 ordinar}' persons could not be expected to have that 
 knowledge of Him which the Apostles might by this 
 time have gained. 
 
 It is also observable that the word ' faith ' in the New 
 Testament, means sometimes not so much faith in the 
 abstract, as confidence in God and in our Lord, founded 
 on faith. And it seems as if this were the proper 
 meaning in this place, as when later on, on this same 
 Lake, when St. Peter had asked to be enabled to come 
 to our Lord walking on the waters, and began to fear 
 and so to sink, our Lord addressed him as one ' of little 
 faith.' It was not so much faith that was wanting to 
 the Apostle, as the confidence with which he ought to 
 have trusted to our Lord's word, bidding him come. 
 So here, if the Apostles had been calmly asked to state 
 their belief about our Lord, it is not probable that their 
 confession would have stopped far short of that after- 
 wards made by St. Peter. But if this were so, then they 
 might have known that where He was, whether asleep or 
 awake, they were safe with Him, and that no power, on 
 earth nor in Heaven, or the whole multitude of the 
 fiends of Hell, could harm them unless He permitted 
 them so to do. The perfection, therefore, of faith was 
 
286 The Sto7'm on the Lake, 
 
 wanting to them, manifesting itself in absolute confi- 
 dence, which would have prompted them indeed to pray 
 to Him, or to have recourse to Him in any other way, 
 but which was inconsistent with the flurry and alarm 
 which made them disturb His sleep, and almost reproach 
 Him for having allowed the danger to go as far as it had 
 gone. 
 
 The circumstance of the rebuke spoken by our Lord 
 to the winds and waves seems to have been distorted 
 by some heretics, as if it implied that the elements had 
 a kind of animated life, and could hear the words and 
 understand them. But our Lord would use human 
 language for the sake of those who witnessed the miracle, 
 and if He had not done so there might have been no 
 evident proof that the storm did not cease of itself as 
 suddenly as it had begun, and from the same kind of 
 natural cause. And if, as has been sometimes thought, 
 this tempest was contrived and brought about by the 
 evil spirits, either from their general enmity to our Lord, 
 or because they may have dreaded the work of mercy 
 which He was about to work on arriving at the shore 
 for which He was bound, then the language of our Lord 
 ■ may have been directly addressed to them. The other 
 circumstance in the case, namely, that there was a great 
 calm immediately, is noticed by some writers as showing 
 the miraculous power of the words of our Lord. For, 
 under ordinary circumstances, although the wind might 
 have ceased suddenly, the waves could not have sub- 
 sided, except after some interval of time. And there is 
 often about the miraculous works of our Lord this 
 character of perfect completeness, no single circumstance 
 of all that could be thought of to make the benefit abso- 
 lutely perfect in its own kind. For He does not what 
 He begins by halves, and thus it is sometimes noticed 
 in persons who have had some marvellous cure or grace 
 
The Sto7nn on the Lake. 287 
 
 conferred on them, at some shrine or by the interposition 
 of some saint, that they are not afterwards molested by 
 pain or trouble of the same kind as that from which they 
 have thus been deUvered. 
 
 This cannot quite be called the first occasion on which 
 our Lord had shown His power over nature. For in a 
 certain sense, the former miracle on the Lake, that of 
 the marvellous fishing, may be considered as coming 
 under this head. Still even that marvellous manifestation 
 must have been far less striking, in its effects upon the 
 mind and imagination, than this stilling of the tempest. 
 The great forces of the natural elements are things far 
 above the power of man, and he feels himself puny and 
 helpless, indeed, in the presence of some of the great 
 outbursts of these forces which are occasionally wit- 
 nessed — all the more if it happens that he is not simply 
 a spectator, but a plaything, so to say, in the hands of 
 the great powers which are set in motion. As these 
 great powers of nature bring home to us the might of 
 God Who made them, so certainly the exercise of any 
 control over them, on the part of men like ourselves, is 
 a most overwhelming proof of the communication to 
 them of the powers of God. And in the case before us, 
 our Lord had acted with supreme power and authority. 
 He had not prayed, or invoked any power but His own. 
 He had spoken to the winds and waves as their Master, 
 and in ordinary experience they had no Master. All 
 the wisdom and science and skill of man were utterly 
 powerless before them. And yet, at a word, the winds 
 and the waves had obeyed Him. Thus while the 
 malignant Pharisees in Capharnaum, by the very enor- 
 mity of the wickedness on which they were so ready to 
 rush in their hostility to Him, had, as it were, fettered 
 His power in the healing of disease and the driving out 
 of devils, because He was so loth to provoke them to 
 
2 88 The Storm on the Lake. 
 
 blasphemy, these poor fishermen of the Lake, who had 
 accompanied Hhn and His Apostles, were allowed to 
 be the witnesses of a miracle which even these Scribes 
 could hardly have found means to calumniate, and He 
 manifested to them His hidden Godhead in a way they 
 could hardly mistake. Thus fear is the first feeling of 
 which the Evangelists speak in them. For fearful as was 
 the storm itself, still more fearful was the power now 
 manifested of quelling the storm with a word. 'And 
 they feared exceedingly, and they said one to another, 
 Who is this, thinkest thou, that both wind and sea obey 
 Him ? ' It may also have been by a special arrangement 
 of Providence that this experience of theirs of the Divine 
 power, manifested by our Lord in the quelling the tem- 
 pest, should have been a kind of preparation of their 
 minds and hearts for the great display of a similar power, 
 over the spiritual storms by which souls can be beset, 
 which was awaiting them on their landing in the country 
 of the Gerasenes. Not that our Lord had not often, 
 before this time, shown His power over the devils, or 
 that any instance of possession had not very dreadful 
 aspects, but that certainly we have no instance recorded 
 for us of this awful scourge in the Gospels, so terrible as 
 that which was soon to be set before them. 
 
 This is the simple history of the miracle, and we may 
 proceed at once to those other aspects of the narrative 
 of which mention has been made. It was said that 
 there was here a parable and a prophecy as well as a 
 miracle. The parable consists in this, that the circum- 
 stances of this incident are contrived, so to speak, in the 
 Providence of God, as to set before us a perfect picture 
 of that which frequently takes place in the history of 
 souls, especially of those who are watchful over their 
 own movements, and over the dealings of God with 
 them. On such souls it is frequently God's way, to 
 
The Storm on the Lake, 289 
 
 allow the sudden storms of temptation to sweep down, 
 as the blast of wind in this history swept down through 
 one of the gullies or narrow valleys along the eastera 
 shore of the sea of Galilee. This tempest seems to have 
 taken place in the evening, if not in the night, and this 
 circumstance must have added greatly to the fearfulness 
 of the trial to which the faith and the confidence of the 
 Apostles were exposed. Thus, then, we have here a 
 perfect image of a soul overwhelmed by darkness and 
 gloom, deprived of all spiritual consolation and light, 
 and at the same time beset by temptations, and doubts, 
 and difficulties of many kinds, strong and bewildering in 
 themselves, but made still more so by the malice and 
 cunning of the enemies of mankind, who are permitted 
 at such times to do almost their worst, though they are 
 all the time held back by the supreme power of God, 
 Who measures carefully every item of the forces which 
 He allows them to set in motion. In such a condition 
 of the soul, it is apparently left to itself, as the mariners 
 in the boat on the Lake seemed to be abandoned by our 
 Lord, Who slept as if He had no care for them. They 
 are tempted by the worst of temptations, that of despair, 
 for they think that there is no longer help for them even 
 in our Lord Himself They have perhaps been accus- 
 tomed from time to time to enjoy His sensible presence 
 in the form of light and consolation, and then they have 
 feared no assaults of their spiritual enemies, because that 
 sensible presence of His was enough to animate them 
 and make them secure. But all this is now at an end, 
 and as the ship seemed to be covered by the waves, so 
 the soul in this state seems to be altogether submerged 
 in a sea of temptations and in tribulations. 
 
 Happy indeed are such souls, if they follow the ex- 
 ample of the disciples, in the manner in which it may 
 be harmlessly and profitably followed, that is, by rousing 
 T 7 
 
290 The Storm on the Lake. 
 
 up our Lord, not indeed in any way that involves want 
 of confidence and weakness of faith, still less any want 
 of perfect respect, or perfect submission to His will, but 
 in the manner in which He delights to be besieged and 
 beset and importuned by us, that is, by constant and 
 fervent and urgent prayer for help. Persons in despair 
 ■do not pray, but good Christian souls, under the storms 
 'Of temptation and sorrows of every kind, are driven by 
 their sufferings and trials to the blessed remedy of -prayer, 
 whereby they testify their own faith and confidence in 
 Him. And then He arises, as it were, from sleep. For 
 all along He has not been far from them. He has been 
 with them, but, as it were, in that Divine sleep which 
 alone He can allow, not manifesting His presence by 
 any external sign, while He has been at the centre of 
 the soul, because it has been His presence there which 
 has been its strength in resistance, and the cause of that 
 distressed and anxious love which has made it so fearful 
 of offending Him, so troubled by the evil suggestions to 
 which it may have been exposed, and so faithful in its 
 -course to Him in prayer and supplication. And at a 
 word from Him the miracle of the Lake is repeated. 
 For He has but to bestir Himself, if we use such 
 language, and all the powers of Hell and all the passions 
 of human nature, which these powers may have succeeded 
 in lashing into fury, as the waves were lashed into fury 
 by 'the winds, all are at once subdued, and a great calm 
 succeeds as if there had been no storm for Him to quell. 
 For where He is, there is light and grace, always the 
 jgrace that is sufficient for the conquering of the tempta- 
 tions which have arisen, and when He chooses the soul 
 is at once filled to the brim with joy and delight and 
 courage and peace, feeling that all its enemies are placed 
 under its feet, and that it can do all things in Him Who 
 is its strength. And the fruit of the trial is an increase 
 
The Storm on the Lake. 291 
 
 of faith and at the same time of holy and loving fear, 
 for there has been a fresh manifestation, alike of the 
 power of the spiritual enemies of man and of the innate 
 weakness of our nature, if it were left to itself, and also 
 of the intimate presence of God in the soul, and of the 
 instantaneous effect of a single divine word. The 
 Apostles were in some degree trained by these miracles 
 of the Lake, for the discharge of their future great duties 
 in the guidance and ruling of souls of all characters, 
 and they went forth from the experience of this night 
 voyage, as from other similar incidents of which we shall 
 have to speak, with a large increase of knowledge of our 
 Lord and of His power, as well as of the confidence 
 with which they were ready to brave any danger in His 
 company. Thus this incident of the tempest came very 
 beautifully on the end of those instructions in the prin- 
 ciples of the Kingdom which had been given to them so 
 lately in the first series of parables. 
 
 Moreover, it must be added that the parabolic import 
 of this miracle is not to be confined to the consolation 
 which may be derived from it, in the assurance that it 
 may give, that, in the spiritual storms to which the souls 
 of the followers of our Lord are liable, they may rely on 
 His aid and trust that they have Him with them, even 
 when they experience in themselves none of the sensible 
 joy in His presence which it is their lot at other times 
 to feel. The lesson is not merely that when such times 
 of trial come, our Lord is still there to help and sustain 
 them. It extends further, to a sketch of that which is 
 actually the regular course of things with such souls. It 
 implies that their ordinary experience shall be, and ought 
 to be, such as is represented in the miracle. We are to 
 expect tempests and disturbances, and, as St. Peter says 
 in his Epistle, we are not to be surprised at them or 
 count them as something strange. They are the natural 
 
292 The Storm on the Lake. 
 
 and regular incidents of our spiritual warfare, just as 
 battles and scares and sudden attacks are the natural 
 incidents of the life of soldiers on a campaign in the 
 country of an enemy. They are to be expected, and it 
 is to be more a strange thing and a matter of surprise, 
 if they do not occur, than if they do occur. But, further, 
 we are taught by the miracle, viewed in the light in 
 which we are now regarding it, that under these con- 
 ditions of our warfare, to which we must make up our 
 minds and at which we are in no wise to be frightened, 
 we shall have with us, unless we drive Him away by 
 some fault of our own, the presence of our Lord in our 
 hearts, a presence like that of One Who is asleep indeed, 
 but Whose Heart is awake, according to the words of 
 the Canticle already quoted. He can no more forsake 
 us than He forsook the Apostles in the ship. But He 
 requires of us, as He required of them, the exercise of 
 the faith that He has given us, the patience, and courage, 
 and endurance, and confidence, which are due from us 
 to Him. As it was a deficiency of faith, in the eyes of 
 our Lord, to be too anxious and full of fear, under those 
 circumstances of the storm, even though the boat was 
 covered by the waves, so it is not the way of the strong 
 saints of God to be too much alarmed and cast down by 
 the assaults of this kind, to which He subjects them in 
 His providential guidance of their souls. The storm was 
 allowed by Him to test, and, in the end, to strengthen 
 the faith of the disciples. It was a step in the gradual 
 formation in their hearts of that perfect and unshaken 
 faith in His divinity which was required in them, before 
 they could be made the foundation stones of the Church. 
 So in the experience of the saintly souls of which we 
 speak, the trials of this kind to which they are exposed, 
 form an essential part of the discipline of God with 
 regard to them, and therefore to leave them out, as it 
 
The Storm on the Lake, 293 
 
 were, from the process of their training for their high 
 places in the Kingdom, would be contrary to the ordi- 
 nary method by which God provides for their growth in 
 perfection. 
 
 These thoughts naturally prepare us for the con- 
 sideration of what may be called the prophetical meaning 
 of the miracle of the storm on the Lake calmed by our 
 Lord. These miracles, as has been said, may well be 
 considered as foreshadowing the fortunes of the Catholic 
 Church in the world. This also was one of the many 
 points of instruction as to which it was very important 
 that our Lord should enlighten the minds of the Apos- 
 tles, and of those who were to come after them in the 
 Church. It is needless to say how many traces we 
 have in the Gospel history of the very natural truth, 
 that the minds and thoughts, even of the most intimate 
 companions of our Lord, were very far indeed from the 
 comprehension of the conditions under which the Church 
 was to be launched on the world. When they came to 
 see how mighty and various were His miracles, showing 
 Him to be possessed of all the power of the Godhead 
 over creatures, they would very naturally, in one sense 
 of the word, take up with notions as to the future of the 
 Kingdom far more in harmony with the carnal ideas of 
 the Jews, as to the reign of the Messias, than with the 
 anticipations of the Sacred Heart. There were many 
 passages in the prophecies which might have been quoted 
 by them in support of these views, for the words of the 
 prophets require to be, in many cases, spiritually under- 
 stood, and this kind of interpretation was not familiar to 
 the Jewish schools. It is one of the most beautiful parts 
 of the Divine Providence over the Church, that her 
 fortunes in the world are so gradually unfolded, and 
 that it is so seldom that even her wisest children are 
 able to forecast the immediate future. But our Lord's 
 
2 94 'r^^ Storm on the Lake. 
 
 time was very short, and He had a great difficulty, on 
 account of the state of the hearts of those with whom 
 He had to deal, in unfolding to them what may be 
 called the principles of the history of His Kingdom in 
 this world. But He could at least leave these, and other 
 points of the same kind, sketched for them in miracles 
 and parables, and in miracles that were in themselves 
 parables, just as He left the reprobation of the synagogue 
 foretold in the mu-acle of the withered fig-tree. These 
 would be interpreted for the Apostles by the Holy 
 Ghost, a part of Whose office it would be to bring to 
 their remembrance what had passed in His lifetime and 
 what had been said by Him. And, after the Apostles, 
 these things would rem.ain for ever in the narrative of 
 the Evangelists, for the consolation and illumination of 
 the Church of all generations. 
 
 In this aspect, the miracle before us becomes, like 
 that of the wonderful fishing, a prophecy of what was to 
 be so often found in the Christian ages. The Church 
 is assailed by storms and tempests of every kind, the 
 powers of hell are furious against her, the princes of this 
 world are either hostile, or faithless in her defence, her 
 own children are among her most malicious enemies, 
 wounding her heart with the special malice of heresy 
 and schism, she is constantly on the very verge, as it 
 seems, of destruction, most like indeed to a ship tossed 
 about by winds and waves at their will, helpless and 
 hopeless, covered by the water already, and on the point 
 of finally sinking beneath them. Her own apostate 
 children, the infidel powers, the followers of the false 
 Prophet, the subterranean plotters against faith, rehgion, 
 and even the natural society which God has founded on 
 law and public order, and on which she herself rests — all 
 are leagued against her, and all are ready to shout with 
 joy at what they deem her inevitable destruction. And 
 
The Storm on the Lake, 295 
 
 the prayers of her children, as well as the intercessions 
 of the saints themselves, seem for a time to be in vain^ 
 and our Lord is thought almost to have forgotten His- 
 promise, for He makes as if He were asleep — until the 
 moment appointed in His own wisdom comes, and then 
 He rises and rebukes the waves and the winds, and 
 there is a great calm. This is the ever recurring expe- 
 rience of century after century. It happened at the 
 beginning of this century, and in the closing years of 
 the last. It has happened in our own time, and even 
 now the Pontiff, on the throne of St. Peter, is fain to- 
 warn the faithful again and again, of the urgent danger 
 of the time and of the necessity for most instant and 
 united prayer. No doubt the day will come when the 
 storm will for the time be lulled and the madness of the 
 waves cease. And as often as this happens in succeed- 
 ing centuries of the life of the Church, as often are her 
 children reminded of this scene on the Lake of Galilee,, 
 when our Lord seemed to have forgotten His charge 
 while He was asleep on a pillow, in the moment of the 
 most urgent danger, and when, at His own chosen 
 moment, He bade the waves and the winds be still. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 The Legion of Devils. 
 
 St. Matt. viii. 28 — 34 ; St. Mark v. i — 21 ; St. Luke viii. 26 — 40. 
 Vita Vita Nostra, § 64. 
 
 It has often happened, in the lives of missionary saints 
 and other Apostolic men, that the vessels in which they 
 have sailed from place to place have been met by very 
 violent tempests, and been saved almost miraculously 
 from destruction. And in such cases the saints have seen 
 the work of the evil spirits in the tempests, which have 
 been raised to hinder their carrying the Gospel, or the 
 means of grace, to some country that might otherwise 
 remain without them, as well as the interference of 
 heaven in their safety under such imminent danger, and 
 in the calming of the stormy seas which has suddenly 
 taken place. Such incidents have their anticipation in 
 the Life of our Lord, and the stilling of the storm of 
 which we had to speak in the last chapter, is their typical 
 forecast. It might almost seem as if the storm on the 
 Lake of Galilee on this occasion had been raised by the 
 evil spirits, to hinder the approach of our Lord to a shore 
 where He was to show, in a very marvellous manner, His 
 power over Hell and all its citizens. When the morning 
 dawned, and the vessel containing our Lord reached the 
 shore opposite to Capharnaum, which led to an open 
 gorge surrounded on each side by steep mountains, the 
 party was at once met by two very formidable and fierce 
 demoniacs, over whom our Lord was to exercise His 
 
The Legion of Devils. 297 
 
 power under circumstances so singular, as to have made 
 their dispossession the subject of a special narrative by 
 each of the three historical Evangelists. Nowhere in the 
 Gospel history have we so detailed an account of a case 
 of this kind, except perhaps in those places in which they 
 speak of the lunatic boy who was delivered from the 
 power of the devil immediately after the Transfiguration. 
 The history of these Gadarene or Gerasene demoniacs 
 is full of instruction for us of every kind. 
 
 We speak of demoniacs in the plural, for St. Matthew 
 tells us that they were two. His narrative is much the 
 shortest of the three, and it suits his usual conciseness to 
 speak of the demoniacs in the plural number, for it is 
 clear that he omits a number of circumstances which 
 apply to one only of the two, and thus his narrative does 
 not require that he should discriminate between them. 
 St. Mark and St. Luke add these particular circumstances, 
 which belong to the history of the chief and most con- 
 spicuous of the two, and as these would not all apply to 
 the second, they omit all mention of him. Thus there is 
 no contradiction between the first Evangelist on the one 
 hand and the second and third on the other, and the 
 difference between the several narratives is simply 
 accounted for by the fact that the details added by 
 St. Mark and St. Luke belonged only to the case of one 
 demoniac, who seems, from the whole story, to have 
 been a man well known, and perhaps of some import- 
 ance, in the country. If this were the case, it is natural 
 to suppose that it was his case that made so deep an 
 impression on the inhabitants of the district, and that 
 thus the dispossession of his companion was a matter 
 which attracted comparatively little notice. 
 
 * And they came on the other side of the sea, into the 
 country of the Gerasenes, which is over against Galilee. 
 And as He went out of the ship, and was come forth to 
 
298 The Legion of Devils. 
 
 the land, immediately there met Him out of the 
 sepulchres two that were possessed with devils, one, a 
 certain man who had a devil now a very long time, and 
 he wore no clothes, neither did he abide in a house, but 
 in the sepulchres. And no man now could bind him, 
 not even with chains, for having been bound often with 
 fetters and chains, he had burst the chains and broken 
 the fetters in pieces, and no one could tame him, and 
 breaking the bonds he was driven by the devil into the 
 deserts. And he was always, night and day, in the 
 monuments, and in the mountains, crying out and cutting 
 himself with stones, exceeding fierce, so that no man 
 could pass by that way.' 
 
 This, then, was a case of demoniacal possession of a 
 more fearful kind than those others which have already 
 been mentioned in the Gospel history. In the case of 
 the demoniac who was healed on the Sabbath on which 
 our Lord taught in the synagogue at Capharnaum, the 
 poor sufferer appears to have lived among his friends, 
 and to have been allowed to be present at the services of 
 the Sabbath, which may perhaps have ordinarily had a 
 good soothing effect upon such persons, whose violent 
 fits probably only recun-ed at intervals. In other cases 
 we hear of demoniacs being brought to our Lord, and 
 this shows that they must have been to a certain extent 
 under the control of their friends. Such might be 
 expected to be the case when possessions occurred in the 
 midst of the chosen people, when the Synagogue, the 
 Church of that time, was in its full ordinary power, and 
 when the cities and dwellings of the people were to some 
 extent sanctified by the holy prayers and ordinances of 
 the true religion. The country of the Gerasenes appears 
 to have been either altogether heathen, or inhabited by a 
 mixed population of which a large portion were heathen. 
 In such regions the evil spirits would have more power, 
 
The Legion of Devils, 299 
 
 as in our own day they have more power in heretical 
 countries than in Catholic countries, more in heathen 
 lands than in Christian countries. Certainly, the inci- 
 dents of the case now related by the Evangelists are in 
 complete accordance with this experience. As these two 
 demoniacs seem to have run to meet our Lord and His 
 companions, they may not have known Who He was 
 until they came near, and their rushing upon the party 
 may be explained by what the EvangeHst tells us, that no 
 man could pass that way, and they may have at first 
 intended to fall on the wayfarers with their usual 
 violence. But the evil spirits soon became aware, if 
 they had not discerned our Lord from the beginning, 
 of the presence of One Who was their Master, and from 
 Whose anger and justice they had everything to fear. 
 And it is possible that the Evangelists mean us to under- 
 stand that they knew our Lord at once, and that their 
 meeting him in the manner they did was the result of 
 their abject terror at finding themselves in His Presence. 
 St. Mark and St. Luke tell us that the demoniac 
 threw himself at our Lord's feet, and that the Lord 
 addressed the devil who had possession of the chief of 
 these two demoniacs, saying to him, ' Go out of the man, 
 thou unclean spirit.' * Seeing Jesus afar off, he ran and 
 adored Him ; he fell down before Him, and crying out 
 with a loud voice, he said, What have I to do with Thee, 
 Jesus, the Son of the Most High God ? Art Thou come 
 hither to torment us before the time ? I adjure Thee by 
 God, I beseech Thee, do not torment me ! And Jesus 
 asked him, What is thy Name ? But he said, My name 
 is Legion, for we are many, because many devils were 
 entered into him. And they besought Him much, that 
 He would not command them to go into the abyss, that 
 He would not drive them away out of the country. And 
 there was there near the mountain a great herd of swine 
 
300 The Legion of Devils, 
 
 feeding. And the Spirits besought Him, saying, If Thou 
 cast us out hence, send us into the herd of swine. And 
 Jesus immediately gave them leave. And the unclean 
 spirits going out, entered into the swine, and the herd 
 with great violence was carried headlong down a steep 
 place into the sea, being about two thousand, and were 
 stifled in the sea.' 
 
