And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and he gave them authority over the unclean spirits. Matthew x. 1. And he called unto him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner of disease and all manner of sickness. Luke ix. 1. And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases. Here you find that the first Gospel (St. Mark’s) makes mention only of the “authority over unclean spirits,” and this probably represents the fact. The third account is an amplification; and the second altogether exaggerates. Hence, when we read, in the context of the second version of these instructions, “Heal the sick, _raise the dead_, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils; freely ye received freely give” (Matthew x. 8), we cannot fail to see several arguments against the probability of the italicized words being literally intended by Jesus. First, the language of Christ habitually dealt in metaphor, and in metaphor habitually misunderstood by His disciples; secondly, there is no instance in which a single one of the Twelve carried out this precept during the life of their Master, and only one in which one of the Twelve (Peter) is said to have raised a woman from the dead (for St. Paul’s incident with Eutychus can hardly be called a case in point); thirdly the precept is recorded by only one Evangelist;[21] fourthly that same Evangelist records only one case in which our Lord Himself raised any one from the dead, _i.e._ the revivified daughter of Jairus—and it seems absurd to represent Christ as commanding all the Apostles to do that which most of them probably never did, and He Himself (according to the First Gospel) only did once.