will revive; the strife of the world will renew wrath and hate; ambition
and greed will blot out the beauty of the earth; envy of others will
blind the man to his own blessedness; and self-conceit will revive in
him all those prejudices whose very strength lies in his weakness; but
the man has had a glimpse of the peace to gain which he must fight with
himself; he has for one moment felt what he might be if he trusted in
God; and the memory of it may return in the hour of temptation. As
the commonest things in nature are the most lovely, so the commonest
agencies in humanity are the most powerful. Sickness and recovery
therefrom have a larger share in the divine order of things for the
deliverance of men than can show itself to the keenest eyes. Isolated
in individuals, the facts are unknown; or, slow and obscure in their
operation, are forgotten by the time their effects appear. Many things
combine to render an enlarged view of the moral influences of sickness
and recovery impossible. The kingdom cometh not with observation, and
the working of the leaven of its approach must be chiefly unseen. Like
the creative energy itself, it works "in secret shadow, far from all
men's sight."

The teaching of our Lord which immediately follows concerning the small
beginnings of his kingdom, symbolized in the grain of mustard seed and
the leaven, may, I think, have immediate reference to the cure of this
woman, and show that he regarded her glorifying of God for her recovery
as one of those beginnings of a mighty growth. We do find the same
similes in a different connection in St Matthew and St Mark; but even if
we had no instances of fact, it would be rational to suppose that the
Lord, in the varieties of place, audience, and occasion, in the dullness
likewise of his disciples, and the perfection of the similes he chose,
would again and again make use of the same.