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THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
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THE 
 
 Sabbaths of Our Lord 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rt. Rev. WILLIAM BACON STEVENS, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 /Bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 J. M. STODDART & CO. 
 
 733 SANSOM STREET 
 1873 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 
 
 WILLIAM BACON STEVENS, 
 In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 
 Westcott & Thomson, 
 
 Sii'fiotypers and Rlectrotypcrs, Phiiada. 
 
 Henry B. Ashmead, 
 
 Pritttcr, rhi'ada. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE II 
 
 INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 ; 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 The First Sasbath at Nazareth 39 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 The First Sabbath at Nazareth {Continued) 54 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The First Sabbath at Nazareth ( Continned) 65 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The First Sabbath in Capernaum 82 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The First Sabbath in Capernaum ( Continued ) 100 
 
 1* , 5 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The First Sabbath in Capernaum {Contijiued) 117 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 The Sabbath at the Pool of Bethesda 134 
 
 CHAPTER VIH. 
 The Sabbath in the Corn-Fields 159 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 The Healing the Withered Hand on the Sabbath 182 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Second Sabbath in Nazareth 199 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 The Healing of the Blind Man ON THE Sabbath 218 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 The Healing of the Blind Man on the Sabbath (^Continued) 238 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The Healing of the Woman who had a Spirit of Infirm- 
 ity, on the Sabbath 257 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Dining ■WITH One of the Chief Pharisees on the Sabbath... 275 
 
CONTENTS. 7 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Sabbath at Bethany 294 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. , 
 Our Lord's Sabbath in the Sepulchre 313 
 
 CHAPTER XVn. 
 The First Lord's Day. I. — The Morning Hours 331 
 
 CHAPTER XVHI. 
 The First Lord's Day. H. — The Evening Hours 347 
 
 ^ CHAPTER XIX. 
 The Change of Day from the Seventh to the First 366 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 HE following work has two designs. 
 First, to give an expository account 
 of our Lord's words^ and works on 
 the Jewish Sabbath, while he tabernacled in the 
 flesh. By grouping together the sketches of his 
 Sabbaths, as recorded by the several Evangel- 
 ists, and separating them from other material, 
 we bring into clearer light, and undistracted 
 observation, the sayings and the doings of the 
 Lord of the Sabbath, and thus learn more 
 clearly what Is his mind and will, in reference to 
 the divine command, " Remember the Sabbath 
 day to keep it holy." 
 
 Secondly, to make a small contribution to 
 the literature of the Sabbath question. 
 
10 PREFACE. 
 
 This question has a wide compass, and a full 
 discussion of all the points involved in it would 
 fill volumes. Hundreds of books, more or less 
 elaborate, written by the most thoughtful and 
 educated men, have been published on all the 
 branches of this important subject, so that it 
 is doubtful if there is any one phase of it which 
 has not already been fully discussed. The 
 controversies of past generations, however, are 
 beinof revived in this. The discussions which 
 at different times, raged with such fierceness 
 around the fourth commandment, are reap- 
 pearing now, though In new forms and dress, 
 corresponding to the modern aspects of thought 
 and action. 
 
 So important a place does a Sabbath, or holy 
 rest-day, hold in every Christian country, and 
 in the Christian Church, that its sacred observ- 
 ance will ever call out the bitter opposition of 
 the prince of darkness and his human allies. 
 It needs but a slight knowledge of the "signs 
 of the times " to see what Inroads are already 
 being made in desecrating the Lord's day, and 
 
PREFACE. II 
 
 what efforts are put forth to weaken the tone of 
 the pubhc conscience on this point, and to make 
 us relax our hold upon It as a divine and oblig- 
 atory Institution. 
 
 We cannot be blind to the fact, that in various 
 parts of this land, open attempts are now made 
 to turn this rest-day into a continental Sunday, 
 and make it the weekly gala-day of society 
 throuo^hall its g^rades. We shall soon be called 
 upon to meet these questions face to face. They 
 rise up in our literature, in politics, in social life, 
 and we cannot shrink from them. The keeping 
 holy of the Lord's day, Is essential to the very 
 existence and perpetuity of our nation, and It be- 
 comes all Christian men, and especially all minis- 
 ters of Christ, to stand upon their watch-towers 
 and give the needed note of warning as the 
 danger of wresting It from us approaches, that 
 the people may take heed to the Incoming evil 
 and learn the true nature, the real value, and 
 the divine sanction, of this holy day. For it is 
 a day essential to the well-being of the Indi- 
 vidual, the family, the Church, the nation and the 
 
12 PREFACE. 
 
 world ; to the best interests of man In this Hfe, 
 and to the higher interests of his soul in the 
 life which is to come. * 
 
 These biblical sketches of " The Sabbaths of 
 our Lord" may perchance throw new light Into 
 some minds on these Important matters. They 
 may also serve a profitable purpose for family 
 reading on the Lord's day. . They can be used 
 perhaps with wider interest by the many lay- 
 readers In the Church, who may find In these 
 pages Instruction, guidance and pleasure. They 
 might be useful to Sunday-school teachers, and 
 furnish a whole winter's course of Instruction to 
 many Bible classes. Thus they may be the 
 humble means of fixing In the minds of the 
 young and the old, the fundamental principles 
 
 which underlie the Lord's day, and on which 
 we base its origin, Its obligation. Its perpetuity 
 
 and Its unspeakable blessings. 
 
 The late John Ouincy Adams, President of 
 the United States, in closing an address before 
 the delegates of the National Lord's Day Con- 
 vention, used the following significant words : 
 
PREFACE. 13 
 
 "It was the remark of one of the ablest and 
 purest of those foreigners who came to our aid 
 in the days of revolutionary peril, and who 
 made his home, and recently his grave, among 
 us — the late venerable Peter Duponceau of 
 Philadelphia — that of all we claimed as charac- 
 teristic, our observance of the Sabbath is the 
 only one truly national and American, and for 
 this cause, if for no other, he trusted it would 
 
 never loose its hold on our affections and patri- 
 otism. It was a noble thought, and may well 
 
 mingle with higher and nobler motives to stim- 
 ulate our efforts and encourage our hopes. 
 And while it is the glory, so eagerly coveted by 
 other nations, that they may be pre-eminent in 
 conquests and extended rule, let us gladly'ac- 
 cept it as our distinction, and wear it as the 
 fairest of all that grace our escutcheon, that we 
 pre-eminendy honor the Sabbath, and the Sab- 
 bath's Lord." 
 
 W. B. S. 
 
 Philadelphia, November, 1872. 
 
"Sundays observe; think when the bells do chime 
 'Tis angels' music, therefore come not late : 
 
 God then deals blessings 
 
 Let vain or busy thoughts there have no part, 
 
 Bring not thy plough, thy plot, thy pleasures thither j 
 Christ purged his temple, so must thou thy heart. 
 
 George Herbert. 
 
) 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 / 
 
 THE OLD-TESTAMENT SABBATH. 
 
 E have In the four Gospels the record 
 of quite a number of our Lord's Sab- 
 baths. They show us where he was, 
 what he said, and what he did, on this day of 
 rest. They bring before us a great variety of 
 facts, places, scenes, and a series of holy teach- 
 ings uttered by our Lord in various cities and 
 villages of Judea. We shall thus be hearing 
 from week to week the words of Him who 
 " spake as never man spake," the holiest of 
 preachers, on the holiest of days. 
 
 It is Interestlnor to know how He '* who made 
 all things," and who, as the Creator of heaven 
 and of earth, " rested on the seventh day from 
 
 2* 
 
 B 
 
 17 
 
1 8 INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 all his work which he had made," and who, In 
 consequence, " blessed the seventh day and hal- 
 lowed it," would do when he came to the earth 
 which he had made, to save the men whom he 
 had created. 
 
 It is interesting to see how He, who gave 
 Moses the law of the Sabbath, would act under 
 his own law when he tabernacled in the flesh. 
 
 It is Interestinor to mark how '' the Lord of 
 the Sabbath" would conduct himself in refer- 
 ence to those many and onerous glosses and 
 traditions, with which the Scribes and Pharisees 
 had encumbered the fourth commandment, 
 whether he would tacitly acknowledge their 
 authority or sweep them away, by his word and 
 example, as so many human incrustations on the 
 divine law. 
 
 These points will be Illustrated as we pro- 
 ceed, and we shall gain new and interesting 
 facts concerning our Saviour's personal history 
 by attentively studying the records of his Sab- 
 baths after his public entrance upon his ministry 
 as detailed by the several Evangelists. 
 
 Before we enter upon these separate Sabbath 
 sketches, let us turn back to the old Hebrew 
 Sabbath, and look at its origin, history and de- 
 
THE OLD- TESTA ME NT SABBATH. 1 9 
 
 sign. As to its origin, it was Instituted at the 
 end of the six days' work of creation by God 
 himself, and was designed to commemorate his 
 rest on the seventh day '' from all his work 
 which he had made." Hence "he blessed the 
 Sabbath day and sanctified It." 
 
 By "blessing the Sabbath day" we are to un- 
 derstand that he desio^ned it to be fountain and 
 source of blessing, for only thus can time, which 
 has no personality or consciousness, be blessed. 
 He therefore constituted this day as one fraught 
 with special blessings. 
 
 By "sanctifying" the seventh day we under- 
 stand, in accordance with the use of Old-Testa- 
 ment language, the hallowing or setting it apart 
 from other days by specific acts and consecrat- 
 ing it for an holy purpose. 
 
 Thus on the first page of Revelation we find 
 these three great facts, that God, having com- 
 pleted the works of creation, " rested the sev- 
 enth day from all his work that he had made" — 
 that a seventh day's rest, or Sabbath, was in 
 consequence thereof designated for all the fu- 
 ture as a day of blessing, or a "blessed" day — 
 that this seventh portion of time was hence- 
 forth, by divine ordering, to be set apart as 
 
20 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 "sanctified" time, and kept apart from all secu- 
 lar uses and pursuits. 
 
