Christ felt the wit and the earnestness and the stratagem and the faith of that woman. He turns upon her and says:
“You have conquered Me. Your daughter is well now. Go home, mother; but before you get there she will come down, skipping out to meet you.”
There I see the mother going. She feels full twenty years younger now. She is getting on in life, but she goes with a half run. Amid an outburst of hysterical laughter and tears they meet. The mother breaks down every time she tries to tell it. The daughter is before her, with cheeks as rosy as before she fell in the first fit. The doctors of the village prophesy that the cure will not last, because it was not according to their prescription. But I read in the oldest medical journal in the world: “The daughter was made whole from that very hour.”
This story shows you Jesus with His back turned. That woman came to Him and said: “Lord, spare the life of my child; it will not cost You any thing.” Jesus turned His back. He threw positive discouragement on her petition. Jesus stood with His face to blind Bartimeus, to the foaming demoniac, to the limping paralytic, to the sea when He hushed it, and to the grave when He broke it; but now He turns His back.
I asked an artist if he ever saw a representation of Jesus Christ with His back turned. He said no. And it is a fact that you may go through all the picture galleries of London, Dresden, Rome, Florence and Naples, and you will find Christ with full face and profile, but never with His back turned. Yet here, in this passage, He turned away from the woman.
ZACCHÆUS.
Zacchæus was a politician and a tax gatherer. He had an honest calling, but the opportunity for “stealings” was so large that the temptation was too much for him.
The Bible says that Zacchæus was “a sinner”—that is, in the public sense. How many fine men have been ruined by official position! It is an awful thing for any man to seek office under government unless his principles of integrity are deeply fixed. Many a man, upright in an insignificant position, has made shipwreck in a great one. So far as I can tell, in the city of Jericho this Zacchæus belonged to what might be called the “ring.”
They had things their own way, successfully avoiding exposure—if by no other way, perhaps by hiring somebody to break in and steal the vouchers.