 We are thus able to trace the succession of incidents 
 in this wonderful scene. The demoniacs run to our Lord, 
 and adore Him, the devils having discovered their 
 Master, and crouching in abject terror at His feet. Then 
 our Lord, as if to show His rejection of their homage, 
 bids the devils leave the men. Then they endeavour to 
 plead with Him in their hellish way, as if there was 
 something unjust or premature in His purpose of 
 depriving them of that miserable enjoyment which they 
 find, in tormenting and afflicting the creatures of God by 
 the usurped power which they had been allowed to 
 exercise, as if all that was permitted them in the 
 Providence of God was theirs by right, and as if they 
 did not deserve immediate banishment to Hell, because 
 God had not as yet banished them thither. ' What have 
 we to do with Thee, Jesus, the Son of the Most High 
 God ? ' and they venture to adjure Him by God not to 
 torment them : * Art Thou come hither to torment us 
 before the time ; I beseech Thee do not torment me.' 
 These words will be explained more fully presently. 
 Then, after the adjuration and petition not to be 
 tormented, our Lord asks the name of the devil, and 
 is answered, again, in their hellish boastful way, * Legion, 
 for we are many.' And while He persists in the injunction 
 to them to go out, they pray that He will not send them 
 out of the country, or into the abyss of Hell, which is the 
 prison to which they are all finally destined. After this, 
 while He still enjoins them to depart, they pray to be 
 
The Legion of Devils. 301 
 
 allowed to go into the swine, if they are to be cast out 
 from their human victims. Our Lord gives them leave, 
 and in a moment the whole herd of two thousand swine 
 is driven, by the malice of these enemies of the creatures 
 of God, to run violently over a steep precipice into the 
 waters of the lake below. This is ,the order of the 
 several incidents here mentioned, which may have pressed 
 so fast one on the other as to be all concluded within a 
 few minutes. 
 
 We have already seen, in the case of the demoniac in 
 the synagogue at Capharnaum already mentioned, as well 
 as of those others who were delivered in the same city, 
 after the sun had set on that memorable Sabbath, that 
 the devils were ever forward in declaring our Lord to be 
 the Son of God. The question whether they really dis- 
 cerned in Him the Divine Person Whose Name they 
 used, or whether they uttered the words in a kind of 
 blasphemous derision, or, again, in adulation and flattery, 
 has been already spoken of. What is quite certain is 
 that our Lord did not allow them to bear witness to His 
 Divinity, nor did He allow them, on the other hand, to 
 turn Him from His purpose of casting them out. He 
 would have from them no witness, and He would accept 
 from them no adoration, such as was offered to Him on 
 this occasion. The words of the demoniac in the syna- 
 gogue at Capharnaum are almost identical with those 
 used by them in the land of the Gerasenes. In both 
 cases it is said, ' What have we to do with Thee ? ' The 
 demoniac at Capharnaum calls Him Jesus of Nazareth, 
 perhaps with some intention of lowering Him in the 
 minds of the audience in the synagogue. In the case of 
 the Gerasenes the name of his supposed birthplace is 
 left out, as in that region Capharnaum and Nazareth 
 were equally unknown or disliked. So also the other 
 demoniacs healed at Capharnaum had cried out that He 
 
302 The Legion of Devils. 
 
 was the Son of God, and had been silenced by His 
 command. And again, the demon in the synagogue is 
 said to have asked our Lord, ' Art Thou come to destroy 
 me ? ' and here the legion of devils are said in the same 
 way to have cried out, 'Art Thou come to torment us 
 before the time ? ' and to have added, first prayers and 
 supplications, and finally, an adjuration by the name of 
 God that He would not torment them. 
 
 The expression, ' What have we to do with Thee ? ' 
 occurs in several places in Scripture, and was used by our 
 Lord Himself in His significant answer to His Blessed 
 Mother at the marriage feast at Cana of Galilee. It has 
 been already explained as meaning a remonstrance, an 
 expostulation, an intimation that the person addressed 
 either possesses, or claims, some kind of power or influ- 
 ence over the speaker, of which the latter has some 
 reason to deprecate the exertion, either for the moment 
 or altogether. The exact force or strength of the remon- 
 strance may vary indefinitely, and is to be gathered in 
 each case from the circumstances of the incident and the 
 relation of the persons concerned. Thus these words may 
 amount either to a passionate expostulation, founded on 
 right and justice, or to a loving intimation on the part of 
 the speaker that a certain amount of just influence is to 
 be acknowledged. The meaning of the phrase is thus 
 founded on the actual import of the words. In the 
 cases before us the devils mean to claim some exemp- 
 tion from the power which our Lord, as they knew, could 
 exercise over them, and which, they greatly feared. He 
 was about to exercise actually. They lied, as they 
 usually do, in asserting, as they virtually asserted, that 
 our Lord had nothing to do with them, that it was just 
 that He should let them alone. He had everything to do 
 with them, for as God He was their natural Master and 
 Lord, and all the pov/er which they exerted over the 
 
The Legion of Devils, 303 
 
 souls and bodies of men came from Him, in the first 
 instance, as a natural gift. And in the second place, the 
 actual exercise of this power by them, in this or that 
 case, depended entirely on His permission and tolerance 
 in each individual instance, and could be limited and 
 terminated by Him at His will. Moreover, as Man He 
 had received other powers also, by virtue of the Hypos- 
 tatic Union, and He came especially for the purpose of 
 destroying the kingdom over men which the devils had 
 usurped, and of delivering both bodies and souls from 
 their tyranny. They had everything to do with Him, 
 because in the exercise of what was permitted to them, 
 for wise and judicial purposes of the providence of God, 
 they were fighting against His Father's honour, they 
 were injuring His creatures, they were disturbing the 
 peace and the beauty of His Kingdom. They had 
 everything to do with Him, because it was His purpose, 
 first to use them in order to chastise the sins of men and 
 fill them ^vith holy fear, and then to show His power and 
 accredit His own mission in the world by casting them 
 out by a word, and letting all men see at once the 
 hideous malice and mischievousness of His enemies, 
 and the heahng and redeeming power and character of 
 His own work. The devils, then, went far beyond the 
 truth in their claim for immunity, on the ground that 
 what they were doing was, in a certain true sense, per- 
 mitted by God. It was permitted by Him, but only for 
 His own purposes, not for theirs, and just so far and so 
 long as seemed good to Him in His Providence. 
 
 The words which follow, * Art thou come to destroy 
 us, or to torment us, or to torment us before the time ? ' 
 — this last clause being added on this occasion only — 
 contain many truths concerning the condition of the 
 fallen angels, and the manner in which they are, and are 
 to be, treated by the justice of God. The essential 
 
304 The Legion of Devils. 
 
 torment of the evil spirits is the loss of the possession 
 and sight of God, and the eternal fire by which they are 
 devoured without being destroyed. And this torment has 
 been theirs from the moment of their fall from Heaven, 
 greater or less in this or that one among them, in exact 
 proportion to their sin, which was more heinous in some 
 of them than in others. The demons of whom we hear 
 in the Gospel history could not ask to be spared this, 
 nor could they fear that our Lord was about to inflict it 
 on them now, seeing that it had already been inflicted on 
 them from the very beginning. In another sense, it 
 might be said that His very Presence, that of the Divine 
 Person in the Sacred Humanity, was a torment to them. 
 It made them writhe, and renewed their pain, because it 
 brought home to them all that they had lost, and the 
 hopelessness of their eternal lot. The words here may 
 be understood as including this signification, but it cer- 
 tainly does not represent all that they must have meant. 
 Indeed, it is not easy for us to interpret fully the 
 thoughts and words of these miserable enemies of God. 
 Besides these truths, we are taught by the Fathers, 
 whose doctrine is based upon Scripture, that a great 
 number of the evil spirits, probably by far the greater 
 number, have not as yet been shut up in the prison of 
 Hell, which is to be their abode throughout all eternity, 
 at least not with that final and complete imprisonment 
 which is to be their lot after the Day of Judgment, 
 and that it is to them a comparative relief and enjoy- 
 ment to be allowed to haunt the air and the earth 
 on which we live, and to vent their malice upon the 
 creatures of God. This final sending of them to their 
 eternal prison is what is presently spoken of in this 
 passage as their being cast out into the abyss, and 
 this is the great torment and punishment which, as 
 they know from prophecy, awaits them, and from 
 
The Legion of Devils. 305 
 
 which they shrink with the most intense abhorrence and 
 dread. And lastly, it is a great torture and chastise- 
 ment to any evil spirit who has been permitted to 
 possess himself of a human body, in the way and 
 degree in which these poor demoniacs were possessed, 
 to be cast out. Dispossession involves an act of 
 authority on the part of God, or of some one speaking 
 in His Name, it involves also a cessation of the usurped 
 power in which the pride of the demons takes so much 
 delight, and their forced submission to their Master, 
 against Whom they have rebelled. It involves an acknow- 
 ledgment of defeat, most galling to them, and it brings 
 nearer to them, if it does not actually involve, that final 
 incarceration of which mention has just been made. 
 Thus the simple act of our Lord in casting them out, as 
 He was now about to do, was in the eyes of these 
 miserable spirits a most true torment. 
 
 We are thus able to see the meaning of this expostu- 
 lation, or remonstrance, or fearful apprehension, on the 
 part of these devils. The torment they already felt they 
 could not deprecate, nor could they mean nothing more 
 by their prayer than that our Lord would not come near 
 them. They must have meant to endeavour to induce 
 Him not to cast them out, at all events not to cast 
 them out in such a way as to forbid them for the future 
 from entering into other creatures of God, in such a way 
 as to anticipate, as they would think, the final sentence of 
 inclusion in Hell which they knew to await them here- 
 after, although there is not any decree or ordinance of 
 God, much less any claim of justice on their part, which 
 could prevent the immediate infliction on them of that 
 final sentence at any moment in any particular case. 
 Their first prayer would be, then, that they might not be 
 cast out, their second prayer, if the first could not be 
 granted, would be that they might not at once be sent to 
 u 7 
 
;3o6 The Legion of Devils. 
 
 their places of never-ending torment. This explains the 
 meaning of the words added here, which do not occur in 
 the former instances, 'before the time.' No sentence of 
 God can fall before the time, for He has in His power 
 and in His right to punish them with the extreme 
 severity of His justice at any time. But to cast them out 
 of the persons whom they now possessed, sooner than 
 they might otherwise have had to leave them, would be, 
 in their lying estimate of their rights, a tormenting them 
 before the time, and, much more, to banish them at once 
 to the abyss would be the same anticipation of justice. 
 
 There is yet another circumstance to be noted in con- 
 nection with this particular case, which may give yet a 
 further meaning to these words of the demons. For the 
 •country in which our Lord now found Himself seems to 
 have been, in the main, a heathen country, the popula- 
 lation of which was to some extent mixed, but still one 
 of the main elements of which were heathen. Our Lord, 
 as He said Himself, was not sent except to the lost 
 sheep of the House of Israel, and during His lifetime 
 He restricted His own preaching, and even that of the 
 Apostles, to the Jewish nation. The few exceptions that 
 we find to this rule in His conduct are only such 
 as show us that He observed it in general with great 
 ••strictness. If this was the case, the devils in the country 
 •of the Gerasenes may have alleged, in their malicious 
 way, that the time was not yet come for Him to invade, 
 as it were, their possessions and dominions among the 
 heathen. Indeed, the very facts of the case show an 
 •extent of power allowed to them among these poor 
 Iieathen, of which there is no instance among the dispos- 
 sessions which are related elsewhere in the Gospel 
 history. Among the Jews there are many terrible cases, 
 but none like this. The devils seem to reign with a 
 plenitude of power here, whereas among the Jews their 
 
The Legion of Devils, 307 
 
 capacity for evil seems to be held in check, more or less, 
 by the presence of the faith and the Synagogue. In this 
 sense also, therefore, these devils may be understood as 
 complaining that our Lord crosses over the lake to 
 molest them, before the time has come for His teaching 
 and authority to be spread beyond the limits of the 
 chosen people to whom He was more immediately sent. 
 
 There may seem to be some confirmation of this 
 interpretation in the fact, which is related by St. Mark 
 alone, that the devils ventured even to adjure our Lord 
 * by God,' that He would not torment him. This was a 
 lying and blasphemous use of the name of God on the 
 part of these rebel spirits. But it seems to contain or 
 imply the assertion that, as the Providence of God had 
 arranged that these devils should be in possession of this 
 man, or should be dominant in that region, He might be 
 in some sort appealed to, as if His justice or His decree 
 required that the possession and domination should not 
 be prematurely interfered with. The other instance of 
 this kind of adjuration in the Gospel history is that of 
 Caiaphas the High Priest, who spoke in the name of the 
 Synagogue, and of the nation which God had made His 
 own, and it was therefore an act of homage to the name 
 of His Father, for our Lord to answer the adjuration, 
 even although it was made most malignantly, and with 
 the sole purpose of forcing Him to an avowal which 
 would lead at once to His condemnation as a blas- 
 phemer. It cannot certainly be said that these evil spirits 
 had a right to interpose the authority of the name of 
 God to shield themselves from the chastisement which 
 was about to fall on them. But their insolence and 
 pride were so great that they may have dared to speak as 
 if they had some rights, in consequence of God's per- 
 mission, which might be pleaded as a check to the act of 
 authority which our Lord was now about to perform. 
 
3o8 The Legion of Devils. 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, the appeals and remon- 
 strances of these evil spirits, our Lord let them see that 
 He would not desist from His purpose of expelling them. 
 For ' He commanded the unclean spirit to go out of the 
 man.' That is, He went on commanding. St. Luke and 
 St. Mark both seem to give the command as the reason 
 for the abject petitions of the devil, and the former, in 
 his usual spirit of compassion and sympathy, adds here 
 the pitiable circumstances of the case, as if to suggest 
 that our Lord's knowledge of these circumstances w^as 
 the motive of His persistence. 'For many times it 
 seized him, and he was bound with chains, and kept in 
 fetters, and breaking the bonds he was driven by the 
 devil into the deserts.' St. Luke had already mentioned 
 of this poor man the other circumstances, that he ' had a 
 devil now a very long time, and he wore no clothes^ 
 neither did he abide in a house, but in the sepulchres.' 
 It may be added that these two Evangelists give the 
 story of this poor man's petition to our Lord after his 
 deliverance, that he might remain with Him, and this 
 seems to show that His case was one which touched and 
 interested the Apostles very much. All the circum- 
 stances mentioned by St. Luke, point to the contrast 
 between this case and other cases, and show that the 
 suffering of this person was unusual in its duration, 
 its malignity, its intensity. The devils were not usually 
 allowed to possess their poor victims continuously, and 
 indeed, we have seen in the instance of the demoniac 
 healed in the Synagogue that this could not have been 
 so. 
 
 But in the case of this man the affliction had now been 
 for a very long time, and the fits, so to speak, of the 
 possession were very frequent and very violent. He was 
 treated, as was often the case when there was great 
 violence, like a maniac, and so put into confinement by 
 
The Legion of Devils, 309 
 
 his friends, bound with chains and fetters, all of which 
 in his frenzy he had strength enough, goaded on by his 
 diaboHcal master, to break through. His possession 
 seemed almost permanent, with very few intervals, nor 
 was he permitted to rest from time to time, and live 
 among men, but was driven by the devil into the desert, 
 he could bear no clothes on his body, he was cutting his 
 flesh with stones, spending his days and nights in the 
 tombs and on the wild mountain-side, crying out, 
 howling, and assailing all the passers-by. This was 
 almost the extreme licence permitted by God to these 
 evil spirits. For they were always restrained from making 
 themselves masters of the soul and of its faculties as 
 well as of the body, and, as has already been said, the 
 state of possession was by no means, of necessity, a 
 state of sin, though it was often permitted as a chastise- 
 ment for sin. Our Lord, in the full knowledge of all 
 human things which belonged to His Sacred Humanity, 
 knew all these circumstances, and He could not forbear 
 now, at last, to deliver him. The devils might howl out, 
 using the voice and organs of the poor man himself, that 
 to cast them out would be to torment them before the 
 time. But, for the compassion of the Sacred Heart of 
 Jesus Christ, the time had long ago come for the deliver- 
 ance of this creature of God from the miserable bondage 
 to which these evil masters had reduced him. No 
 amount of human suffering and degradation will ever 
 satisfy the malice of our spiritual enemies, but in the 
 eyes of our most loving Redeemer any suffering is 
 enough to plead for deliverance. Indeed, when we come 
 to consider the fruits of the voyage over the Lake taken 
 by our Lord, we find indeed many great ends served 
 thereby for the instruction of the Apostles, of the Gera- 
 senes, and of ourselves, but still the one immediate 
 result of the whole appears to have been the deliverance 
 
3IO The Legion of Devils. 
 
 of these two demoniacs, as if for them, and for them 
 alone, our Lord had sailed through the storm. 
 
 The next incident in this history is the question asked 
 by our Lord as to the name of the devil. 'And He 
 asked him, What is thy name ? And he saith to Him, 
 My name is Legion, for we are many, because many 
 devils were entered into him.' There can be no difficulty 
 about the question here asked by our Lord. It was one 
 of those many questions which He is related to have put, 
 not for the sake of gaining any knowledge thereby, for 
 He could gain by the answer none which He did not 
 already possess, but in order that the answer might be 
 heard by the bystanders, and that they might thus learn, 
 not from Him, but out of the mouths of the persons 
 addressed, what He desired them to know. The answer 
 given by the devil, * My name is Legion, for we are 
 many,' was probably given in a mocking, scornful way, 
 as if it had been said, ' Name indeed, as if we were but 
 one : my name is Legion ! ' For the devils cannot lay 
 aside their boastfulness and arrogance, even in the 
 presence of our Lord. And, indeed, there is no difficulty 
 at all in believing that a great number of devils might be 
 permitted to enter into one man, as we are told that the 
 Blessed Magdalene had once been possessed by seven 
 devils, and as our Lord, in the description of the 
 returning devil, had spoken of him as taking with him 
 seven others more wicked than himself. Still it is pro- 
 bable that the name Legion, if it was meant to convey, as 
 some have thought, the exact number of the evil spirits 
 in this case, was a great exaggeration. It is better to 
 take it as simply signifying a large number, and by this 
 those present at the dispossession would understand the 
 extreme affliction and misery to which this poor man had 
 been subjected, and might also be reminded of the 
 immense multitude of our spiritual enemies, who sur- 
 
The Legio7t of Devils, 311 
 
 round us on every side, and whose malice is in pro-- 
 portion to their numbers, ever ready to wreak their 
 hatred and envy upon us to any extent that is permitted 
 to them by God. And yet, after all, they could not 
 make even this victim whom they possessed sin unless 
 he consented to their temptations, nor could they hurt 
 him, even in his body, one atom more than was allowed 
 them. When they left him, as we shall see, he was in a 
 state at once to resume the demeanour and habits of 
 civilised men, though we see, from their action on the 
 herd of swine, how ready they would have been to urge 
 him to self-destruction if they could. 
 
 After declaring their number, the devils, as we are 
 told by St. Mark and St. Luke, made two petitions ta 
 our Lord, one that they might not be driven out of the 
 country, and another that He would not command them 
 to go into the abyss of Hell. This last, would have been, 
 as we have already seen, to put an end, either for ever,. 
 or for a time, to their power of injuring and tempting 
 mankind, and the other punishment which they depre- 
 cated would have been to drive them into some other 
 part of the world, instead of this country of the 
 Gerasenes where they had made themselves so formid- 
 able and so mischievous. No doubt the devils rejoice at 
 any fresh opportunity of deluding and hurting men, but 
 perhaps they prefer the places and the populations in 
 which they have already acquired power, because, under 
 such circumstances, they are able to lead men on and on 
 to greater sins, or to inflict on them greater and greater 
 injuries as chastisements for their sins. And if they 
 made their prayer with some hellish intentions and 
 motives such as these, our Lord allowed their desires 
 to be articulated by the organs of the demoniacs, from 
 whom they were about to be cast out, as He had 
 permitted them in the same way to declare their 
 
The Legion of Devils, 
 
 multitude, in order that the Apostles and any others 
 who were present might hear them, and so gain fresh 
 knowledge both of His power over the kingdom of Satan 
 and of the malice of these enemies of God and man. 
 For it is from such anecdotes as that of which we are 
 speaking that we gain our knowledge concerning the 
 action of the demons in the world in which we live, and 
 the extent to which liberty is allowed to them by 
 God. 
 
 It does not appear that our Lord gave any direct 
 answer to these two appeals. Then, as it seems, the 
 devils, still in abject terror lest their fears should be 
 verified, made another petition, which involved their own 
 humiliation, but which still, if granted, would save them 
 from the extreme chastisement which they apprehended. 
 There was not far from the spot a herd of many swine, 
 feeding, on the mountain. It was something very 
 ignominious to these haughty spirits, the highest in rank 
 and the noblest in gifts of all the creatures of God, to be 
 told that they might possess themselves of some of the 
 most unclean and vile of the animal creation. When the 
 devils enter men, they at least have to do with beings 
 who are spiritual like themselves, but swine are among 
 the lowest orders of the kingdom to which they belong, 
 and were considered so foul that they were neither 
 allowed as sacrifice nor even as food for the chosen 
 people. And yet there was something about them which 
 had a miserable attraction, in its way, to those evil spirits, 
 for they were at least animals, the property of man, and 
 therefore by destroying them they could injure man, 
 whom they hate most of all God's creatures, because he 
 is destined to sit in their lost thrones in Heaven, and 
 because he has been favoured by God in a peculiar way, 
 inasmuch as God has chosen to become man. And we 
 iind in the history of Job that Satan began by attacking 
 
The Legion of Devils. 313 
 
 that holy patriarch in his possessions of this kind, and 
 these devils were glad to vent their hatred on the men of 
 this country, from which they feared that our Lord might 
 chase them, by the destruction of this large herd of 
 swine, since no other way was open to them. 
 
