The woman was a Greek, and had not had the training of the Jew for a belief in the Messiah. Her misconceptions concerning the healer of whom she had heard must have been full of fancies derived from the legends of her race. But she had yet been trained to believe, for her mighty love of her own child was the best power for the development of the child-like in herself. No woman can understand the possible depths of her own affection for her daughter. I say _daughter_, not _child_, because although love is the same everywhere, it is nowhere the same. No two loves of individuals in the same correlation are the same. Much more the love of a woman for her daughter differs from the love of a father for his son--differs as the woman differs from the man. There is in it a peculiar tenderness from the sense of the same womanly consciousness in both of undefendedness and self-accountable modesty--a modesty, in this case, how terribly tortured in the mother by the wild behaviour of the daughter under the impulses of the unclean spirit! Surely if ever there was a misery to drive a woman to the Healer in an agony of rightful claim and prostrate entreaty, it was the misery of a mother whose daughter was thus possessed. The divine nature of her motherhood, of her womanhood, drew her back to its source to find help for one who shared in the same, but in whom its waters were sorely troubled and grievously defiled. She came crying to him. About him stood his disciples, proud of being Jews. For their sakes this chosen Gentile must be pained a little further, must bear with her Saviour her part of suffering for the redemption even of his chosen apostles. They counted themselves the children, and such as she the dogs. He must show them the divine nature dwelling in her. For the sake of this revelation he must try her sorely, but not for long. "Have mercy on me," she cried, "O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil." But not a word of reply came from the lips of the Healer. His disciples must speak first. They must supplicate for their Gentile sister. He would arouse in them the disapproval of their own exclusiveness, by putting it on for a moment that they might see it apart from themselves. Their hearts were moved for the woman. "Send her away," they said, meaning, "Give her what she wants;" but to move the heart of love to grant the prayer, they--poor intercessors--added a selfish reason to justify the deed of goodness, either that they would avoid being supposed to acknowledge her claim on a level with that of a Jewess, and would make of it what both Puritans and priests would call "an uncovenanted mercy," or that they actually thought it would help to overcome the scruples of the Master. Possibly it was both. "She crieth after us," they said--meaning, "She is troublesome." They would have him give as the ungenerous and the unjust give to the importunate.