Matthew 9

Mk. 1 And it came to pass on a certain day that again he entered into Capernaum, after 2 some days; and it was noised that he was in the house. And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them.L. 17 And as he was teaching, there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judea, and Jerusalem: and the power of 18 the Lord was present to heal them. And behold, men come unto him bringing a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed which was borne of four. And they sought to bring 19 him in, and to lay him before him. And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, nor find by what way they might bring him in because of the multitude, they went upon the housetop, uncovered the roof where he was, and when they had broken it up, they let him down through the tiling with his couch, into the midst before Jesus. 20 And when he saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee.21 And behold, certain of the scribes and Pharisees sitting there began to reason within themselves, saying, Who is this which blasphemeth? Why doth this man thus speak Mk. 8 blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone? And immediately, when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, answering their thoughts he said unto them, Why reason ye these things? Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? 9 For whether is it easier, to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to 10 say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man 11 hath power upon earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto 12 thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. And immediately he rose up before them, took up the bed whereon he lay, went forth before them all, and departed to his own house, glorifying God. But when the multitude saw it, they were all amazed, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men; and they were filled with fear, saying, We never saw it on this fashion; we have seen strange things to-day.13 And after these things he went forth again by the sea side, and all the multitude re- 14 sorted unto him, and he taught them. And as he passed by, he saw a publican, named Matthew or Levi, the son of Alpheus, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he said unto him, Follow me. And he left all, rose up, and followed him.

THERE had never appeared in any age such a man, such a friend, or such a helper. He seemed the contrast of a king or prince, and yet all his words were kingly; all his acts a succession of the kingliest deeds, decisions, and commands. By his works and life, he established in the midst of the old theocracy the framework of an empire before which all former religious systems were to fade away. But though his absolute self-control was never intermitted, there were times when the claims of the truth, or the service of his kingdom, brought out the full grandeur of his power and kingly greatness. It was thus when he had to meet and confute prejudice and error, or to heal the sick and diseased. At times we shall see him forced to blame and condemn, but this was only a passing shadow on the clear heaven of his unvarying grace and love. It is impossible to realize such an appearance, but we can imagine it in some measure. The stainless truth and uprightness which filled his whole nature; the exhaustless love and pity which were the very breath of his spirit; the radiant joy of the bridegroom wedding redeemed humanity; the calm light as of other worlds in his every look, may well account for the deathless love and devotion he inspired in those whom he suffered to follow him. G.

L. 17. Doctors of the law: Scribes or Rabbis.—The rabbis were the heads of the nation in the widest sense, for the religion of the people was also their politics. They were the theologians, the jurists, the legislators, the politicians, and, indeed, the soul of Israel. The people gloried in them as the crown of Israel, and its distinguishing honor above all other nations. Their activity never rested. Whether as guests from the Holy City, or as residents, they pervaded the land, visiting every school and synagogue, to extend their influence by teaching and exhortations. This incident led to the first open difference between Jesus and this all-powerful order. G.

19. Jesus probably stood in the open lewan, or interior court, and the crowd were around and in front of him. Those who carried the paralytic, not being able “to come at him for the press,” ascended to the roof, removed so much of it as was necessary, and let down their patient through the aperture. Examine one of these houses, and you see at once that the thing is natural, and easy to be accomplished. The roof is only a few feet high, and by stooping down and holding the corners of the couch—merely a thickly-padded quilt, as at present in this region—they could let down the sick man without any apparatus of ropes or cords to assist them. And thus, I suppose, they did. The whole affair was the extemporaneous device of plain peasants, accustomed to open their roofs, and let down grain, straw, and other articles, as they still do in this country. W. M. T.

20. It was alike their faith and his which the Lord saw and rewarded. And this faith, as in the case of all whom he healed, was not as yet the reception of any certain doctrines, but a deep sense of need, and of Christ as the one who only could meet that need. T.—Be of good courage, my child; thy sins are forgiven thee. These first words of our Lord show that the man’s uppermost feelings were a deep sense of sin, and the doubt and fear which the sense of sin inspires. As he had lain, crippled and weary, on the bed to which his “sins” had conducted him, he had grown more sensitive to the guilt of his career. We cannot doubt that these tender words sufficed to dispel the man’s shame and fear, to quicken a dawning faith in his soul. Faith being quickened, the element in which Christ’s healing power can work is generated. With what infinite delicacy does Christ adjust himself to the man’s needs—forgiving his sins, removing his fears, quickening his faith, awakening hope, and afterward conferring health! S. Coz.

It was a wondrous utterance, and must have sounded still more strangely when thus first heard, than to us who have been familiar with it from childhood. No one had ever heard him admit his own sinfulness. He showed no humility before God as a sinner; never sought pardon at his hands. The standard he demanded was no less than the awful perfection of God. But now he rises above any mere tacit assumption of sinless purity by his claim, not only to announce the forgiveness of sins by God, but himself to dispense it. It was at once a proclamation of his own sinlessness, and of his kingly dignity as the Messiah, in whose hands had been placed the rule over the new theocracy. The rabbis felt, in a moment, all that such words implied. The law knew no such form as an official forgiving of sins, or absolution. Forgiveness was the direct act of God; no human lips dared pronounce it. It was a special prerogative of the Almighty; even should mortal man venture to declare it, he could only do so in the name of Jehovah, and by his immediate authorization. But Jesus had spoken in his own name. He had not hinted at being empowered by God to act for him. It was the turning-point in the life of Jesus, for the accusation of blasphemy, now muttered in the hearts of the rabbis present, was the beginning of the process which ended, after a time, on Calvary; and he knew it. G.

Mk. 10, 11. The Pharisees, always on the watch, seized upon this opportunity to renew their accusations; he had claimed a fulness of power which belonged to God alone; the power, namely, to forgive sins. Perceiving their irritation, he appealed to a fact which could not be denied, as proof that he claimed no power which he could not fully exercise. N.—“You ask an outward sign of the communication of inward grace—a proof within the cognizance of your senses of miraculous power; and that proof I will supply. J. A.—I will speak a word, I will claim a power, which if I claim falsely, I shall be convinced upon the instant to be an impostor and a deceiver. I will say to this sick man, ‘Rise up and walk;’ by the effects, as they follow or do not follow, you may judge whether I have a right to say to him, ‘Thy sins be forgiven thee.’” T.