 'And the devils besought Him, saying, If Thou cast 
 us out hence, send us into the herd of swine. And He 
 said to them, Go.' This request is explained by St. Luke, 
 * They besought Him that He would suffer them to enter 
 into the swine.' For our Lord did not directly wish the 
 possession of the swine, or their subsequent destruction, 
 but He permitted it on the suggestion and request of the 
 evil spirits, using for the purposes of His own wisdom 
 and mercy what they proposed out of malice and hatred 
 to men. So it is with all the mischievous plans of His 
 enemies, whether devils or men. He permits them, and 
 turns them all, in His own Providence, to a good end, 
 either of chastisement, or warning, or instruction. ' And 
 the unclean spirits going out, entered into the swine, and 
 the herd with great violence was carried headlong into 
 the sea, being about two thousand, and were stifled in 
 the sea.' Such is the malignity of the hatred of the evil 
 spirits against God's creatures, especially man and what 
 belongs to man. If they were permitted to injure us to 
 the full extent of their power, they would at once destroy 
 the whole world, and their opportunities of mischief, 
 which are now and then allowed them in the Providence 
 of God, are meant by Him to instruct us in this truth, 
 how extreme is their hatred, how great is their power, 
 and how entirely, in the exercise of their power for the 
 satisfaction of their hatred, they are reined in or let loose 
 by God. The destruction of the swine followed imme- 
 diately on the relinquishment by the devils of their 
 possession of the demoniacs, and on our Lord's per- 
 mission to them to enter into their new victims, in order, 
 
314 The Legion of Devils, 
 
 as it seems, that no mistake might be possible as to the 
 agencies at work in their destruction. 
 
 Tlie devils niay have had more than one evil intention 
 in this catastrophe. They may have simply indulged 
 their hatred for men by destroying the swine which 
 belonged to men, and this intention is sufficient to 
 account for their action without more. But it may also 
 have been in their designs to put an impediment in the 
 way of the conversion of the people of the country, 
 which might possibly have resulted from our Lord's 
 display of Divine power in the deliverance of the demo- 
 niacs. That is, they may have wished that our Lord 
 should appear, in the eyes of the ignorant population, 
 not only as One Who had the power to cast out even 
 the fiercest and most violent demons, but also as One 
 Whose presence among them was heralded by the loss 
 of valuable property in the destruction of the herd of 
 swine. It may not have been in our Lord's designs to 
 preach on the present occasion to these benighted 
 people, and if, as has been supposed, they were mainly 
 a heathen population, it would have been beyond the 
 range of His special mission so to do. We find Him 
 after this passing through other parts in which there 
 could have been few Jews, and He does this, as it 
 appears, chiefly for the purpose of avoiding the attention 
 of His malignant enemies and persecutors in Galilee, 
 and not with any view of actually converting the heathen. 
 Whatever was the end which the devils had in view. He 
 did not see fit to forbid them the use of their natural 
 power in the destruction of the herd of swine. 
 
 There have been instances in the history of the Church 
 in which the Providence of God has permitted similar 
 losses, even when it might have seemed that to prevent 
 them would greatly have forwarded the interests of 
 religion. Thus the child which St. Clotilde had per- 
 
The Legion of Devils. 315 
 
 suaded Clovis to allow her to have baptised, died soon 
 after baptism, and its death was immediately attributed 
 to his concession. It has often happened that 'an epi- 
 demic malady has broken out in a savage tribe, soon 
 after it has consented to receive Christian instruction. 
 And in Christian countries, just as the Church has 
 seemed to be about to triumph, her success has been 
 frustrated by the sudden death of some of her most 
 conspicuous supporters, as when, in our own country, 
 Queen Mary and Cardinal Pole both died on the same 
 day, leaving the throne open to Elizabeth and the see 
 of Canterbury to Parker. It is, in the same way, the 
 private experience of hundreds of converts, that every- 
 thing seems to succeed with them until they submit to 
 the Church, and everything to go wrong with them after- 
 wards. In many cases it is easy to see that the Provi- 
 dence of God is, in this respect, rich in mercy towards 
 such persons, giving them opportunities of laying up 
 immense merits, or punishing them temporally for sins, 
 as soon as they are able to make their punishment turn 
 to their spiritual profit. In other cases the counsels of 
 God are hidden from our eyes, for they belong to a great 
 plan of which we can only see a small part. But our 
 faith is enough to tell us that all is ordered by Him most 
 mercifully and most wisely. 
 
 Our Lord may have had many reasons for this per- 
 mission of destruction. Some of the writers of the 
 Church have thought, as has already been said, that 
 He intended it as a lesson of the malice and power of 
 the evil spirits, our enemies, and of the extent to which 
 they are under the control of God. Others have thought 
 that the destruction of the swine was permitted by Him, 
 because these animals were unclean, and because it was 
 forbidden, in the Mosaic Law, to eat of their flesh. 
 This explanation, however, supposes that the owners of 
 
3i6 The Legion of Devils. 
 
 the swine were Jews, who were led by the hope of gain 
 to furnish these animals to their heathen neighbours. 
 It is not impossible, however, that, even if the owners 
 and keepers were heathens, our Lord may have granted 
 the permission to the devils, with a view of showing that 
 He would not protect what was to a certain extent pro- 
 scribed and branded as unclean by the Law. Thus 
 He permits many accidents and misfortunes in heathen 
 lands, and to those outside the pale of the Church, 
 from which her children are shielded, and which are 
 not allowed within the range of her influence. More- 
 over, it may have been in the plan by which all His 
 movements and actions were guided, that He should 
 on some few occasions show that He was most truly 
 Master and Lord of all the world, and that, as such, 
 He had the right and the power to take any creatures 
 whatever or any possessions whatever for His own use, 
 and to deal with them as He pleased, without regard to 
 the inferior rights of human owners, so entirely shadowy 
 and subordinate in comparison with His own supreme 
 and universal dominion. 
 
 We can easily understand that the lesson of His life to 
 us would be incomplete if there were not also in it some 
 pages from which truths of this class are to be gathered. 
 Thus we have the example of the cursing of the un- 
 fruitful fig-tree, which probably had an owner, whose 
 rights may have been injured by our Lord's paraboHc 
 and prophetic act regarding it. In the same way, when 
 He needed the ass and her colt for the purpose of His 
 triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, He 
 bade the disciples tell the owners, ' The Lord hath need 
 of them,' and said they would send them at once. These 
 were instances of His use of creatures over which this or 
 that man may have had certain rights of ownership, 
 which, however, were nothing in comparison with the 
 
The Legion of Devils. 317 
 
 dominion of our Lord. In the present case, if He chose 
 to use the swine feeding on the mountain for the purpose 
 of illustrating the truths to which He desired to draw 
 attention, the very secondary rights of their owners must 
 give way. For all creatures belonged to Him, by right 
 of creation and preservation, and they could be of no 
 use to their so-called owners except by His cooperation 
 and sustentation of their lives. And as the Incarnate 
 Son of God, He was Lord and King of all the world 
 into which He had come, and He was but exercising 
 His inherent and sovereign rights in permitting the 
 destruction of the swine, giving to their owners, as it 
 may be said, a compensation that far outweighed their 
 loss, in His own Presence among them, in the marvel- 
 lous exercise of His power in the deliverance of the 
 demoniacs, and in the truths which He proclaimed 
 both by what He did and by what He permitted. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 The Gerasenes. 
 
 St. Matt. viii. 30 — 34 ; St. Mark v. 14 — 21 ; St. Luke viii. 34 — 40 
 Vita VitcE Nostrce, § 64. 
 
 The marvels which had taken place after the landing 
 of our Lord and His disciples on the shore of the lake 
 opposite to Capharnaurn, were to have a sequel of which 
 we might hardly have expected to read, but that the 
 history of God's dealings with men are full of such 
 incidents. What might have passed if our Lord had 
 acted with more severity towards the legion of devils 
 cannot be conjectured, but the destruction of the large 
 herd of swine, which He had permitted, could not fail 
 to attract attention and to cause alarm. The population, 
 which might have passed over almost without remark 
 the wonderful deliverance of the demoniacs, especially 
 of that one whose case was the most lamentable, as well 
 as the best known, on account of the great length of 
 time during which he had been possessed by the devils, 
 could not but be aroused by the loss of the unclean 
 animals, to which they looked as the sources of gain. 
 ' Which when they that kept them saw done, they fled, 
 and told it in the city and in the villages and in the 
 fields, they told everything, and concerning them that 
 had been possessed by the devils.' They put the loss 
 of the swine first, as touching themselves most nearly, 
 for they were responsible to the owners, and perhaps 
 they might have passed over the deliverance of the 
 
The Gerasenes 
 
 319 
 
 demoniacs, but that it was necessary to mention it in 
 order to explain the strange calamity which had befallen 
 their charge in a way that threw no discredit on them- 
 selves. 
 
 The tidings spread through the whole region. We 
 may suppose that Gerasa was a town of some size, with 
 a number of farms and clusters of outlying dwellings in 
 its neighbourhood. The owners of the swine seem to 
 have been many, and the simple fact that one after 
 another had to be informed by the keepers of the herd 
 was enough to spread the news of the arrival of our 
 Lord among the whole population of the gorge in which 
 the town lay. Thus, in one house after another, the 
 name of our Lord came to be spoken of, and it is 
 natural to suppose that these poor people had already 
 heard of Him, though He may never before have set 
 foot in their country. The Providence of God used the 
 destruction of the swine for the purpose of spreading 
 the tidings as swiftly as possible through the population, 
 and, as has already been remarked, the perishing of the 
 herd could not be made known without some mention 
 of what had been done for the famous demoniacs who 
 haunted the sepulchres between the town and the strand. 
 'And they went out to see what was done. And they 
 came to Jesus, and found the man out of whom the 
 devils were departed sitting at His feet, clothed, and 
 in his right mind. And they were afraid. And they 
 that had seen it, told them in what manner he had been 
 dealt with who had the devil, and concerning the swine. 
 And all the multitude of the country of the Gerasenes 
 besought Him to depart from their coasts, for they were 
 taken with great fear.' 
 
 We find more than one opinion among the Fathers 
 as to the nature and motives of this great fear of which 
 the Evangehsts speak, and which made the Gerasenes 
 
320 The Gerasenes. 
 
 beseech our Lord to depart from them. It has been 
 thought that this fear was that reverential and humble 
 awe of which we have an example in St. Peter, after 
 the miraculous fishing which took place soon after the 
 delivery by our Lord of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 when the Apostle begged our Lord to depart from him, 
 for he was a sinful man. That is, he was astonished 
 and appalled at the great display of our Lord's power 
 which he had just witnessed, and by which he and his 
 partners profited so much. He felt himself unworthy 
 to be the recipient of boons so great, the witness of 
 wonders so surpassing, and, above all, of being the 
 companion or even the host of so Divine a Guest. 
 The Apostle's words were words of loving and adoring 
 humihty, and our Lord understood them as such, and 
 by no means fulfilled his request to the letter. That 
 He did not act so on the occasion of which we are 
 speaking, is perhaps enough to show us that the words 
 of the Gerasenes were the product of feelings very 
 different from those of St. Peter. Others of the Fathers 
 suppose, therefore, that the fear which came upon them 
 was a worldly fear of self-interest, natural perhaps in 
 persons who may have felt themselves as sinful as 
 St. Peter proclaimed himself to be. They feared that 
 He might go on to mark His presence among them 
 by other chastisements and plagues, and so they besought 
 Him, for they did not dare to threaten Him or to 
 attempt to force Him, to depart and leave them to 
 themselves. And our most gracious Lord would not 
 force Himself on them, and so let them constrain Him, 
 in their unworthiness, to leave them in their spiritual 
 blindness and unconscious misery. The opinion of these 
 writers, then, attributes the fear of the Gerasenes mainly 
 to their love of temporal things, as if they might have 
 been ready to welcome our Lord if He had not per- 
 
The Gerasencs. 3 2 1 
 
 mined the legion of devils to enter into the herd of 
 swine and to destroy them, and they consider that these 
 poor pagans, as they appear to have been, preferred 
 temporal possessions to the knowledge of the truth, 
 immunity from material disaster to the spiritual treasures 
 of the Gospel. 
 
 It seems, however, not quite necessary to put the 
 petition of the Gerasenes upon a sordid anxiety for 
 the safety of their temporal possessions. The Evangelists 
 speak of their great fear as the cause of their prayer to 
 our Lord, just as our Lord's words to St. Peter, on the 
 occasion already referred to, ' Fear not ! ' seem to imply 
 that fear had a great part in the feelings which had 
 made the Apostle cry out, ' Depart from me, O Lord.' 
 For the near approach of anything that belongs to the 
 supernatural world, such as the power which is exercised 
 in a miracle, or, again, a great manifestation of holiness 
 and spiritual purity, or the appearance of an angel, or a 
 vision, or anything else of that kind, strikes the natural 
 man with fear, and this feeling is not destroyed even in 
 the saints of God while on earth. Thus we find it more 
 than once mentioned that 'fear came on' the people 
 after a great miracle. Man, at all events fallen man, 
 is afraid of his God. This natural shrinking away from 
 the face of what is Divine, of anything that seems to 
 bring God nearer to us, may account for the fear which 
 came upon the Gerasenes, all the more as the mani- 
 festation of power on the part of our Lord had taken 
 the form of the casting out of a great number of devils, 
 instead of an ordinary miracle of healing mercy, and of 
 the permission of a conspicuous display of the malice 
 and power of the evil spirits, in the very presence of 
 Him Who had shown so marvellous an authority over 
 themselves. It cannot be doubted that the sense of 
 the terrific powder displayed in this incident was height- 
 V 7 
 
32 2 The Gerase7tes, 
 
 ened to the Gerasenes by the destruction of their own 
 property. Moreover, it must be remembered again that 
 they were probably a heathen population, among whom 
 the devil had a greater power than among the Jews, and 
 where ideas of the Godhead were very dark and gloomy. 
 For this was a part of the diabolical ingenuity of the 
 enemies of God and man in heathenism, to represent 
 all that was Divine as severe, capricious, easily moved 
 to anger, pitiless, inexorable, morose, revengeful, far 
 more prone to inflict injuries and to let loose calamities 
 on mankind than to show them any compassion or 
 mercy. The heathen instinct is to serve God or the 
 gods as hard masters, of whom they would gladly be 
 rid if they could, but whom they must at any cost 
 beware of offending. In truth, these poor Gerasenes, 
 respectfully and reverently beseeching our Lord to leave 
 them to themselves, are almost typical representatives 
 of the heathen temper towards God, a temper which 
 may often be found even among those who call them- 
 selves Christians. 
 
 In contrast to the superstitious desire of the Gerasenes 
 to be rid of our Lord, is the figure of the late victim of 
 demoniacal fury, the man out of whom the legion of 
 devils had been cast, sitting at the feet of our Lord, 
 clothed, and in his right mind. The description given 
 of him by the Evangelists, reads as if they had heard the 
 people who witnessed the incident speaking of him, and 
 it is clear that his case was very well known throughout 
 the country, as of one who had been for a very long time 
 in the miserable state out of which our Lord rescued 
 him. The conjecture that he was a man of importance 
 and of some position seems very probable in itself. As 
 he had been for so long possessed, and driven away by 
 the devils from all communication with his relations and 
 friends, it is not at all unlikely that he would be an 
 
The Gerasenes. 323 
 
 object of fear and of some suspicion at first, and this 
 may have been partly the reason why our Lord allowed 
 him to sit at His own feet and be seen by the whole 
 multitude. Perhaps he was also afraid to go among 
 them again immediately. But the main reason for his 
 humble petition to our Lord must have been his deep 
 gratitude, and a fear of the recurrence of the fearful 
 calamity from which he had just escaped. Our Lord at 
 once acceded to the prayer of the population, and pre- 
 pared to depart. They gave Him no thanks, they offered 
 Him no hospitality, though He had but just landed 
 from the night voyage through the tempest, they urged 
 Him only to depart. ' And He, going up into the ship, 
 returned back again. And when He was going up into 
 the ship, he that had been troubled with the devil began 
 to beseech Him that he might be with Him. And He 
 admitted him not, but saith to him, Go into thy house 
 and to thy friends, and tell them how great things the 
 Lord hath done for thee, and hath had mercy on thee. 
 And he went his way, and began to publish through the 
 whole city and in Decapolis, how great things Jesus had 
 done for him, and all men wondered.' The name Deca- 
 polis applies to a region, not to a single city, and St. 
 Mark, who inserts it here, is our authority, at a point of 
 the history a little later on, for another miracle of our 
 Lord's wrought in ' the coasts of Decapolis.' 
 
 We have not far to seek for the motive which may 
 have guided our Lord in so easily allowing Himself to 
 be hindered from any further preaching among the 
 Gerasenes. Indeed it is not at all certain that He had 
 any further design in landing on that coast than the 
 withdraw^al of Himself from the attention and persecu- 
 tion of His enemies in and about Capharnaum on the 
 one hand, and the merciful purpose of delivering these 
 two demoniacs on the other. He may certainly have 
 
324 The Gei^asenes. 
 
 wished to do something towards preparing the popula- 
 tion on that further side of the Lalie for the reception of 
 the Gospel at some future time, and for this He had 
 already provided and was about still further to provide. 
 But at this time of His Ministry it was becoming usual 
 with Him to pass from place to place without formal or 
 public preaching. But it has already been said more 
 than once that this population was mainly heathen, and 
 to such He was not directly sent. If they had pressed 
 Him to remain among them, as the Samaritans of Sychar 
 had pressed Him, it is natural to suppose that He would 
 have yielded gladly and lovingly, but He had no reason 
 at all for forcing Himself on them. And, as He was aj; 
 the time particularly engaged in the instruction and the 
 training of the Apostles in the methods and principles of 
 the missionary life on which they were so soon to enter, 
 it was a part of the lesson which they were to learn from 
 His example, as well as from His precept, not to force 
 the Gospel upon unwilling hearers. The Gospel ad- 
 dresses itself to the heart, and is to win its way with men 
 of good will. It is, therefore, contrary to the whole 
 genius, so to say, of the Gospel, to present it to those 
 whose hearts are evidently shut against it, and will be 
 shut only the more closely the more it is urged upon 
 them against their will. There is another reason for the 
 same line of conduct, contained in the charge to the 
 Apostles by our Lord on which we shall very soon have 
 to comment. This other reason consists in the short- 
 ness of time, the value of the labour of the Apostolate, 
 on account of which it is necessary that the gracious 
 offer of God should be at once made to new hearers, 
 rather than that time should be consumed in again and 
 again endeavouring to overcome the obstinacy of those 
 who turn away from them. Our Lord tells the Apostles 
 that they will not have gone through the cities of Israel 
 
The Gerasenes. 325 
 
 before the Son of Man come. They are to shake the 
 dust of the cities which reject them off their feet, and go 
 their way to other scenes of labour. Our Lord was 
 virtually acting on this rule when He at once em- 
 barked on His ship to sail away from the land of the 
 Gerasenes. 
 
 For good reasons of His own Wisdom, our Lord did 
 not allow the man who had been delivered from the 
 devil to join His own company. It was an act of 
 gratitude on the part of that poor sufferer, and also, 
 probably, an effect of the fear he might have that he 
 could not be safe at a distance from his benefactor. But 
 our Lord could not have allowed his Apostles and imme- 
 diate companions to be burthened with the charge of 
 persons thus healed, nor, in the great majority of cases, 
 could these last have been fit for the strict rule of life 
 and the many privations of the Apostolic company. It 
 was better, and more in accordance with the designs of 
 God in the marvellous work which had just been wrought, 
 that such persons should go back to their homes and 
 their ordinary duties, and become living and speaking 
 witnesses of the immense mercy of God and of the 
 power of the Sacred Humanity of our Lord. In this 
 way the testimony of the miracles was spread abroad 
 and perpetuated, instead of being confined to those only 
 who might happen to have been present when the mira- 
 culous cures or deliverances were wrought. Every one 
 who saw and heard of this man throughout the whole 
 region could thus learn from him something concerning 
 our Lord. In giving him this mission, our Lord virtually 
 promised him the protection and security from relapse 
 about which he was so anxious. ' Jesus sent him away, 
 saying. Return to thy house, and tell how great things 
 God hath done for thee. And he went through the 
 whole city, publishing how great things Jesus had done 
 
326 The Gerasenes, 
 
 for him, and all men wondered.' And St. Mark, as has 
 been said, adds that he published our Lord's mercies in 
 the whole region of Decapolis. 
 
 It is also easy to connect the lesson conveyed by the 
 case of this man, and by our Lord's dealings with him, 
 with those other cases of which mention was made as 
 occurring before the voyage across the Lake. In those 
 cases our Lord put the difficulties of the ApostoUcal 
 vocation very plainly, and also spoke very strongly about 
 the danger of tampering with such vocations. In this 
 case, He decidedly rejects the offer made by this poor 
 man in the first fervour of his gratitude. For, as there 
 are many who may seek some high vocation without 
 sufficient reflection and with a certain amount of lurking 
 ambition or self-interest, so there are those who are but 
 too ready to hsten to specious pretexts for adjourning 
 or infringing on their perfect obedience to a Divine call. 
 And the case before us shows us another truth. There 
 are many who may aspire to such paths of life who are 
 not fit for them. Their desires and their aspirations do 
 them good, as long as they do not make them indifferent 
 to the duties of their true vocations. Some also are 
 allowed by Providence to make trial of a religious life, 
 though they are not intended to persevere in it. There 
 is no need to suppose that all who make the trial are 
 really called, or that all who do not persevere forsake, 
 rather than mistake, their vocation. They are in many 
 cases better fitted for other duties, by having had the 
 experience and the training which they had gained, 
 where they have yet not remained. They are far better 
 than they would otherwise have been, they have less 
 worldHness, more strength and practical light to guide 
 them and to sustain them under trials and temptations. 
 They do much good to others in their own homes, as 
 this poor man may have done among his neighbours and 
 
The Gerasenes. 327 
 
 friends, by making known the name and the power of 
 our Lord. 
 