 These are the trinal roots of that s^reat insti- 
 tution which, ordained by God himself and ex- 
 ampled forth to us in his own holy rest from 
 creative work, was by him specially charged 
 with blessing, and by him specially separated 
 and sanctified for his service and man's welfare. 
 
 The name Sabbath given to this day comes 
 from the Hebrew Shabath, which signifies to 
 rest, whence Shabbdth, the day of rest. The 
 root of these words is S/ieba, or seven, a num- 
 ber which, not in the Hebrew tongue alone, but 
 in the language of most of the Eastern nations, 
 signifies fullness,' completeness or perfection. 
 Hence we find in those nations, as the biblical 
 and classical scholar well knows, septenary di- 
 visions of time, consisting of cycles of seven 
 days, or seven months, or seven years, which 
 can be accounted for only by referring them 
 back to the seventh-day rest after creation, the 
 traditions of which spread themselves over, and 
 rooted themselves in, the laneuaoes of the 
 Eastern nations. 
 
 These things link the'Sabbath with God as its - 
 author, with the finished work, creation, as its 
 
THE OLD-TESTAMENT SABBATH. 21 
 
 first day of observance, and with man as the 
 being to whom pertains the blessings of this 
 sanctified season. It thus has a divine basis, a 
 worldly basis, a human basis, and Is as universal 
 In Its obllratlon as the world In which It was 
 
 o 
 
 first proclaimed, and Is as enduring In Its perpe- 
 tuity as the human race, for whose special bless- 
 ing and sanctlficatlon It was ordained. While 
 In the succeeding patriarchal times we find no 
 formal mention of the Sabbath, yet we notice 
 numerous Indications of it appearing here and 
 there, showing with conclusive force that the 
 institution was still preserved, though in the 
 lapse of centuries and In the wide dispersion of 
 the human race its obllofatlons were less heeded 
 and its observance less marked and regarded. 
 
 Over two thousand years pass away before 
 we again meet with any formal notice of this 
 day. The time and the occasion of its reappear- 
 ance were bodi interestlnof. The children of 
 Israel, to the number of nearly three millions, 
 and under the leadership of Moses, had escaped 
 from Egypt, had crossed the Red Sea, had gone 
 a month's march on their way to the promised 
 land, and were now encamped in the wilderness 
 between Ellm, with its wells and Its palm trees, 
 
2 2 INTR on UC TIOiV. 
 
 and Sinai, so soon to smoke at the presence of 
 God. The people had murmured for water and 
 for bread. God gave them manna from heaven. 
 Of this bread the people gathered an "omer" 
 (six pints) for each person, except that on the 
 sixth day they gathered " two omers for each 
 person." This Moses explained by saying, " This 
 Is that which the Lord hath said. To-morrow Is 
 the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." 
 "Eat that to-day, for to-day is a Sabbath unto 
 the Lord ; to-day ye shall not find It In the field ; 
 six days shall ye gather it, but on the seventh 
 day, which is the Sabbath, in it there shall be 
 none." This transaction took place one month 
 before the delivery of the Law on Mount Sinai, 
 and therefore was but the resuscitation or the 
 bringing forward again into prominent view the 
 old organic law of God in Paradise. 
 
 Again, therefore, did God determine to re- 
 Institute his almost forgotten Sabbath, and to 
 re-enact It under such circumstances as should 
 strike the beholder with awe and Illustrate his 
 own majesty. Hence, on the top of Sinai, upon 
 which he had descended in fire, and up to which 
 he had called Moses, and amidst thunderings 
 and lightnings and earthquakes, he gave the ten 
 
THE OLD-TESTAMENT SABBATH. 23 
 
 commandments and wrote them with his own 
 finger upon two tables of stone, as If too jeal- 
 ous of their sacredness and their accuracy to 
 permit Moses, or even Gabriel, to be an amanu- 
 ensis on so solemn an occasion. Remarkable 
 Indeed must those laws be, which God did not 
 trust Moses, his great prophet — no, nor yet 
 angels or archangels — to write out or even copy 
 from his mouth, but which he must write with 
 his own finger, and on tables, not of brass or 
 gold of man's make, but of stone of his own 
 handiwork, that man might have the exact and 
 literal transcript of his will, so that there should 
 be no possibility of mistake as to its words or 
 Its meaning. The code of laws, or ten com- 
 mandments, which God thus gave on Mount 
 Sinai is the moral law of the world, given at 
 that time in special charge to the Jews, because 
 to them were to be committed the oracles of 
 God, and deposited by Moses, at God's com- 
 mand, In the ark of the covenant ; the only laws 
 thus secured, but designed, by their very tenor, 
 for the whole world, and recognized as such by 
 our Lord and his apostles, and by the Church 
 of God wherever found. 
 
 The law of the Sabbath stands as the fourth 
 
24 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of these commands. It is crraven on the same 
 stone tables with the other nine ; it was written 
 w^ith the same finger which wrote the others ; it 
 was deposited under the mercy-seat in the ark 
 of the covenant, and between the outstretched 
 wings of the cherubim in the holy of holies 
 with the rest ; and if the other nine are moral 
 laws, the fourth is also ; if the fourth is not, the 
 other nine are not. If the nine are designed for 
 all men, so is the fourth ; if the fourth is not 
 designed for all, neither are the other nine. 
 They stand or fall together. The attempt made 
 by men who would relax the obligation of the 
 Sabbath to sever the fourth command from the 
 Decaloorue, and desio^nate it as ceremonial and 
 partial, is a rude dislocation of that command 
 from its true articulations and attachments that 
 destroys at once the majesty and symmetry of 
 that moral code, the ten laws of which seem 
 to be the ten fingers of the two hands of God, 
 whereby he upholds the moral government of 
 the world. 
 
 The majesty of this fourth commandment 
 comes out more clearly if we dwell a moment 
 on its peculiar construction. It was ushered in 
 by an emphatic word which marked no other — 
 
THE OLD-TESTAMENT SABBATH. 2$ 
 
 "Remember!" not only Implying that they 
 should recall the original Institution of their 
 patriarchal Sabbath, which tradition, perhaps, 
 had handed down, but also implying that they 
 should give this command in special charge to 
 their memory, that It might not be forgotten 
 throuorhout all their creneratlons. 
 
 o o 
 
 It is drawn up with a minuteness of specifica- 
 tion which we find In no other command. It is 
 based, as none other is, on God's special exam- 
 ple. It is the only one linked with his special 
 blessing and hallowing. It is the only one given 
 both negatively and positively. No command 
 was more frequently repeated, none more care- 
 fully guarded ; and it is the only command of 
 which God said that it was a " slo^n" between him 
 and the children of Israel, throughout their gen- 
 erations, for a perpetual covenant, and this pe- 
 culiar language is repeated no less than four 
 times by Moses and Ezeklel. 
 
 To those, then, who calmly look at these 
 points, it becomes perfectly clear that the fourth 
 commandment is of perpetual moral obligation, 
 — that it Is still binding with all its original force, 
 — that it demands of us the same obedience 
 which we pay to the first, the sixth or the tenth, 
 
26 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 for it Is as much the expression of God's will, 
 and as much the requirement of God's authority, 
 as any one In the Decalogue. - 
 
 It is to be observed, in this connection, that 
 there are two phases under which the law of the 
 ten commandments is to be viewed: i. As a 
 code designed for the whole world ; 2. As a 
 code specially adapted -to the Jews; and these 
 two phases are discernible in the very structure 
 of the Decalogue, as a moment's contemplation 
 will show. 
 
 The germ, the root-principle, of each of the 
 ten commandments Is Invariably enunciated as a 
 distinct proposition, and in the briefest and most 
 emphatic language; e.g., the second command- 
 ment, which in our Bibles is divided Into three 
 verses, is all expressed in the original by three 
 or four words — Thou shalt not make to thyself 
 idols. The third commandment In four words — 
 Thou shalt not take up the name of the Lord 
 thy God in vanity. The fourth commandment 
 in five words — Remember the rest-day, to hal- 
 low it. The fifth in four or five words — Honor 
 thy father and thy mother. The sixth, the sev- 
 enth, the eighth, the ninth. In two words each, 
 and the tenth, though occupying several lines, is 
 
THE OLD-TESTAMENT SABBATH. 2/ 
 
 really contained in the two Hebrew words 
 translated Thou shalt not covet. So that the 
 entire ten commandments are comprised in the 
 original Hebrew in less than forty words, and 
 these few words embrace the principles of the 
 moral law as designed for the whole world. 
 To this day they form the basis of all moral 
 law and oblisfation, and the ethics and the laws 
 of the world are perfect and effective, just in 
 proportion as they Accept and develop and guard 
 these foundation-principles of duty and justice 
 to God and man as laid down in the ten com- 
 mandments. 
 
 The fourth of these commandments reads, 
 "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 
 Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, 
 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord 
 thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work, thou 
 nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant 
 nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy 
 stranger that is within thy gates, for in six days 
 the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and 
 all that in them is, and rested the seventh day, 
 wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and 
 hallowed it." Ex. xx. 8-11. This was the for- 
 mal proclamation of the Sabbatic law. It is 
 
2 8 INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 embedded In a divine code not one provision 
 of which has been abroo^ated or set aside. 
 
 It should be observed that in the very enact- 
 incr of this law of the Sabbath the divine Law- 
 giver traces it back to Its origin In his own rest 
 on the seventh day, deduces from that the 
 reason for its perpetual and universal observ- 
 ance, and is the only one of the ten command- 
 ments for which an historic reason is assigned. 
 
