attend their Lord; secondly, by the exclusion of all others in the house, except the father and mother of the child. The professional mourners and musicians were turned out—not merely because they 'insulted the dumbness of sincere sorrow and the patient majesty of death' (Farrar), but because they diffused, as their behaviour soon showed ([Greek: kategelôn autou]), an atmosphere of unbelief. The Lord wishes to remove all antagonistic and disturbing human presences and to speak Himself in power to the innermost soul of the departed maiden. On the other hand, if the air was charged with unbelief, if those He wished to help were without faith, as was the case in His own village of Nazareth, 'He could there do no mighty work.'[1]
We trace the same principle in His dealing with those whom He had healed. Sometimes He bids them 'go and tell their friends how great things God has done for them,' as when he refused to keep the Gadarene demoniac by His side. At another time he bids them tell no man of the cure which had been wrought. This difference of treatment can be explained most simply, if we suppose that in the one case Christ knew that the patient's ordinary milieu was favourable to
- ↑ Mark vi. 5.