That ye may know . . . I say unto thee. To the learned doctors who so love their logic that they must think as well as speak in it, he grants the logic they love. They ask a proof of him, and he gives them the very proof they ask. Abruptly breaking off while his sentence to them is incomplete, he finished it with a deed which spoke louder than words. At once to prove and confirm the man’s incipient faith, and to show that he has power to absolve him from his sins, the Lord turns to him with the words, “I say unto thee, Arise, take up thy bed, and walk!” S. Coz.—12. And immediately he arose, etc. The argument was unanswerable, for not only did the prevalent belief connect sickness in every instance with actual sin, but also it was generally maintained, even by the rabbis, “that no sick man is healed from his disease, until all his sins have been forgiven.” It was, therefore, in full accordance with their own notions that he who by his own authority could heal diseases, could also, by his own authority, pronounce that sins were forgiven. F.

14. Matthew or Levi.** Matthew describes his calling, and adds “the publican” to his name in the list of apostles. Mark and Luke call him Levi, his Jewish name, and tell us that he was wealthy, “made a feast in his own house,” but left all. J. G. B.—At or near Capernaum there was a receipt of custom. Lying as the town did at the nucleus of roads which diverged to Tyre, to Damascus, to Jerusalem, and to Sepphoris, it was a busy centre of merchandise, and therefore a natural place for the collection of tribute and taxes. These imposts were to the Jews preëminently distasteful. They were not only a badge of servitude; they were not only a daily witness that God seemed to have forsaken his land, but the mere payment of such imposts wore almost the appearance of apostasy to the scrupulous mind of a genuine Jew. F.—Jews who made themselves the instruments of this disgrace to their country, were accounted the vilest of the vile. They became in fact outcasts from all society except that of their own degraded class. They were not allowed to enter the synagogues or the temple, or to take any part in public prayers, nor were offerings accepted from them. K.

His admission of a publican as a disciple could not fail to irritate his enemies still more. But he had no hesitation in his course. Sent to the lost, he welcomed to his inmost circle one of their number in whom he saw the germs of true spiritual life, in disregard of all the prejudices of the time, and all the false religious narrowness of ecclesiastical leaders. He desired, in the choice of a publican as apostle, to embody visibly his love for sinners, and show the quickening virtue of the kingdom of God even in the most unlikely. G.—He who came to seek and save the lost—he who could evoke Christian holiness out of the midst of heathen corruption—could make, even out of a Jewish publican, the apostle and the first evangelist of a new and living faith. It was the glorious unworldliness of a divine insight and a perfect love, and Matthew more than justified it by turning his knowledge of writing to a sacred use, and becoming the earliest biographer of his Saviour and his Lord. F.

THUS ended the first year of the public life of Jesus. The fame of his wonderful works; the authority with which he delivered his doctrines; among the meeker and more peaceful spirits, the beauty of the doctrines themselves; above all, the mystery which hung over his character and pretensions, had strongly excited the interest of the whole nation. From all quarters—from Galilee, Perea, Judea, and even the remoter Idumea—multitudes approached him with eager curiosity. H. M.

Section 30.—Heals the Impotent Man at Bethesda.

Jerusalem.

L. 29 AND Levi made him a great feast in his own house. And it came to pass, that M. 10 as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, a great company of publicans and sinners came and sat down also with him and his disciples; for there were many, and they followed him. But when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat with publicans and sinners, they murmured against his disciples, and said unto them, Why eateth and drinketh your Master, why do ye eat and drink, with publicans and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, answering, he said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice. For I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Mk. 18 And the disciples of John and of the Pharisees used to fast, and they come and say unto him, Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast often, and make 19 prayers, but thy disciples fast not, but eat and drink? And Jesus said unto them, Can ye make the children of the bride-chamber fast and mourn, while the bridegroom is 20 with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days. 21 And he spake also a parable unto them: No man seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment; else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old garment, and the rent is made worse, and the piece that was taken out of the new, agreeth not with L. 37 the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles: else the new wine will burst 38 the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must 39 be put into new bottles, and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.

THERE is a religion, of which the Pharisaism of Christ’s days was an exaggerated specimen—the very heart and soul of which consists in penances and prayers and fastings—in worship offered, in duties done, in sacrifices made, in mortifications inflicted and endured—all to soothe an agitated conscience, to win a peace with God, to eke out a hope of heaven. To this the faith that is in Christ our Saviour stands diametrically opposed—the one offering as a free gift what the other toils after as a reward; the one inviting us to begin when the other would have us end; the one putting forgiveness and acceptance with God in our hand and calling upon us, in the free spirit of his redeemed, forgiven, adopted children, to live and serve and in all things to submit to our Father which is in heaven—the other holding out the forgiveness and the acceptance away in the distance, and calling upon us, in the spirit of bondage, to labor all through life for their attainment; the one the old tattered garment, the other the piece of the new-made cloth.

And the wine of the kingdom, ever as it pours itself afresh from its fountain-head on high into the spirit of man, is it not a new wine that needs new bottles to contain it? If it be indeed the spirit of Christ which is working in hearts that have been opened to receive it, may we not safely leave it to its own operation there, and allow it to shape the vessel that holds it as it likes? H.

WHEN you take the entire attitude, bearing, and conduct of Jesus Christ as to their ablutions, their fastings, their prayers, their keeping of the Sabbath, their attendance at the feasts, it is not difficult to imagine what an inexplicable mystery he must have been to the superstitiously religious Jews among whom he lived. This man Christ Jesus—speaking so much and in such a way of God and godliness, proclaiming the advent of God’s own kingdom on the earth, unfolding its duties, its privileges, its blessednesses, yet to them seeming so neglectful, so undevout, so irreligious! We may not be able now thoroughly to understand with what kind of eyes they looked upon that wonderful spectacle which the life of Jesus pressed upon their vision—but we should be capable of discerning the emphatic protest which that life was ever raising against all mere formal piety, the piety of times and seasons and ordinances, the religion of rule and of routine. H.