 This law has never been abrogated ; the day 
 has been changed, but the obligation to set 
 apart a seventh portion of time as hallowed 
 time still holds, and will hold till the end of 
 time. 
 
 Under the Jewish economy the law of the 
 Sabbath Involved several points. In the twenty- 
 third chapter of the book of Leviticus we find 
 this law Incorporated Into the statutes of the 
 Jewish theocracy, with certain added prescrip- 
 tions designed to show how it was to be kept 
 holy. There it stands at the head of that chap- 
 ter wherein are officially declared by Moses, 
 acting by express command of God, what shall 
 be the " feasts of the Lord " and '* the holy con- 
 vocations " of his people Israel. " Six days 
 shall work be done, but the seventh day is the 
 
THE OLD-TESTAMENT SABBATH. 2(^ 
 
 Sabbath of rest, a holy convocation ; it is the 
 Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings." 
 This is the ordinance of the Sabbath as found in 
 the Jewish statute-book, the book of Leviticus. 
 Like the law of Sinai, it enjoins six days of 
 labor and a seventh day of rest. In addition to 
 this positive command it requires two things — 
 thatthls Sabbath shall be ''a holy convocation," 
 and that It shall be kept " in all your dwellings." 
 From the SInaltic law and the Levltical statute 
 we gather these elemental and obligatory points. 
 The Sabbath was to be a rest day ; it was to be 
 the seventh day ; it was to be a Jioly day ; it 
 was to be a day of holy convocation, or the as- 
 sembling of people for holy purposes ; and it 
 was to be kept in eveiy fmnily and dzuelling. 
 God distinctly declared (Ex. xxxi. i6, 17), 
 "Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the 
 Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their 
 generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign 
 between me and the children of Israel for ever." 
 The penalty of death was affixed to the break- 
 ing of the Sabbath : " Every one that defileth it 
 shall surely be put to death, for whosoever doeth 
 any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from 
 among his people." These facts prove the 
 
30 INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 truth of the remark that ''there was no rite nor 
 Institution, not even circumcision, by which the 
 Jews were more conspicuously distinguished 
 from surroundinof nations and marked off as the 
 worshipers of Jehovah, the Creator of the ends 
 of the earth. Their Sabbath-keeping was a 
 perpetual and visible token of the connection 
 in which they stood to God, and of the great 
 mission which under him they were set apart to 
 discharge." It was the sio^n between God and 
 his people — the sign of the covenant ; so that to 
 break the Sabbath was to break the covenant 
 with God. 
 
 Aside from these general regulations, there 
 were no specific directions as to how the Sab- 
 bath should be spent. There w^as in the earlier 
 days of the Jewish Church no prescribed relig- 
 ious observance for this day, except that the 
 daily sacrifices were to be doubled and the 
 loaves of shew-bread on the table In the holy 
 place were to be renewed by twelve fresh cakes. 
 
 It was a day of sacred festivity, of social 
 gathering, of religious instruction, of personal 
 freedom, of physical rest for man and beast. 
 As the nation grew in wealth and luxury, as 
 they imbibed by the very process of contact 
 
THh OLD-TESTAMENT SABBATH. 3 1 
 
 evil habits and thouorhts from the surroundhiof 
 heathen nations, as amidst their own tribal 
 rivalries and internecine wars laxity of morals 
 grew apace, so the law of the Sabbath, like the 
 other laws of God, became gradually neglected 
 and profaned. Work encroached little by little 
 on rest, secularity usurped the place of devo- 
 tion ; and though one prophet after another was 
 raised up to warn the people, yet the defection 
 went on until the captivity engulfed priest and 
 people and sacrifices and Sabbaths in one over- 
 whelming sorrow and chastisement. They had 
 polluted his Sabbaths and broken his covenant, 
 and hence God eave them for a time into the 
 hands of their enemies. After their return un- 
 der Nehemiah a stricter observance was en- 
 forced. The lessons learned in the captivity 
 w^ere severe but w^holesome. The temporary 
 expatriation had brought with it great search- 
 ings of heart, and these had resulted in great 
 resolutions of amendment of life. As they sat 
 by the rivers of Babylon they looked back to 
 their once quiet Sabbaths and holy convocations 
 as to fading visions of delight. 
 
 As their harps hung silent upon the willows 
 they called to mind their joyous festivals and 
 
32 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 seventh-day gladness ; and thus thrown in upon 
 themselves, and made to bend their minds upon 
 the inner blessincrs of the land and the cove- 
 nant which they had to all appearance lost, they 
 saw the greatness of their loss, and mourned in 
 bitterness of spirit their expatriation from Judea 
 and the destruction of their holy temple. It 
 was after the captivity that the Schools of the 
 Rabbis were founded and the sect of the Phari- 
 sees established. The laxity of former times 
 was now offset by extreme rigidity. A spirit 
 of intense Judaism was fostered by the Scribes 
 and Pharisees. The law of Moses was overlaid 
 with the incrustations of rabbinic traditions. 
 The teachings of the elders were only instilling 
 into the minds of learners the punctilious ob- 
 servance of human commandments enorrafted 
 
 o 
 
 on the divine, until at last the parasitic com- 
 mandments overshadowed the orio^inal law of 
 God, sucked out its real strength, and substi- 
 tuted that which was human and illegal, for that 
 which was legal and divine. 
 
 This spirit finds its record in the Mishna and 
 the Gemmara, and in the Talmud, the common 
 and post-Christian repository of all the exac- 
 tions, sayings, traditions, puerilities and extrava- 
 
THE OLD-TESTAMENT SABBATH. 33 
 
 gances of the great Jewish schools and the doc- 
 tors of the Jewish law. The pharlsaic party, In 
 their zeal to tone up the long- relaxed popular 
 mind, and to reinstate the almost practically 
 abolished Sabbath, did that which degraded 
 rather than exalted it, and " made it the object 
 of an idolatrous regard, the central figure in a 
 religion wholly ceremonial." Its primary injunc- 
 tion, " Thou shalt do no manner of work," \vas 
 falsely held as aimed at all kinds of work what- 
 ever, no less than thirty-nine kinds or classes 
 of work being specified as involved in the pro- 
 hibition. Thus it was stated that grass was not 
 to be trodden on on the Sabbath, for the bruis- 
 ing of it was a species of harvest work. A 
 man mio-ht fill a trousfh with water for beasts to 
 come to, but might not carry water to them. 
 To eat an ^<gg laid on the first day of the week 
 was interdicted because presumably it was 
 prepared in the order of nature on the sev- 
 enth or Sabbath day. Shoes with nails were 
 not to be worn on that day, as that was the 
 carrying of a burden ; and according to one 
 school of teaching, it was not only not lawful 
 to heal on the Sabbath day, but it was wrong 
 even to minister to the sick. It was also laid 
 
34 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 down in the MIshna that when the sun begins 
 to darken a tailor must not walk out with his 
 needle lest sunset should overtake him carrying 
 it. Nor may a scribe walk out with his ink- 
 horn and pen lest he forget and go with it in 
 his hand. After the Sabbath lamp is lighted 
 one must not begin to pick vermin from his 
 clothes, nor yet begin to read by its light, for 
 that would be servile work. These Sabbatic 
 laws, in all their burdensome minuteness and 
 frivolousness, were an essential part of Judaism. 
 It has been truly said, "They burden the con- 
 science of the sincere and make the unscrupu- 
 lous hypocrites." " For to keep the rabbinical 
 Sabbath aright it is necessary to be perfectly 
 acquainted with all the laws relating to it, which 
 are very many and very intricate, occupying 
 above one hundred and seventy folio pages." 
 
 Maimonides and Kimchi, fathers of the tra- 
 ditions, in a gloss upon the words of Isaiah 
 (Ivlii.. 13), "Thou shalt call the Sabbath a de- 
 light," say, " It is forbidden to fast on the Sab- 
 bath, but on the contrary men are bound to de- 
 light themselves with meat and drink, for we 
 must live more delicately on the Sabbath than 
 other days, and he is highly to be commended 
 
THE OLD-TESTAMENT SABBATH. 35 
 
 who provides the most deHcious junkets against 
 that day. We must eat thrice on the Sabbath, 
 and all men are to be admonished of It ; and 
 even the poor themselves, who live on alms, let 
 them eat thrice on the Sabbath, for he that 
 feasts thrice on the Sabbath shall be delivered 
 from the calamities of the Messiah, from the 
 judgment of hell and from the war of Gog and 
 
 Mao;ocr." 
 
 This is an Instance-^— and they might be Indefi- 
 nitely multiplied — where, starting from a true 
 principle that the Sabbath was to be a delight 
 and not a day of dull austerity, they run out 
 their Interpretations Into most ridiculous details, 
 the usual style of rabbinical theology stretching 
 the literal interpretation to the perversion, and 
 subversion often, of the true spirit and intent 
 of the law. " Under the shadow of the tradi- 
 tions the most palpable illegalities could be with 
 impunity committed, and even, on occasions, the 
 literal meaning of one ordinance could be played 
 off against another so that both should be ren- 
 dered futile." 
 
 Such are a specimen of the absurdities and 
 excesses which the pharisaic party ran into In 
 their attempt to throw guards and restrictions 
 
36 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 around the fourth commandment. Missing to 
 a great extent its inner spirit, they legislated for 
 its outward observance. Led on by a line of 
 false interpretation which made no allowance for 
 change of times and circumstances, and which 
 looked fixedly and solely to the letter of the 
 command, they were led by their inexorable 
 loo^ic to the conclusions which we have stated. 
 They erected cheval - de - frise around that 
 law, bristling with a hundred points, upon 
 any one of which the incautious and unwary 
 would impale himself They made this law^the 
 first and great commandment, the keeping of it 
 superior in its sanctity to all the others, and de- 
 clared that he who kept the Sabbath holy — holy 
 in their sense — w^ould merit salvation even if 
 he broke every other command in the Deca- 
 logue. Thus they made the word of God of 
 none effect through their traditions, and they 
 taueht for divine doctrine the commandments 
 of men. 
 
