Mark 1:32-34 And at even, when the sun did set, they brought to him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils.… If we may reverently compare this scene with its modern analogies, it bears less a resemblance to anything that occurs in the life of a clergyman, than to the occupation of a physician to a hospital on the day of his seeing his out-patients. There is, indeed, all the difference in the world between the best professional advice and the summary cure such as was our Lord's. But we are, for the moment, looking at the outward aspects of the scene; and it shows very vividly how largely Christ's attention was directed to the well-being of the bodily frame of man. Now it would be a great mistake to suppose that this feature of our Saviour's ministry was accidental or inevitable. Nothing in His work was accidental: all was deliberate, all had an object. Nothing in His work was inevitable, except so far as it was freely dictated by His wisdom and His mercy. To suppose that this union in Him of Prophet and Physician was determined by the necessity of some rude civilization, such as that of certain tribes in Central Africa and elsewhere, or certain periods and places in medieval Europe when knowledge was scanty, when it was easy and needful for a single person at each social centre to master all that was known on two or three great subjects — this is to make a supposition which does not apply to Palestine at the time of our Lord's appearance. The later prophets were prophets and nothing more — neither legislators, nor statesmen, nor physicians. In John the Baptist we see no traces of the restorative power exerted on some rare occasions by Elijah and Elisha; and when our Lord appeared, dispensing on every side cures for bodily disease, the sight was just as novel to His contemporaries as it was welcome. Nor are His healing works to be accounted for by saying that they were only designed to draw attention to His message, by certificating His authority to deliver it; or by saying that they were only symbols of a higher work which He had more at heart in its many and varying aspects — the work of healing the diseases of the human soul. True it is that His healing activity had this double value: it was evidence of His authority as a Divine Teacher; it was a picture in detail, addressed to sense, of what, as the Restorer of our race, He meant to do in regions altogether beyond the sphere of sense. But these aspects of His care for the human body were not, I repeat, primary; they were strictly incidental. We may infer with reverence and with certainty that His first object was to show Himself as the Deliverer and Restorer of human nature as a whole: not of the reason and conscience merely without the imagination and the affections — not of the spiritual side of men's nature, without the bodily; and, therefore, He was not merely Teacher, but also Physician, and therefore and thus He has shed upon the medical profession to the end of time a radiance and a consecration which is ultimately due to the conditions of that redemptive work, to achieve which He came down from heaven teaching and healing. (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: And at even, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils. |
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