M. 11-13. Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners? The simple-minded apostles were perhaps unable to explain; but Jesus at once faced the opposition, and told these murmuring respectabilities that he came not to the self-righteous, but to the conscious sinners. He came not to the folded flock, but to the straying sheep. It was his will not to thrust his grace on those who from the very first wilfully steeled their hearts against it, but gently to extend it to those who felt their need of it. And then, referring them to one of those palmary passages of the Old Testament (Hos. 6: 6), which even in those days had summed up the very essence of all that was pleasing to God in love and mercy, he borrowed the phrase of their own rabbis, and bade them—these teachers of the people, who claimed to know so much—to “go and learn” what that meaneth, “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.” F.—Many of these poor publicans and sinners—excommunicated though they might be—very careless about religious rites—were men of simpler, more honest natures, kindlier in their dispositions, and, in a sense, too, more devout, than many of these pretentious pietists. “Go,” said Jesus to those who imagined themselves to be righteous and despised others—“Go, and learn what that meaneth: I will have mercy, and not sacrifice”—mercy rather than sacrifice if the two be put in comparison; mercy alone, and no sacrifice, if the two are put in opposition—mercy among publicans and sinners rather than sacrifice or any amount of ceremonial observances among scribes and Pharisees. H.—The very essence of the Jewish sacrificial system was that it expressed the infinite mercy of God, in providing a way of pardon for sin. To be without the spirit of mercy was really to lose the meaning and heart of the sacrifices; as now, to hold to the doctrine of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, but to be without the spirit which leads to personal self-sacrifice for the salvation of others, is to be without the spirit of Christ. L. A.

13. Not the righteous, but sinners. Nothing can mark the grandeur of his enthusiasm for humanity, more than that he thus proposed to lay the foundation of his kingdom in a class on which the priests and theologians, and the higher ranks of the day, looked down with haughty contempt and moral aversion. It shows how deeply he looked into things, that he recognized the greater openness of the truth of castes thus discredited; their franker and more decisive bearing toward the startling innovations of his teaching; their deeper longing for peace of conscience and reconciliation to God.

Mk. 18. Jesus had silently left the harsh discipline of fasting behind, and had prescribed no formal rules for prayer, such as were common to the rabbis and their disciples, and to those of the Baptist; and now a deputation came to ask him for an explanation. G.—Pharisees fast often. Although they had instituted a fast twice in the week (on Thursday, because on that day Moses was believed to have reascended Mount Sinai; on Monday, because on that day he returned), this was but a traditional institution, so little sanctioned by the Mosaic law, that in it but one day of fasting was appointed for the entire year, the day of atonement. F.

19,20. He here gives the questioners to understand that if they would but recognize in him the bridegroom, if they but were the bridegroom’s friends, marriage-guests’ joy would drive all thoughts of fasting from their minds. C. B.—Calmly forecasting his own departure, our Lord inspired his disciples with courage and hope. The thought of Christ as our present Saviour should dispel from our religion all tinge of asceticism or gloom. The world needs the example of a cheerful piety to win it to the Church: the joy of the Lord is our strength. J. P. T.—Christ here presents himself as “the

Bridegroom;” intending, as we may very well suppose, to remind the disciples of John that under this very aspect their own master had so recently hailed him. How large an amount of the Old Testament in this single phrase does he claim for himself, and as finding its fulfilment in him! How much in the New Testament, only hereafter to be uttered, does he already anticipate in this significant word! T.

21. When the garment is indeed worn out (for “old” here can mean nothing short of this), it would be no true economy to endeavor with a new piece, which would not match with the threadbare old, to fit it for use again. As such an ancient garment, the great Author of all the economies in the Church of God would here characterize that elder economy, given by the hand of Moses; whereof these obligatory fasts, which men were now seeking to thrust on his disciples, formed a part. This likening of that elder dispensation to such a worn-out garment may seem harshly spoken; yet the language is not stronger than that which Paul uses (Gal. 4: 3, 9), nor than that employed in Heb. 7: 18, where the apostle speaks of the disannulling of the commandment which went before “for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof.” “It would profit nothing,” Christ would here say, “to seek to attach my new as a patch to that old of yours. My doctrine is something more than a mere supplement to yours, to repair that, where it is outworn. It is something which is all of a piece, not a righteousness of works, eked out and patched here and there with the righteousness of faith, but from head to foot a new garment for souls.” It was exactly such a piece of patchwork as this, which the Galatians actually attempted, and for which Paul chides them so earnestly. T.

The old nature cannot be renewed by the imposition from without of the exercises of fasting and prayer; no outward and compulsory asceticism can change it. A mere renewal from without is at best an artificial, hypocritical thing. The new cloth is torn, and a patch laid upon the old that does not fit it. N.—Institutions must conform to the doctrine which they embody. They must be new, because that is new. A new type of piety must create a new ritual congenial with itself. It will not brook customs incongruous with it. G. P. F.

L. 37, 38. New wine in new bottles As the first comparison had chiefly to do with doctrine, something therefore more external, even as a garment is worn on the outside of the body, this with life, that which is more inward, as wine is inwardly received. T.—Let not the Pharisees think that the new wine of the kingdom, the fresh spirit of love to God and man, which Jesus came to breathe into regenerated humanity, could be safely poured into their old bottles—into those forms and ceremonies of worship, dry as dust, and brittle as the thinnest, most withered piece of leather. No, there must be new bottles for the new wine, bottles that will yield to the pressure from within, and expand as the fermenting liquid which they contain expanded. And such new bottles as were thus required Jesus was finding—not in priestly men, chained up from childhood within priestly habits—not in those rigid Levitical institutions which the long years had been stiffening into an immovable inflexibility: but in these fishermen, these publicans—natural, homely, unlearned men, open to imbibe his spirit in all its richness and expansiveness; and in those simple forms and institutions of Christianity, which, cramped by no formal injunctions, were to be left free to take such new outward shapes as the indwelling spirit might mould. H.—The new wine was already bursting the old bottles, and the result could not be doubtful. Conservatism felt itself imperilled, for it had been weighed, and found wanting. The sacrifices were mere outward forms; the temple, notwithstanding the glory with which Herod’s love of magnificence and hypocritical piety had adorned it, was a symbol of exclusiveness, intolerance, and hatred of humanity at large; the high officialism of the day a dam against every reform, every breath of fresh religious thought, and every attempt at a purer spiritual life. G.