 " You remember and admire," says Coleridge, 
 " the saying of an old divine that ceremony 
 duly initiated is a chain of gold around the neck 
 of faith ; but if In the wish to make it co-essen- 
 tial and consubstantial you draw it closer and 
 
THE OLD-TESTAMENT SABBATH. 37 
 
 closer, It may strangle the faith it was made to 
 deck and designate." This is what the Scribes 
 and Pharisees did to the Sabbath. They stran- 
 ded It with the chains of excessive exactions 
 and directions. Its true life, vigor, breadth, 
 glory, w^as gone in the tightening of those liga- 
 tures which they fastened around its neck, de- 
 signedly for its more comely adornment, but 
 resultinof in the eventual destruction of the or- 
 dinance in its true import as established by 
 God. 
 
 It is important to bear these things In mind 
 in studying the acts of our Lord on the Sab- 
 bath day. Much of the force of his teaching 
 and of his example Is lost If we are Ignorant of 
 the peculiar aspect of the Sabbath question in 
 his day. 
 
 We find him on no less than seven different 
 occasions workinof miracles of healinor on that 
 day and justifying himself to the carping Phari- 
 sees by saying, " My Father worketh hitherto, 
 and I v/ork." We notice him every now and 
 then animadverting upon their glosses and tra- 
 ditions as exalting the " letter of the law, which 
 killeth," above " its spirit, which giveth life." 
 
 Coming, as Jesus did, '' not to destroy the law, 
 
38 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 but to fulfill" It, It was necessary that he should 
 first recover the law from the manipulations of 
 its professed friends — that he should let It be 
 seen what It originally was, and what It was 
 meant for, and how it was to be kept. To this 
 end, he removed the additions which age after 
 ao^e had been added to the divine statute until 
 at last, what men had enacted, covered up what 
 God had ordained. 
 
 Like everything else which he touched, Jesus 
 put this law In its true position and light. He 
 rescued It from the hands of the scribes and 
 Pharisees, and showed It as God would have us 
 esteem It, a day of holy rest, holy service and 
 merciful works. It was God the Son comment- 
 ing by word and deed upon the law of God the 
 Father. And God the Holy Ghost has inspired 
 holy men of old to write out these teachings 
 and incidents : — and thus we have the threefold 
 testimony of the triune God to the true nature 
 and blessedness of the patriarchal, the Mosaic 
 and the Christian Sabbath. 
 
NAZARETH. 
 
The Sabbaths of Our Lord. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 
 
 " And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up : and, as 
 his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and 
 stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of 
 the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the 
 place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, be- 
 cause he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; he hath 
 sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the cap- 
 tives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
 bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed 
 the bock, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And 
 the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue wei-e fastened on him. 
 And he began to say unto them. This day is this Scripture fulfilled in 
 your ears. And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious 
 words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said. Is not this 
 Joseph's son ? And he said unto them. Ye will surely say unto me 
 this proverb. Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done 
 in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. And he said, Verily I say 
 unto you. No prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you 
 of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the 
 heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was 
 throughout all the land ; but unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto 
 Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that zuas a widow. And many 
 lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet ; and none of 
 them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian. And all they in the 
 synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and 
 rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of 
 the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down 
 headlong. But he passing through the midst of them went his way, 
 and came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them on 
 the Sabbath days." LuKE iv. 16-31. 
 
 39 
 
40 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 E shall speak of this Sabbath first, be- 
 cause in his teachings on this day our 
 Lord opened before us his whole work 
 and mission as the Messiah. The Evanorelist 
 
 o 
 
 says, ''He came to Nazai^eth^' implying that he 
 had been away, and so he had. When he became 
 thirty years old, the Levitical age at which only 
 a man could take upon himself the ofhce of a 
 priest, he left Nazareth, and we find him visit- 
 ing John the Baptist, who was preaching " the 
 baptism of repentance for the remission of sins" 
 on the banks of the river Jordan, and thus ful- 
 filling his office as " the voice of one crying in 
 the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the 
 Lord." 
 
 Here, and by his own " Forerunner," he was 
 baptized, for thus ''it became him to fulfill all 
 righteousness." Here, as he went up from the 
 river's brink, '' he saw the heavens opened, and 
 the Spirit of God descending like a dove and 
 lighting upon him, and lo a voice from heaven 
 saying, This is my beloved Son In whom I am 
 well pleased." 
 
 From this baptismal scene he was "led up 
 of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted 
 of the devil." In this wilderness (whether it be 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 4 1 
 
 the desert between the Mount of OHves and 
 Jericho, called Ouarantania, as some suppose, or 
 the desert of Arabia, as is believed by others) 
 he fasted " forty days and forty nights." From 
 this wilderness, having first overcome the devil 
 in his threefold temptation by the sword of the 
 Spirit, which is the word of God, he departed 
 into Galilee and went to Nazareth, " w^here he 
 had been brought up." Were it not that every- 
 thinof connected with our Lord's birth and 
 earthly life is a marvel, and goes contrary to 
 man's preconceived opinions, we should w^onder 
 that so obscure a place as Nazareth should be 
 selected as the place of his longest earthly so- 
 journ. It is not once mentioned in the Old 
 Testament, nor by the Jewish historian Jose- 
 phus, nor do we find any record of its exist- 
 ence until it is spoken of as the home of the 
 Virgin Mary. The name is derived from the 
 Hebrew w^ord Netser or " branch," and means 
 the "city of branches," and the Holy Spirit 
 teaches us that by growing up at Nazareth, the 
 city of branches. He whose name is ''The 
 Branch" thus fulfilled the spirit of the ancient 
 prophecies of Isaiah (xl. i), Jeremiah (xxiii. 5) 
 and Zechariah (ill. 8), which St. Matthew has 
 
 4« 
 
42 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD, 
 
 condensed into the phrase " he shall be called a 
 Nazarene." 
 
 In the turbulent district of Lower Galilee, 
 and in the province given to the tribe of Zebu- 
 Ion, lies this now famous town. According to 
 the rate of travel in that country, it is a three 
 days' journey from Jerusalem, being about sixty- 
 five miles north of it. 
 
 After crossing the plain of Esdraelon, so cele- 
 brated for centuries as the battlefield of many 
 of the most warlike nations of the world, from 
 the times of Deborah and Sisera dowm to the 
 last year of the last century, when Bonaparte 
 obtained there a signal victory over the Turks, 
 you ascend the hills which constitute the south- 
 ern ridges of the Lebanon range, and winding 
 among them in their picturesque beauty for a 
 little while, you then gradually descend into 
 Nazareth. It lies in a beautiful sequestered 
 nook in the midst of fertile slopes and valleys, 
 and its gardens abound with the olive, the fig 
 and the pomegranate trees, and altogether pre- 
 sents a pleasing and thrifty appearance. 
 
 Here it was, more than eighteen centuries 
 ago, that the angel Gabriel came, when sent 
 from God, " to a virgin espoused to a man 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 43 
 
 whose name was Joseph of the house of Da- 
 vid," to tell this " handmaid of the Lord," " Fear 
 not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God, 
 and behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb and 
 bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name 
 Jesus." 
 
 Here it was, when Joseph "was minded to 
 put her away privily" because "she was found 
 with child of the Holy Ghost," that the angel of 
 the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, 
 "Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take 
 unto thee Mary thy Vv^fe, for that which is con- 
 ceived in her is of the Holy Ghost," Llere it 
 was that Joseph and Mary were united in mar- 
 riage by the striking forms of the Hebrew ritual 
 after this visit of the angel, having previously 
 and before the annunciation of Gabriel been pub- 
 licly betrothed to each other, and from that be- 
 trothal were in law, though not in fact, regarded 
 as " man and wife." 
 
 Here it was, after the birth of Christ and 
 their temporary flight into Egypt to avoid the 
 cruelty of Herod, and the fear created in their 
 minds by the reign of his son Archelaus, that 
 the humble couple and the child Jesus took up 
 their abode in peace and seclusion. 
 
44 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Here it was that Joseph toiled in daily labor 
 at the trade of a village carpenter, and Mary, 
 watching the growth of the infant Saviour, pon- 
 dering all these thinors in her heart, did the dii- 
 ties of a housewife. 
 
 From this place it was that Joseph and Mary 
 and Jesus, when the latter was twelve years old, 
 went up to Jerusalem, because Jesus was now a 
 Hebrew catechumen, a "child of the law," or 
 "of the precept," as they were termed, and all 
 such, according to the usages of the Jewish 
 Church, were to be catechised by the elders and 
 scribes. 
 
 To this place the parents and " child Jesus " 
 returned after this wonderful visit to Jerusalem, 
 when Jesus was found "in the temple sitting in 
 the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and 
 asking them questions," causing all to be "as- 
 tonished at his understanding and answers." 
 
 Here it was, at a later period, that, in accord- 
 ance with the requirements of Jewish law which 
 demanded that every male child should learn 
 some trade, Jesus learned his reputed father's 
 trade and wrought as a carpenter among the 
 townspeople of Nazareth. Here it was that he 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH 45 
 
 "grew In wisdom and In stature, and In favor 
 with God and man." 
 
 Thus, from the time that he was two years old 
 until he reached the age of thirty, Jesus dwelt 
 In Nazareth, passing more than five-sixths of 
 the time In which he tabernacled In the flesh In 
 this notedly despised town of Galilee, for that 
 Nazareth was looked down upon as a low and 
 Immoral place Is evident from the question 
 which that " Israelite Indeed," Nathanael, asked, 
 when In reply to the words of Philip concerning 
 Jesus he said, " Can there any good thing come 
 out of Nazareth ?" 
 
