Luke 4:18-22 The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted… Some years ago (says Dr. M'Cosh) I had a call at my house in Ireland by a young nobleman with whom I was at that time intimate, and who has since risen to eminence as a statesman (I mean Earl Dufferin), who introduced to me his friend Lord Ashburton. The nobleman introduced took me aside and said, "You know that I have lately lost my dear wife, who was a great friend of Mr. Carlyle's; and I have applied to Mr. Carlyle to tell me what I should do to have peace, and make me what I should be. On my making this request he simply bade me read Goethe's 'Wilhelm Meister.' I did so, and did not find anything there fitted to improve me. I went back to Mr. Carlyle, asking him what precise lesson he meant me to gather from the book; and he said, 'Read "Wilhelm Meister" a second time.' I have done so carefully, but I confess I am unable to find anything there to met my anxiety; and I wish you to explain, if you can, what Mr. Carlyle could mean." I told him that I was not the man to explain Carlyle's meaning — if, indeed, he had any definite meaning. I told him plainly that neither Goethe nor Carlyle, though men of eminently literary genius, could supply the balm which his wounded spirit needed; and I remarked that Goethe's work contained not a little that was sensual. I did my best to point to a better way, and to the deliverance promised and secured in the gospel. I do not know the issue, but I got an eager listener. Carlyle wished to persuade his mother, a woman of simple but devoted piety, that his advanced faith was the same as that which she held firmly, and so much to her comfort, only in a somewhat different form. But, in fact, the mother's faith was crushed in the form in which the son put it, when it became a skeleton, as different from the life which sustained her as the bones in our museums are from the living animal. (Dr. M'Cosh's "Certitude, Providence, and Prayer.") Parallel Verses KJV: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, |
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