39. He graciously proceeds to make excuse for the disciples of John. Was it to be expected that their own, to which these had been accustomed so long, should grow out of favor with them on the instant, even though he offered to them something better in its room? But let them have time and opportunity to wean themselves from that old, and doubtless there would be found among them those who would grow into liking of this new, which indeed in a higher sense is the oldest of all. T.—The “new wine” seems plainly to be the evangelical freedom which Christ was introducing; and the old, the opposite spirit of Judaism: men long accustomed to the latter could not be expected “straightway”—all at once—to take a liking for the former. “These inquiries about the difference between my disciples and the Pharisees’, and even John’s, are not surprising; they are the effect of a natural revulsion against sudden change, which time will cure; the new wine will itself in time become old, and so acquire all the added charms of antiquity.” What lessons does this teach, on the one hand, to those who unreasonably cling to what is getting antiquated; and, on the other, to hasty reformers who have no patience with the timidity of their weaker brethren! B.

Section 61.—Healing by the Touch of his Garment. Jairus’s Daughter.

Capernaum.

L. 41 And while he spake these things unto them, behold, there came a man named Jairus, one of the rulers of the synagogue; and when he saw him, he fell down at Jesus’ 42 feet and worshipped him, and besought him that he would come into his house: for he Mk.23 had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a dying. And he be- sought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death, is even now dead: I pray thee come and lay thy hands upon her, that she may be healed; and she 24 shall live. And Jesus arose and followed him, and so did his disciples. But as he went, much people followed him, and thronged him. 25 And behold, a certain woman which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, 26 and had suffered many things, and had spent all her living upon many physicians, neither 27 could be healed of any, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind him, and touched the border of his garment. 28, 29 For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she 30 was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? 31 When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said unto him, Master, thou seest the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And

Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me. 32 And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. And when the woman 33 saw that she was not hid, she came fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, and fell down before him, and told him all the truth; and declared unto him before all the people, for what cause she had touched him, and how she was healed immediately. 34 And when he saw her, he said unto her, Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague. And the woman was made whole from that hour. 35 While he yet spake, there cometh one from the ruler of the synagogue’s house, saying 36 to him, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further? But as soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, 37 Be not afraid, only believe, and she shall be made whole. And when Jesus came into the ruler’s house, he suffered no man to go in, save Peter, and James, and John the 38 brother of James, and the father and the mother of the maiden. And he seeth the tumult, the minstrels and people making a noise, and them that wept and wailed great- 39 ly. And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? 40 Give place: for the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn, knowing that she was dead. But, when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the 41 damsel was lying. And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha- 42 cumi: which is, being interpreted, Damsel, (I say unto thee) arise. And her spirit came again, and straightway the damsel arose, and walked; for she was of the age of twelve 43 years. And her parents were astonished with a great astonishment. And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be M. 26 given her to eat. And the fame hereof went abroad into all that land.

THE simplest and obvious use of sorrow is to remind of God. Jairus and the woman, like many others, came to Christ from a sense of want. It would seem that a certain shock is needed to bring us in contact with reality. We are not conscious of our breathing till obstruction makes it felt. We are not aware of the possession of a heart till some disease, some sudden joy or sorrow, rouses it into extraor- dinary action. And we are not conscious of the mighty cravings of our half divine humanity; we are not aware of the God within us, till some chasm yawns which must be filled, or till the rending asunder of our affections forces us to become fearfully conscious of a need. F. W. R.

Christ is now, as he was then, passing through the midst of men, if they would but see him. Still they throng and press and draw nothing from him, because they bring no eye to discern, and do not feel that need which opens the eyesight. We can take from him only what we perceive in him, and must urge the prayer that “God would reveal his Son in us!” . . . It is our hope and joy to think, as we touch him here, with the hands of dying men, that he is still passing on through the world to perform his great- est work—to raise the dead. Many a home like that of Jairus looks for his appearing. Himself the Risen One; he is advancing to awake his friends who have fallen asleep, and to comfort those who mourn over them, and who wait for his coming. He spreads his garment, meanwhile, as he moves, to the touch of misery and sin, and if he lingers in his progress to the homes of the dead, it is but to gather in his train the fuller fruits of his redeeming toil. His mercy and our need cause the seeming delay. His work on the way must be finished ere the close can come. Ere long he will enter that highest house, and we possess the privilege of the best-beloved, to enter the innermost chamber with him, where sorrow shall be turned into joy, and death into life, where faith which touches the hem shall rise to vision that beholds the face, and friends who part and weep at nightfall shall meet at day-dawn, in a world where the voice of crying shall not be heard any more, nor the shadow of death fall upon the heart forever. Ker.

L. 41. It is not improbable that this ruler of the synagogue had been one of the very deputation who had pleaded with Jesus for the centurion-proselyte by whom it had been built. If so, he knew by experience the power of him to whom he now ap- pealed. F.—Mk. 23. Even now dead. She had been given over when her father left her, and actually was dead before he could return. He might therefore, when he applied to Christ, fear that she was at this time dead, and express his belief of it. D.

