believe, only to persons who were royal or divine. So she confessed that
He was a king--perhaps a God come down on earth--and again she cried to
Him. "Lord, help me." And what was our Lord's answer--seemingly more
stern than ever? "Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet
to take the children's bread and cast it unto the dogs." Hard words.
Yes: but all depends on how they were spoken. All depends on our Lord's
look as He spoke them, and, even more, on the tone of His voice. We all
know that two men may use the very same words to us;--and the one shall
speak sneeringly, brutally, and raise in us indignation or despair;
another shall use the same words, but solemnly, tenderly, and raise in us
confidence and hope. And so it may have been--so, I fancy, it must have
been--with the tone of our Lord's voice, with the expression of His face.
Did He speak with a frown, or with something like a smile? There must
have been some tenderness, meaningness, pity in His voice which the quick
woman's wit caught instantly, and the quick mother's heart interpreted as
a sign of hope.

Let Him call her a dog if He would. What matter to a mother to be called
a dog, if she could thereby save her child from a devil? Perhaps she was
little better than a dog. They were a bad people these Syrians, quick-
witted, highly civilised, but vicious, and teaching vice to other
nations, till some of the wisest Romans cursed the day when the Syrians
first spread into Rome, and debauched the sturdy Romans with their new-
fangled, foreign sins. They were a bad people, and, perhaps, she had
been as bad as the rest. But if she were a dog, at least she felt that
the dog had found its Master, and must fawn on Him, if it were but for
the hope of getting something from Him.

And so, in the poor heathen mother's heart, there rose up a whole heaven
of perfect humility, faith, adoration. If she were base and mean, yet