 Thus the Gerasenes and their neighbours, who were 
 for the present unfit for the preaching of the Gospel 
 among them by our Lord and His Apostles, were pro- 
 vided with an instruction according to their capacity, 
 and so not left altogether without benefit from the great 
 work of mercy and power which had been wrought 
 among them. Our Lord, Who might have done more 
 for them at once if their faith had been stronger, did 
 what He could, according to their weakness, and pre- 
 pared the way for greater things hereafter. For it is 
 on.y reasonable to suppose that, in these seemingly 
 chance incidents, which make up altogether so large a 
 portion of His Public Life, when He passed from place 
 to place, in consequence of some persecution in one 
 place or some rejection of His teaching in another, were 
 all arranged divinely in His Providence, with a view to 
 the benefit of those among whom He appeared and went 
 away, as well as with regard to the actual emergencies of 
 the time, and His prudential consideration for the safety 
 of His own Person until the time came for His Passion,, 
 the edification and instruction of His immediate com- 
 panions, and the general requirements of the work which 
 He had in hand. There is the same appearance of 
 occasional influences being allowed to regulate the 
 course of Apostles and Apostolical men, as in the 
 journeys and voyages of St. Paul, or the sojourning in 
 this or that particular spot of men like St. Vincent Ferrer 
 or St. Francis Xavier. Our Lord had done on that 
 further side of the Lake exactly what He designed to 
 do, and He provided, in the most perfect manner then 
 possible, both for the demoniac himself and for the 
 population among whom he was commissioned to make 
 known the mercies of God vouchsafed to himself. And 
 
328 The Disciples of St. John, 
 
 now, though He had spent so few hours, probably, in 
 this pagan or semi-pagan countr)^, the work of His 
 Father called Him again to the city which had come 
 to be spoken of as His own, where more than one case 
 of urgent need was awaiting His charity. ' And entering 
 into a boat, He passed over the water, and came into 
 His own city. And the multitude received Him, for 
 they were all waiting for Him.' The width of the Lake 
 of Galilee is nowhere so great but that the opposite 
 shores can easily be seen, and the boat in which He 
 was would be recognized as it approached the city. 
 
 CHAPTER XXH. 
 
 The Disciples of St. John. 
 
 St. Matt. ix. 14—17 ; Vita Vitce NostrcB, § 65. 
 
 We have already noticed many indications, in the narra- 
 tives of the Evangelists at this period, that the presence 
 of our Lord in or near Capharnaum, was now compara- 
 tively rare, and that, in consequence, the people took 
 every opportunity of collecting about Him, whenever it 
 was possible for them so to do. The sail across the 
 Lake, of which we have lately been speaking, was sudden 
 and unexpected, and they seem to have understood that 
 it was only the occasion of a short absence of our Lord. 
 The circumstances of the application made to Him for 
 admission to His company, and the like, of which we 
 hear just before the departure of our Lord, seem to 
 show that it was necessary to lay hold of every occasion 
 for the sake of obtaining access to Him at this time. 
 The conversation of which we are now to speak is an 
 
The Disciples of St. John, 329 
 
 evidence of the same fact. St. Mark and St. Luke tell 
 us that the people were expecting Him on the shore on 
 His return, and that when He landed they collected in 
 numbers around Him. And it is here that a few words 
 of St. Matthew lead us to place an incident which shows 
 that there were in the crowd some of the disciples of 
 St. John, who obtained the first place, so to say, among 
 those who were so anxious to apply to Him. 
 
 Here again we meet with one of those occasions on 
 which it is very necessary to remember the principles on 
 which the Harmony of the Gospels must be formed, if 
 we are not to run the risk of seeming to make the 
 Evangelists contradict each other, not indeed as to the 
 more important portions of their narratives, but as to 
 circumstances of time and order concerning which they 
 are, in truth, most careful and most accurate. In men- 
 tioning the various applications made to our Lord con- 
 cerning admission to His company, and the like, as also 
 in the case of certain common classes of miracles, such 
 as those of the dispossession of demoniacs, which occa- 
 sioned the calumnies and blasphemies of the Pharisees, 
 and a few other classes of incidents, it is quite clear that 
 the Evangelists must have had a large number of inci- 
 dents in their memories, which were more or less identi- 
 cal in character. They are incidents which must have 
 occurred, as it seems, scores of times in the course of 
 our Lord's active life of preaching. It would therefore 
 be most foolish to suppose that, whenever we find men- 
 tion of something belonging to these classes in the 
 various Gospels, the Evangelists are to be necessarily 
 understood as recording exactly the same identical inci- 
 dents. And it would be still more uncritical to find a 
 difficulty in the fact that these incidents seem to be 
 placed in different surroundings by the various Evange- 
 lists who relate them, and that we must, in consequence 
 
The Disciples of St. John. 
 
 of this entirely fictitious difficulty, do serious violence to 
 the Sacred Text in one way or in the other. It is usually 
 the case that the Evangelists have tacitly furnished us 
 with the solution of all such difficulties, if we will but 
 attend to them, and it is always true that these difficulties 
 vanish, when they are considered in the light of an intelli- 
 gent study of the order and character and particular aim 
 and arrangement of each several Gospel. 
 
 The difficulty which has been raised as to the order 
 of events at the point which we have now reached, is 
 one of these imaginary wants of accuracy on the part of 
 the historians of our Lord, who, even if they had not 
 been inspired and guided by the Holy Ghost, would 
 still, on account of their human knowledge and their 
 immense reverence for everything connected with their 
 work and with the Person of our Lord, have been sure 
 to deserve our most absolute confidence on all these 
 matters. The single difficulty in this place lies in the 
 fact that the incident of which we have now to speak 
 relates to one of the commonest questions of the time, 
 a question which must have naturally occurred to any 
 one who watched attentively, whether as a friend or as 
 an enemy, the gradual growth of our Lord's work, and 
 the principles on which He conducted its development. 
 This being the case, we have already had to record an 
 incident which in almost every particular resembles this 
 of which we are now to speak, but which is placed by 
 the two Evangelists, St. Mark and St. Luke, at an earlier 
 point of the history. At that point it was almost inevitable 
 that the question should have been raised, because it 
 was just after the great banquet given to our Lord by 
 the Evangelist St. Matthew on the occasion of his own 
 call to the more familiar companionship with his Master. 
 The manner in which St. Matthew relates the conversa- 
 tion of which we are now speaking, is quite in accordance 
 
The Disciples of St. John, 331 
 
 with the principles which he continually follows in the 
 composition of his work. For he brings in this conversa- 
 tion as a sequel to the mention of the kindred subject 
 of the question raised as to our Lord's habit of eating 
 and drinking occasionally with publicans and sinners, 
 as His enemies put it. This occurs immediately after the 
 banquet given by St. Matthew himself This, of course, 
 was at an earlier period. And there seems no doubt, 
 from the accounts of the other EvangeHsts, that a 
 question about the absence of any rule with regard to 
 general fasts among His followers, was actually put to 
 our Lord at the same time with the other. It is very 
 natural that one question should lead on to the other in 
 the same conversation. But this same question, about the 
 difference between our Lord's rule and those of St. John 
 and of the Pharisees in this respect, was also asked, 
 and by other inquirers, at the time of which we are now 
 speaking, for St. Matthew has taken the pains to tell us 
 that this occasion was connected with the appeal made 
 to our Lord, by Jairus the ruler of the synagogue, to 
 come and heal his daughter. The words in which 
 St. Matthew tells us this, seem to have been purposely 
 inserted to guide us as to the context. We know that 
 the miracle on the daughter of Jairus took place on the 
 return of our Lord from the other side of the Lake, 
 after the dispossession of the legion of devils. It is 
 therefore necessary to place this incident at this point 
 of the story. And, indeed, St. Matthew's words guide 
 us to this arrangement, as has been said. 
 
 It is well known, and frequently mentioned in the 
 Gospel history, that our Lord did not begin by training 
 His disciples as a body according to any fixed external 
 rule, especially with regard to bodily austerities and the 
 practice of mortifications of that kind. He laid down 
 the principles of Evangelical perfection with regard to 
 
332 The Disciples of St. John. 
 
 fasting, as with regard to prayer and to almsdeeds, in 
 the Sermon on the Mount, and the large portion of that 
 discourse which is devoted to these subjects is abundant 
 evidence of their importance in the system of our Lord. 
 It would have been absurd to give precepts as to the 
 manner in which Christians were to fast, and give alms, 
 and pray, unless they were to fast, and to give alms, 
 and to pray. But the Church was not yet founded, and 
 her beautiful order of seasons and days of public and 
 common penance was not yet promulgated, and so the 
 incipient community, so to call it, of our Lord's disciples, 
 had no fixed or known rules on this subject. It cannot 
 be for a moment doubted that fasting was very largely 
 and severely practised by the disciples, but all was done 
 in the spirit of the precept which bade them hide such 
 observances from the eyes of men. Thus, whereas it 
 could be said that on such and such days and occasions 
 the disciples of the Pharisees or the disciples of the 
 Baptist would fast, this could not be said in the same 
 way of the disciples of our Lord. There was an entire 
 absence of any public customs or prescriptions of this 
 kind, and thus it appeared outwardly that our Lord's 
 disciples did not observe such common mortifications. 
 
 This circumstance in our Lord's method with His 
 disciples could not escape remark, all the more on 
 account of the contrast in which He thus placed Himself 
 to the other teachers of the day, especially the Pharisees 
 and St. John Baptist himself, who, in this particular, 
 adhered to the usual custom of the Jewish teachers. 
 St. John founded no school, no system of his own. 
 His work was essentially the work of one who prepares 
 the way for another. Thus there was no reason at all 
 why he should not do as other teachers of the day in 
 this respect. It did not need any great amount of 
 captiousness to make the remark on the difference 
 
The Disciples of St. John. 333 
 
 between our Lord's system and that of others, especially 
 in such a matter as that of fasting. It must necessarily 
 have happened frequently, even in the short period of 
 time during which our Lord had preached in Galilee, 
 that a day or a season would arrive which the disciples 
 of the Pharisees or of St. John would observe by fasting, 
 and which was not so observed by our Lord and His 
 disciples, at least as far as any visible mortification 
 went. There are some Catholic countries in which 
 the abstinence of the Saturday in each week, in 
 honour of our Blessed Lady, has been dispensed with 
 by authority, and others in which it is still observed. 
 Thus it is natural for travellers from the former 
 countries, when they find themselves in the latter, to 
 ask questions as to the reason for the difi'erence. So 
 the members of certain religious orders observe rules of 
 this kind which are not observed by others, or by 
 Christians in general, and here again- the difference 
 meets the eye, and is quite certain to be noticed. In 
 the same way, it seems to have been one of the com- 
 monest remarks made in Galilee, at this time, upon the 
 practice of our Lord's disciples, that they did not fast 
 when others did. We have mentioned an instance of 
 this in the question put to our Lord on the subject, 
 which is related by the second and third Evangelists 
 after their account of the banquet given by St. Matthew 
 soon after his call to the Apostolate. ' It is in its place 
 there, and it is clear that the ' answer then made by our 
 Lord to that question furnishes the main reason why the 
 question itself has been so recorded. But exactly the 
 same reason may be assigned for the insertion in those 
 two Gospels of the incident related at the same time, of 
 the question put to our Lord — it is not said by whom — 
 as to the fasting of the disciples of St. John, and of the 
 answer given by Him. 
 
334 The Disciples of St, John, 
 
 Although it is not said in that place, either by St. Mark 
 or by St. Luke, who the persons were who asked our 
 Lord the question as to which we are speaking, it seems 
 most likely that that question was put by some persons 
 of the same class who had asked the other question 
 about His eating and drinking with publicans and 
 sinners. For in that question the disciples of St. John 
 and of the Pharisees are spoken of in the third person : 
 'Why do the disciples of John fast often and make 
 prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees in like manner, 
 but Thy disciples do not fast? Thine eat and drink.' 
 Nor is there anything in the context to show that the 
 disciples of the Baptist had any more to do with the 
 question than the Apostles themselves. But it is most 
 likely that the disciples of St. John would be as much 
 inclined to ask the question as any others, when they 
 had an opportunity. It is likely that they would need 
 as much as any others some instruction on the point, 
 whenever it came to be brought before them, and 
 especially when the time came for them to think that 
 they m.ight have to pass from the school, so to say, of 
 their own master, to that of our Lord. They would then 
 find themselves, to recur to the illustration lately used, 
 in the position of persons who find themselves entering 
 a country, in which the common practice, as to the 
 ordinance of fasting or abstinence, was different from 
 that to which they had been accustomed in their own 
 homes. There is great reason for thinking that such 
 was their position at this point of the history. 
 
 The last thing that we heard of the Blessed Baptist 
 was that solemn embassy, so to call it, which he had 
 sent of two of his disciples to our Lord, who were com- 
 missioned to ask Him in plain terms, *Art Thou He 
 that art to come, or do we look for another ? ' And we 
 have seen what was his meaning and intention in that 
 
The Disciples of St. John. 335 
 
 question, how our Lord answered it, and how He took 
 that opportunity of uttering His magnificent encomium 
 on St. John himself. There can be little doubt that 
 the intention of St. John was to put his own disciples 
 formally in communication with our Lord, and to give 
 them an opportunity of witnessing some of the miracles 
 of mercy by which His Mission was attested, a kind of 
 evidence which, in his own case, had been entirely 
 wanting. St. John must have done this, as looking 
 forward to the time when they would become the 
 disciples of our Lord, and perhaps he had already some 
 kind either of foreknowledge or of anticipation, of his 
 own removal from the scene. Even humanly speaking, 
 a life that was entirely at the mercy of a cruel and 
 luxurious tyrant whom he had upbraided for his sin, 
 and by whose side sat the incestuous partner of his 
 crime, burning with hatred against the prophet who had 
 exercised so much influence over him, could not be very 
 secure, and it is possible that St. John may have been 
 forewarned of his approaching end, as has been the case 
 with many of the saints of the Church. He could 
 hardly be ignorant of the shortness of the time allotted 
 by Providence for the whole personal work of our Lord, 
 nor of the sacrifice which He was to accomplish at 
 Jerusalem, nor of the threatening tone which had lately 
 been adopted by His malignant and very powerful 
 enemies. And the issue of the mission of his disciples, 
 when they returned to him after having seen our Lord 
 work a great number of miracles, must certainly have 
 been that he had greater opportunities, of which he 
 could at once avail himself, of showing how the pro- 
 phecies were fulfilled in our Lord, and thus adding 
 another Hnk to the chain of evidences which were to 
 lead them to Him. It would, therefore, be quite what 
 we should expect that, at the point of time which has 
 
33^ The Disciples of St. John, 
 
 now been reached, when the first series of parables was 
 delivered, many of the disciples of St. John were pre- 
 senting themselves to our Lord in order to place them- 
 selves under His guidance. 
 
 This would only be natural, even if there were no 
 other reason for their coming to our Lord than the 
 witness so constantly borne to Him by their own master. 
 But, in truth, it seems very probable indeed that, at the 
 time of which we are now speaking, the little band of 
 followers who had remained in faithful attendance on 
 St. John in his prison, had just been broken up by the 
 violent death of that great Saint. The murder of St. John 
 is not related at this point of the history by the Evan- 
 gelists, but there is good reason for thinking that it had 
 just taken place. They relate it in connection with 
 incidents which must have occurred some time later, 
 when the preaching of the Apostles had attracted the 
 a-ttention of Herod to our Lord Himself, and when, as 
 they tell us, that wicked and superstitious King began 
 to question whether John, whom he had beheaded, were 
 not risen from the dead. The Evangelists always make 
 our Lord the principal figure in their narratives, and do 
 not leave what relates to Him in order to speak of 
 others. Thus it is that even so striking a fact as the 
 murder of St. John, with all its incidents, is not placed 
 by them at its proper chronological point in the history, 
 but is only brought in as it were occasionally, to illustrate 
 the remark made by Herod about our Lord. It is 
 certain, therefore, that St. John was beheaded some time 
 before the preaching of the Apostles, a point in the 
 Ministry of our Lord at which we shall very soon find 
 ourselves. And if this be so, it is very probable that that 
 murder had already taken place at this time, when our 
 Lord returned from the land of the Gerasenes to Caphar- 
 naum across the Lake of Galilee. Thus the disciples of 
 
The Disciples of St. John. 337 
 
 St. John, who now presented themselves, would be men 
 who were about to pass under our Lord's immediate 
 teaching, after having been trained in the school of 
 St. John. 
 
 'Then came to Him the disciples of John, saying, 
 Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Thy 
 disciples do not fast? And Jesus said to them, Can 
 the children of the Bridegroom mourn as long as the 
 Bridegroom is with them ? But the day will come when 
 the Bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and 
 then they shall fast. And nobody putteth a piece of 
 raw cloth unto an old garment. For it taketh away the 
 fulness thereof from the garment, and there is made a 
 greater- rent. Neither do they put new wine into old 
 bottles. Otherwise the bottles break, and the wine 
 runneth out, and the bottles perish. But new wine they 
 put into new bottles, and both are preserved.' 
 
 This answer of our Lord is the same in substance, 
 and nearly the same in words, with the answer which 
 He gave on the former occasion, to which reference 
 has been made. One clause of the former answer, as 
 recorded by St. Luke, is omitted here, but the remainder 
 is identical in the two cases. It is strange that it should 
 appear necessary to explain that this furnishes no argu- 
 ment at all for confounding the two separate occasions, 
 and making them one. Our Lord did not use words at 
 random, nor could He change His mind as to the reason 
 of a line of action deliberately adopted by Him from the 
 beginning. His only reason for varying His words would 
 lie in the various characters or conditions of mind among 
 those to whom He spoke on different occasions. In the 
 present case there is no such variety as to cause Him to 
 alter His language. The inquirers on both occasions 
 asked a perfectly legitimate and natural question, and 
 asked it in a way apparently free from all captiousness. 
 w 7 
 
oo 
 
 8 T/ze Disciples of St. John. 
 
 ■On the first occasion, it is not said who they were, on 
 the second occasion they were disciples of the great 
 St. John, who could not have learnt from him anything 
 but reverence for our Lord. These, moreover, had an 
 additional right, so to say, to put the question, if they 
 were about to be numbered among the disciples of our 
 Lord. There is nothing about our Lord's answer to 
 show that -He thought them unfriendly. On the con- 
 trary. He speaks, parabolically indeed, but still openly, 
 and He gives them a far fuller instruction than was 
 required for the simple answer to their question. He 
 lays down again the great principles which had guided 
 His choice in determining not to legislate as yet for His 
 disciples on the point in question. On some occasions, 
 when He had to answer captious questions, He was very 
 reserved in the answers which He made. On these two 
 occasions there was no reserve, although the principles 
 which He enounced were clothed in parabolical and 
 epigrammatical language. Such language is not always 
 baffling, it is often the very best vehicle for great truths, 
 which it sums up in a manner which fixes them in the 
 memory and stimulates reflection. On the former of the 
 two occasions of which we are speaking, the little band 
 of the Twelve Apostles had not yet been selected, and 
 there is no reason for thinking that all, even of those 
 -who had already been called, were present. It is hardly 
 likely that the question about eating and drinking with 
 publicans and sinners would have been put in the 
 presence of St. Matthew, and the disciples are spoken 
 of in the third person. On the occasion with which 
 we are now dealing, the Apostles must probably have 
 been with our Lord, and it may have been for them, as 
 well as for the disciples of St. John, that He again 
 repeated the great principles contained in His reply. 
 These principles have already been explained in that 
 
The Disciples of St. John. 339 
 
 part of the present work in which the former incident, 
 so exactly resembUng that now before us, has been 
 considered. As set forth on the present occasion, they 
 are three. There is first the principle contained in the 
 words about the children of the Bridegroom, that is, the 
 friends and companions who used to keep the bride- 
 groom company at the joyful time when he received his 
 bride as his own. It has been already remarked that 
 the figure of the Bridegroom, as applied to our Lord, 
 although it is found in the Canticles and other books of 
 the Old Testament, was first used of our Lord, after His 
 coming in the flesh, by the glorious St. John himself. 
 Thus the disciples of the Saint would recognize his 
 language, and perhaps would be reminded of his words 
 when he spoke of himself as the friend of the Bride- 
 groom, rejoicing to hear his voice as he communed with 
 his bride. To such friends the days of the bridal joys 
 would hardly seem a fit time for regulating times of hard 
 labour and service, and our Lord implied that there 
 would be a kind of incongruity in exacting at once 
 the penitential exercises which were to be practised by 
 Christians. In a most true sense the time of His own 
 personal preaching was but a beginning, a first taste, an 
 exceptional period, in the spiritual history of the Church. 
 There is nothing in all her system, as we see it at the 
 present day, after its many centuries of storm and 
 conflict and growth, which is not founded upon what 
 our Lord did and said during the years of His sojourn 
 upon earth. All is there to be found, but in germ and 
 principle, not in full growth and development. So true 
 is this, that to those who do not understand the import- 
 ance of the Church in the mind and heart of our Lord, 
 there is a continual temptation to make a difficulty of 
 the undoubted fact, that her organization was left to 
 unfold itself under the direction of the Apostles after 
 
340 The Disciples of St. John, 
 
 the Day of Pentecost, and is not to be found described 
 in His own words in the Gospels, as so many points of 
 Christian doctrine are to be found there in full per- 
 fection. It is easy to see that if our Lord had legislated 
 on the subject of fasting, in a manner which would have 
 obviated the question of the disciples of St. John, He 
 would have done on that one point what He has done 
 on no other point of the same character. But in doing 
 this. He would not only have been unlike Himself, but 
 He would, as He tells us in those words about the 
 children of the bridegroom, have made rules concerning 
 the more severe parts of discipline in a time of feasting 
 and joy. 
 
 The temporary character of the present absence of 
 rule on these subjects is also clearly set forth by our 
 Lord in the words which follow. ' But the day will 
 come when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from 
 ihem, and then they shall fast.' He did not as yet 
 speak plainly about His Passion, even to His Apostles. 
 That doctrine was reserved until after the confession of 
 St. Peter, which marked the full growth of the faith of 
 the Apostles in the Divinity of our Lord. Now He 
 speaks of it in gentle and ambiguous terms, for He does 
 not say how the Bridegroom is to be taken away. If 
 the disciples of St. John came to Him, on this occasion, 
 fresh from the news of the martyrdom of their own 
 beloved master, the words of our Lord would have had 
 a singular and striking meaning for them. They would 
 imply that He too was, in due time, to be dealt with 
 by the world, in the same way as St. John Baptist, for 
 He does not say, depart, or go away, but be taken away 
 from them. The time was not far off when mourning 
 and penitential exercises would be quite in their place 
 among His disciples, and would involve no jar or incon- 
 gruity on account of the joy which overwhelmed their 
 
The Disciples of St. John. 341 
 
 hearts because of His own Presence. The time was to 
 come, as He told them afterwards, when they should 
 'desire to see one day of the Son of Man, and they 
 should not see it.'^ Then all these rules would be 
 suppUed, and the mortifications which they enjoined 
 would be salutary from their union with the sufferings 
 which the Bridegroom was to undergo when He was 
 torn from His Bride. 
 