 What In the history or character of the peo- 
 ple of that town gave rise to that proverbial ex- 
 pression of Nathanael we do not know. " By 
 the figure which they make In the Evangelist," 
 says Doddridge, " they seem to have deserved 
 it ;" and Is It not another Instance of the volun- 
 tary humility of our Lord that Instead of spend- 
 ing his Infancy and youth and early manhood In 
 a quiet, peaceful town, amid the gentler virtues 
 of a rural people, he tarried In turbulent Galilee 
 and found his longest home among the rude, ill- 
 mannered, vindictive and jealous Nazarethltes ? 
 
 How much of Interest thus clusters about 
 
4^ THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Nazareth ! and how much scope does the imag- 
 ination find in picturing out the childhood and 
 manhood, the home-hfe and the town-Hfe, the 
 school days and the apprentice days of Jesus of 
 Nazareth ! It has a period of twenty-eight 
 years to "revel in, and can roam over all the 
 changes and fluctuations of life, from the two- 
 year-old prattler at his mother's knee to the 
 matured man of thirty, just starting out on his 
 divine mission to be the Saviour of the world. 
 Our visit to Nazareth was one of singular inter- 
 est. We entered it from the south, and skirting 
 the edge of the town, rode on to its end, where, 
 under the shade of a crrove of olive trees and 
 close to a beautiful spring, we pitched our tents 
 and found refreshment after the hot and weary 
 ride across the plain of Esdraelon. This foun- 
 tain is the most voluminous in the town, .and 
 from it the women take most of the water that 
 is drunk in it. It is called "The fountain of the 
 virgin," not only, and with great probability, be- 
 cause the mother of Jesus often, like most of 
 the maidens of Nazareth, resorted thither to 
 draw water and bear it away in water-jars on 
 their heads or shoulders, as w^e saw hundreds 
 doing, but especially because, according to the 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 4/ 
 
 traditions of the Greek Church, it was while 
 Mary was at this spring that the angel Gabriel 
 met her and announced that she should be the 
 mother of the Messiah. Accordingly, to com- 
 memorate this supposed event, the Greek Church 
 has built near by the " Convent of the Annun- 
 ciation." The Latin Church, on the other hand, 
 says that the "annunciation" took place, not at 
 the spring, but in the house of Mary, and points 
 to the grottoes or chambers in the Franciscan 
 church of the chapel of the Annunciation as 
 part of her dwelling. The droning monks pre- 
 tend to show you the window through which the 
 anofel Gabriel flew, and the column which the 
 empress Helena placed to mark the spot where 
 Mary stood or knelt at the time of the angelic 
 visit. 
 
 Nothing could more surely destroy the truth- 
 fulness of the monks' story than the fact as- 
 serted by Romish writers ; that about the thir- 
 teenth century a band of angels took up bodily 
 the house of Mary in Nazareth, then threatened 
 with desecration, and bearing it through the air 
 across the Mediterranean and up the Adriatic 
 gulf, set it down first at Rimini and then on a 
 hill called Loretto. There the so-called ''Casa 
 
48 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Santa!' "the House of Our Lady of Loretto," 
 now stands, an object of deepest veneration and 
 superstition to the devout of the Romish Church. 
 The walls of this house of "Our Lady" are ex- 
 ternally covered with marble, a gorgeous tem- 
 ple has been built up over it, a hundred priests 
 minister in it, a hundred and twenty-three 
 masses are dally said in its precincts. Jewels 
 and vessels of gold and silver, and gorgeous 
 tapestry, and services of various kinds, enrich 
 the shrine, and the pavement around the house 
 is literally worn with the knees of peasants and 
 priests and prelates and princes, as they for cen- 
 turies have crawled devoutly around it. Here 
 also, in this marble-encased cabin. Is shown the 
 window through which Gabriel came — here 
 also the spot where the Virgin heard the angelic 
 "Ave Maria;" and as if this did not sufficiently 
 tax the credulity of the faithful, you are also 
 shown, in this same " Casa Santa," the altar 
 where St. Peter first said mass after our Lord's 
 ascension, when the apostles met at Nazareth, 
 and turned this house into a church. 
 
 Leaving the Church which fosters these su- 
 perstitions to reconcile their discrepancies, we 
 turn away from these lying wonders to the 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 49 
 
 lovely valley which stretches away to the east 
 and south of the town, to the numerous hills 
 which environ it like a o^irdle, to the babblino- 
 stream which marks its way by its green bor- 
 ders through the edge of the town, and picture 
 before us, as far as imagination permits, the 
 childhood, boyhood and early manhood of Jesus 
 as they were here displayed to the rustic Naza- 
 rethites. 
 
 It was most thrilling to be there. Du Saulcy 
 says that '* he wept as he stood in the chapel of 
 the Annunciation," and other travelers have re- 
 corded their deep emotions as they heard therein 
 the pealing organ and the solemn chants of the 
 priests. These constitute no attraction for the 
 true Christian, but they are moved, moved to 
 tears and prayers, as they walk up and down 
 those hills, over those plains, down by the foun- 
 tain and across the fields, studded with clumps 
 of olive and fig trees, and tesselated with the 
 flowers of God's arranging, because every spot 
 seems full of the memories of Jesus. How 
 often had he walked over these fields ! how 
 often followed his mother to the fountain ! how 
 often climbed those hills ! how often gone up 
 there for retirement and prayer ! how often, as 
 
 6 - D 
 
50 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 he stood upon their tops, had he looked north- 
 ward to the snow-crowned head of Hermon, 
 eastward to the rounded top of Tabor, south- 
 ward across the plain of Esdraelon to the 
 mountains of Gilboa and Benjamin, and west- 
 ward to the promontory of Carmel, where Elijah 
 slew the prophets of Baal, as it jutted out into 
 the great sea ! 
 
 The twenty-eight years' life of Jesus in this 
 spot have consecrated the town and its sur- 
 roundings and made it hallowed ground. 
 
 Yet the whole authentic record of these years 
 is contained in the verses (Luke ii. 40) : "And 
 the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled 
 with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon 
 him ;" and after his return from Jerusalem, 
 whither at twelve years of age he had gone to 
 the feast of the Passover, it is said (Luke ii. 51, 
 52), "And he went down with them and came 
 to Nazareth, and was subject unto them, and 
 Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in 
 favor with God and man." This is all the record 
 that we have of his long residence in Nazareth. 
 
 Marvelous silence ! The prying curiosity of 
 men would fain know how our Lord looked as 
 a babe, how he played as a boy, how he mingled 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH 5 I 
 
 with his companions, how he wrought as a car- 
 penter, how he behaved as a young m^n In so- 
 ciety, how the people of Nazareth regarded 
 him, with a hundred other questions about mat- 
 ters where the Bible is silent. 
 
 What should we say of human biographers 
 who should thus skip over four- fifths of the lives 
 of the subjects of their writings, who should tell 
 us nothing of the childhood, the appearance, the 
 habits of person or of mind, the education and 
 associations, of the one whose life they were 
 portraying? It would be strange and unsatis- 
 factory. But this silence of the Scripture In 
 reference to our Lord Is deeply instructive, and 
 even with our finite minds we can see its wis- 
 dom. We desire to know the Infancy and child- 
 hood of earthly heroes, in order that we may 
 mark the causes, and trace the development, of 
 those traits of mind and heart for which they 
 afterward became renowned, and thus observe 
 the mental and moral processes by which their 
 character was built up and compacted into his- 
 toric greatness. But our Lord was beholden to 
 no such parental or domestic training, to no 
 such social or educational Influences ; and hence 
 there was no necessity to tell the occurrences 
 
52 7'HE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 of his early life as the clew or key to his subse- 
 quent history, for it was not moulded by earthly 
 surroundings, nor did human teachers give 
 shape and direction to his mental or moral 
 powers. His childhood ever blossomed with 
 the beauty of holiness, his boyhood was ever 
 fragrant with the expanding flowers of grace, 
 and his manhood brought forth day by day the 
 ripened fruit of the Spirit, for it is emphatically 
 said, "The child grew and waxed strong in 
 spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God 
 was upon him." 
 
 There Is also somethlnof sublime in this silence 
 of Scripture, for instead of leading off our 
 thoughts to the early life of Jesus, and thus dif- 
 fusing our Interest over all the years that he 
 tabernacled in the flesh, the Holy Ghost now 
 concentrates all our looks and feelings on the 
 one work which it was the one object of his life 
 to accomplish. He thus rebukes a prurient cu- 
 riosity, and rejects as useless what Is not Imme- 
 diately connected with redemption. The sacred 
 writers are here dealing with the most marvel- 
 ous deeds and the most astounding works of 
 grace, and they cannot stop to tell the doings 
 of years which had no immediate relation to his 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 53 
 
 work as Prophet, Priest and King; of years 
 which were but the temporal Hnks which con- 
 nected the cross of Calvary with the manger of 
 Bethlehem, and the virgin-born Son of Mary 
 with the risen and ascended Lord of glory. 
 
 As we contemplate this reticence of Scripture, 
 how forcibly are we impressed with the sublime 
 truth, " It is the glory of God to conceal a thing " ! 
 Infinite wisdom, checking the else rampant im- 
 agination of man, has made a biographical blank 
 where men would have written minute histories, 
 but we know that the blank will be filled up by 
 and by, and we must be content to wait until we 
 see Jesus in heaven and *' follow him whither- 
 soever he goeth" to learn the real history of 
 
 his abode at Nazareth. 
 5 * 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH 
 
 (Continued.) 
 
