from drowning is more to be envied than those who have not passed through his peril. Nor can we suppose that the one sinner who repenteth is ninety and nine times more happy than those who, at some previous period, were entered in the Lamb's book of life. The abundance

of joy only marks the extremity of the peril which is escaped peril which to tempt were to tempt the living God.

The difference between our several debts to the Great Creditor, lies more in our own estimate than in His in whose sight there is none that doeth good. To love much it is not necessary that we should sin much, but that we should feel how much we have sinned. The Saviour no more intended to tell Simon that he had little to be forgiven, than he did to call the Pharisees righteous when he said, "I come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." He said in effect to Simon, "You think you have little to be forgiven;" and to the Pharisees, "You call yourselves righteous, my mission of mercy is to those who confess themselves sinners." The woman's joy compensated her for the contumely she had suffered of men; and in the rewards of a true faith, she had a support in her depressed state which the world knew not of. Affliction, which proved in her case the prompter to repentance, led her to seek forgiveness; but it was not her sorrow but her faith which saved her.

Jesus pursued this his second circuit through Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, and preaching the kingdom. And in the journey he was accompanied by certain women

whom he had healed of infirmities, Mary of Magdala, commonly called Mary Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others. These ministered unto Jesus of their substance. That these women accompanied our Saviour was not a new thing, for among the Jews it was customary for prophets and preachers thus to accept the service and assistance of holy women. Of Joanna and Susanna nothing is certainly known beyond this brief record. Of Mary Magdalene much more remains, since she continued on Calvary till the death of Jesus, and was one of the witnesses of the resurrection. When the evil spirits were expelled from her is not recorded. And there is no warrant for the legends which have connected her name with an abandoned life; or for the opinion which makes Mary of Magdala the same person as the woman who was a sinner, who wiped the feet of Jesus with her hair. Such a person. could hardly have been the companion of Joanna, nor could that woman probably have been one who could minister with "her substance." The love of the woman whose sins were forgiven has led to the connexion of the fame of Mary with hers. It is a natural, and, we may add, a poetical consequence of the error of which we have already spoken, that much love must necessarily have been preceded by much sin; and that to reach the perfection of love, one must necessarily pass through the veriest depths of guilt. Such a doctrine has in Scripture not only no warrant, but abundant contradiction. Of the disciple whom Jesus loved, there is the least recorded of

infirmity or of weakness. And St. Paul indignantly reproves the delusion which would seem to have obtained in his day, as it has certainly since: "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid !"

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XVI.

The Demoniars.

The consent of scholars in harmonizing the Gospel, places, during the second journey of our Lord through Galilee, the greater number of the cases recorded, in which he relieved those possessed of demons. Various theories have been advanced to reconcile the statements of Holy Scripture with the reason of men, and with modern observation and experience. And because we hear not, since the time of Christ, of so frequent possessions of evil spirits; since, indeed, at the present, the fact of such possession is never asserted, there have been efforts made to reason away the power of the Son of God, and to reduce this class of miracles, together with others, to mere natural effects following natural causes. But who shall say that there are not, even now, cases of evil possession? Who shall reduce that to a figure which the Son of God and his disciples treated as a reality? Who shall assert that Jesus, the reprover of the superstitions of the Jews, and the completer of what Moses, for the hardness of their hearts, left unfinished, consented to a fraud: that he addressed demons where there were no demons, and amused the superstition of the people to

build up his authority. Such theories, however intended, are nothing less than the impiety of accusing Jesus of Nazareth of being an impostor. If in one case we are to refuse the literal acceptation of the works of the Son of God, where are we to stop? And if we say that Jesus but accommodated himself to the superstitions of the Jews, how far are we from the sin of the Pharisees, "He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of devils casteth he out devils." If we make Jesus of Nazareth a partner in collusion, we degrade his kingdom and blaspheme: for we represent it to be the kingdom of Satan divided against. itself. But if we assent to the truth, that he by the Spirit of God cast out Satan, we confess that the kingdom of God is come unto us. Doubts are traitors. He that is not with Christ is against him, and he that gathereth not with him scattereth abroad. And there is danger that in questioning the operations of the Spirit, we may fall into the sin which shall not be forgiven in this world or that which is to come. "Either," said our Lord, "make the tree good and his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit." The Gospel of the Son of God cannot favour a popular delusion, or convey a false impression as to the character of the works done by him whose teachings and whose miracles it relates.

Christ spake with these demons as beings distinct from the persons whom they possessed. And in the enumeration of his cures, the Evangelists make a separate mention of those possessed with evil demons. The demons