 The other two principles of which our Lord here 
 speaks are contained, the first in the image of the new 
 and old cloth used in the same garment, the other in 
 that of the new wine which must not be poured into 
 old bottles. These have been already fully explained 
 elsewhere. The first is the principle, as it may be called, 
 of homogeneity in any Divine system, by which the 
 union of incongruous elements in the same system is 
 forbidden. Every such system, as the system of the Law 
 and the system of the Gospel respectively, has its own 
 spirit, and the outward observances and regulations of 
 each system must be the natural outcome and expression 
 of that system. Under the Gospel as under the Law, 
 every instinct of natural religion was to be taken up and 
 allowed its full expression, but that expression was to be 
 in harmony with the spirit of the Law under the Law, 
 with the spirit of the Gospel under the Gospel Every- 
 thing in the Gospel was interior, everything in the Law 
 external, everything in the Gospel was in the spirit of 
 filial love and confidence, everything in the Law in the 
 spirit of fear. Our Lord was laying down in these words 
 the whole principle on which the Apostles acted in their 
 dealing with the Mosaic system. And it is easy to see 
 how many difficulties He would have created for them, 
 if He had at that time made the system of penance and 
 fasting common to the Jewish teachers a matter of 
 1 St. Luke xvii. 22. 
 
342 The Disciples of St. John. 
 
 obligation on His own disciples. But He did far more 
 than not make it a matter of obligation. He made His 
 system interior as well as childlike, and He resisted all 
 suggestions to the contrary as incongruous to its spirit. 
 
 The doctrine contained in the apophthegm about the 
 wine and the bottles, goes a little beyond that of the 
 former image, and completes the teaching of our Lord 
 on this momentous subject. It is based on the necessity 
 of sameness of character and harmony of spirit between 
 those who are to live under and practise a religious 
 system, and the rules and provisions of that system itself. 
 Men must first be formed and moulded according to the 
 new spirit, and then they must be given a system of 
 rules in which also that spirit is expressed. An illus- 
 tration may be found in a matter already referred to, 
 the rules and the spirit of a religious order, for every 
 such order in the Church has a spirit and temper of its 
 own. The great founders of orders, especially those 
 who may be called the most original, have formed their 
 disciples long before they have given them a rule. For 
 a time the rule lives in the members of the order, and 
 nothing more is required, because, in the first fervour 
 of the spiritual life, and while the members are few and 
 live together, the Holy Ghost serves to guide each one 
 according to the same spirit. But in all human things 
 this first beautiful instinctive uniformity must of necessity 
 fall away, and when the rules are made they are the 
 reflection of the spirit which has been manifesting itself 
 without rule, and then in turn they perpetuate this and 
 preserve its uniformity through successive generations. 
 Modem history is full of the failure of paper Consti- 
 
 utions, drawn up in the closet by scientific poHticians, 
 and then forced in their integrity upon communities that 
 have no capacity for working them. They are like the 
 
 armour of Saul, of which David could make no use. 
 
The Disciples of St. John. 
 
 This, in the political and social order, is an illustration 
 of the principle which our Lord here sets forth under 
 the image of the wine and the bottles. He was probably- 
 thinking of many other parts of the system which He 
 was to introduce, as well as of that particular matter of 
 detail concerning which the disciples of the Baptist had 
 been questioning Him. They had touched a subject of 
 immense importance, but the importance of which it is 
 likely that they could not yet see. Our Lord's action 
 in this matter, which He must have known would attract 
 attention and draw down on Him a certain amount of 
 censure from the more religious portion of the Jewish 
 nation, was guided by the same heavenly wisdom which 
 made Him so resolutely brave the strongest of Jewish 
 prejudices in His conduct and language concerning the 
 Sabbath Day. In each case He was looking forward to 
 the formation of the Church, and acting in a manner 
 which was not to be fully understood except in the light 
 which the Church would throw upon it. There is this 
 truth included, among many others, in that exclamation 
 of our Lord's at a later date than this, which is recorded 
 by St. Luke, that He had a baptism wherewith He must 
 be baptized, and that He was greatly straitened until it 
 was accomphshed. That is, the Passion was to be the 
 foundation of everything which He was to leave behind 
 Him, and, until that great victory was won, there were 
 a thousand things as to which He was obliged to hold 
 back His full counsel, and to act in a manner which even 
 those whose hearts were most truly with Him did not 
 comprehend. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 The daugJiter of Jairiis and the woman with the 
 issue of blood. 
 
 St. Matt. ix. 18—26 ; St. Mark v. 22—43 I St. Luke viii. 41—56 ; 
 Vita VitcB NostrcE, § 66. 
 
 Our Lord had hardly ended His answer to the questions 
 of the disciples of St. John, when He was interrupted by 
 a more urgent appeal on His charity from another quarter. 
 Indeed, it seems as if He had delayed this applicant, in 
 order to answer the disciples of the Precursor. ' While 
 He was speaking these things unto them, behold a 
 certain ruler, a man whose name was Jairus, and he was 
 a ruler of the synagogue, came and adored Him, and he 
 fell down at the feet of Jesus, beseeching Him that He 
 would come into his house, for he had an only daughter, 
 almost twelve years old, and she was dying, and he 
 besought Him much, saying, My daughter is even now 
 dead, at the point of death, but come lay Thy hands 
 upon her and she shall live, that she may be safe and 
 may live. And Jesus rising up followed him, with His 
 disciples, and a great multitude followed Him and they 
 thronged Him.' Thus it was that our Lord could not 
 withdraw Himself from the occasions of mercy, and 
 although He was at this time so much bent on secrecy 
 and retirement, He could not, as it were, escape from the 
 discharge of His great office of the Redeemer of man- 
 kind and the healer of all evils, whether of body or of 
 soul. Jairus was probably one of His friends, a friend 
 also of the centurion whose servant our Lord had healed 
 
The daughter of J aims, 345 
 
 at His last visit to the city, and of the nobleman whose 
 son had been cured the year before, while our Lord was 
 at a distance. They were a little knot of pious souls, to 
 whom His powers were well known, and who had a sort 
 of claim on Him, for the frequent use which He had 
 made of the synagogue, which one of them had built and 
 over which the other presided. It must have been a 
 piece of sudden good news to Jairus, that the Master 
 had returned so soon from the other side of the lake, 
 and before that return they must have been looking for 
 Him anxiously. Then the sail was seen in the distance, 
 and the news reached them that our Lord would soon be 
 on the shore. We gather from St. Luke, that they were 
 waiting for Him, and it may have been a momentary 
 disappointment to them that He gave His first attention 
 to the disciples of His dear friend and Precursor. 
 
 However, though our Lord assented at once to the 
 invitation of this good man, Jairus had to experience 
 another trial of his patience before he could rejoice at 
 the presence of our Lord in his house. There was 
 another humble and retiring soul, watching for the arrival 
 of our Lord, and determining within herself to make her 
 venture in applying, in her own way, to the well-known 
 compassion of the Master. 'And there was a certain 
 woman, having an issue of blood twelve years, who had 
 bestowed all her substance on physicians, and had 
 suffered many things from many physicians, and could 
 not be healed by any, and was nothing the better, but 
 rather worse, who as she heard of Jesus, came in the 
 crowd behind Him, and touched His garment, for she 
 said within herself, if I shall touch only His garment, I 
 shall be healed. And immediately the issue of her blood 
 stopped, and forthwith the fountain of her blood was 
 dried up, and she felt in her body that she was cured of 
 the evil' 
 
34^ The daughter of J aims and 
 
 The Evangelists have so arranged their description of 
 this poor sufferer that we have here a perfect picture of 
 the misery of her bodily state, the inveterate character of 
 the evil, the costliness of the remedies which she had 
 used, and the utter inefficiency of all human physicians 
 in the case. Her action is one of great modesty, rever- 
 ence, humility, and also of great confidence in our Lord, 
 though perhaps she may have had but an imperfect 
 notion as to His Divine Person, thinking that she might 
 be healed by Him without His knowing it. The hems of 
 the garments, or rather perhaps the fringes, were in some 
 degree kept sacred by the Jews, but the expression of 
 touching the hem of the garment is one by which simple 
 humility may be conveyed, as when St. John Baptist said 
 that he was not worthy to loose the latchet of the shoe 
 of our Lord. Perhaps it might have been dangerous to 
 leave her imperfect ideas uncorrected, as it might have 
 led to the using of such opportunities as that of which 
 she availed herself, as if the garments of our Lord were 
 amulets or charms, and had in them some intrinsic 
 power of their oyra. for healing diseases. But our Lord 
 was probably influenced by other considerations in His 
 forcing the poor woman before us to declare what had 
 taken place. He knew what was passing, or what had 
 passed in the house of his friend Jairus, since he had left 
 it for the purpose of calling our Lord to his aid. The 
 messengers were already on the way, bearing to Jairus 
 the tidings that since he had left his daughter, she had 
 passed away and that there was no longer any hope. 
 The people of Capharnaum had seen many wonderful 
 miracles of our Lord, but they had had no experience of 
 His power to raise the dead to life. As far as we know, the 
 one instance in which that power had been exercised, 
 was that of the widow's son of Naim. Jairus therefore 
 would be in danger of failing in the faith]necessary, accord- 
 
the woman with the issue of blood. 347 
 
 ing to the ordinance of God, for the performance of the 
 great miracle which our Lord had in His mind to work in 
 favour of his child, and he might be strengthened and 
 confirmed in faith, at this time of his special trial, by 
 the revelation both of what had just taken place in the 
 case of the woman with an issue of blood, and also of 
 the perfect knowledge of our Lord as to what had 
 passed, as she had hoped, in secret. For such reasons 
 as these, then, our Lord determined to make this case 
 public, though on other occasions He had often been 
 strict in commanding that His works of mercy of this 
 kind should be concealed. 
 
 'And immediately Jesus, knowing in Himself that 
 virtue had gone out from Him, turning to the multitude, 
 said, Who hath touched My garments ? And His dis- 
 ciples, Peter and those that were with Him, said to Him, 
 Master, the multitude throng and press Thee, Thou 
 seest the multitude thronging Thee, and sayest Thou, 
 Who hath touched Me ? And Jesus said, Somebody 
 hath touched Me, for I know that virtue is gone out of 
 Me. And He looked about to see her who had done 
 this. But the woman, fearing and trembling, seeing that 
 she was not hid, knowing what was done in her, came 
 trembling and fell down before His feet, and declared 
 before all the people for what cause she had touched 
 Him, and how she was immediately cured, and told Him 
 all the truth. But Jesus turning and seeing her said, Be 
 of good heart, daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole, 
 go in peace, and be thou whole of thy disease. And the 
 woman was healed from that hour.' 
 
 Here again we come on an incident, for the complete 
 understanding of which it is necessary that we should 
 form right notions concerning the Sacred Humanity of 
 our Lord. His words might seem to imply, in the first 
 place, that virtue could go out from Him, for the purpose 
 
34^ The daughter of J air us and 
 
 and end of healing diseases, as it might go out of some 
 medicinal herb or spring, simply by the contact of the 
 per.son to be healed with any part of His Body, or with 
 His garments which were in contact with His Body. In 
 the second place, they might be understood as signifying 
 that He required to be informed of the person in whose 
 favour this miracle had been wrought, although He was 
 conscious that it had been wrought in favour of some 
 one, as if the power of healing which belonged to His 
 Body, as the instrument and organ of His Divinity, was 
 almost like a physical thing — a handkerchief or some- 
 thing of that sort, of which He might feel the departure 
 at the moment when it was taken, but not necessarily 
 know who it was that had taken it. But in the first 
 place, our Lord did not need to be informed, either now 
 or at any other time, of what was happening about Him, 
 and the question which He now asked was not asked for 
 His own information, but for the confirmation of the 
 faith of the disciples and of Jairus, and other similar 
 reasons. In the second place, although His Sacred Body, 
 as the temple of the Divinity, had the power of healing 
 all diseases and infirmities in those who touched it, a 
 power which is now and then dwelt on by St. Luke, who 
 lingers over such details with great and loving attention, 
 still this power was only exercised and put into use when 
 He Himself chose, and not at other times. He fre- 
 quently used the touch, or the laying on of hands, for 
 the cure of diseases, but at other times He healed and 
 wrought other miracles by a simple command. When 
 the Evangelists say that virtue went forth from Him, or 
 that as many as touched the hem of His garments were 
 healed, they speak of cases in which our Lord willed it 
 so to be, and they use this language about virtue going 
 forth from Him only on such occasions, and not when the 
 miracles were wrought by a mere command or word. 
 
the woman with the issue of blood. 349 
 
 Thus we must recognize this inherent virtue of the 
 Sacred Humanity, and at the same time understand that 
 it was only exerted in this particular way when our Lord 
 so chose. It cannot be doubted that His Sacred Heart 
 had watched over this poor lady, during the whole of the 
 time when she was debating within herself how to obtain 
 from Him the boon which she desired, that He knew 
 of her approach, and that it was in consequence of a 
 direct and conscious act of His will that her cure was 
 wrought. But it was in His mind not only to heal her, 
 but to use her cure for the benefit of others, as has been 
 said, and also to confirm and strengthen and elevate her 
 faith, which had in it something of imperfection. The 
 question w^hich He asked was asked for the sake of 
 bringing out, in the most natural way, what He desired to 
 make manifest, and not because He could not have 
 pointed her out at once if He had so chosen. The 
 simple action which is described by the Evangelists, of 
 His looking round to see her who had done this, con- 
 tained the truth of what we are speaking. For our Lord 
 would not have looked round for a person whom He 
 could not recognize when He saw her. His eyes sought 
 her out, and by that very search she knew, as the Evan- 
 gelists say, that she could not be hid. She could hide 
 herself from the eyes of men, for her action in touching 
 Him was one of which no one could take particular 
 notice, especially as so many were pressing on Him in 
 the crowd. But His eyes she could not escape, and so 
 she had to come forward trembling and astonished 
 before the whole crowd, to kneel at His sacred feet, and 
 acknowledge all that had taken place in her. It was this 
 that our Lord intended, and He at once reassured her 
 against any fear she might have that she had offended 
 Him by her act. ' He said to her. Daughter, thy faith 
 hath made thee whole, go in peace.' It was true that her 
 
350 The daughter of Jairus and 
 
 faith had made her whole, though the direct and prin- 
 cipal agent in her healing was the supernatural power 
 which had gone forth from Him. For faith was ordi- 
 narily the condition on which His miracles were wrought, 
 and if she had not had faith, she would never have touched 
 Him, nor would her touch have been made the means 
 of her cure. And our Lord always insisted on this con- 
 dition. Moreover, He always spoke, even on such occa- 
 sions as this, when He had manifested His Divine power 
 and authority over nature or disease, with the utmost 
 humility and meekness, attributing the effects to the 
 human cause in those who benefited by them, and not 
 to the supernatural cause of His own touch or word. 
 
 All this incident had taken some little time, and all 
 the while, short as the interval may have been, the loving 
 father of the girl whom our Lord was on His way to 
 heal, was standing by, perhaps inwardly fretting even at 
 a moment's delay. And then, as it seemed, all his hopes 
 were at once dashed to the ground. Our Lord was still 
 speaking to the lady who had been healed, when the 
 news came that the girl was dead. 'As He was yet 
 speaking, some come to the ruler of the synagogue, from 
 the ruler of the synagogue's house, saying to him, Thy 
 daughter is dead, why dost thou trouble Him ? trouble 
 Him not. And Jesus, hearing this word, said to the 
 ruler of the synagogue, the father of the maid,' as if 
 Jairus had turned to Him in his agony of grief, ' Fear 
 not, beheve only, and she shall be safe.' We are told 
 nothing of the state of mind of the father, but we gather 
 from the narrative that he had sufficient faith not to 
 distrust the word of our Lord, coming so soon on that 
 manifestation of His miraculous power which had just 
 been witnessed. 
 
 It was now clearly our Lord's intention to w^ork, here 
 at Capharnaum, this second great miracle of the raising 
 
the zuoman with the issue of blood. 351 
 
 the dead to life. His immense charity was thus, as it 
 were, forced to override the counsels of His prudence, 
 which had restrained Him from any great manifestation 
 of His power in this place for some time past — ever 
 since, it would appear, the miracle wrought on the 
 servant of the centurion. This and the other miracles 
 which immediately followed on this memorable day, were 
 to have the effect of driving Him away again, never to 
 return as before. There is but a single instance on 
 record of anything approaching the miraculous as done 
 by Him in Capharnaum after this day. He at once 
 took what precautions were now possible. It is possible 
 that the delay may have been ordered in His Provi- 
 dence, so that the girl might die, and be raised to 
 life, rather than be cured. For the news that she 
 was dead would incidentally secure greater privacy to 
 our Lord in her father's house. It seems from the 
 language of the Evangelists, that our Lord at once 
 dismissed the crowd, as far as was possible. This may 
 have been comparatively easy, if they were allowed to 
 draw the natural inference from the news of the death 
 of the girl who had been so ill. For that would lead 
 them at once to disperse, giving up all hope of witnessing 
 a miracle. St. Mark gives us this intimation in his exact 
 description of the circumstances, for he speaks of the 
 separation from our Lord's company even of the greater 
 number of the Apostles, before he speaks of our Lord's 
 going on to the house. ' He admitted not any man to 
 follow Him, but Peter and James, and John, the brother 
 of James, and they come to the house of the ruler of 
 the synagogue.' A second separation took place later, 
 for it appears that on arriving at the house, our Lord 
 found a crowd already there. There may have been 
 time enough, since the maiden had expired, for the 
 collection of the usual mourners. ^ And seeing a tumult, 
 
352 The daughter of J aims and 
 
 and people weeping and wailing much, when' He was 
 come to the house, He suffered not any man to go in 
 with Him, but Peter and James and John, and the father 
 and mother of the maiden. And He saw the minstrels 
 and the multitude making a rout, and going in He saith 
 to them. Why make ye this ado, and weep ? The damsel 
 is not dead, but sleepeth ! Give place, for the girl is 
 not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed Him to 
 scorn, knowing that she was dead. And He having put 
 them all forth, taketh the father and the mother of the 
 damsel, and them that were with Him, and entereth in 
 where the damsel was lying. And taking the damsel 
 by the hand, He saith to her, Talitha cumi, which is, 
 being interpreted, Damsel, I say to thee, arise ! And 
 immediately the damsel rose up and walked, and she 
 was twelve years old. And they were astonished with 
 a great astonishment. And He charged them strictly 
 that no man should know it, and commanded that some- 
 thing should be given her to eat.' 
 
 Our Lord, all through this incident, was desirous of 
 hiding the miracle which He was about to work from 
 the knowledge of men, for the motives which forced 
 Him at this time to avoid publicity in every possible 
 way. But we see plainly also that He spoke with His 
 usual humility, so as to make the least of what He was 
 to do. There was also a reason of divine prudence in 
 the words which He used, for by asserting that the 
 maiden was not dead, but asleep. He drew from the 
 witnesses of her death, and from those who had seen 
 the body as it lay on the bed where she had died, the 
 strongest possible confirmation of the truth of the great 
 miracle He was going to perform. His words were not 
 false, in the sense in which He spoke them, for that is 
 sleep out of which there is to be a speedy awakening, 
 and that is death out of which there is to be no awaken- 
 
the woman with the issue of blood. 353 
 
 ing until the Day of Judgment. But, in the case of this 
 girl, she was to be again among her family and friends 
 in a very short time, and was to live among them during 
 the remainder of an ordinary lifetime. Nor could she 
 have been dealt with, in the world beyond the grave, as 
 one whose time of trial was permanently at an end, and 
 who was never to return to this earth. Thus, in a most 
 true sense, she was asleep, and was soon to wake, though 
 in another sense what the mourners and wallers said of 
 her was true, that she was really dead. Her soul had 
 left her body, there was no life in her, she could never 
 be restored to her parents in this world, except by the 
 power of Him Who is the Master of life and death. 
 
 The three chosen disciples, and the father and mother 
 of the deceased damsel, were alone in the room with 
 our Lord and the lifeless corpse. These were witnesses 
 enough for the perfect authentication of the miracle, 
 whenever it was necessary to authenticate it, and the 
 whole crowd of those who had been put forth by our 
 Lord were witnesses to the truth of the death of the 
 damsel. Her new life would be spent among those 
 who had known her, and thus there could not be wanting 
 any portion of the evidence which might be reasonably 
 required. But it was still necessary, for the reasons 
 already mentioned, that the miracle should not be public. 
 Our Lord had not let anything hinder Him from the 
 manifestation of the miracle wrought on the woman with 
 the issue of blood, for that had been necessary, or at 
 least opportune, for the confirmation of the faith of the 
 father of this girl. The details of this second miracle 
 are perfectly simple. It was wrought both by word and 
 by touch of that Sacred Humanity, which had in it all 
 healing power for the ills of men. In these circum- 
 stances our Lord not only acted as was His wont, that 
 the power might be seen to proceed directly from His 
 X 7 
 
354 ^'^^ daughte7^ of J aims and 
 
 Sacred Person, but also did what was natural in arousing 
 from sleep one who lay on a couch. He took her by 
 the hand, spoke to her, and lifted her up. Her spirit 
 returned, and she arose immediately and walked. All 
 these circumstances show the completeness of the cure 
 wrought on her, for in ordinary cases, a person who had 
 just been brought back from the other world would 
 have been weak, and unable to move with the vigour 
 •of one who had never been struck down by disease or 
 death. And He bade them give her to eat, to show, 
 as it seems, the reality of her restored life, and that she 
 was not a phantom. * And they were astonished with a 
 great astonishment. And He charged them strictly that 
 no man should know it.' But in this, as in other cases, 
 it was impossible for the miracle to be kept secret. The 
 parents could not understand the motives of charity 
 which caused our Lord to insist so much on secrecy, 
 and besides, the girl herself was there, the living evidence 
 of what had been done for her by our Lord. It could 
 not be but that the servants and friends of the family 
 would soon come to know of her restoration, and in a 
 city like Capharnaum, the news of such a wonder would 
 very soon spread. ' The fame went abroad into all that 
 country.' 
 