25-34. One always loves to think of the surrounding circumstances of this miracle—Christ called to the ruler’s house filled with mourning and death, with his heart absorbed in the great work which lay before him. The thronging press of the people is around him, curious and expectant. But nothing far off or near, future or present, can shut out from him the appeal of misery. He is, always and everywhere, alive to a suppliant’s touch. His very garment, to its hem, is instinct with his own spirit and sensitive to the most trembling hand. It is not less so now far up in heaven. The place which increases the sympathy of all hearts that enter there, has not diminished his. His garment, widespread and dropping low, is near our hand, and he feels a sinner’s and a sufferer’s touch upon his throne, with circle on circle of glory gathering round him, and saints and angels thronging in. He came down that, in his nearness to our misery, we might learn to know his heart, and he rose that we might be assured of his power to help and heal. So let us seek to read this incident and consider what it teaches. Ker.

28. If I may but touch.** There was in the woman a mixture of weakness and of faith. She could not think to steal a cure without the knowledge of him by whom it was wrought; or imagine a charm in the garment that Christ wore, which could produce such an effect, independent of his agency and will. Yet she acted as if she had thought thus; and a compassionate Redeemer commended her faith, and excused her infirmity. D.—In many, faith may be weak and ignorant, but touching Christ it is forgiven much. Many things were wrong in this woman’s knowledge, but her faith was very full and absolute. Up to the measure of what she needed, her confidence was entire. Ker.—She believed that she was to receive something, a real blessing, from Christ. This was that in her which was not in the crowd around her. They all travelled on in the highway together, talked about Christ, were interested in him in various ways, discussed his origin and nature, hoped that some good would come of him to the nation. But the woman believed that she should personally receive new life from him. She knew she needed it; she knew she had nothing to buy it with—for she had spent all her living on physicians, and could not be healed of any, but rather grew worse. Most graphic history of how many hearts! She believed that she could have that new life by a touch. The reaching out of her hand was an expression of that faith. Another signal might probably have done just as well. In other cases a prayer was as effectual. But there must have been two things: the faith that she should receive the benefit, and some act to embody that faith and bring the benefit home. With faith, action. F. D. H.

29. And she felt that she was healed.** There was an inward sense, which could not be mistaken, of return to wholeness—the stanching of a wound through which life, for long years, had been slowly ebbing, and the rising of a tide of new existence which made her feel she could yet be, and do something, in God’s world. When faith, under a sense of its need, touches Christ, the virtue that comes from him gives some such feeling to the soul. When that great transference of sin and spiritual sickness is made to the Saviour the soul is safe, entirely and eternally safe, through the grace of him who will keep that soul which we commit to his trust, and who will never suffer any one to pluck it out of his hand. Ker.

30,31. Knowing in himself.** Conscious of the forthcoming of his healing power, which was not as in prophets and apostles, a power foreign to him, but dwelling in him. Somebody touched. Yes, the multitude “thronged and pressed him,” but all involuntarily; they were merely carried along: but one, one only, touched him, with the conscious, voluntary, dependent touch of faith, reaching forth its hand expressly to have contact with him. This and this only Jesus acknowledges and seeks out. Even so, multitudes still come similarly close to Christ in the means of grace, but all to no purpose. The voluntary, living contact of faith is that electric conductor which alone draws virtue out of him. B.—The only touch which reaches God is that of faith. The multitude may throng and press: but heart to heart, soul to soul, mind to mind, only so do we come in actual contact with God. F. W. R.

32-34. In this the loving and gracious dealings of the Son of man, who always sought to make through the healing of the body a way for the healing of the soul, are to be traced. She had borne away a maimed blessing, had she been suffered to bear it away in secret and unacknowledged. T.—Christ will have himself openly confessed, and not only secretly sought. Our Christian life is not, as it is sometimes called, merely a thing between ourselves and God; but a good confession to be witnessed “before all the people.” A.—Her faith had made her whole, and Christ’s virtue had made her whole. It is as when we say that faith justifies: our faith is not itself a blessing; but it is the organ by which the blessing is received; it is the right hand of the soul, which lays hold upon it. T.—It is a principle of God’s kingdom, and a part of God’s command, that a confession before men shall accompany the believing of the heart. If anybody could be excused, it would seem that she might be. But there is no exception, none; none for the proudest man, none for the weakest woman. Hitherto her offering is incomplete; she has brought her secret faith, but not herself; and true faith must keep nothing back that the Lord requires. Then the Lord uses for her encouragement a term of endearment he had not spoken before: “Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole.” Her faith had made the occasion—doing it mediately; his divine power had made the cure—doing it directly. Faith is the conditional cause; Christ himself is the efficient, energetic cause. And the acknowledgment of him is the signal of the final blessing which then falls in a benediction from his lips: “Go in peace.” F. D. H.

25-34. There is not one of all our Saviour’s many miracles of healing fuller of comfort and encouragement. Whenever we grow sad or despondent as we think how much of fear, or shame, or error, or weakness, or superstition mingles with the faith we cherish, if only the depth of the spiritual disease be felt, he who accepted this woman’s faith with all its weakening ingredients, will not cast us off. A timid trembling touch of him, be it only the touch of humility and trust, will still bring forth that healing virtue which delights to pour itself freely into every open receptacle that is brought to it. H.

35-38. The message had not been addressed to Jesus, but he overheard it, and with a compassionate desire to spare the poor father from needless agony, he said to him those memorable words, “Fear not, only believe.” They soon arrived at his house, and found it occupied by the hired mourners and flute-players, who, as they beat their breasts, insulted the dumbness of sincere sorrow, and the patient majesty of death. F.

