out of their cold eyes, whether He would heal on the Sabbath day, that
they might accuse Him. Our Lord bids the man stand out into the middle
of the little congregation. He obeys, perhaps, with some feeble
glimmer of hope playing round his heart. There is a quickened
attention in the audience; the enemies are watching Him with
gratification, because they hope He is going to do what they think to
be a sin.

And then He reduces them all to silence and perplexity by His
question--sharp, penetrating, unexpected: 'Is it lawful to do good on
the Sabbath day, or to do evil? You are ready to blame Me as breaking
your Sabbatarian regulations if I heal this man. What if I do not heal
him? Will that be doing nothing? Will not that be a worse breach of
the Sabbath day than if I heal him?'

He takes the question altogether out of the region of pedantic
Rabbinism, and bases His vindication upon the two great principles
that mercy and help hallow any day, and that not to do good when we
can is to do harm, and not to save life is to kill.

They are silenced. His arrow touches them; they do not speak because
they cannot answer; and they will not yield. There is a struggle going
on in them, which Christ sees, and He fixes them with that steadfast
look of His; of which our Evangelist is the only one who tells us what
it expressed, and by what it was occasioned. 'He looked round about on
them _with anger_, being _grieved_.' Mark the combination of emotions,
anger and grief. And mark the reason for both; 'the hardness,' or as
you will see, if you use the Revised Version, 'the _hardening_' of
their hearts--a process which He saw going on before Him as He looked
at them.