 It cannot be doubted that this publicity of so great 
 a miracle would exasperate, still more than ever, the 
 hostility of the enemies of our Lord, and this may 
 account for the line of conduct which was now adopted 
 by Him of keeping more than ever aloof from Caphar- 
 naum, in which city we are not certain that He ever 
 ■spent more than a few passing hours at a time after this 
 •day. But of this we shall have to speak hereafter. The 
 miracle before us suggests two heads of consideration, 
 distinct the one from the other, and on these we may 
 spend what remains to us of the present chapter. 
 
the woman with the issue of blood. 355 
 
 In the first place, the incidents of this day, of which 
 we have not yet come to the end, but especially the two 
 miracles just spoken of, exemplify very pointedly a prin- 
 ciple in the working of God's Providence which is very 
 well worthy of particular attention. The two miracles 
 which we have lately been considering, when taken 
 together, form an instance of that connection which 
 constantly subsists between the lives of different persons, 
 whether known to or related to one another, or not. It 
 is clear that the incident of the cure of the lady with an 
 issue of blood, had a marked influence in bringing about 
 the miracle of the raising of the girl to life, and that, on 
 the other hand, the subject of the former miracle would 
 not have had the opportunity of drawing near to our 
 Lord, as He was passing through the streets in the midst 
 of the crowd, but for the petition of Jairus to our Lord 
 that He would come and lay His hands on his daughter. 
 This is the incomprehensible marvel of the wisdom of 
 God, that He makes our lives link in one with another 
 in so close a manner, and provides for the good of each 
 one of a large number of souls by the same stroke of 
 His hand, while He makes us almost infinitely dependent 
 one on another, so that no single life of all His children, 
 is without its continual and manifold influences on the 
 lives of those around him. It is probable that the reve- 
 lation of these workings of Providence will be among 
 the most beautiful parts of that great manifestation of 
 the ways of God which will take place at the last day. 
 One great reason for the General Judgment, as distin- 
 guished from that which each soul undergoes singly at 
 the moment of death, is this declaration of God's ways 
 in the treatment of men, not singly, but in the various 
 relations and mutual offices in which they are placed in 
 the world as it actually is. This is one of the great 
 points which stand out prominently, in connection with 
 
35^ The daughter of J aims and 
 
 these miracles on the last day, as it seems, when our 
 Lord was at Capharnaum for any length of time. The 
 circumstances of the case have led the Evangelists to 
 trace out for us more closely than usual the connection 
 between one of these incidents and the rest, a connection 
 which might have been traced out in thousands of other 
 such occurrences, if such had been the will of our Lord 
 in the composition of the Gospel history. It is chiefly 
 with regard to Capharnaum that we have hints of this 
 kind. We seem to see the traces of a history of the 
 dealings of our Lord with a certain number of chosen 
 souls, many of whom became very conspicuous in His 
 service. We have mentioned the little cluster of friends 
 who belonged to our Lord's disciples in that city— the 
 nobleman who began, so to say, the series of mercies, 
 by obtaining from Him the healing of his son when our 
 Lord was at a distance, the Roman centurion who built 
 the synagogue in which our Lord so often taught, and 
 it is natural to join to him Jairus, the ruler of the same 
 synagogue. All these men, and their famihes, were the 
 objects, so to say, of a connected Providential action. 
 If the circle included a Gentile officer, it may also have 
 taken in the good publican St. Matthew, perhaps also, 
 though this is conjecture, the family of St. Martha and 
 St. Mary Magdalene. This little band of friends would 
 probably have made themselves the friends of our Blessed 
 Lady, and of those cousins of our Lord with whom she 
 lived. Thus in the very midst of this city, which, after 
 all, was to reject our Lord and to acquire for itself the 
 fatal celebrity given to it by His denunciations of its 
 hardness of heart, there would be this Httle assembly of 
 devout souls and followers of our Lord, for most of 
 whom He had exerted His miraculous powers. The 
 mercy shown to one led on to the mercies earned by 
 others, and thus the precious grace spread from heart to 
 heart. 
 
the woman with the issue of blood. 357 
 
 Another very striking thought in connection with this 
 subject, is that which is suggested by the contrast be- 
 tween the miracle on the widow's son of Nairn and that 
 on the daughter of Jairus, which also may be compared 
 with that which was afterwards to be wrought in favour 
 of Lazarus. These three miracles, as is well known, 
 exhaust the list of the occasions on which our Lord 
 raised the dead to life. Their history may be used as 
 tracing out the gradual deepening and growth of the 
 hostility to Him on the part of the Pharisees, and the 
 influence which that hostility had on His own line of 
 conduct. The scene at Naim is one of unmixed triumph 
 and joy. Our Lord is accompanied by a crowd of dis- 
 ciples, and a large concourse of people are present from 
 the city itself, to which the widow and her son belonged. 
 There seems no sign of opposition or of incredulity. All 
 is peaceful and calm, lit up by an intense light of faith 
 and hope and charity. There is no concealment on our 
 Lord's part, there is not a voice raised against Him after 
 the wonder has been worked. The miracle, public as it 
 is, is unsolicited, for no one would have ventured to ask 
 for such a boon at that time. What no one asks for, 
 our Lord gives, out of simple compassion in the first 
 instance, and for many great ends of His own in the 
 second. The rumour spreads over all the land, and 
 reaches even the Baptist in his lonely dungeon in the 
 castle of Machaerus, and thus its effect is to bring about 
 that solemn embassy, so to call it, of St. John to our 
 Lord, when he asked Him whether He was He that was 
 to come, or whether they looked for another. 
 
 The contrast is great in the scene at Capharnaum. 
 Our Lord is most careful to hide what He is about to 
 do, and what He has done. He puts out all but the 
 very fewest witnesses, and these He charges not to make 
 it known. He is in the midst of His enemies, and His 
 
358 The daughter of J aims, 
 
 works of mercy are slandered with a malice worthy rather 
 of Hell than of earth. Out of mere charity, our Lord is 
 obliged to hide what He does, though that is a work of 
 the highest power and of the tenderest compassion. He 
 cannot help doing what He does, and yet He is forced 
 to draw over it a veil, for fear of intensifying still more 
 miserably the sin of the enemies who dog His every step. 
 When all is over, and the fame of the great work of 
 mercy flies abroad all over the land. He is compelled to 
 withdraw Himself still more, and after all, the great 
 result is that the atrocious calumny about casting out 
 devils by means of the prince of the devils is imme- 
 diately renewed. An equally striking contrast is obser- 
 vable if these two miracles of resurrection, so different in 
 their circumstances and consequences, are compared to 
 the other great miracle of the raising of Lazarus, worked 
 at a time when our Lord had already retired from the 
 gaze of His enemies. He could not refuse to listen to 
 the touching words of Martha and Mary. *Lord, he 
 whom Thou lovest is sick.' He knew what it would 
 cost Him. The miracle was wrought before a large 
 company, some of whom were already more than half 
 determined on His death. It was wrought amid our 
 Lord's own tears. He makes a public address of thanks- 
 giving to His Father, and He has to encourage Martha 
 at the last moment, lest her faith might fail. The 
 miracle was the most stupendous, one of the most public, 
 the most fatal in its consequences of all that He ever 
 wrought. It became the immediate occasion of the plot 
 against His life, which was at last executed by means of 
 the treachery of Judas. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 The Evil Tongue. 
 
 St. Matt. ix. 27 — 34 ; Vita Vitce Nostra, § 67. 
 
 It has already been pointed out that St. Matthew has 
 arranged a great series of miracles, at an early stage of 
 his Gospel,^ and that he has taken some of them alto- 
 gether out of their chronological context, for the sake 
 of putting under one head, as it were, a large number 
 of various manifestations of power of this kind on the 
 part of our Lord. In this way we have the miracles on 
 the leper, on the centurion's servant, on the mother-in- 
 law of St. Peter, on a very great number of sick and 
 possessed persons on the same day at Capharnaum. 
 These are followed by the calming of the storm on the 
 lake, the deliverance of the Gerasene demoniacs, the 
 healing of the paralytic, the healing of the woman with 
 an issue of blood and of the daughter of Jairus. Thus 
 the first Evangelist has collected together, it may be 
 said, instances of the exertion of our Lord's miraculous 
 power on every kind of disease, on the devils in posses- 
 sion of men, on the elements themselves, and, finally, 
 over life and death. When we consider the purpose for 
 which this marvellous chain has evidently been woven 
 by St. Matthew, we can feel little surprise that he should 
 have neglected the order of time for the sake of so 
 convenient a collection of these evidences of the Divine 
 mission of his Master. It has also been remarked, that 
 1 St. Matt. viii. ix. 
 
360 The Evil Tongue. 
 
 where such hints are especially necessary, as when the 
 Evangelist has made a great stride in time from one part 
 of our Lord's Ministry to another, he has, as of set 
 purpose, added a word or two to guide us as to the true 
 place in time of the anecdotes which he has combined. 
 It is on this account that we have felt safe in placing the 
 application of the scribe to be allowed to follow our 
 Lord, immediately before the miracle of the stilling of 
 the storm, and also in placing the question of the 
 disciples of St. John on the subject of fasting, imme- 
 diately before the coming of Jairus to beg our Lord to 
 come and heal his daughter. The same guidance carries 
 us a little further on the present occasion, and enables 
 us to fill up the incidents of this remarkable day, after 
 the return of our Lord from the other side of the Lake, 
 with two more miracles, the last of the miracles, strictly 
 so called, which, as far as we know, were ever wrought 
 by our Lord in this favoured city of Capharnaum.^ Here 
 also St. Matthew, though he relates these miracles long 
 before their time, at least long before many things in the 
 Life of our Lord which actually preceded them, gives us 
 sufficient guidance to make us certain that they are to 
 be placed here and not elsewhere. 
 
 ' And as Jesus passed from thence,' that is, from the 
 house of the ruler of the synagogue whose daughter He 
 had restored to life, ' there followed Him two blind men, 
 crying out and saying, Have mercy on us, O Son of 
 David ! And when He was come to the house, the 
 blind men came to Him. And Jesus saith to them, 
 Do you believe that I can do this unto you? They 
 say to Him, Yea, Lord. Then He touched their eyes, 
 
 ' The only exception to this statement that can be found is the 
 incident of the payment of the didrachma (St. Matt. xvii. 23 — 26), 
 which gave occasion to a miracle only in the larger sense of the word, 
 and this miracle does not seem to have been public. 
 
The Evil Tongue, 361 
 
 saying, According to your faith let it be done unto you. 
 And their eyes were opened, and Jesus strictly charged 
 them, saying, See that no man know this. But they 
 going abroad, spread His fame about in all the country. 
 And when they were gone out, behold they brought Him 
 a dumb man possessed with a devil. And after the 
 devil was cast out, the dumb man spoke. And the 
 multitudes wondered, saying, Never was the like seen 
 in Israel. But the Pharisees said, By the prince of the 
 devils He casteth out devils.' It is easy to see from 
 this last mentioned circumstance, that the miracle 
 belongs to the time with which we are now concerned, 
 when the enemies of our Lord had been driven by the 
 terrible necessities of their opposition to Him at any 
 cost, to this most detestable calumny and blasphemy 
 against the Holy Ghost. Thus we are a long way 
 beyond that epoch in His Ministry in w^hich the first 
 miracles on the list of St. Matthew are to be placed, 
 such as the healing of the leper and the paralytic who 
 was let down before Him from the roof. 
 
 These new miracles have little that is characteristic 
 in them, as distinguished from others that our Lord had 
 worked of the same kind. But our Lord's way of 
 dealing with the poor blind men is remarkable. He 
 seems not to have paid them any attention while He 
 was passing through the streets, on His way to the 
 house which served as His home at Capharnaum. This 
 is very inteUigible, when we remember how anxious He 
 was at this time to avoid public notice. The blind men 
 must have had guides and assistants, for they followed 
 Him on the way, and when He had reached the house, 
 these persons managed to bring them into our Lord's 
 own presence. Now He could converse wath them 
 without notice of others, and He simply asked them 
 concerning their faith. It reads as if our Lord were 
 
362 The Evil Tongue. 
 
 catechising them, and as if He might have declined to 
 help them, if they had not answered Him with full 
 confidence and faith. *They say to Him, Yea, LordJ 
 Thus they had a claim, a right, it might almost be said, 
 to the exertion on their behalf of His miraculous powers, 
 and this He seems to have acknowledged, for He said, 
 ' According to your faith let it be done to you.' The 
 miracle was immediately wrought. Our Lord repeated 
 to them the strict injunction which He had given in the 
 case of the daughter of Jairus, and with the same result. 
 *And Jesus strictly charged them, saying. See that no 
 man know this. But they going out, spread His fame 
 abroad in all that country.' A number of motives 
 combined to make them disobey Him. It was not 
 easy for them to escape the questionings of those who 
 knew them, and thus a certain number of persons must 
 have heard of the miracle. Nor could they understand 
 that it was not only out of humility that our Lord thus 
 acted. Why should the fame of so great a benefit be 
 kept hidden ? There were other sufferers beside them- 
 selves, and these might as well have the opportunity of 
 hearing while the wonder-worker was as yet in their city; - 
 They could not know that the simple fact of their publi- 
 cation of His powers might make it impossible for them 
 to be exercised in favour of others. And so it came 
 about, that the friends of the dumb man who was 
 possessed by the devil came to know of our Lord's 
 presence, and brought him to Him. It was the most 
 natural thing in the world, and yet, on account of the 
 malice of His enemies, it was for the moment one of 
 the most mischievous. 
 
 In this case, of course, there was no interrogatory 
 about faith. Our Lord could not but help this poor 
 man, for the scandal which the cure would give was a 
 scandal wicked in itself, unreasonable, and so not to be 
 
The Evil Tongue, 363 
 
 attended to in any way. Not the less, however, would 
 it drive Him away from the city which had so long 
 been known as His own. ' And after the devil was cast 
 out, the dumb man spoke, and the multitudes wondered, 
 saying, Never was the Hke seen in Israel.' They were 
 not unaccustomed to the casting out of devils in certain 
 cases, as we learn from the argument which our Lord 
 used when this calumny about the league with Beelzebub 
 was first set afloat. But it was altogether unknown for 
 the disease or infirmity of the body to be healed at the 
 same time, and by the same act by which the devil was 
 ejected. This was a new and distinct miracle, and 
 thus appears to have attracted especial attention on this 
 occasion, as before. There was therefore nothing left 
 for the Pharisees but to choose one of the only two 
 possible alternatives. They must either acknowledge 
 that He had with Him the power of God, and then 
 they would have had to explain why they did not believe 
 in Him, or they must adhere, at all costs, to their own 
 invented calumny, that He cast out devils by Beelzebub. 
 Even this did not explain the miracle. It left the 
 miraculous cure of the dumb person out of sight, unless 
 it were supposed that the devil had had some power 
 over his organs of speech and had released his hold on 
 them at the moment of the dispossession. But there 
 was no other opening for their malice, and so 'the 
 Pharisees said. By the prince of the devils He casteth 
 out devils.' On the former occasion on which this 
 calumny had been, for the first time, invented, St. Mark^ 
 tells us that it originated with the Scribes who had been 
 sent down from Jerusalem to watch our Lord's move- 
 ments. It may be supposed that, at the time of the 
 miracle now before us, the calumny was adopted by the 
 Pharisees of Capharnaum themselves, as the official 
 3 St. Mark iii. 22. 
 
364 The Evil Tongue. 
 
 answer, so to say, to be given to the argument drawn 
 from such miracles in favour of our Lord's mission. 
 Some of them, as it appears, had already made an 
 arrangement with the Herodians, members of Herod's 
 administration, the object of which was to take our 
 Lord's life. 
 
 It is not the habit of the Evangelists to dwell on the 
 motives of our Lord's line of action, at this or that place 
 of their history, although they furnish us with quite 
 sufficient indications of those motives. It is clear in the 
 present case, that the renewal of this detestable calumny 
 drove our Lord away once more from this His own city, 
 and that, now that even there the calumny had been set 
 on foot, it so far influenced Him as to make Him very 
 sparing indeed in His visits, even for a short time. But 
 we may well dwell on the effects of this weapon of oppo- 
 sition to our Lord, for two reasons. First, it was the 
 most efficacious weapon that the powers of Hell invented 
 in their warfare against Him. And in the second place, 
 it is the weapon of which those same powers of Hell 
 have made greater use than of any other, in their war- 
 fare against the Catholic Church in all ages since the 
 day of Pentecost. It was fitting, as it might seem, that 
 the Life of our Lord Himself should contain a very 
 marked anticipation of the use of calumny in hindering 
 His work, seeing that no other weapon was to be half so 
 instrumental in hindering the work of the Church in 
 after ages. Our Lord had immense difficulties to con- 
 tend with, in the dulness of His own disciples, in the 
 carnal views of the majority of the holy nation, to whom 
 He was specially sent, He had the natural passions of 
 man ranged against Him, He had to contend with the 
 self-interest of some, the political views of others, with a 
 priesthood corrupted to the core by sensuality and cove- 
 tousness, with the astute and profligate Herod, with the 
 
The Evil Tongue. 365 
 
 ambition of Caiaphas, and with the human respect by 
 which Pilate was ruled, and which had beneath it only 
 too true a foundation in the character of the Emperor 
 Tiberius. And, if the opposition of man had been little, 
 there was also the deadly and crafty enmity of the 
 legions of Hell to account with. Yet it may fairly be 
 said, that nothing could have stopped Him from the 
 conversion of the whole nation, which He might then have 
 made a most powerful instrument for the conversion of 
 the world, if it had not been for the power of lying which 
 was set in motion against Him. It was this that turned 
 away the hearts of the most well-disposed among the 
 people, the very persons who were the most religious, 
 and in other respects the most natural subjects for His 
 teaching. These people would be the most ready to 
 receive their impressions from their own legitimate 
 teachers, who sat in the chair of Moses, and who were 
 the persons who propagated this lie concerning Him. 
 And it was the fatal power of lying which, in the end, 
 brought about the Crucifixion, because it persuaded the 
 people that He had been at last detected as an impostor. 
 Thus the evil tongue prevented one large class from 
 receiving our Lord, and made another still larger class 
 abandon Him at the time of His Passion. That aban- 
 donment led directly to the choosing of Barabbas rather 
 than our Lord, and to the horrible cries of 'Crucify 
 Him I ' before which Pilate quailed. 
 
 It is only natural to find that what is true of our 
 Lord, is also most perfectly true of the Catholic Church, 
 which He has left behind Him in the world to do His 
 work and estabhsh His Kingdom. She too has had 
 most powerful enemies to overcome. She has had against 
 her the whole power of paganism, a system infinitely 
 pleasant to the natural man and his lower passions, the 
 indulgence of which was consecrated by the cunning of 
 
366 The Evil Tongue. 
 
 Hell, which set before him as the divinities whom he was 
 to worship and imitate, the foulest of his own lusts 
 canonized and deified. Such as were the gods of 
 paganism, such was the worship by which they were 
 honoured. The Church had to fight against the whole 
 power also of the Roman Empire, an Empire which 
 might have lasted to this day, and have been spread all 
 over the world in peaceful and beneficent dominion, if 
 its rulers had known their own interests and united them 
 with the advancement and protection of the Church. 
 And, moreover, a whole army of worldly interests was 
 arrayed against her, as we see even in the tumult raised 
 at Ephesus against St. Paul. The pagan priesthoods 
 were as well endowed as the Anglican Establishment at 
 the present day, the philosophers, the soothsayers, all 
 the motley rabble of ' false prophets,' and pretenders to 
 spiritual power, ' theosophy,' magic, occult knowledge, 
 and the like, were touched in their most vital interests by 
 the presence of the Spouse of Christ. It was then as it 
 is now, only that the superstitions were more powerful, 
 the incredulity of the people more profound, the gains of 
 the impostors, and the numbers of those who lived by 
 professional vice far more immense. 
 
 But what was the most powerful of all the weapons 
 which the Church had to contend against ? It was not 
 the power of the Caesars, or of any other of those num- 
 berless influences arrayed against her, but the power of 
 lying. It was this that set the populace in arms against her, 
 it was this that made her children pay the penalty for the 
 foul abominations of the most abandoned of heretics, this 
 which brought upon her the hatred of the whole human 
 race. The sword of the Caesars themselves could never 
 have raged as it did against her, but for the calumnies 
 which were commonly believed. She can brave persecu- 
 tion, she can defy the power of the sword, she is compa- 
 
The Evil Tongue, 367 
 
 ratively powerless against the evil tongue. This was from 
 the very first taken up as the weapon which alone could 
 deal with the Church. The whole army of her enemies 
 could at least unite on this point, if on no other. The 
 use of slander could combine all the other influences 
 which existed in human society, the people, the rulers, 
 the philosophers, all could be set against her by syste- 
 matic and widespread calumnies. 
 
 We find exactly the same phenomenon in that most 
 hateful of all the persecutions which the Catholic Church 
 has had to undergo, the persecution of heretics and 
 schismatics. These men have been found in all ranks 
 and orders of life, and there have been many among 
 them who began with strictness of virtue and austerity of 
 life, and assailed the truth, originally, in ignorance rather 
 than in malice. And what is true of the founders of 
 heresies, is still more true of their followers, who have in 
 many cases been educated in error instead of adopting it 
 for themselves. Leaving aside considerations of personal 
 probity and honesty, of which we are no fit judges in 
 individual cases, we see in the warfare of these men 
 against the Church the same characteristic use of the 
 Satanic weapon of the evil tongue. A great number of 
 them have done and do nothing but abuse and calum- 
 niate. They do not prove the truth of their own 
 doctrines, or the hoHness of their own sects, they do 
 not defend their own claims to the Catholicity and 
 Apostolicity and Unity which must be the notes of the 
 true Church wherever it exists, half so much as they 
 vilify and malign the only Church which appears to 
 possess these notes. When persons go to them in 
 distress of conscience, as is so frequently the case in the 
 days in which we live, because they cannot find peace 
 and rest, unity of doctrine and the voice of authority, in 
 their own separated communions, the favourite device 
 
368 The Evil Tongue. 
 
 of these men is, not to show them the unknown 
 excellencies of these communions and their actual 
 union with the great body of the Church all over the 
 world, but rather to assure them that the Church is an 
 impostor, and thus practically direct them to a denial of 
 the Creed and to infidelity. The main staple of their 
 argument is negation, falsehood, calumny. And in 
 many cases they succeed only too well in the destruction 
 of all faith. Souls are turned away from the only Mother 
 to whom has been committed the words of eternal life, 
 because heretical teachers, on their own authority, assert 
 that she has a devil or is in league with Beelzebub. 
 
