that as it may, they expect to find rest and food, and they find a
sick woman.

There must have been at least two rooms in the humble house, because
they 'come to Jesus Christ and tell Him of her.' Now if we turn to the
other Evangelists, we shall find that Matthew says nothing about any
message being communicated to Jesus, but brings Him at once, as It
were, to the side of the sick-bed. That is evidently an incomplete
account. And then we find in Luke's Gospel that, instead of the simple
'tell Him of her' of Mark, he intensifies the telling into 'they
besought Him for her.' Now, I think that Mark's is plainly the more
precise story, because he lets us see that Jesus Christ did not commit
such a breach of courtesy, due to the humblest home, as to go to the
woman's bedside without being summoned, and he also lets us see that
the 'beseeching' was a simple intimation to Him. They did not ask;
they tell Him; being, perhaps, restrained from definite petitioning
partly by reverence, and partly, no doubt, by hesitation in these
early days of their discipleship--for this incident occurred at the
very beginning, when all the subsequent manifestations of His
character were yet waiting to be flashed upon them--as to whether it
might be in accordance with their new Teacher's very little known
disposition and mind to help. They knew that He could, because He had
just healed a demoniac in the synagogue, but one can understand how,
at the beginning of their discipleship, there was a little faltering
of confidence as to whether they should go so far as to ask Him to do
such a thing. So they 'tell Him of her,' and do you not think that the
tone of petition vibrated in the intimation, and that there looked out
of the eyes of the impulsive, warm-hearted Peter, an unspoken prayer?
So Luke was perfectly right in his interpretation of the incident,
though not precise in his statement of the external fact, when,