Multitudes

'And seeing the multitudes . . .'

jesus had been preaching and healing throughout Galilee. Everywhere people had brought their sick and diseased ones to Him, and we read that He healed them all. As His fame increased the crowds grew into great multitudes: people coming not only from Galilee but from Decapolis and Judaea and from beyond Jordan.

Jesus looked upon these multitudes of sick and troubled people and went up into a mountain. Here the disciples came to Him, and here He taught them the blessings and doctrine of heaven.

Because this is all a part of the Lord's Word it is spirit and life, it is full of meaning for each of us to-day, and should have a place in our inner spiritual experience.

As our religious life matures Jesus comes to us from within His Word. The literal story opens up and reveals Him in His glory, much as the clouds of the natural world will open and reveal the sunshine after a cloudy day. Then we feel His presence and become conscious of deep and wonderful meanings beneath the surface of the letter of the Word.

The spiritual picture carried by this record of Jesus preaching and healing throughout Galilee represents His preaching and healing among the multitudes of feelings and thoughts that fill our daily lives. These feelings and thoughts, and their resulting activities form the boundary of our spiritual life—the circuit of the soul. The name Galilee means circuit.

It is the desires of our hearts, and the thoughts that fill our minds that really make us what we are. They form the character which lives for ever. It is this that Jesus seeks to save.

Thoughts quickly multiply into multitudes. If we love Jesus first they are thoughts of truth; if we love ourselves first they are thoughts of evil.

prayer

'O Lord, in the multitude of my thoughts within me, may thy comforts delight my soul' (Psalm 94, 19).

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