 Thus it is that the Church in all ages, and certainly 
 not least in our own, has the same fortune in the world 
 with her Divine Master. Lying has ever been the chief 
 weapon of her enemies, the weapon never laid aside, and 
 the most successful. The power of lying arises from the 
 constitution of society, in which God has made us 
 immensely dependent on the veracity one of another, 
 and it arises also from our inborn readiness to judge 
 of other men from what we see and hear, and, in the 
 third place, from the inclination of the degenerate human 
 heart to judge unfavourably rather than favourably, to 
 believe evil rather than to believe good. A lie flies over 
 the world, and yet there may be very few who are liars 
 in repeating it. For what is one man's lie, is the credulity 
 or carelessness or mistake of another, and it becomes a 
 religious conviction, and a tenet that it is a duty to act 
 upon, in a third or a fourth. This explains to us those 
 startling words of our Lord to His Apostles, that the 
 time would come when people would think it a service 
 done to God to kill them. We see this immense influence of 
 mendacity in the most modern books of controversy against 
 the Church, in Manuals^ and Preservatives^ and Plain 
 Reasons, and the like. Many of these books, though not 
 
The Evil To7igiie. 369 
 
 all, are written by men of respectability and good cha- 
 racter, who are yet only the repeaters of a lie a thousand 
 times refuted, one which with due industry they might have 
 known to be a lie, nay, which after more consideration 
 some of them have the grace to acknowledge as such. 
 The test of such men is found in their readiness to 
 acknowledge their misstatements. Some of them do this. 
 Others promise to do it, but live for years and die 
 without retracting their calumnies — for calumnies they 
 become, when they are left unretracted in the face of 
 confutation, though they may at first have been simple 
 inaccuracies or blunders. But if it is so difficult to get 
 even men of respectability to make a retractation, when 
 it is irresistibly brought home to them, how much more 
 difficult must it be to eradicate from the mind of whole 
 populations the falsehoods which they have drunk in: 
 with their mother's milk ! To take only a single instance 
 of a successful falsehood. At this moment, a large 
 portion of the European and Christian world believe 
 implicitly in the calumnies which were suggested to- 
 Pascal by men who might have known better, and which 
 he did not examine. It so happened that he had a 
 matchless style, and that, from the circumstances of the 
 day in France, society was full of elements which made 
 men desirous to believe the falsehoods which he sent 
 abroad. They have been refuted again and again, 
 but all to no purpose. So it is with other similar 
 falsehoods, which have been sent into the world under 
 the name of learning and authority, but which are yet in 
 their origin the simplest and most barefaced misrepresen- 
 tations. Lying is Satan's parody on truth, it is the word 
 of Satan, as truth is the word of God. On account 
 of the corruption of the world, the word of God is less 
 powerful in it than the word of Satan. 
 
 Y 7 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Harvi07iy of tJie Gospels as to the Second Period 
 of the Public Life. 
 
 § 56. — The caliinmy of the Pharisees about Beelzebub, 
 
 Matt. xii. 22 — 37. 
 
 Then was offered to Him 
 one possessed with a devil, 
 bhnd and dumb, and He 
 healed him, so that he spoke 
 and saw. And all the multi- 
 tudes were amazed, and said. 
 Is not this the Son of David ? 
 
 But the Pharisees hearing 
 it, said, This man casteth not 
 out devils but by Beelzebub, 
 the prince of devils. 
 
 And Jesus knowing their 
 thoughts, said to them, Every 
 kingdom divided against it- 
 self shall be made desolate, 
 and every city or house di- 
 vided against itself shall not 
 stand. And if Satan cast out 
 Satan, he is divided against 
 himself, how then shall his 
 kingdom stand "i 
 
 And if I by Beelzebub cast 
 out devils, by whom do your 
 children cast them out ? 
 Therefore they shall be your 
 judges. But if I by the Spirit 
 of God cast out devils, then 
 is the kingdom of God come 
 upon you. 
 
 Mark iii. 22 — 30. 
 
 And the scribes who were 
 come down from Jerusalem, 
 said. He hath Beelzebub, and 
 by the prince of devils He 
 casteth out devils. 
 
 And after He had called 
 them together. He said to 
 them in parables, How can 
 Satan cast out Satan ? And 
 if a kingdom be divided 
 against itself, that kingdom 
 cannot stand. And if a house 
 be divided against itself, that 
 house cannot stand. And if 
 Satan be risen up against 
 himself, he is divided, and 
 cannot stand, but hath an end. 
 
Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 371 
 
 Matt. xii. 29 — 37. 
 
 Or how can any one enter 
 into the house of a strong 
 man, and rifle his goods, un- 
 less he first bind the strong 
 man ? and then he will rifle 
 his house. He that is not 
 with Me, is against Me, and 
 he that gathereth not with 
 Me, scattereth. 
 
 Therefore I say to you. 
 Every sin and blasphemy 
 shall be forgiven men, but 
 the blasphemy of the Spirit 
 shall not be forgiven. And 
 whosoever shall speak a word 
 against the Son of Man, it 
 shall be forgiven him, but he 
 that shall speak against the 
 Holy Spirit, it shall not be 
 forgiven him, neither in this 
 world, nor in the world to 
 come. 
 
 Either make the tree good, 
 and its fruit good, or make 
 the tree evil, and its fruit evil. 
 For by the fruit the tree is 
 known. O generation of vi- 
 pers, how can you speak good 
 things, whereas you are evil .'* 
 for out of the abundance of 
 the heart the mouth speaketh. 
 A good man out of a good 
 treasure bringeth forth good 
 things, and an evil man out 
 of an evil treasure bringeth 
 forth evil things. But I say 
 unto you, that every idle word 
 that men shall speak, they 
 shall render an account for 
 it in the day of judgment. 
 For by thy words thou shalt 
 be justified, and by thy words 
 thou shalt be condemned. 
 
 Mark iii. 27 — 30. 
 
 No man can enter into the 
 house of a strong man and 
 rifle his goods, unless he first 
 bind the strong man, and 
 then he will rifle his house. 
 
 Amen I say to you, that all 
 sins shall be forgiven unto 
 the sons of men, and the 
 blasphemies wherewith they 
 shall blaspheme. But he 
 that shall blaspheme against 
 the Holy Spirit, shall never 
 have forgiveness, but shall be 
 guilty of an everlasting sin. 
 Because they said. He hath 
 an unclean spirit. 
 
372 Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 § 57. — The Scribes ojid Pharisees seeking for a sign. The 
 close union of the disciples to our Lord. 
 Matt. xii. 38 — 50. Mark iii. 31 — 35. Luke 19 — 21. 
 
 Then someof the 
 scribes and Phari- 
 sees answered Him, 
 saying, Master, we 
 would see a sign 
 from Thee. 
 
 Who answering 
 said to them, An 
 evil and adulterous 
 generation seeketh 
 a sign, and a sign 
 shall not be given 
 it, but the sign of 
 Jonas the prophet. 
 For as Jonas was 
 in the whale's belly 
 three days andthree 
 nights, so shall the 
 Son of Man be in 
 the heart of the 
 earth three days 
 and three nights. 
 
 The men of Ni- 
 nive shall rise in 
 judgment with this 
 generation, and 
 shall condemn it, 
 because they did 
 penance at the 
 preaching of Jonas. 
 And behold a 
 greater than Jonas 
 here. The queen 
 of the south shall 
 rise in judgment 
 with this genera- 
 tion, and shall con- 
 demn it, because 
 she came from the 
 ends of the earth 
 to hear the wisdom 
 of Solomon, and 
 behold a greater 
 than Solomon here. 
 
Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 11 
 
 Matt. xii. 43 — 49. 
 
 And when an 
 unclean spirit is 
 gone out of a man, 
 hewalketh through 
 dry places seeking 
 rest, and findeth 
 none. Then he 
 saith, I will return 
 into my house from 
 whence I came out. 
 And coming he 
 findeth it empty, 
 swept, and gar- 
 nished. Then he 
 goeth, and taketh 
 with him seven 
 other spirits more 
 wicked than him- 
 self, and they enter 
 in and dwell there, 
 and the last state 
 of that man is 
 made worse than 
 the first. So shall 
 it be also to this 
 wicked generation. 
 
 And He was yet 
 speaking to the 
 multitudes, behold 
 His mother and 
 His brethren stood 
 without, seeki-.gto 
 speak to Him And 
 one said r to Him, 
 Behold Thy mo- 
 ther and Thy breth- 
 ren stand without 
 seeking Thee. But 
 He answering him 
 that told Him, said, 
 Who is My mo- 
 ther, and who are 
 My brethren? And 
 stretching forth 
 His hand towards 
 His disciples, He 
 said, Behold My 
 
 Mark iii. 31 — 34. 
 
 Luke 
 
 vui. 19 — 21. 
 
 And His mother 
 and His brethren 
 came, and stand- 
 ing without, sent 
 unto Him, calling 
 Him. And the 
 multitude sat about 
 Him, and they said 
 to Him, Behold 
 Thy mother and 
 Thy brethren with- 
 out seek for Thee. 
 And answering 
 them. He said, 
 Who is My mother 
 and My brethren ? 
 And looking round 
 about on them who 
 sat about Him, He 
 saith. Behold My 
 mother and My 
 
 And His mother 
 and brethren came 
 unto Him, and they 
 could not come at 
 Him for the crowd. 
 And it was told 
 Him, Thy mother 
 and Thy brethren 
 stand without, de- 
 siring to see Thee. 
 
 Who answering, 
 said to them, My 
 
374 
 
 Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 Matt, xii. 50. 
 
 mother and My 
 brethren. For who- 
 soever shall do the 
 will of My Father, 
 that is in Heaven, 
 he is My brother, 
 and sister, and 
 mother. 
 
 Mark iii, 35. 
 
 brethren. For who- 
 soever shall do 
 the will of God, 
 he is My brother, 
 and My sister, and 
 My mother. 
 
 Luke viii. 21. 
 
 mother and My 
 brethren are they 
 who hear the word 
 of God and do it. 
 
 § 58. — The Pa7'able of the Sower. 
 
 Matt. xiii. i — 9. 
 
 The same day 
 Jesus going out of 
 the house, sat by 
 the sea side. And 
 great multitudes 
 were gathered to- 
 gether unto Him, 
 so that He went 
 up into a boat and 
 sat, and all the 
 multitude stood on 
 the shore. 
 
 And He spoke 
 to them many 
 things in parables, 
 saying. Behold the 
 sower went out to 
 sow. And whilst 
 he soweth some 
 fell by the way 
 side, and the birds 
 of the air came 
 and ate them up. 
 And other some 
 fell upon rocky 
 ground, where they 
 had not much 
 earth, and they 
 shot up immedi- 
 ately, because they 
 had no depth of 
 earth. And when 
 the sun was risen 
 
 Mark iv. i — 9. 
 
 And again He 
 began to teach by 
 the sea side, and a 
 great multitude 
 was gathered to- 
 gether unto Him, 
 so that He went up 
 into a boat, and 
 sat in the sea ; and 
 all the multitude 
 was upon the land 
 by the sea side. 
 
 And He taught 
 them many things 
 in parables, and 
 said unto them in 
 His doctrine. Hear 
 ye. Behold, the 
 sower went out to 
 sow. And whilst 
 he soweth, some 
 fell by the way 
 side, and the birds 
 of the air came 
 and ate it up. And 
 other some fell 
 upon rocky ground, 
 where it had not 
 much earth, and 
 it shot up imme- 
 diately, because it 
 had no depth of 
 earth. And when 
 
 Luke viii. 4 — 8. 
 
 And when a very 
 great multitude 
 was gathered to- 
 gether, and hast- 
 ened out of the 
 cities unto Him, 
 He spoke by a 
 similitude. 
 
 The sower went 
 out to sow his 
 seed. And while 
 he soweth, some 
 fell by the way 
 side, and it was 
 trodden down, and 
 the birds of the air, 
 ate it up. And 
 other some fell 
 upon a rock, and 
 as soon as it was 
 sprung up, it with- 
 ered away, because 
 it had no moisture. 
 And other some 
 
Harmony of the Gospels. 2ilS 
 
 Matt, xiii 7 — g. 
 
 they were scorched, 
 and because they 
 had not root they 
 withered away. 
 And some fell 
 among thorns, and 
 the thorns grew up 
 and choked them. 
 
 And some fell 
 upon good ground, 
 and they brought 
 forth fruit, some an 
 hundred fold, some 
 sixty fold, and some 
 thirty fold. He 
 that hath ears to 
 hear, let him hear. 
 
 Mark iv. 7 — 9. 
 
 the sun was risen, 
 it was scorched, 
 and because it had 
 no root, it withered 
 away. And some 
 fell among thorns, 
 and the thorns 
 grew up, and 
 choked it, and it 
 yielded no fruit. 
 
 And some fell 
 upon good ground, 
 and brought forth 
 fruit that grew up, 
 and increased, and 
 yielded, one thirty, 
 another sixty, and 
 another a hundred. 
 And He said. He 
 that hath ears to 
 
 Luke viii. 8. 
 fell among thorns, 
 and the thorns 
 growing up with it, 
 choked it. 
 
 And some fell 
 upon good ground, 
 and being sprung 
 up, yielded fruit an 
 hundred fold. Say- 
 ing these things 
 He cried out. He 
 that hath ears ta 
 hear let him hear. 
 
 § 59. — The Parable of the 
 Wheat and the Cockle. 
 
 St. Matt. xiii. 10 — 17 ; 24 — 30. 
 
 And His disciples came 
 and said to Him, Why speak- 
 est Thou to them in parables.? 
 Who answered and said to 
 them. Because to you it is 
 given to know the mysteries 
 of the kingdom of heaven, 
 but to them it is not given. 
 For he that hath, to him shall 
 be given, and he shall abound, 
 but he that hath not, from 
 him shall be taken away that 
 also which he hath. There- 
 fore do I speak to them in 
 parables, because seeing they 
 see not, and hearing they 
 hear not, neither do they 
 understand. And the pro- 
 1 Isaias 
 
 Matt. xiii. 15 — 17. 
 
 phecy of Isaias is fulfilled in 
 them, who saith, ' By hearing 
 you shall hear, and shall not 
 understand, and seeing you 
 shall see, and shall not per- 
 ceive. For the heart of this 
 people is grown gross, and 
 with their ears they have 
 been dull of hearing, and 
 their eyes they have shut, lest 
 at any time they should see 
 with their eyes, and hear with 
 their ears, and understand 
 with their heart, and be con- 
 verted, and I should hea- 
 them.' ^ But blessed are your 
 eyes, because they see, and 
 your ears, because they hear. 
 For, amen, I say to you, 
 many prophets and just men 
 have desired to see the things 
 vi. 9, 10. 
 
37^ IIarmo7iy of the Gospels. 
 
 Matt. xiii. 24 — 30. 
 
 that you see, and have not 
 seen them, and to hear the 
 things that you hear, and 
 have not heard them. 
 
 Another parable he pro- 
 posed to them, saying. The 
 kingdom of heaven is hkened 
 to a man that sowed good 
 seed in his field. But while 
 men were asleep, his enemy 
 came and oversowed cockle 
 among the wheat, and went 
 his way. And when the blade 
 was sprung up, and had 
 brought forth fruit, then ap- 
 peared also the cockle. And 
 the servants of the good man 
 of the house coming said to 
 
 him. Sir, didst thou not sow 
 good seed in thy field? whence 
 then hath it cockle ? And he 
 said to them, an enemy hath 
 done this. And the servants 
 said to him. Wilt thou that 
 we go, and gather it up ? 
 And he said. No, lest per- 
 haps gathering up the cockle, 
 you root up the wheat also 
 together with it. Suffer both 
 to grow until the harvest, 
 and in the time of the har- 
 vest I will say to the reapers, 
 Gather up first the cockle, 
 and bind it into bundles to 
 burn, but the wheat gather 
 ye into my barn. 
 
 § 60. — The Parables of the Seed, the Mustard Seed, 
 and the Leaven. 
 
 Matt. xiii. 31 — 35. 
 
 Another parable He pro- 
 posed unto them, saying. 
 The kingdom of heaven is 
 like to a grain of mustard 
 seed, which a man took and 
 sowed in his field. Which is 
 the least indeed of all seeds, 
 
 Mark iv. 26 — 34. 
 
 And He said. So is the 
 kingdom of God, as if a man 
 should cast seed into the 
 earth. And should sleep, and 
 rise, night and day, and the 
 seed should spring, and grow 
 up whilst he knoweth not. 
 For the earth of itself bring- 
 eth forth fruit, first the blade, 
 then the ear, afterwards the 
 full corn in the ear. And 
 when the fruit is brought 
 forth, immediately he putteth 
 in the sickle, because the 
 harvest is come. 
 
 And He said. To what 
 shall we liken the kingdom 
 of God ? or to what parable 
 shall we compare it. It is as 
 a grain of mustard seed, 
 which when it is sown in the 
 earth, is less than all the 
 
Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 377 
 
 Matt. xiii. 34, 35. 
 
 but when it is grown up, it is 
 greater than all herbs, and 
 becometh a tree, so that the 
 birds of the air come, and 
 dwell in the branches thereof. 
 
 Another parable He spoke 
 to them, The kingdom of 
 heaven is like to leaven, which 
 a woman took and hid in 
 three measures of meal until 
 the whole was leavened. 
 
 All these things Jesus 
 spoke in parables to the mul- 
 titudes, and without parables 
 He did not speak to them. 
 That it might be fulfilled 
 which was spoken by the 
 prophet saying, I will open 
 my mouth in parables, I will 
 utter things hidden from the 
 foundation of the world. ^ 
 
 Mark iv. 33, 34. 
 
 seeds that are in the earth. 
 And when it is sown, it grow- 
 eth up, and becometh greater 
 than all herbs, and shooteth 
 out great branches, so that 
 the birds of the air may dwell 
 under the shadow thereof. 
 
 And with many such para- 
 bles He spoke to them the 
 word according as they were 
 able to hear. And without 
 parable He did not speak 
 unto them ; but apart, He 
 explained all things to His 
 disciples. 
 
 § 61. — Explanatio7i of the Parable of the Sower. 
 
 Matt. xiii. 18 — 23. 
 
 Mark iv, 10 — 25. 
 
 And when He 
 was alone, the 
 twelve that were 
 with Him asked 
 Him the parable. 
 And He said to 
 them, To you it is 
 given to know the 
 mystery of the 
 kingdom of God, 
 but to them that 
 are without, all 
 things are done in 
 parables. That see- 
 ing they may see, 
 and not perceive, 
 and hearing they 
 may hear, and not 
 
 2 Psalm Ixxvii. 2, 
 
 Luke viii. 9 — 18. 
 
 And His dis- 
 ciples asked Him 
 what this parable 
 might be. To 
 whom He said. To 
 you it is given to 
 know the mystery 
 of the kingdom of 
 God, but to the 
 rest in parables, 
 that seeing they 
 may not see, and 
 hearing may not 
 understand. 
 
3/8 
 
 Harmo7ty of the Gospels. 
 
 Matt. xiii. i8 — 22. 
 
 Hear you there- 
 fore the parable of 
 the sower. When 
 any one heareth 
 the word of the 
 kingdom, and un- 
 derstandeth it not. 
 there cometh the 
 wicked one, and 
 catcheth away that 
 which was sown in 
 his heart, this is he 
 that received the 
 seed by the way 
 side. 
 
 And he that re- 
 ceived the seed 
 upon stony ground, 
 this is he that 
 heareth the word, 
 and immediately 
 receiveth it with 
 joy. Yet hath henot 
 root in himself, but 
 it is only for a time, 
 and when tribula- 
 tion and persecu- 
 tion ariseth be- 
 cause of the word, 
 he is presently 
 scandalized. 
 
 And he that re- 
 ceived the seed 
 
 Mark iv, 13 — 18, 
 
 understand, lest at 
 any time they 
 should be con- 
 verted, and their 
 sins should be for- 
 given them. 
 
 And He saith to 
 them, Are you ig- 
 norant of this para- 
 ble .'' and how shall 
 you know all para- 
 bles ? 
 
 He that soweth, 
 soweth the word. 
 And these are they 
 by the way side, 
 where the word is 
 sown, and as soon 
 as they have heard, 
 immediately Satan 
 cometh, and taketh 
 away the word that 
 was sown in their 
 hearts. 
 
 And these like- 
 wise are they that 
 are sown on the 
 stony ground, who 
 when they have 
 heard the word, 
 immediately re- 
 ceive it with joy. 
 And they have no 
 root in themselves, 
 but are only for a 
 time, and then 
 when tribulation 
 and persecution 
 ariseth because of 
 the word, they are 
 presently scanda- 
 lized. 
 
 And others there 
 are who are sown 
 
 Luke viii. 11 — 14. 
 
 Now the parable 
 is this : The seed 
 is the word of God. 
 And they by the 
 way side are they 
 that hear, then the 
 devil cometh, and 
 taketh the word 
 out of their heart, 
 lest believing they 
 should be saved. 
 
 Now they upon 
 the rock, are they 
 who when they 
 hear, receive the 
 word with joy, and 
 these have no 
 roots, for they be- 
 lieve for a while, 
 and in time of 
 temptation, they 
 fall away. 
 
 And that which 
 fell among thorns 
 
Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 79 
 
 Alatt. xiii. 23. 
 among thorns, is 
 he that heareth the 
 word, and the care 
 of this world and 
 the deceitfulness of 
 riches choketh up 
 the word, and it 
 becometh fruitless. 
 
 But he that re- 
 ceived the seed 
 upon good ground, 
 this is he that 
 heareth the word, 
 and understandeth, 
 and beareth fruit, 
 and yieldeth the 
 one a hundredfold, 
 and another sixty, 
 and another thirty. 
 
 Mark iv. 19 — 24. 
 
 among thorns ; 
 these are they that 
 hear the word. 
 And the cares of 
 the world, and the 
 deceitfulness of 
 riches, and the lusts 
 after other things, 
 entering in choke 
 the word, and it 
 becometh fruitless. 
 And these are 
 they who are sown 
 upon the good 
 ground, who hear 
 the word, and re- 
 ceive it, and yield 
 fruit, the one thirty, 
 another sixty, and 
 another a hundred. 
 
 And He said to 
 them. Doth a can- 
 dle come in to be 
 put under a bushel, 
 or under a bed ? 
 and not to be set 
 on a candlestick ? 
 For there is no- 
 thing hid which 
 shall not be made 
 manifest, neither 
 was it made secret, 
 but that it may 
 come abroad. If 
 any man have ears 
 to hear, let him 
 hear. 
 
 And He said to 
 them, Take heed 
 what you hear. In 
 what measure you 
 shall mete, it shall 
 be measured to you 
 again, and more 
 shall be given to 
 
 Luke viii. 15, 18. 
 
 are they who have 
 heard, and going 
 their way, are 
 choked with the 
 cares and riches 
 and pleasures of 
 this life, and yield 
 no fruit. 
 
 But that on the 
 good ground, are 
 they who in a good 
 and very good 
 heart, hearing the 
 word, keep it, and 
 bring forth fruit in 
 patience. 
 
 Now no man 
 lighting a candle 
 covereth it with a 
 vessel, or putteth it 
 under a bed, but 
 setteth it upon a 
 candlestick, that 
 they who come in 
 may see the light. 
 For there is not 
 anything secret, 
 that shall not be 
 made manifest, nor 
 hidden, that shall 
 not be known, and 
 come abroad. 
 
 Take heed there- 
 fore how you hear. 
 For whosoever 
 hath, to him shall 
 be given, and who 
 soever hath not, 
 that also which he 
 thinketh he hath. 
 