 E said that we had no records of our 
 Lord's doings at Nazareth until he 
 appears on this Sabbath in the syna- 
 gogue. This is true as to positive records, yet 
 we have in the passage which describes this 
 Sabbath four words — ''as his custom was" — 
 which give us some insight into his previous 
 character, and by inference at least tells us what 
 his Sabbath habits were. The whole sentence 
 reads, "And as his custom was, he went into the 
 synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up for 
 to read." That word, "custom," carries us away 
 back to his childhood. We see him as a child, 
 led by his mother's hand, walking to the syna- 
 gogue week after week, taking his place as a 
 child, or as a catechumen, with the other " chil- 
 
 5i 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 55 
 
 dren of the precept," reverently listening to the 
 reading of the law and the prophets. 
 
 We see him, as he arrives at man's estate, 
 still going every seventh day to the same syna- 
 gogue and taking his part in its simple services. 
 This he doubtless did always. 
 
 He did not plead as a reason why he should 
 remain away, that that worship had become cor- 
 rupt — that they had made the word of God " of 
 none effect through their traditions," their glosses 
 and their false Interpretations. 
 
 Nor did he. In the conscious holiness of his 
 own soul, feeling that he needed not this human 
 instrumentality for his own perfection, neglect 
 It, and thus throw the force of his example 
 against it, by forsaking the assembling of him- 
 self with others on that sacred day. This ha- 
 bitual attendance of our Lord on divine worship 
 is a guide and model to us ; for if the holy Jesus 
 could tolerate all the imperfections of synagogue 
 worship In the degenerate days in which he 
 lived, conducted by the scribes and Pharisees, 
 who w^ere so polluted and hypocritical as they 
 were in his day, then surely ought we to gather 
 ourselves within the courts of the Lord's house, 
 and not stay away because of personal antipa- 
 
56 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 thies to minister or people, hypercritical objec- 
 tions to pulpit teaching, hypocritical assumptions 
 of religious superiority, or alleged defects, or 
 excesses, in the mode of worship. 
 
 As we shall often have occasion to speak of 
 the synagogues, it may be well here to give a 
 general description of them, in order the better 
 to understand the allusions which will be so fre- 
 quently made. 
 
 ''Synagogue" is a Greek word employed in 
 the Septuagint as the translation of twenty-one 
 Hebrew words in which the idea of a gathering 
 is implied, and means literally, a meeting-house. 
 
 Though many Jewish writers claim for the 
 Synagogue a very remote antiquity, yet its real 
 origin does not date, probably, earlier than the 
 days of Ezra after the return of the Jews from 
 Babylonish exile. Then we have distinct traces 
 of what has been called " the synagogue paro- 
 chial system," both among the Jews in Palestine 
 and in other countries. Accordinor to the Tal- 
 mudists, wherever ten families lived, there a 
 Synagogue was to be erected, though generally 
 but one was built in each town. Their structure 
 was simple, and varied with the tastes and 
 wealth of the congregation. Usually they were 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 5/ 
 
 erected on the hiorhest ground in or near the 
 city, and were so arranged that as the worship- 
 er entered and bowed, his face was '' toward 
 Jerusalem," where was the one only temple and 
 the one only sacrifice. In the prayer of conse- 
 cration offered by King Solomon on the occasion 
 of dedicating the Temple which he had built to 
 the worship of almighty God, he again and 
 again speaks of ''praying toward this house," 
 of spreading forth his hands '' toward this 
 house," of pi*aying " toward this place, the city 
 which thou hast chosen and the house which I 
 have built for thy name," and thus indicates the 
 posture and direction which the Israelite would 
 take, in whatsoever land he abode, when he 
 sought to worship the God of his fathers. The 
 internal construction of the Svnao^oQ^ue was 
 symbolical of the temple. At the upper or 
 Jerusalem end, stood the ark, the chest which, 
 like the older and more sacred ark, contained 
 the book of the law. It gave to that end the 
 name and character of a sanctuary. This part 
 of the Synagogue was naturally the place of 
 honor. Here were the " chief seats," for which 
 Pharisees and scribes strove so eagerly, and to 
 which the wealthy and honored worshiper was 
 
SS THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 invited. Here too, in front of the ark, still re- 
 producing the type of the tabernacle, was the 
 eight-branched lamp lighted only on the greater 
 festivals. Beside these there was one lamp 
 kept burning perpetually. A little farther to- 
 ward the middle of the building was a raised 
 platform on which several persons could stand 
 at once, and in the middle of this rose a pulpit 
 in which the reader stood to read the lesson or 
 sat down to teach. The congregation was di- 
 vided, the men on one side, the women on the 
 other, a low partition five or six feet high run- 
 ning between them. The arrangement of mod- 
 ern synagogues, for many centuries, has made 
 the separation more complete by placing the 
 women in low side galleries screened off by lat- 
 tice-work. 
 
 . The officers of the Synagogue were, first, the 
 •'ruler" or chief of the Synagogue, who exer- 
 cised rectorial care over the building and the 
 people, then the " elders," or heads of the Syna- 
 gogue, then the "reader," or legate, who blended 
 the office of a reader, secretary and messenger, 
 then the "minister," or attendant, who opened 
 the doors, prepared the place for service, took 
 the sacred rolls from the ark and o^ave them to 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 59 
 
 the reader, and receiving them again, replaced 
 them in their sanctuary. The worship of the 
 synagogue was made up of fixed forms of 
 prayer (each chief ruler being authorized to 
 make such for his own synagogue), the reading 
 of the law and the prophets in such consecutive 
 order as that the whole should-^be read through 
 In a cycle of three years, and in an exposition 
 by some one of the worshipers of the portion 
 of Scripture previously read. 
 
 The Hebrew Church divided the "lav/," or 
 Pentateuch, into fifty- four sections (parashahs), 
 or proper lessons, which were read in the syna- 
 eoo^ues on the Sabbath. To these were added 
 proper lessons (haphtarahs) taken out of the 
 prophets, and they were coupled together in a 
 calendar directing when they were to be read. 
 
 Thus the first section (parashah) of the Pen- 
 tateuch began with the first chapter of Genesis 
 and extended to the eio^hth verse of the sixth 
 chapter, " But Noah found grace in the eyes of 
 the Lord." The corresponding prophetical les- 
 son (haphtarah) is taken from Isaiah xlli. 5-21, 
 and we note at once the parallelism between 
 them, as both refer to the work of creation. 
 This is somethlnor in^e the first and second les- 
 
60 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 sons in the calendar of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church, only In this Church the second lesson is 
 taken out of the New Testament, so as to make 
 the two testaments or covenants, the Mosaic 
 and the Christian, reflect light on each other, for 
 there is no interpreter of Scripture so good 
 and so exact as Scripture itself, whereby we 
 may compare " spiritual things with spiritual." 
 
 Several features of the Christian Church have 
 been evidently borrowed from the forms of the 
 Synagogue. This is not to be wondered at 
 when we consider that the apostles were edu- 
 cated in the usages of the Synagogue, and that it 
 was by means of the synagogues planted by the 
 Jewish colonies in various parts of the world 
 that the gospel was introduced to the Hebrew 
 and the Gentile nations, for Into whatever coun- 
 try the apostles went, they usually found there a 
 synagogue, and thither they resorted, and in it 
 first preached salvation through Jesus Christ. 
 Thus God had providentially prepared these 
 reading and preaching places, these depositories 
 of the law and the prophets, these houses of 
 Sabbatical worship and assembling, as so many 
 foci In which to gather the religious elements of 
 the age, and from which to shed forth the glo- 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 6 1 
 
 rious light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, "of 
 whom Moses in the law and the prophets did 
 write." 
 
 In addition to religious uses, the synagogue 
 was also the common school of the village, 
 where the children were taught by the Rabbi 
 the elements of education, and who especially 
 grounded them in the knowledge of the law 
 and the more noted traditions of the elders. It 
 was doubtless in one of these synagogue schools 
 that our Lord learned the rudiments of Jewish 
 learning. 
 
 Another function which the Synagogue ful- 
 filled was that of a court of justice. It was the 
 town court. Its rulers were as justices of the 
 peace. Trials of minor cases were held there, 
 and the adjudged punishment of scourging was 
 often administered there, and our Lord distinctly 
 warns his disciples that among other ill treat- 
 ment " they will scourge you In their syna- 
 o^OQfues." 
 
 Thus learning, law, religion, clustered around 
 the Synagogue and made it the centre of the 
 most potent influences that can mould a com- 
 munity. 
 