39. As regards the Lord’s words, that the maiden was not dead, but slept, he uses exactly the same language concerning Lazarus, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth.” The reality of the death is not denied, but only the fact implicitly assumed, that death will be followed by a resurrection as sleep is by an awakening. He, the Lord of life, takes away that word of fear, “She is dead,” and puts in its room that milder word which gives promise of an awakening, “She sleepeth.” T.—41. How could that touch, that call, be other than effectual? He, who made that hand, touched it; and he, who shall once say, “Arise, ye dead,” said now, “Maid, arise.” Death cannot but obey him who is the Lord of life. The soul is ever equally in his hand who is the God of spirits; it cannot but go and come at his command. Bp. H.—Jesus seldom speaks of a future time in divine things. His sense was of the presentness of the true life. The maid was not dead to him—she was only sleeping. It is in harmony with the sublime familiarity of Jesus on all the points of this subject, which men had consecrated with all solemn symbols as the one great dread of the race, that he should have used the dear mother-call to this little girl—Talitha-cumi—as if she only had slept soundly for a night. . . . Who of us ever thinks of his sleeping family as in any sense lost to him? And it is only a deeper sleep that separates the departed. The home is unbroken. Its numbers are complete. The Son of man joins for us, by his precepts and promises, home and paradise. The Talitha-cumi, heard no more by the outward ear, is heard by faith. In the calm of the holy city, the redeemed awake to the light which needs no sun nor moon to create it. Over every silent grave the ear of faith can hear the words, I am the resurrection and the life—he that believeth in me, never dies. C. H. Hall.

There is nothing more remarkable about these raisings from the dead by Jesus Christ than the simple, unostentatious way in which they were effected. “Young man, I say unto thee, Arise!” “Maid, arise!” “Lazarus, come forth!” It is in the style of him who said, “Let there be light, and there was light.” They were the highest instances of the forth-putting of his divine almighty power. With respect to many of his other works, questions might be raised as to the nature or extent of the power required for their performance, but none as to these. . . . And if Jesus never presents himself to our eye in a diviner, never does he show himself in a more human aspect than in these raisings from the dead. They were those of the only son of a widowed mother, the only daughter of two fond parents, the only brother of two affectionate sisters. And in each case there was something singular in the tenderness of our Lord’s conduct toward the mourners. He knew beforehand how speedily the anxiety would be relieved, the sorrow chased away; but the “Weep not” to the mother before he touched the bier, the “Fear not, only believe,” to the agitated father, the tears that fell before the grave of Lazarus, what a testimony do they bear to the exquisite susceptibility of the Saviour’s spirit—to the quickness, the fullness of his sympathy with human grief! It is even then, when he is most divine, that he is most human—when he lifts himself the highest above our level that he links himself the closest to us as a true brother of our humanity.

43. That no man should know it.** As we think of the difficulty, we might almost say impossibility, of such concealment, the thought occurs that it was not so much with any desire or intention to secure secrecy that the order was issued, as to prevent those who had the closest personal interest in the miracle being the first or the loudest in noising it abroad.

41-43. Jesus is the great raiser of human souls as well as of human bodies. All that are in the grave of sin, of spiritual death, may hear his voice. Awake, it says to each of us—awake thou that sleepest, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life. Let us awake, and with life new-given turn to the life-giver; rejoicing to know that as tenderly as he handed her new-raised son to the widow of Nain, as tenderly as he ordered the food to be given to the little daughter of Jairus, as tenderly will he watch over the first stages of our spiritual being; and that as fully as the griefs of widowed mother and weeping parents were shared in of old by him in Galilee, as fully will he share in all the griefs of our earthly history, till he take us to that land where his own gracious hand shall wipe off the tears from every eye. H.

Section 62.—Heals Two Blind, and a Dumb Demoniac. Again rejected at Nazareth. Third Circuit in Galilee.

M. 27 And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed him, crying, and saying, 28 Thou Son of David have mercy on us. And when he was come into the house the blind men came to him; and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do 29 this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord. Then touched he their eyes, saying, According 30 to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were opened, and Jesus straitly charged 31 them, saying, See that no man know it. But they, when they were departed, spread abroad his fame in all that country. 32 And as they went out, behold, they brought to him a dumb man possessed with a 33 devil. And when the devil was cast out, the dumb spake. And the multitude mar- 34 velled, saying, It was never so seen in Israel. But the Pharisees said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the prince of the devils.Mk. 1 And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples 2 follow him. And when the sabbath-day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, and said, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works M. 55 are wrought by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the carpenter’s son? Is not his 56 mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all here with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? 57 And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without Mk. 5 honour, save in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. And he could do there no mighty works, because of their unbelief; save that he laid his hands 6 on a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief.M. 35 And Jesus went round about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease 36 among the people. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. 37 Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are 38 few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.

THIS short sentence descends to the deepest depth of his being, and lays open the chief spring of all his movements: He had compassion on the multitudes. Spiritual truth was precious to him; he felt also the burden of a great mission, and he was tenderly alive to all the rights and claims of God. But he pitied and loved the multitude; their spiritual condition, their destinies, their necessities, and their sorrows oppressed his heart. In addition to all the force of fidelity to God, to himself, and to truth of which he was conscious, there were impulses of love and pity that gushed up ever warm and fresh in his bosom, and imparted a subduing tone to all his ministrations. Jesus saw an inexpressible worth in human nature. It is fallen and ruined, but it is a precious ruin. Y.—He came so nigh to us lost sinners, that he became like to us in all things except sin; nay, as the elder Brother, the kinsman Redeemer of his people, he undertook their full deliverance from all the consequences of their rebellion, bearing their griefs, carrying their sorrows, grappling with their temptations, working out their righteousness by his own perfect voluntary obedience, and dying—on the shameful, bitter, then accursed cross—their death to the broken law, that they might receive eternal life. Even now, upon the throne of his glory, he has not laid aside his sympathy, for he has carried up with him to the right hand of the Father the body which felt our pains, the heart which bled in our sorrows, and the mind that endured our trials. Blessed be his name! He is not the less man, though “crowned with glory and honor,” than when he resisted our tempter in the wilderness, sat wayworn and weary at the gate of Sychar, wept at the tomb of his friend, staggered under his cross amid the hootings of the multitude, or gave up the ghost in a cry of agony. Every pulsation of his human breast reminds him of his brethren below. He pleads for them as he shows the scars of his crucifixion. He exerts his almighty power in ordering all providence for their good, and in embellishing the mansions of heaven for their eternal home. Bethune.