;8o Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 Mark iv. 25 
 
 you. For he that 
 hath, to him shall 
 be given, and he 
 that hath not, that 
 also which he hath 
 shall be taken 
 away from him. 
 
 Luke viii. 18. 
 
 shall be taken away 
 from him. 
 
 § 62. — Explanation of the 
 Parable of the Cockle. Thi'ee 
 others added. 
 
 Matt. xiii. 36—53. 
 Then having sent away the 
 multitudes, He came into the 
 house, and His disciples came 
 to Him, saying. Expound to 
 us the parable of the cockle 
 of the field. Who made an- 
 swer and said to them, He 
 that soweth the good seed, is 
 the Son of Man. And the 
 field is the world. And the 
 good seed are the .children of 
 the kingdom. And the cockle 
 are the children of the wicked 
 one. And the enemy that 
 sowed them is the devil. But 
 the harvest is the end of the 
 world. And the reapers are 
 the angels. Even as cockle 
 therefore is gathered up, and 
 burnt with fire, so shall it be 
 at the end of the world. The 
 Son of Man shall send His 
 angels, and they shall gather 
 out of His kingdom all scan- 
 dals, and them that work 
 iniquity. And shall cast them 
 into the furnace of fire : there 
 shall be weeping and gnash- 
 ingof teeth. Thenshallthe just 
 shine as the sun, in the king- 
 dom of their Father. He that 
 hath ears to hear, let him hear. 
 The kingdom of heaven is 
 hke unto a treasure hidden 
 in a field, which a man hav- 
 
 Matt. xiii. 44 — 53. 
 
 ing found, hid it, and for joy 
 thereof goeth, and selleth all 
 that he hath, and buyeth that 
 field. Again the kingdom of 
 heaven is like to a merchant 
 seeking good pearls. Who, 
 when he had found one pearl 
 of great price, went his way, 
 and sold all that he had, and 
 bought it. Again the king- 
 dom of heaven is like to a 
 net cast into the sea, and 
 gathering together of all kind 
 of fishes. Which, when it 
 was filled, they drew out, and 
 sitting by the shore, they 
 chose out the good into ves- 
 sels, but the bad they cast 
 forth. So shall it be at the 
 end of the world. The angels 
 shall go out, and shall sepa- 
 rate the wicked from among 
 the just. And shall cast them 
 into the furnace of fire, there 
 shall be weeping and gnash- 
 ing of teeth. 
 
 Have ye understood all 
 these things ? They say to 
 Him, Yea. He said unto 
 them. Therefore every scribe 
 instructed in the kingdom of 
 heaven, is like to a man that 
 is a householder, who bring- 
 eth forth out of his treasure 
 new things and old. 
 
 And it came to pass, when 
 Jesus had finished these para- 
 bles, He passed from thence. 
 
Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 381 
 
 § 63. — Ottr Lord stillmg the sto7'jn. 
 
 Matt. viii. 18 — 27. 
 
 And Jesus seeing 
 great multitudes 
 about Him, gave 
 orders to pass over 
 the water. 
 
 And a certain 
 scribe came and 
 said to Him, Mas- 
 ter, I will follow 
 Thee whitherso- 
 ever Thou shalt go. 
 And Jesus saith to 
 him, The foxes 
 have holes, and 
 the birds of the air 
 nests, but the Son 
 of Man hath not 
 where to lay His 
 head. And another 
 of His disciples 
 said to Him, Lord, 
 suffer me first to 
 go and bury my 
 father. But Jesus 
 said to him. Follow 
 me, and let the 
 dead bury their 
 dead. 
 
 And when He 
 entered into the 
 boat, His disciples 
 followed Him. And 
 behold a great tem- 
 pest arose in the 
 sea, so that the 
 boat was covered 
 with waves, but 
 He was asleep. 
 And they came to 
 Him, and awaked 
 Him, saying, Lord, 
 save us, we perish. 
 And Jesus saith to 
 them. Why are you 
 fearful, O ye of 
 
 Mark iv. 35 — 40. 
 
 And He said to 
 them that day, 
 when evening was 
 come. Let us pass 
 over to the other 
 side. 
 
 Luke viii. 22 — 25. 
 
 And sending 
 away the multi- 
 tude, they take 
 Him even as He 
 was in the ship, 
 and there were 
 other ships with 
 Him. And there 
 arose a great storm 
 of wind, and the 
 waves beat into the 
 ship, so that the 
 ship was filled. 
 And He was in 
 the hinder part of 
 the ship, sleeping 
 upon a pillow, and 
 
 And it came to 
 pass on a certain 
 day, that He went 
 into a boat with 
 His disciples, and 
 He said to them, 
 Let us go over to 
 the other side of 
 the lake. And they 
 launched forth. 
 And when they 
 were saihng, He 
 slept. And there 
 came down a storm 
 of wind upon the 
 lake, and they were 
 filled, and were in 
 
382 
 
 Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 Matt. viii. 26, 27. 
 
 little faith ? Then 
 rising up, He com- 
 manded the winds 
 and the sea, and 
 there came a great 
 calm. But the men 
 wondered, saying, 
 What manner of 
 man is this, for the 
 winds and the sea 
 obey Him ? 
 
 Mark iv. 39, 40. 
 
 they awake Him, 
 and say to Him, 
 Master, doth it not 
 concern Thee that 
 we perish .^ And 
 rising up, He re- 
 buked the wind, 
 and said to the sea, 
 Peace, be still. And 
 the wind ceased, 
 and there was 
 made a great calm. 
 And He said to 
 them. Why are you 
 fearful .'* have you 
 not faith yet ? And 
 they feared ex- 
 ceedingly, and they 
 said one to another, 
 Who is this (think- 
 est thou) that both 
 wind and sea obey 
 Him.? 
 
 Luke viii. 24, 25. 
 
 danger. And they 
 came and awaked 
 Him, saying. Mas- 
 ter, we perish. But 
 He arising, re- 
 buked the wind 
 and the rage of 
 the water, and it 
 ceased, and there 
 was a calm. And 
 He said to them, 
 Where is your 
 faith ? Who being 
 afraid, wondered, 
 saying one to ano- 
 ther, Who is this, 
 (think you) that 
 He commandeth 
 both the winds and 
 the sea, and they 
 obey Him 1 
 
 § 64. 
 Matt. viii. 28 — 34; ix. i. 
 
 And when He was 
 come on the other 
 side of the water, 
 into the country 
 of the Gerasenes, 
 there met Him two 
 that were possessed 
 with devils, coming 
 out of the sepul- 
 chres, exceeding 
 fierce, so that none 
 could pass by that 
 way. 
 
 The legion of devils. 
 
 Mark v, i — 21. 
 
 And they came 
 on the other side of 
 the sea, into the 
 country of the Ge- 
 rasenes. And as 
 He went out of the 
 ship, immediately 
 there met Him out 
 of the sepulchres a 
 man with an un- 
 clean spirit, who 
 had his dwelling in 
 the sepulchres, and 
 no man now could 
 bind him, not even 
 with chains. For 
 having been often 
 bound with fetters 
 
 Luke viii. 26 — 40. 
 
 And they sailed to 
 the country of the 
 Gerasenes, which 
 is over against 
 Galilee. And when 
 He was come forth 
 to the land, there 
 met Him a certain 
 man who had a 
 devil now a very 
 long time, and he 
 wore no clothes, 
 neither did he abide 
 in a house, but in 
 the sepulchres. 
 
Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 383 
 
 Matt. viii. 29. 
 
 And behold they 
 cried out, saying, 
 What have we to 
 do with Thee, Jesus 
 Son of God ? art 
 Thou come hither 
 to torment us be- 
 fore the time ? 
 
 Mark v. 5 — 11, 
 
 and chains, he had 
 burst the chains, 
 and broken the 
 fetters in pieces, 
 and no one could 
 tame him. And he 
 was always day and 
 night in the monu- 
 ments and in the 
 mountains, crying 
 out and cutting 
 himself with stones. 
 And seeing Jesus 
 afar off, he ran and 
 adored Him. And 
 crying out with a 
 loud voice, he said, 
 What have I to do 
 with Thee, Jesus 
 the Son of the most 
 high God ? I ad- 
 jure Thee by God 
 that Thou torment 
 me not. For He 
 said unto him. Go 
 out of the man, 
 thou unclean spirit. 
 And He asked him, 
 What is thy name ? 
 And he saith to 
 Him, My name is 
 Legion, for we are 
 many. 
 
 Ltike viii. 28 — 32. 
 
 And he besought 
 Him much that He 
 would not drive 
 him away out of 
 the country. And 
 there was there 
 
 And when he 
 saw Jesus, he fell 
 down before Him, 
 and crying out with 
 a loud voice, he 
 said, What have I 
 to do with Thee, 
 Jesus, Son of the 
 most high God ? 
 I beseech Thee, do 
 not torment me. 
 For He com- 
 manded the un- 
 clean spirit to go 
 out of the man. 
 For many times it 
 seized him, and he 
 was bound with 
 chains, and kept in 
 fetters, and break- 
 ing the bonds he 
 was driven by the 
 devil into the de- 
 serts. And Jesus 
 asked him, saying, 
 What is thy name? 
 But he said. Le- 
 gion, because many 
 devils were entered 
 into him. 
 
 And they be- 
 sought Him that 
 He would not com- 
 mand them to go 
 into the abyss. 
 And there was 
 
384 Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 Matt. viii. 30 — 34. 
 
 And there was, 
 not far from them, 
 an herd of many 
 swine feeding. And 
 the devils besought 
 Him, saying. If 
 Thou cast us out 
 hence, send us into 
 the herd of swine. 
 And He said to 
 them, Go. But they 
 going out went into 
 the swine, and be- 
 hold the whole 
 herd ran violently 
 down a steep place 
 into the sea, and 
 they perished in 
 the waters. 
 
 And they that 
 kept them fled, and 
 coming into the 
 city, told every- 
 thing, and concern- 
 ing them that had 
 been possessed by 
 the devils. 
 
 And behold, the 
 whole city went 
 out to meet Jesus, 
 and when they saw 
 H im, they besought 
 Him that He would 
 depart from their 
 coasts. 
 
 Mark v, 12 — 17. 
 
 near the mountain 
 a great herd of 
 swine, feeding. And 
 the spiritsbesought 
 Him, saying, Send 
 us into the swine, 
 that we may enter 
 into them. And 
 Jesus immediately 
 gave them leave. 
 And the unclean 
 spirits going out, 
 entered into the 
 swine, and the herd 
 with great violence 
 was carried head- 
 long into the sea, 
 being about two 
 thousand, and were 
 stifled in the sea. 
 
 And they that 
 fed them fled, and 
 told it in the city 
 and in the fields. 
 And they went out 
 to see what was 
 done. And they 
 came to Jesus, and 
 they see him that 
 was troubled with 
 the devil, sitting, 
 clothed, and right 
 in his mind, and 
 they were afraid. 
 And they that had 
 seen it, told them, 
 in what manner he 
 had been dealt with 
 who had the devil, 
 and concerning the 
 swine. And they 
 began to pray Him 
 that He would de- 
 part from their 
 coasts. 
 
 Luke viii. 33 — 37. 
 there a herd of 
 many swine feed- 
 ing on the moun- 
 tain, and they 
 besought Him that 
 He would suffer 
 them to enter into 
 them. And He 
 suffered them. The 
 devils therefore 
 went out of the 
 man, and entered 
 into the swine, and 
 the herd ran vio- 
 lently down a steep 
 place into the lake, 
 and was stifled. 
 
 Which when they 
 that fed them saw 
 done, they fled, and 
 told it in the city 
 and in the villages. 
 And they went out 
 to see what was 
 done, and they 
 came to Jesus, and 
 found the man out 
 of whom the devils 
 had departed, sit- 
 ting at His feet 
 clothed, and in his 
 right mind, and 
 they were afraid. 
 And they also that 
 had seen, told them 
 how he had been 
 healed from the 
 legion. And all the 
 multitude of the 
 country of the Ge- 
 rasenes besought 
 Him to depart 
 from them, for they 
 were taken with 
 great fear. 
 
Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 385 
 
 Matt. ix. I. 
 
 And entering into 
 a boat, He passed 
 over the water, and 
 came into His own 
 city. 
 
 Mark v. 18 — 21. 
 
 And when He 
 went up into the 
 ship, he that had 
 been troubled with 
 the devil, began to 
 beseech Him that 
 he might be with 
 Him. And He ad- 
 mitted him not, but 
 saith to him. Go 
 into thy house to 
 thy friends, and tell 
 them how great 
 thing the Lord hath 
 done for thee, and 
 hath had mercy on 
 thee. And he went 
 his way, and began 
 to publish in De- 
 capolis how great 
 things Jesus had 
 done for him, and 
 all men wondered. 
 
 And when Jesus 
 had passed again 
 in the ship to the 
 other side, a great 
 multitude assem- 
 bled together unto 
 Him, and He was 
 nigh unto the sea. 
 
 Luke viii. 38 — 40. 
 
 And He going 
 up into the ship, 
 returned back 
 
 again. 
 
 Now the man 
 out of whom the 
 devils were depart- 
 ed, besought Him 
 that he might be 
 with Him,but Jesus 
 sent him away, say- 
 ing. Return to thy 
 house, and tell how 
 great things God 
 hath done for thee. 
 And he went 
 through the whole 
 city, publishing 
 how great things 
 Jesus had done 
 for him. 
 
 And it came to 
 pass, that when 
 Jesus was returned, 
 the multitude re- 
 ceived Him, for 
 they were all wait- 
 ing for Him. 
 
 § 65. — The disciples of 
 
 St. John. 
 
 Matt. ix. 14 — 17. 
 
 Then came to Him the 
 disciples of John, saying, 
 Why do vve and the Phari- 
 sees fast often, but Thy dis- 
 ciples do not fast? And Jesus 
 said to them, Can the children 
 of the bridegroom mourn as 
 long as the bridegroom is 
 with them? But the days will 
 come, when the bridegroom 
 shall be taken away from 
 2 7 
 
 Matt, ix. 16, 17. 
 
 them, and then they shall 
 fast. And nobody putteth a 
 piece of raw cloth unto an old 
 garment. For it taketh away 
 the fulness thereof from the 
 garment, and there is made a 
 greater rent. Neither do they 
 put new wine into old bottles. 
 Otherwise the bottles break, 
 and the wine runneth out, and 
 the bottles perish. But new 
 wii)e they put into new bottles, 
 and both are preserved. 
 
386 
 
 Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 § 66. — The daughter of Jairus and the woman with the 
 issue of blood. 
 
 Matt. ix. 18—26. 
 
 As He was 
 speaking these 
 things unto them, 
 behold a certain 
 ruler came and 
 adored Him, say- 
 ing, Lord, my dau- 
 ghter is even now 
 dead, but come, 
 lay Thy hand upon 
 her, and she shall 
 live. And Jesus 
 rising up followed 
 him with His dis- 
 ciples. 
 
 And behold a 
 woman who was 
 troubled with an 
 issue of blood 
 twelve years, came 
 behmd Him, and 
 touched the hem of 
 His garment. 
 
 For she said 
 within herself, If I 
 shall touch only 
 His garment, I 
 shall be healed. 
 
 Mark v. 22 — 43. 
 
 And there Com- 
 eth one of the ru- 
 lers of the syna- 
 gogue named Jai- 
 rus, and seeing 
 Him falleth down 
 at His feet. And 
 he besought Him 
 much, saying : My 
 daughter is at the 
 point of death, 
 come, lay Thy hand 
 upon her, that she 
 may be safe, and 
 may live. And He 
 went with him, and 
 a great multitude 
 followed Him, and 
 they thronged 
 
 Him. 
 
 And a woman 
 who was under an 
 issue of blood 
 twelve years, and 
 had suffered many 
 things from many 
 physicians,and had 
 spent all that she 
 had, and was no- 
 thing the better, 
 but rather worse, 
 when she had heard 
 of Jesus came in 
 the crowd behind 
 Him, and touched 
 His garment. For 
 she said, If I shall 
 touch but His gar- 
 ment, I shall be 
 healed. And forth- 
 with the fountain 
 of her blood was 
 dried up, and she 
 
 Luke viii, 41 — 56, 
 And behold there 
 came a man, whose 
 name was Jairus, 
 and he was a ruler 
 of the synagogue, 
 and he fell down 
 at the feet of Jesus, 
 beseeching Him 
 that He would 
 come into his 
 house, for he had 
 an only daughter, 
 almost twelve years 
 old, and she was 
 dying. And it hap- 
 pened, as He went, 
 that He was 
 thronged by the 
 multitudes. 
 
 And there was a 
 certain woman, 
 having an issue of 
 blood twelve years, 
 who had bestowed 
 all her substance 
 on physicians, and 
 could not be healed 
 by any. She came 
 behind Him, and 
 touched the hem 
 of His garment, 
 and immediately 
 the issue of her 
 blood stopped. And 
 Jesus said, Who is 
 it that touched Me? 
 And all denying, 
 Peter and they that 
 were with Him 
 said, Master, the 
 multitudes throng 
 and press Thee, 
 
Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 387 
 
 Matt. ix. 22, 
 
 But Jesus turn- 
 ing and seeing her, 
 said, Be of good 
 heart, daughter,thy 
 faith hath made 
 thee whole. And 
 the woman was 
 healed from that 
 hour. 
 
 Mark v. 30 — 36. 
 
 felt in her body- 
 that she was cured 
 of the evil. And 
 immediately Jesus 
 knowing in Him- 
 self the virtue that 
 had gone out from 
 Him, turning to the 
 multitude, said, 
 Who hath touched 
 My garments } And 
 His disciples said 
 to Him, Thou seest 
 the multitude 
 
 thronging Thee, 
 and sayest Thou, 
 Who hath touched 
 Me ? And He 
 looked about to see 
 her who had done 
 this. But the wo- 
 man fearing and 
 trembling, know- 
 ing what was done 
 in her, came and 
 fell down before 
 Him, and told Him 
 all the truth. And 
 He said to her, 
 Daughter, thy faith 
 hath made thee 
 whole, go in peace, 
 and be thou whole 
 of thy disease. 
 
 While He was 
 yet speaking, some 
 come from the ruler 
 of the synagogue's 
 house, saying, Thy 
 daughter is dead, 
 why dost thou trou- 
 ble the Master any 
 farther? But Jesus 
 having heard the 
 word that was spo- 
 ken, saith to the 
 
 Luke viii. 46 — 50. 
 
 and dost Thou say^ 
 Who touched Me? 
 And Jesus said, 
 Somebody hath 
 touched Me, for I 
 know that virtue is 
 gone out from Me. 
 And the woman 
 seeing that she was 
 not hid, came 
 trembling, and fell 
 down before His 
 feet, and declared 
 before all the peo- 
 ple for what cause 
 she had touched 
 Him, and how she 
 was immediately 
 cured. But He said 
 to her. Daughter, 
 thy faith hath made 
 thee whole, go thy 
 way in peace. 
 
 As He was yet 
 speaking, there 
 Cometh one to the 
 ruler of the syna- 
 gogue, saying to 
 him. Thy daughter 
 is dead, trouble 
 Him not. And Je- 
 sus hearing this 
 word, answered the 
 father of the maid, 
 Fear not, believe 
 
;88 Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 Matt. ix. 23 — 26. 
 
 And when Jesus 
 was come into the 
 house of the ruler, 
 and saw the min- 
 strels and the mul- 
 titude making a 
 rout, He said. Give 
 place, for the girl 
 is not dead, but 
 sleepeth. And they 
 laughed Him to 
 scorn. And when 
 the multitude was 
 put forth. He went 
 in and took her by 
 the hand. And the 
 maid arose. 
 
 And the fame 
 hereof went abroad 
 into all that 
 country. 
 
 Mark v. 37—43. 
 
 ruler of the syna- 
 gogue. Fear not, 
 only believe. 
 
 And He admit- 
 ted not any man to 
 follow Him, but 
 Peter, and James, 
 and John the bro- 
 ther of James. And 
 they come to the 
 house of the ruler 
 of the synagogue ; 
 and He seeth a 
 tumult, and people 
 weeping and wail- 
 ing much. And 
 going in. He saith 
 to them,Why make 
 this ado, and weep.'' 
 the damsel is not 
 dead, but sleepeth. 
 And they laughed 
 Him to scorn. But 
 He having put 
 them all out, taketh 
 the father and the 
 mother of the dam- 
 sel, and them that 
 were with Him, and 
 entereth in where 
 the damsel was 
 lying. And taking 
 the damsel by the 
 hand. He saith to 
 her, Talitha cumi, 
 which is, being in- 
 terpreted. Damsel 
 (I say to thee) arise. 
 And immediately 
 the damsel rose up, 
 and walked ; and 
 she was twelve 
 years old. 
 
 And they were 
 astonished with a 
 great astonish- 
 ment. And He 
 
 Luke viii. 51 — 56. 
 
 only, and she shall 
 be safe. 
 
 And when He 
 was come to the 
 house, He suffered 
 not any man to go 
 in with Him, but 
 Peter, and James, 
 and John, and the 
 father and mother 
 ot the maiden. And 
 all wept and 
 mourned for her. 
 But He said. Weep 
 not, the maid is 
 not dead, but sleep- 
 eth. And they 
 laughed Him to 
 scorn,knowing that 
 she was dead. But 
 He taking her by 
 the hand, cried out, 
 saying, Maid, arise. 
 And her spirit re- 
 turned, and she 
 arose immediately. 
 
 And He bid them 
 give her to eat. 
 And her parents 
 were astonished, 
 
Harmony of the Gospels. 
 
 189 
 
 Matt. 
 
 Mark v. 43. 
 
 charged them 
 
 strictly that no man 
 should know it, and 
 commanded that 
 something should 
 be given her to eat. 
 
 Luke viii. 56. 
 
 whom He charged 
 to tell no man what 
 was done. 
 
 § 67. — Healing of two blind 
 7nen, and one dumb. 
 Matt. i.x. 27 — 34. 
 And as Jesus passed from 
 thence, there followed Him 
 two blind men crying out 
 and saying, Have mercy on 
 us, O Son of David. And 
 when He was come to the 
 house, the blind men came 
 to Him. And Jesus saith to 
 them, Do you believe that I 
 can do this unto you ? They 
 say to Him, Yea, Lord. Then 
 He touched their eyes, say- 
 ing, According to your faith, 
 be it done unto you. And 
 their eyes were opened, and 
 
 Matt. ix. 
 
 31—34- 
 
 Jesus strictly charged them, 
 saying, See that no man 
 know this. 
 
 But they going out, spread 
 His fame abroad in all that 
 country. And when they 
 were gone out, behold they 
 brought Him a dumb man, 
 possessed with a devil. And 
 after the devil was cast out, 
 the dumb man spoke, and 
 the multitudes wondered, say- 
 ing. Never was the like seen 
 in Israel. But the Pharisees 
 said. By the prince of devils 
 He casteth out devils. 
 
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