our own sicknesses. The Scripture is all light, or all dark, as we do, or do not see ourselves in it.

Ver. 17. Himself took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses. He must take, and bear them; they defy all the skill of man. We may well stand amazed, and are for ever indebted to him, that he would take and bear them with sympathy and painful suffering. And his bearing is healing, his taking is taking away.

Ver. 18. Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment to depart unto the other side. Did he withdraw from his work? no; but from their mistaken apprehensions of him, as a temporal king, and because he would not bring reproach upon himself, by giving the least countenance to their tumultuous proceedings.

Ver. 19. Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. It was well said, if the heart had been right, But the answer shows he did not think of following Christ for Christ, but for the world.

Ver. 20. The foxes have holes, &c.- Giving him to understand that he was not what he took him for, and had none of those things to bestow which he hoped to gain by following him.

But the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.The Son of man, and the Son of God too; that by this union the human nature might be exalted to a participation of the Godhead. Behold the great abasement of the greatest of all the sons of men! and how powerfully it preaches lowliness to grandeur, and contentment to poverty.

Ver. 21. Suffer me first to go and bury my fatherEither then dead, or to stay till his death. It was a plausible pretence; but this doing something else first, ruins us; and if we have an excuse for not coming to

Christ now, it is to be feared we shall die with one in our mouths.

Ver. 22. Let the dead bury their dead. Christ, you see, speaks a different language from the world. In his account, not only the deceased, but the dead to God and their souls, are the dead.

Follow thou me.·

-As we all should, for the reason here intimated, because we are dead without him.

Ver. 26: Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? -Considering what they had seen, and knew of him, they should have concluded, against all appearances, that they were safe whilst he was in the ship with them. Let his servants be warned by this rebuke. They are but too apt to dishonour him, destroy their own peace and hinder their progress, by their desponding fears.

-He arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.-When your doubts are up, and run mountains high, think you see him in the very action and posture of rebuking the winds and the sea.

Ver. 27. What manner of man is this?— Blessed are we, when we can say this from our own experience of his power in us. And we do not believe in him at all, if we do not believe in him for this very end.

Ver. 28. Two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, &c.-In the mischievous disposition, madness, despair, and blasphemy of these possessed with the devils, hell is as it were naked before us. How dreadful to think this may be our condition!

Ver. 29. What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God?-They knew what they said, and that he did not come to help them. Blessed be God, he came to deliver us from their power and malice. But what less in effect do all those say, who prefer their lusts to him, refuse his help, and despise his salvation?

Ver. 29. Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?-The day of judgment. They know their sufferings are not yet at the highest, and think of the time with dread and horror. They are here preaching to us. What is your choice from this day forward? will you follow Christ, or go with them into their place of torment?

Ver. 32. And he said unto them, Go.- Better any where than in man. But why must the owners of the swine suffer this loss? It is a sufficient answer to say, that Christ saw it fit. We all know who sends calamities, and for what end: and why then should this, more than other instances of the same nature, be thought a reflection on divine goodness?

Ver. 34. Besought him that he would depart out of their coasts.-The miracle wrought no effect among them. They preferred their swine to his presence and teaching.

Good Lord, deliver us from the dreadful guilt of saying, What have we to do with thee? Thou tookest on thee the seed of Abraham, and camest in great pity to heal and help us, to rescue and to save us, to cleanse us from the defilement of sin, and restore the decayed powers of our natures, and without the grace of thy redemption we perish. Grant us so perfectly to believe in thee, that, renouncing all self-dependence, and trusting only in thy help, we may follow thee without delay, as the life of our souls, and by thy mighty aid be defended in all dangers, and against all the enemies of our salvation.

LECTURE.

WE are reading of Jesus, and his miracles come thick upon us. Who is Jesus, and why were these things written? what is it to us to hear, as we have done in this chapter, of his curing the leprosy, the palsy, the fever, speaking the winds and sea into a calm, and casting out devils with his word? Jesus, you know, is the Son of God, born into our flesh to redeem it from the curse it was under, to take away our sins by the sacrifice of himself, and to purge our natures from the power of sin, by turning our hearts and wills to God in obedience. And his mighty works, as they are a full proof of his being sent of God on the great design of helping, redeeming, and saving lost mankind, so they are a call to every one of us to receive him in that capacity. Have you no need of him? do you intend to reap no benefit by him? did God never put it into your hearts to say, I am sick of a deadly distemper, I have a worse plague cleaving to me than any that I read of, and must go to Jesus for healing? Then you are blind to your sin; you are without faith and without hope; you lose your baptism; all your worshipping of God in the name of Christ, whatever else you are or do, is in vain; and if you die in this condition, you perish. Observe, therefore, what conversion is, and how you come to the faith of Jesus, and to a state of salvation by him. If you were sick of a bodily distemper, and knew you had an infallible Physician to go to, you would put yourselves into his hands without delay. And why would you do this, but because you felt your sickness, and would gladly be eased of the pain and trouble of it? Well, Jesus is not here to take our infirmities, and bear our sicknesses, in

this sense; he is not now present to say to the leper, I will, be thou clean,—to heal the palsy, or rebuke a raging fever; but, nevertheless, he is always present with his compassionate heart to do much greater things for us, to make us whiter than snow in his blood, to strengthen the decayed powers of our nature, to calm the violence of our passions, to change the vicious bent of our affections, to purge out our corruption, and subdue those lusts by which the devil keeps possession of us. This is our business with him, this we all certainly want from him, and this he wants to do for us; for his great aim in all the miracle he wrought was to turn our eyes to him as the Physician of the soul, to convince us of our need of healing, and of his power and will to help us to the uttermost. Let your consciences speak; let your hearts tell you, whether you ever came to him for this purpose, knowing yourselves to be in an evil case, and that none but he can work your deliverance. For just in proportion to the feeling of your own plague, to the knowledge you have of your death in sin, will be your turning to him, faith and trust in him. If you have been in pain for yourselves, from the discovery of your danger and misery in sin, it will be glad tidings to you, and the joy of your souls, to hear of Jesus, carrying salvation in his name, manifesting his power, healing all manner of diseases, to engage your trust and confidence in him for your own cure, and never rejecting any who came to him for help. If you feel your burden, you will long to be eased of it; if you know your own sore, you can lay your hand upon it, and tell him of it, and upon the warrant of every miracle you read of you may depend upon him for relief; but if you do not, if you deny your sin, or make light of it, or think all is well with you, because, perhaps, you are not open sinners, how can you come to him for his healing;