V. 21. No wind so powerful to drive us from Tyre and Sidon unto Christ-from the coasts of sin to the land of the living-as calamity. When we are vexed, we come out; when the wind blows, we presently bethink ourselves and depart out of those coasts. Gen. xii. 10.Farindon.

V. 22.—The valley of tears brought me more sight of my God, more insight into myself, than ever the valley of visions; more, than all duties and ordinances had done. viii. 24, 25; Ps. cxix. 71; Job. xxxiii. 19–30; xlii. 5, 6. -Sam. Shaw.

We find something of an expectation of the Messiah of the Jews in all parts of the world at this season. But the remarkable circumstance is this; that this Syrophenician idolatress must have looked for no partial deliverer of the Jewish nation, but for a general benefactor of all mankind in the person of the Jewish Messiah; for, had He been to come for the particular benefit of the Jews only, this daughter of Canaan could have had no part or interest in the Son of David. S. John iv. 25; Eph. i. 9, 10; iii. 1, 6.—Bp. Horsley.

V. 25.-Lord, help me. With God, a publican goes beyond a Pharisee; a sigh or a groan, that can not be uttered; beyond a long prayer with ostentation. Care not how long, nor how loud, thy prayer be; but how hearty. S. Luke xviii. 9-14.-Bp. Henshawe.

Then came she, &c. Jacob holds with his hands, when his thigh is lamed.—Gen. xxxii. 25, 26; Job. xiii. 15.— Bp. Reynolds.

V. 27.-Truth, Lord. Oh, rare example in a heathen of resignation to the will of God, of complacency and satis

faction in the general arrangement of His Providence ! Would God, that men would imitate the humility of this pious Canaanite, that they would consider the scanty measure of the human intellect; rest satisfied in the general belief of the Divine goodness and wisdom; and wait for the event of things to clear up the things "hard to be understood in the present constitution of the moral world, as well as in the Bible. Gen. xviii. 35; Ps. xcv. 1, 2; S. John xiii. 7; 1 Cor. xiii. 12.-Bp. Horsley.

دو

We must brace our minds to the full extent of that great truth, that "No man hath seen God at any time." Still, amid outward darkness and inward, amid a world going on, it seems, its own course, with no other laws than those, which God hath given to nature; amidst all the doubts and perplexities of our own hearts, the deepest difficulties sitting hard beside the most Blessed truths; still we must seek after the Lord with unabated faith, if so be that we may find Him.-Ps. iv. 7; Job. xiii. 15; Habak. iii. 17, 18.—Dr. Arnold.

V. 28. Four things are required to justifying faith,— knowledge, assent, confidence, application: in all these four the faith of this woman was great.-Edw. Leigh.

We may observe that we have three ascending degrees of faith, manifesting itself in the breaking through of hindrances, which would keep from Christ; in the paralytic (S. Mark ii. 4), the blind men at Jericho (S. Mark x. 48), and this woman of Canaan. The paralytic broke through the outward hindrances of things merely external; blind Bartimæus through the hindrances, opposed by his fellow men; and this woman, more heroically than all, through apparent hindrances even

from Christ Himself. These in their seeming weakness were the three mighty ones, not of David, but of David's Son, that broke through the hosts of the enemy, until they could draw living water from the wells of Salvation. 2 Sam. xxiii. 16; Heb. xi. 33–37.—Abp. Trench.

V. 32. In His sufferings, He had trial of mercy, and "learned" to be merciful. His own hunger moved Him to work the miracle of the loaves; for He said, “I have compassion on the multitude." His poverty made Him an orator for the poor, and He begs with them to the end of the world; for, when He became a man of sorrows," He became also a man of compassion. Ex. xxiii. 9; Heb. ii. 10-18.-Farindon.

Hark, O my soul, how graciously thy Redeemer considers His servants. He keeps account how long they have been with Him, and how far they are off from their own houses, and casting all together resolves to supply them, and with His speedy mercy prevents their wishes. O infinite Goodness! How safely may our prayers expect Thy pity, while our wants alone are enough to move Thee, and draw from Thy tender bowels such soft and kind expressions! S. Luke xxii. 28; S. John v. 6. -Austin.

V. 39. The Fathers give various allegorical turns to this miracle. S. Augustine tells us that the seven loaves signified the sevenfold operations of the Holy Ghost; the four thousand men, the Church established on the four Gospels; the seven baskets of fragments, the perfection of the Church. But of this whole transaction we may well rest content with that golden key, given to us by the Lord Himself in the sixth chapter of S. John; where with

the eyes of Faith we trace under the veil of this miracle the far greater mysteries of the Spiritual feast of Divine Love, the manner of our soul's food, of our body's blessed immortality in the Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ our Saviour. There, in the highest sense, His compassion is manifested. He places us, one by one, in the well ordered ranks of His Church. He blesses the material bread, so that it becomes, not multiplied, but spiritualized. We receive it from Him by the hands of His Ministers; and then He sends us away, or graciously dismisses us, with that gift of Peace, which passeth all understanding, which endureth for ever.-J. Ford.

CHAPTER XVI.

VERSE 1.-The children of this world, the better to effectuate what they have resolved upon, are at a marvellous great unity among themselves. "They hold all together and keep themselves close" (Ps. lvi. 6). Herod and Pilate (S. Luke xxiii. 12), at some odds before, must now be made friends. Pharisees and Sadducees, sectaries of contrary opinion and notoriously factious against each other, will yet conspire to tempt Christ. The Epicureans and the Stoics, two sects of philosophers, of all others the most extremely distant and opposite in their tenets and doctrines, came with their joint forces at Athens to encounter Paul, and discountenance Christianity. Prov. i. 10–16; xi. 21; S. Mark xii. 13.Bp. Sanderson.

Such a sign, as when Joshua arrested the course of the sun, or Samuel called down the thunder, or Isaiah made the shadow of the degrees to go down on the sun-dial. 2 Kings i. 10; John vi. 32; xiv. 8.-Beza.

V. 2.-The face of the sky. The beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets could have its origin in no other way, than by the purpose and command of an intelligent and powerful Being. He governs all things; not as the soul of the world, but as the Lord of the Universe. is not only "God," but "Lord," or Governor. We know Him only by His properties and attributes, by the wise

He