It is interesting to find these wild flowers of natural faith, humility and love growing outside the carefully cultured garden of the Hebrew religion. God has never been without witnesses among the nations. We recall Cyrus in the Old Testament, Iso. 45: 1-7; and Cornelius in the New, Acts 10:1-8. “In every nation.” See Acts 10:35. But of course the propitiation of Christ underpins the salvation of all men, Rom. 3: 25,

Because the centurion was under the authority of Rome and was loyally obedient to it, he was able to exercise authority; and since he was so sure that Christ was obedient and loyal to God, he felt that HE, too, was able to exert authority over all other forces, especially those which were injuring and torturing human lives. Let us seek to be such obedient servants that Christ may be able to say to us also, with the absolute certainty that we shall obey, “Go” and “Come” and especially “Do this.”

Luke 7:11-23. Nain lay near the plain of Esdraelon, on the slopes of Little Hermon. Two confluent streams met there—those with Christ and those with death, vs. 11 and 12. He wipes away tears by removing the cause. When the young are being borne by their young companions to graves of sin, itis thus that the Master arrests them. See Eph. 5:14. There was a threefold gradation in the power he put forth—to Jairus’ daughter, just dead; to this young man, on the way to burial; and to Lazarus, who was three days dead. The depression from John’s long confinement in the gloomy fortress of Macheerus, east of the Dead Sea, and the fact that Jesus had not sent to deliver him, were the double root of this sad lapse from the position taken up on the Jordan bank, when he recognized and indicated the Lamb of God. But our Lord did not chide; he understood, Ps. 103: 9. His miracles of mercy and power are his best evidences, and he left John to draw his own conclusions, Tsa. 35:5, 6. May ours be the blessedness of the unoffended, who will trust Christ, even though he does not hasten to deliver them just as they had hoped!