 There was generally a desk on which the rolls 
 
62 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 of parchment were placed, so that, as one side 
 of the sacred Scriptures was unrolled, the other 
 side could be conveniently rolled up, for the 
 books of that day were not made Into leaves 
 like ours, but were mostly of skins rolled into 
 convenient size and labeled on the outside and 
 secured by a leathern clasp or thong. In read- 
 ing these rolls of the law and the prophets, the 
 reader always " stood up," imitating the position 
 of Ezra in his "pulpit of wood" in the streets 
 of Jerusalem, and the practice of the Jewish as- 
 semblies from the rebuilding of the temple. 
 Some have thought that the phrase, "As his 
 custom was," refers not to his habit of going 
 every Sabbath to the Synagogue, but to the 
 being frequently called upon to read out of the 
 holy rolls. It may be so, for sometimes the 
 reader was one of the assembly who was neither 
 an office-bearer, -or a scribe or Pharisee, and 
 sometimes, also, the expounder of the law was 
 even a stranger, as in the case of the Synagogue 
 at Antioch, where, after the reading of the pro- 
 phets, St. Luke says, "The rulers of the Syna- 
 gogue sent unto Paul and his companions, say- 
 ing, Ye men and brethren, if ye have any word 
 of exhortation for the people, say on." 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 63 
 
 Being a general favorite with the people (for 
 it is said that *' he grew in favor with God and 
 man"), and perhaps from his ability to read the 
 Scriptures with more truthfulness of expression 
 because he knew, as they did not, the deep 
 meaning of each word and sentence, Jesus was 
 probably often called upon to ** stand up for to 
 read." Little did that simple folk imagine who 
 it was that read to them such weighty words. 
 They saw in him only a good young man of 
 spotless life and devout habits, a well-beloved 
 citizen and industrious mechanic ; in fine, an 
 Israelite in whom there was no guile. They 
 did not know that there was standinof in their 
 midst the Seed of the woman who was "to bruise 
 the serpent's head," the ''Prophet greater than 
 Moses," the ''Messiah'' of whom David so roy- 
 ally sung, the "Prince of peace'' of whom Isaiah 
 prophesied, the "Son of man" seen in the vis- 
 Ions of the holy Daniel, the "Lord" who, accord- 
 ing to Malachi, was so suddenly to come to his 
 temple. The veil was upon their eyes and upon 
 their hearts ; their mental vision was as yet not 
 prepared for such an outburst of glory ; but the 
 long looked-for "day-star" was now to arise, 
 and the ears of that Sabbath assembly were to 
 
64 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 be startled that morning by an announcement 
 that would fill them with excitement and wonder, 
 for as " he stood up for to read," " there was de- 
 livered unto him (by the one whose office it was 
 to fetch and carry back the rolls from the sanc- 
 tuary) the book (or roll) of the prophet Esaias 
 (Isaiah), and when he had opened the book he 
 found the place where it was written — Isaiah 
 Ixl. I. — 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, be- 
 cause he hath anointed me to preach the gospel 
 to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken- 
 hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives 
 and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at 
 liberty them that are bruised, to preach the ac- 
 ceptable year of the Lord.' And he closed 
 the book and gave it again unto the minister 
 and sat down, and the eyes of all them that were 
 in the Synagogue were fastened on him, and he 
 began to say unto them, This day is this scrip- 
 ture fulfilled in your ears." A murmur of sur- 
 prise rises from the assembly and glances of 
 wonder pass from eye to eye at this bold decla- 
 ration, but soon they hush themselves into si- 
 lence that they may listen more attentively to 
 the Carpenter who now for the first time preaches 
 in their Synagogue. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 
 
 (Continued.) 
 
 ET us In imao^ination seat ourselves In 
 the Synagogue of Nazareth and listen 
 to *' the gracious words" which pro- 
 ceed out of the mouth of Jesus. 
 
 It Is all the more Interesting because It Is the 
 record of the only time our Lord read In the 
 synagogue, and also of the first sermon which 
 he preached ; because by taking his text from 
 Isaiah he endorsed the Inspiration of that evan- 
 gelical prophet ; and especially because In this 
 his first discourse among his neighbors and 
 kinsfolk, ".where he had been brought up," he 
 expounds the character of the Messiah, and the 
 nature of the klno^dom which he was anointed 
 to establish. 
 
 On comparing the words of St. Luke with 
 
 6 * E 65 
 
66 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 those of Isaiah we find some sho^ht verbal differ- 
 ences, owing, doubtless, to the fact that, w^hlle 
 our Lord read from and expounded the pure 
 Hebrew words as written by Isaiah, St. Luke, 
 who wrote his gospel for the Hellenist Jews, 
 quotes from the Septuagint version of that 
 prophet, as one with which they were more 
 familiar. The differences, however, are only 
 verbal, and of no exegetlcal value. The grand 
 thouQ^ht Is the same, and it is with the thouofht 
 itself, rather than with its drapery of words, that 
 we have now to do. 
 
 Of what our Lord said upon this passage of 
 Isaiah we have but one sentence preserved, viz. : 
 "This day Is this Scripture fulfilled in your 
 ears." In what manner he applied this prophecy 
 to himself, and how he unfolded Its Inner mean- 
 ing, w^e know not. That It was done with an 
 unction and earnestness which they had never 
 before seen Is evident from the statement of St. 
 Luke that all " wondered at the gracious words 
 which proceeded out of his lips." As their fel- 
 low-townsman opened to them this Scripture, 
 fitting to his own person and office the several 
 parts of this prophecy, bringing out of the 
 sacred text a hidden meaning which their wisest 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 6/ 
 
 scribes had never tauorht, and makinof clear as 
 the sunlight what had so long been obscured by 
 mists of traditions received from their fathers, 
 the people, we can imagine, 5at in mute aston- 
 ishment and awe. They gave him their undi- 
 vided attention ; they let not a word fall to the 
 ground, but recognized to a certain extent their 
 grace and jDOwer. 
 
 To understand this the better, let us see what 
 this prophecy required for its fulfillment, and 
 then ascertain whether He who then spake met 
 these conditions. 
 
 This prophecy of Isaiah was regarded by all 
 the Jews as referring to the advent of the Mes- 
 siah. It demanded, first, that the person fulfill- 
 ing it should be the Messiah or anointed one, 
 for the words, " Messiah " in Hebrew, '' Christos " 
 in Greek, are equivalent to the English, Christ 
 or anointed. Anointinof was one of the solemn 
 forms of setting apart prophets, priests and 
 kinofs. But the anointed one of the text was to 
 be set apart, not with material oil, as were Elisha 
 and Aaron and David, but by the Spirit of the 
 Lord God — i. e., by the outpouring or descent 
 of the Holy Ghost ; and was not Jesus thus an- 
 ointed when the Holy Ghost like a dove lighted 
 
6S THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Upon him at his baptism in Jordan ? It required, 
 secondly, that this "anointed one" should be a 
 Prophet preaching glad tidings, preaching the 
 gospel, preaching " the acceptable year of the 
 Lord." Did not Jesus go up and down Judea 
 preaching the word, and so speaking that not 
 only did he draw multitudes to his discourses, 
 but the very soldiers who were sent to appre- 
 hend him returned, saying, " Never man spake 
 like this man"? He was, of a truth, "that 
 Prophet" greater than Moses which the Lord 
 God was to raise up to his people Israel. 
 
 It required, thirdly, that this "anointed one" 
 should be able to stay the effect of sin In what- 
 soever form that sin manifested itself. Thus, as 
 the prophecy intimated, he was to "heal," or 
 " bind up," the broken-hearted, those whom sin 
 had crushed and made sad and trampled under 
 foot. He was to preach "deliverance to the 
 captives" — the captives of Satan, the victims of 
 his snares and arts. He w^as " to give sight to 
 the blind," those who were spiritually as well as 
 physically blind, and who could not see the 
 things which pertained to their eternal peace. 
 He was to " set at liberty them that are bruised" — 
 bruised under the yoke and burden of sin, man- 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH 69 
 
 acled and galled by the fetters of the pniice of 
 darkness, whose bond-slaves they were. Did 
 not Jesus do all this both to the bodies and the 
 souls of men in the miracles of mercy which he 
 wrought, and in the effect of the doctrines which 
 he taught? and is it not the special purpose of 
 his religion to achieve for the mind, for the heart, 
 for the bodies of men, for man individually and 
 men collectively, in families, states, churches, 
 nations, exactly those things which are here pre- 
 dicted ? Thus he rolls back the effects of sin as 
 it causes woe and darkness and captivity and 
 oppression and every evil work. 
 
 It required, fourthly, that this ''anointed one" 
 should restore to m.an the inheritance which he 
 had lost in Eden. The term " to preach the 
 acceptable year of the Lord" refers to that joy- 
 ful day and year when, according to the direc- 
 tions given in Leviticus, at the close of each 
 forty-ninth year, the priests, on the morning 
 which ushered in the fiftieth year, were to " blow 
 the silver trumpets of the jubilee and proclaim 
 liberty throughout all the land and unto all the 
 inhabitants thereof" — trumpet notes heard sel- 
 dom more than once in a lifetime, but when 
 heard, they filled the heart of the nation with an 
 
70 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 exuberance of joy that found its outburst In all 
 manner of festive orladness and thanksorivinof. 
 And why this gladness ? Because then, a year 
 of rest was proclaimed, and there was neither 
 ploughing nor sowing nor reaping, but the land 
 itself had a Sabbatical year. Because then, 
 every Israelite recovered his right and title to 
 the land originally allotted to his ancestors, and 
 the alienated inheritance was his again without 
 purchase. Because then, the bondmen went out 
 free from servitude and were restored to their 
 original franchise, and thus there was given 
 back to each Israelite his covenanted right and 
 portion in the land of promise given to him by 
 Jehovah. 
 
 This year of jubilee, occurring after each 
 seven weeks of years, or forty-nine years, was 
 typical of the triumph of the Messiah when he 
 would restore to man his lost inheritance, when 
 he would set him free from the bondage under 
 which sin had enslaved him, when he would dis- 
 pense to all "the rest," the jubilee rest, ''which 
 remaineth for the people of God." 
 
 And is not this what Christ is now doing, and 
 will still further do, as the jubilee sound of the 
 gospel trumpet goes out into all lands and 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 7 1 
 
 wakes up notes of joy and salvation among all 
 the tribes and races of men ? The inheritance 
 which we lost through Adam in Eden, He, as 
 '' the second Adam, the Lord from heaven," will 
 restore to us in fuller measure in the paradise 
 of God. 
 
 The bondage of sin under which we ''groaned, 
 beine burdened," He will release us from by 
 breaking the yoke of the oppressor, and letting 
 the oppressed go free. 
 
 It must have seemed very strange to the 
 Nazarethites to hear this young man, whom 
 they had known in his obscurity of twenty-five 
 years, apply this grand Messianic prophecy to 
 himself. There must have arisen in their minds 
 a singular commincrlinor of wonder and incre- 
 dulity, blended perhaps with fear, lest he who 
 had all along been the good and gentle Jesus 
 had lost his mental balance and was going to set 
 up himself as the Messiah. 
 
