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Music For the Soul
Devotional: November 13th

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A LIFE-GIVING WORD OF POWER

He, taking her by the hand, called, saying, Maiden, arise. And her spirit returned, and she rose up immediately. - Luke 8:54-55

"Maiden, arise!" All the circumstances of the miracle are marked by the most lovely consideration, on Christ’s part, of the timidity of the little girl of twelve years of age. It is because of that that He seeks to raise her in privacy, whereas the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus, were raised amidst a crowd. It is because of that that He selects as His companions in the room only the three chief apostles as witnesses, and the father and mother of the child. It is because of that He puts forth His hand and grasps hers, in order that the child’s eyes when they open should see only the loving faces of parents, and the not less loving face of the Master; and that her hand, when it began to move again, should clasp, first. His own tender hand. It is for the same reason that the remarkable appendix to the miracle is given - "He commanded that they should give her food." Surely that is an inimitable note of truth. No legend-manufacturer would have dared to drop down to such a homely word as that, after such a word as " Maiden, arise!" An economy of miraculous power is shown here, such as was shown when, after Lazarus came forth, other hands had to untie the grave-clothes which tripped him as he stumbled along. Christ will do by miracle what is needful and not one hair’s breadth more. In His calm majesty He bethinks Himself of the hungry child, and leaves to others the task of giving her food. That homely touch is, to me, indicative of the simple veracity of the historian.

But the life-giving word itself - what can we say about it? Only this one thing: here Jesus Christ exercises a manifest Divine prerogative. It was no more the syllables that He spoke than it was the touch of His hand that raised that child. What was it? The forth-putting of His will, which went away straight into the darkness; and if the disembodied spirit was in a locality, went straight there, and, somehow or other, laid hold of the spirit, and, somehow or other, reinstated it in its home. Christ’s will, like the king’s writ, runs through all the universe. "He spake, and it was done " - whose prerogative is that? God’s; and God manifest in the flesh exercised it. The words of the Incarnate Word have power over physical things.

Here, too, is the prelude and first-fruits of our resurrection. Not that there are not wide differences between the raising of this child and that future resurrection to which Christian hope looks forward, but that in this one little incident - little compared with the majestic scale of the latter - there come out these two things: the demonstration that conscious life runs on, irrespective of the accident of its being united with or separated from a bodily organization; and the other, that Jesus Christ has power over men’s spirits, and can fit them at His will to bodies appropriate to their condition. Time is no element in the case. What befalls the particles of the human frame is no element in the case. " Thou sowest not the body that shall be." But if that Lord had the power, which He showed in that one chamber, with that one child, then, as a little window may show us great matters, so we see through this single incident the time when " they that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth."

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