Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1890-12-05


Is just the hour that Jesus said TO me Thy ,
son liveth.' One o'clock."''
AS they gather at the evening meal what
gladness in all the countenances in that
home in Capernaum! The mother, Joanna, I
has not lad sleep for many nights and she
now falls OF into delightful slumber. The
father, Chuza, the Herodian courtier, worn
out with anxiety as well as by the rapid
Journey to and from Cana is soon in restful |
Inconsistencies. Joanna was Christian
before, but warrant she was more OF
Christian afterward. Did tho father Chuza
accept the Christ who had cured his boy?
Is there in all the earth parent so migrate
full for the convalescence or restoration OF
an iHnerilled child as not to go into room
and kneel down and make surrender to the
almighty love that came to the rescue.
Do not mix up this case with the angry
discussions about Christian science, but
accept the doctrine, as old as the Bible,
that God does answer prayer for tho sick.
That Capernaum boy was not the only illus
tration of the fact that prayer is mightier
than typhoid fever And there is not a
doctor Of large practice but has como into
the sick room of some hopeless case and,
in cheerful manner, if he were Chris
tian, or with a bewildered manner if he
were a skeptic, said, swell, what have
you been doing with this patient? What
have you been giving him? The pulse is
better. The crisis is past After all, i
think he will get we'll" Prayer will yet
he Acknowledged in the worlds materia
medica and the cry is just as appropriate
now as when Chuza, the courtier from
Capelnaum uttered in Christs hearing:
''Come down ere my child die" If the
prayer be not answered in the way we
wish, it is because God has something
better for the child than earthly recovery,
and there arc thousands of men and women
now alive in answer to fathers and
motheRs' prayers. myself one of the multi
tude. For l have heard my parents tell
how when at three years of age scarlet
fever seemed to have done its full work on
mo and the physicians had said there was
no more use of their coming and they had
left few simple directions TO mako the
remaining hours peaceful, and according
| to the custom in those times in country
places, the neighbors had already como in
and made the shroud, the forlorn case Sud
denly b. ightened and the prayer ''Come
down ere my child die!' was answered in
] a recovery that has not been followed by
a mom6n&s sickness FROM that time to
this.
| But someone may say that Christ in Ca
| pernaum healed that courtier's child, yet
he would not have done it for ono IN hum
bic life. Why, in that very Capernaum he
did the same thing for dying slave. be-
longing to the man who had made present
to the town of the church of which Jesus
was pastor, the synagogue among whose
ruins l today leap from fragment to frag-
| hn al, IF IN
dier's slave, whose only acknowledged rights
were the wishes of his owner. And none
are now so enslaved or so humble or so sick
or so sinful, but the all-sympathetic Christ
is ready to help them, ready to cure them,
ready to omancipate them. Hear it! Par
don for,all Mercy for all. Help for all.
Comfort for all. Heaven for all. Oh, this
Lake Galilee! What a refreshmcnt for
Christ it must have been after sympathizing
with the SICK and raising the dead, and
preaching to the multitudes all day long to
como down on these banks in the night
time and feel the cool air Of the sea on his
hot face, and look up TO the stars, the
| lighted lamps around the heavenly palace
from which he had descended.
But" says somo one, ''why was it that
Christ coming to save the world should
spend so much of his time on and around
so solitary place as Lake Galilee? There
Is only one city of any size on its beach,
| and both tho Western and Eastern shores
are solitude, broken only by the sounds
| coming from the mud novels of the de-
| graded. Why did not Christ begin at
Babylon the mighty, at Athens the learned,
\ at Cairo the historic, at Thebes the
hundred-gated, at Rome the triumphant?
| If Christ was going to save the world, why
not go where the worlds people dwell?
| Would q man, wishing to rcvolutionize for
| good the American continent, pass his time
amid the fishing huts OF the shores of New
foundland? My friends, Galilee was the
hub of the wheel of civilization and art,
and the center of population that stag
| gers realization. On the shores of the
lake we sail today stood nine great cities
Scythopolis, Tariche, Hippos, Gamala,
Chorazin, Capernaum. Bethsaida Mag
dala, Tiberias-and many villages, the
smallest Of which had $4,000 inhabitants,
according to Josephus, and reaching from
the beach back into the country In all di-
rections. Palaces, temples, coliseums,
| gymnasiums, amphitheatres, towers, gar
dens tcrraced on the hillsides, fountains
bewildering with sunlight, baths upon
whose mosaic floors kings trod while this
! Lake from where the Jordan enters 1t to
where the Jordan leaves it, was beautiful
with all styles of Shallop, or dreadful
with all builds of war galleon. Four
thousand ships, history says, were at one
time upon these waters. Battles were
fought there which shocked all nations
with their consequences.
Here minglng blood with pure and spark
| Ing fonm,
In her last throes Judpa fought with
| Rome.
Upon those sca-fghts looked Vcspasian,
and Titus and Trojan, and whole empires.
| From one OF these naval encounters so
many Of the dead toatcd TO the beach,
they could not soon enough be cntombcd,
! and II plague was threatened. Twelve
hundred soldiers escaping from these
vessels Of war were one day massacred in
! tho amptheatrc at Tibcrias. For three
hundred years that almost continuous city
encircling Lake Galilee was tho metropolis
OF our p met. 1t YVES 10 the very heart
of the world that jesus came to sootho its
sorrows, and pardon its SINS and heal its
sick. and emancipate its enslavcd and rean-
! innate its dead.
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