that the Lord healed it again. It is as if he were defending
the kindly feelings of the Divine Physician and as if it would have been
inexcusable had He not exerted His miraculous powers of healing on this
occasion. It is St. Luke, too, who has constantly distinguished between
natural illnesses and cases of possession. This careful distinction
alone would point to the author of the third gospel and the Acts as
surely a physician. As it is it confirms beyond all doubt the claim that
the writer of these portions of the New Testament was a physician
thoroughly familiar with all the medical writings of the time and
probably a physician who had practised for a long time.

Certain miracles of healing are related only by St. Luke as if he
realized better than any of the other evangelists the evidential value
that such instances would have for future generations as to the divinity
of the personage who worked them. The beautiful story of the raising
from death of the son of the widow of Nain is probably one of the
oftenest quoted passages from St. Luke. It is a charming bit of
literature. While it suggests the writer physician it makes one almost
sure that the other tradition according to which St. Luke was also a
painter must be true. The scene is as picturesque as it can be. The Lord
and His Apostles and the multitudes coming to the gate of the little
city just as in the evening sun the funeral cortege with the widow
burying her only son came out of it. The approach of the Lord to the
weeping mother, His command to the dead son to arise, and the simple
words, "and he gave him back to his mother," constitute as charming a
scene as a painter ever tried to visualize. Besides this, Luke alone has
the story of the man suffering with dropsy and the woman suffering from
weakness. The intensely picturesque quality of many of these scenes that
he describes so vividly would indeed seem to place beyond all doubt the
old tradition that he was an artist as well as a physician.

It is interesting to realize that it is to Luke alone that we owe the
account of the well-known message sent by Christ Himself to John the
Baptist when John sent his disciples to inquire as to His mission. After
describing His ministry He said: "Go and relate to John what you have
heard and seen: the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the lepers
are made clean, the dead rise again, to the poor the Gospel is
preached." To no one more than to a physician would