M. 28. Without noticing the men or their cry, he went to the house in Capernaum where he abode; nor was it until they had persistently followed him into the house that he tested their faith by the question, “Believe ye that I am able to do this?” F.—This was the first case particularly mentioned of his giving sight to the blind: and it is distinguished from the other cases by the fact that it is the only one in which the cure is effected by simple touch. Incapable of receiving visual impressions by which their faith might be aided, they are helped by the sense of touch, which they could best apprehend. And even so still are men variously dealt with. The strong in faith have their faith tried; the weak in faith have their faith strengthened. K.—29. According to your faith. The faith, which in itself is nothing, is yet the organ of receiving everything. It places the man in relation with the divine blessing; of no esteem in itself, but only in its relation to its object. It is the bucket let down into the fountain of God’s grace. T.

30. Charged them.** The purpose of our Lord’s earnestness appears to have been to prevent the already excited people from taking some public measure of recognition, and thus arousing the malice of the Pharisees before his hour was come. A.—He must guard against precipitating the conflict with the ruling class, which he well knew could only have one issue, and must gain time to train his disciples, and to plant in the world the seed of divine truth. Hence the prudence which he showed in withholding the full disclosure of his own claims, in avoiding needless publicity, and in postponing the inevitable conflict, which was a consequence of his teaching and his works, until he should have time to lay the foundations, firm and broad, of his spiritual kingdom. G. P. F.

31. In these miracles of healing our Lord must have laid one of the largest of the foundation-stones of his Church. The healed knew him henceforth, not by comprehension, but with their whole being. Their very life acknowledged him. They returned to their homes to recall and love afresh. McD.—34. He casteth out through Beelzebub. Our Lord had confuted this calumny before (Section 47); yet they had the assurance to advance it again. D.

Mk. 2. Well may we ask, as the Jews on this occasion did with another spirit, Whence hath this man wisdom? What education had Jesus, what patterns to form himself upon, to become the man he was? By what train of thinking could he be led to conceive, by what prospects could he be moved to undertake, by what power was he enabled to accomplish, the unparalleled things he did? To imagine that such a person could have existed by accident, is monstrously unreasonable. But that he should also have fallen by accident just into that single country, in which there was a system of religion that he could build on, with a series of predictions applicable to himself; and just at that period too, when these predictions had so pointed him out, as to raise a universal expectation of him, that, under all the disadvantages of a low condition, he should have spirit enough to make and maintain the highest of claims, sagacity enough to interpret the ancient oracles in a much sublimer and juster sense than any of the most learned instructors of the people, and self-denial enough to prefer, in consequence of these interpretations, persecution and crucifixion before the safety of a private station, or the splendor of offered dominion; that every one of these things (and many others equally strange) should meet in the same person, without the special appointment of heaven, exceeds all power of chance. Consider him only as a man, and he appears to have been the greatest and best of men. The general reasonableness of his doctrine, the coolness of his temper, the composedness and familiarity of his whole conversation, prove he was no enthusiast; the unvaried goodness of his life, the willingness with which he suffered death, the impossibility which he could not but see of attaining any worldly advantage by the course which he took, prove sufficiently well that he was no impostor. What must he then have been? And what else can we gather from his whole behavior, than what the spectators did from the finishing scene of it upon the cross, “Truly this was the Son of God?” Secker.

M. 55. Of eighteen years of his life we possess no record whatever save such as is implied in a single word: “the carpenter” (Mk. 6 : 3). We may be indeed thankful that the word remains, for it is full of meaning, and has exercised a very noble and blessed influence over the fortunes of mankind. It has tended to console and sanctify the estate of poverty; to ennoble the duty of labor; to elevate the entire conception of manhood, as of a condition which in itself alone, and apart from every adventitious circumstance, has its own grandeur and dignity in the sight of God. Our Lord wished to show that labor is a pure and noble thing; it is the salt of life; it is the girdle of manliness; it saves the body from effeminate languor, and the soul from polluting thoughts. And therefore Christ labored, working with his own hands. F.—Work—the condition of health, the law of progress, the primal duty in Eden, and the safeguard of every virtue in all ages—is touched with a grand nobility by the spectacle of the carpenter of Nazareth. Idleness, in any rank, becomes doubly a vice from the remembrance of such a lesson. G.—His mother called Mary. The omission of Joseph’s name has been universally accepted as an indication that he was dead; otherwise we might suppose that something contemptuous was intended by only mentioning the mother’s name. F.

THERE are three main views: (1) the Helvidian—that the brethren of the Lord were the actual children of Joseph and Mary; (2) the Hieronymian—that they were his first cousins, being sons of Mary and Alpheus; (3) the Epiphanian—that they were the sons of Joseph by a former marriage. Of these three theories, the second—that of Jerome—is decidedly the most popular, and the one which has least to be said for it. It has not a particle of tradition before the time of Jerome in its favor. Even Jerome, after his residence in Palestine, seems to have abandoned it; and it is perhaps sufficient to observe that, as it assumes three at least of these

“brethren” to have been actual apostles, it is in flagrant contradiction to John 7 : 5, to say nothing of the fact that it depends on a number of very dubious hypotheses. The Epiphanian theory seems to have been the tradition of Palestine, and is the one current in the apocryphal gospels; but I still believe that the Helvidian has an overwhelming preponderance of argument in its favor. The only two serious arguments against it are: (a) The fact that our Lord intrusted his mother to the care of John, not of her own children; but this is accounted for by their acknowledged want of sympathy with him up to that time. (b) The fact that the names of the sons of Alpheus were identical with those of the Lord’s brethren; but these names were as common among the Jews as John and William among us. Undoubtedly the Helvidian view—that they were actual sons of Joseph and Mary—is most in accordance with the simple interpretation of the gospel narratives F.

