Mark ix. 23. "Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are
possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child
cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine
unbelief." This struggle in the father's heart, between solicitude for
the preservation of his child, and a kind of involuntary distrust of
Christ's power to heal him, is here expressed with an air of reality
which could hardly be counterfeited.
Again (Matt. xxi. 9), the eagerness of the people to introduce Christ
into Jerusalem, and their demand, a short time afterwards, of his
crucifixion, when he did not turn out what they expected him to be, so
far from affording matter of objection, represents popular favour in
exact agreement with nature and with experience, as the flux and reflux
of a wave.
The rulers and Pharisees rejecting Christ, whilst many of the common
people received him, was the effect which, in the then state of Jewish
prejudices, I should have expected. And the reason with which they who
rejected Christ's mission kept themselves in countenance, and with which
also they answered the arguments of those who favoured it, is precisely
the reason which such men usually give:--"Have any of the Scribes or
Pharisees believed on him?" (John vii.
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