The miracles of Jesus - Classical Christian Literature by Athleo.net

284 FAITH TRIUMPHANT
nature, of man ;
He was the Son of David, predicted,
expected, arrived. While the priests and rulers, the
Pharisees and Sadducees, criticised and doubted Him,
this woman believed, and therefore brought to Him
her sorrow and her need, urging them on Him with a
persistency which was born of strong conviction
and
confidence.
The woman had u a little daughter," as Mark calls
her, who " had an unclean spirit." The child was in
an evil case, " grievously vexed with a demon,"
Matthew says, and therefore torn and racked in mind
and body with overpowering and distressing agony.
The mother was scarcely less afflicted than her
daughter. Every motherly instinct was aroused into
strained sympathy and distress ; it was a daily sword
in her heart which no earthly agency could remove.
Therefore, when she heard of the advent in the
neighbouring coasts of a wonder-working Healer,
when He was reported to be the long-expected Messiah
of Israel, her hope was quickened, desire such as only
a mother can feel for an afflicted child took possession
of her, and these begot within her soul a faith,
dim and crude at first,
but which by-and-bye became
the means of securing a royal boon for her and her
afflicted child. The faith once kindled led her to a
venturesome step.
As the eagle casts himself in the
early sunrise on the ambient air, so she boldly cast
herself on the mercy of Jesus
and claimed a blessing.
But she had a strange reception. Coldness, silence,
tacit repulsion on the part of the Saviour. No other
suppliant was ever so treated. The disciples themselves
must have been astonished, and perhaps read
in the
stony treatment o( the woman confirmation of