The term brethren is never used in the New Testament to signify a wider relationship than true brothers; though its use in a metaphorical sense (e. g., Matt. 12 : 49) is not uncommon. The Old Testament references do not justify us in depriving it in the New Testament of its natural and normal meaning. The more general term kinsman, though of frequent use in the New Testament, and the more precise designations of cousin, and sister’s son, are never used in respect to the brethren of the Lord. In every instance in the gospels they are mentioned in connection with Jesus’ mother, and in such a manner as to imply that they were part of Mary’s household; while there is nothing to imply that they were either children of Joseph by a former marriage, or adopted children. L. A.—Further, there is no allusion whatever in the gospels to a former marriage of Joseph, and no hint of the childlessness of Mary after the birth of Jesus. They rather assume that she had a family, since Jesus is twice spoken of as her “first-born.” In the history, Jesus himself is mentioned, without any limitation, as the brother of those named. The names of his brothers, and the fact of his having sisters, are given by his fellow-townsmen of Nazareth, without a hint at their being only cousins, or half-blood to him. In other places where “brethren” are mentioned, at times in connection with Mary herself (Matt. 12 : 46), the current use of the word precludes the idea of any other than the full relationship. The substitution of cousins for brothers throughout, is, indeed, wholly arbitrary and contrary to the usage of the language. G.

After weighing all the objections which have been adduced, I can see no sufficient reason for rejecting the first and most natural reading of the passages referred to, for not believing that they were brothers and sisters of Jesus, who grew up along with him in the household at Nazareth. Perhaps our readiness to admit this may partly spring from our not sharing the impression that there is anything in such a belief either derogatory to the character of Mary, or to the true dignity of her first-born Son. H.—Neither his nor her honor requires the perpetual virginity after his birth, unless there be something impure and unholy in the marriage relation itself. The latter we cannot admit, since God instituted marriage in the state of innocence in Paradise, and Paul compares it to the most sacred relation existing, the union of Christ with his Church. And the apostles and evangelists, who are certainly much safer guides in all matters of faith and religious feeling than even fathers and reformers, seem to have had no such feeling of repugnance to a real marriage between Joseph and Mary. It may be regarded as another proof of the true and full humanity and the condescending love of our Saviour, if he shared the common trials of family life in all its forms, and moved a brother among brothers and sisters, that he might be touched with a feeling of our infirmities. P. S.

57. They were offended in him.** The grand fundamental article of all their creed was that their Messiah should be a temporal prince. They fancied nothing but triumphs and trophies, and all the nations under the victorious conduct of their Messiah. They expected such a one as should disenslave them from the Roman yoke; make the Senate stoop to their Sanhedrim, and the Capitol do homage to their Temple. With such fancies and expectations how would they receive a person bearing himself for the Messiah, yet in the poor habit of a mechanic, and preaching to them nothing but humility, self-denial, and contempt of those temporal glories which they had made the very design of their religion? What! shall we receive a threadbare Messiah, one fitter to wield a saw or hatchet than a sceptre? Can such a one be a fit person to step into the throne of David, to redeem Israel, and to cope with all the Roman power? R. S.

Mk. 5. Because of their unbelief. The object of his miracles, then, was not to convince wilful skeptics of his divine authority; if it were, he would have done the most miracles where the unbelief was strongest. To use the miracles as an argument for the divine authority of Christianity, with those who deny its authority and reject its teachings, is to misapprehend their purport and aim. They are the seal of his divine authority, to those who are morally and spiritually ready to receive the truth, but need for it some external sanction. L. A.—Unbelief, and contempt of the divine word, drive Christ out of the heart, as they did out of his own country. Faith seems to put the almighty power of God into the hands of man; whereas unbelief seems to tie up even the hands of the Almighty. Q.

M. 35. Teaching—healing. Jesus, on all occasions, discovers himself to be, what his name implies, the Saviour. He goes about, not to gratify or profit himself, but to diffuse his benefactions. He either teaches, or comforts, or raises from the dead, or heals, or feeds, or delivers, or departs into a mountain to pray. And all for us. For us he preaches, that we may learn the truth; for us he heals, and performs various miracles, that we may believe him; for us, no less, he retires; for us he prays; for us he gives thanks to the Father. Thus he changes his situation often, his disposition never. Horne.

38. The Church, in its missionary character, should take this precious saying along with M. 28: 18–20; the one as the directory of its devotional, the other of its active work, as Christ’s instrument for evangelizing the world, and every Christian should do the same. Ministers of Christ are God’s gifts to a perishing world, to be sought by prayer, offered up in the spirit of the Saviour’s own compassion. B.

The plain of Esdraelon constitutes one of the great physical features of Palestine. Intersecting the country from east to west, it opens eastwardly on the valley of the Jordan, and westwardly on the Mediterranean Sea. The central portion is an immense triangle, the apex of which is toward the west, at the southeast end of Mt. Carmel; its sides being the mountain-ranges of Galilee and Samaria—the one running east twelve miles, the other southeast eighteen miles, from Carmel; and the base being a line twelve or fifteen miles in length, from Jenin northward to below Nazareth, touching the western ends of Gilboa and Little Hermon. The ridges of Little Hermon and Gilboa divide the portion of the plain east of the triangle into three nearly equal parts; the middle part being the famous “valley of Jezreel,” leading down to the Jordan by a gentle decline. The name Esdraelon is a Greek form of the Hebrew Jezreel. N. C. B.

Southwest of the lake, between the northern uplands and the range of Carmel, stretched out the plain of Esdraelon, the market of Galilee. Beyond other parts of the province, this great plain was crowded with life, and covered with fruitful fields, vineyards, and orchards, in the days of our Lord. Jewish writers are never tired of praising Galilee as a whole. Its climate was a wellnigh perpetual spring, its soil the most fertile in Palestine, its fruits renowned for their sweetness. For sixteen miles round Sepphoris and Nazareth, the land, it was boasted, flowed with milk and honey. The whole province was, and is even still, full of verdure, and rich in shade and pleasantness, the true country of the Song of Songs, and of the lays of the well-beloved. It was a region where rich woods crowned the higher hills and mountains; where the uplands, gentle slopes, and broader valleys were rich in pastures, cultivated fields, vineyards, olive-groves, orchards, and palm-groves. G.

Section 63.—The Twelve instructed.

Galilee.