our Lord was great, and wise, and good; and that was all the more reason
why He should be magnanimous, generous, condescending, like a true King,
to the basest and meanest of His subjects. She asked not for money, or
honour, or this world's fine things: but simply for her child's health,
her child's deliverance from some mysterious and degrading illness.
Surely there was no harm in asking for that. It was simply a mother's
prayer, a simply human prayer, which our Lord must grant, if He were
indeed a man of woman born, if He had a mother, and could feel for a
mother, if He had human tenderness, human pity in Him. And so, with her
quick Syrian wit, she answers our Lord with those wonderful words--
perhaps the most pathetic words in the whole Bible--so full of humility,
of reverence, and yet with a certain archness, almost playfulness, in
them, as it were, turning our Lord's words against Him; and, by that very
thing, shewing how utterly she trusted Him,--"Truth, Lord: yet the dogs
eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table."

Those were the beautiful words--more beautiful to me than whole volumes
of poetry--which our Lord had as it were crushed out of the woman's
heart. Doubtless, He knew all the while that they were in her heart,
though not as yet shaped into words. Doubtless, He was trying her, to
shew His disciples--and all Christians who should ever read the Bible--
what was in her heart, what she was capable of saying when it came to the
point. So He tried her, and judged her, and acquitted her. Out of the
abundance of her heart her mouth had spoken. By her words she was
justified. By those few words she proved her utter faith in our Lord's
power and goodness--perhaps her faith in His godhead. By those words she
proved the gentleness and humility, the graciousness and gracefulness of
her own character. By those words she proved, too,--and oh, you that are
mothers, is that nothing?--the perfect disinterestedness of her mother's
love. And so she conquered--as the blessed Lord loves to be conquered--