 To understand the feelings they experienced, 
 place yourselves in their situation. What would 
 be your emotions if on some Lord's day, as you 
 sat in your usual seat in the Lord's house, a 
 man of good repute, yet humble parentage, 
 whom you had known from childhood, whom 
 
72 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 you had seen as a child, as a growing boy, as a 
 working apprentice, as a common mechanic, 
 whose parents you knew, whose home you 
 knew, whom you had met in your daily walks, 
 and who for years had gone with you and sat 
 near you in the house of God, should suddenly, 
 after the lessons for the day had been read 
 which depicted in glowing language the office 
 and work of the Messiah, say, '' This day is this 
 scripture fulfilled in your ears"? How such a 
 declaration from such a person would startle 
 you ! how almost indignant it would make you ! 
 how you would be tempted to sneer and ridicule 
 such claims, or be overwhelmed with alarm at 
 such unrebuked blasphemy ! Like the men of 
 Nazareth, you would say, " Is not this the one 
 whom we have known, and whose parents w^e 
 know, and whose occupation we know ? Why, 
 then, speaks he thus ? Can he expect us to be- 
 lieve his words ? Shall we not rather adjudge 
 him to be insane ?" 
 
 If you will look at the scene from this point 
 of view, you will more readily comprehend how 
 marvelously astounding this claim of Jesus must 
 have seemed to his fellow-townsmen. 
 
 They looked indeed for a Messiah. It was 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH 73 
 
 the one great hope of thdr nation. It was the 
 burden of their prophecies, the substance of 
 their types, the foreshadowing of their Levitical 
 ritual, the theme of their national psalms, and 
 all their future triumph over their enemies and 
 their exaltation as a nation centred in this long 
 looked-for Messiah. To their blinded minds he 
 was to come In glory and reign with a splendor 
 surpassing that of Solomon. He was to be 
 surrounded widi all the insignia of divine royalty. 
 For this '' Carpenter," the reputed son of a car- 
 penter, to appropriate to himself these pro- 
 phetic epithets, and announce that In his person 
 these scriptures found their fulfillment, was In- 
 deed too much to be borne, and no wonder, 
 therefore, that they said, " Is not this Joseph's 
 son?" 
 
 Perceiving their unbelief and knowlnor what 
 was In their hearts, Jesus said unto them, "Ye 
 will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, 
 heal thyself. Whatsoever we have heard done 
 in Capernaum do also here In thy country." 
 Though these were the words of Christ, yet he 
 spoke them as being the sentiments of his hear- 
 ers, whose thoughts he knew and expressed. 
 It was as if they had said, '' We have heard that 
 
74 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 you have done great works In Capernaum : do 
 them here also, that we may see and judge for 
 ourselves, and not have only the hearsay evi- 
 dence of public rumor." It was an Implied cen- 
 sure on him for working miracles In that almost 
 Gentile town before he wrought any in Naza- 
 reth. 
 
 To these murmuring thoughts, and perhaps 
 expressions, Jesus replied, " No prophet is ac- 
 cepted In his own country," or, as St. Mark 
 records It, ''A prophet Is not without honor but 
 In his own country and among his own kin and 
 in his own house." 
 
 This proverbial expression finds Its truth in 
 that deep-rooted principle of human nature not 
 to give full credit to that, with the gradual 
 erowth and unfoldlno^ of which we are familiar, 
 and to prefer the foreign and the unknown, over 
 that which oriorinates out of ourselves and is 
 home-born. Minute knowledge of a man's cha- 
 racter, and of a man's surroundings, tends, in 
 the minds of those thus familiar, to detract from 
 his ereatness. It is so much easier for the hu- 
 
 o 
 
 man mind to detect flaws, than perceive great- 
 ness, so much more ready to note the evil than 
 the crood of our fellow-men, so much more In- 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH 75 
 
 dined to cavil than to praise, that we see every 
 day the truth of the proverb and how pecuHarly 
 fitted it was to express just the position in which 
 our Lord, as a Prophet, stood to the querulous 
 and unbelievinor Nazarethites. 
 
 o 
 
 " But I tell you of a truth," he continues, 
 **many widows were in Israel in the days of 
 Ellas, when the heaven was shut up three years 
 and six months, when great famine was through- 
 out all the land, but unto none of them was 
 Ellas sent save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, 
 unto a woman that was a widow. And many 
 lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the 
 prophet, and none of them was cleansed saving 
 Naaman the Syrian." These instances are 
 quoted by our Lord In order to prove that they 
 who are nearest to the means of grace and op- 
 portunities of conviction are often least inclined 
 to profit by them, on which account they are 
 justly granted to others of a more humble and 
 teachable disposition. 
 
 It seems, however, greatly to have galled the 
 people, not only that our Lord wrought mira- 
 cles in Capernaum before he did In Nazareth, 
 but that he should defend his course of conduct 
 by two such anti-Jewish examples of God's 
 
J^i THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 dealing with men, whereby a Zidonian woman 
 and a Syrian nobleman — Gentiles — received di- 
 vine favors denied to the lepers of Judah or the 
 famine-stricken of Israel. 
 
 They had implied in their talk with him, 
 "Whatsoever we have heard done in Caper- 
 naum do also here in thy country. You wrought 
 miracles there, why not here ?" His replying 
 in the way he did was virtually saying to them, 
 "You are unworthy of It, as Israel of old was 
 unworthy of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, who 
 therefore were sent to work miracles amono- 
 
 o 
 
 the Gentiles. Elijah was sent to a heathen 
 woman, and a heathen man was sent to Elisha." 
 Thus, not only was their national pride rebuked, 
 but they learned, from these instances of bless- 
 ings given by some of their greatest prophets 
 to persons outside the pale of Israel, the lesson 
 that the Gentiles w^ere to be called in to partici- 
 pate in the covenant blessing of the God of 
 Abraham. 
 
 The people were quick to see and to apply 
 these striking words and facts, and "all they 
 in the synagogue, when they heard these things, 
 were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust 
 him out of the city, and led him unto the brow 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. J J 
 
 of the hill whereon their city was built, that 
 they might cast him down headlong." What a 
 sudden chancre ! Behold the excited throne ! 
 The solemn services of the Synagogue are 
 rudely interrupted ; the ruler waits not to give 
 die parting blessing ; the people tarry not for a 
 benediction, but, '* filled with wrath," rise up with 
 turault and thrust the meek and lowly Jesus out 
 of the house, push him along the narrow streets 
 with i-iolse and insult and violence, and lead him 
 to the steep sides of the mountain which over- 
 looks their town, that from its brow " they might 
 cast hira down headlonof." Their murderous 
 design was, however, miraculously thwarted, for 
 our Lord, '' passing through the midst of them," 
 eluded their grasp, *' went his way and came 
 down to Capernaum.." 
 
 Several places are pointed out as this " brow 
 of the hill." I'he city is not built on a plain, 
 nor yet on a mountain, but rather on the sides 
 of hills which partially surround it. Up these 
 slopes the town creeps by means of Its wind- 
 ing streets and perched houses, while one hill, 
 in particular, overlooks the town very much 
 as the brow does the human face. In our 
 walks around Nazareth we saw one place which 
 
 •7* 
 
78 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 remarkably well accords with the description In 
 the text, where, on a rocky wall rising forty or 
 fifty feet, is built the Maronite church, and 
 which the Greeks say Is the real spot indicated 
 by St. Luke. This Is just on the edge of the 
 city; Is on what might fitly be called the "brow 
 of the hill," and overhangs it with suflficlent 
 height and perpendicularity to cause the death 
 of any one who should be cast headlong from 
 its top. 
 
 According to the Latin or Romish Church, the 
 ''Mount of Precipitation" Is two miles distant 
 on a peak which does not overlook the city, but 
 overhangs the northern edge of the plain of 
 Esdraelon. To meet the objections made against 
 this place as too remote from Nazareth, the 
 monks reply that old Nazareth once stood there, 
 and that the new Nazareth does not occupy the 
 ancient site. Yet In this so-called new Naza- 
 reth (and which is indeed new In all its build- 
 ings, not one being here now which was in ex- 
 istence at the time St. Luke wrote) they pretend 
 to show the grotto of the Annunciation, the 
 house of the Virgin, the workshop of Joseph ! 
 Their stories, alas ! do not agree ; they are out 
 of joint, and hence we give them all to the winds 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH. 79 
 
 as worthless fables, forged by the father of lies 
 to deceive a relic-worshiping world. 
 
 Passing from these scenes, let us briefly 
 gather up the lessons which this Sabbath of 
 Jesus at Nazareth teaches. 
 
 The first is, that the utmost purity of life and 
 wisdom of speech will not secure its possessor 
 from the assaults of the ungodly. The Naza- 
 rethites could not bring against Jesus a single 
 charge affecting his moral character, or a single 
 sound argument to gainsay his gracious words. 
 He was literally " holy, harmless, undefiled, sepa- 
 rate from sinners, full of wisdom and of the 
 grace of God." Yet he was hustled out of the 
 Synagogue and thrust along the highway and 
 pressed upon and insulted by the crowd, and led 
 away with murderous purpose as if he had been 
 a thief or a murderer. So that all his past spot- 
 less life, his years of acknowledged goodness, 
 were outweighed by the momentary exaspera- 
 tion of a people chafing under the power of 
 truth. 
 
 The second lesson shows us the power of 
 prejudice to blind the eye, deafen the ear, shut 
 the heart and warp the judgment against the 
 highest excellence. The prejudice in the case 
 
80 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 of these people arose from their long-continued 
 familiarity with Jesus. It was an illustration of 
 the old proverb, " Familiarity breeds contempt," 
 and also of our Lord's own remark, ** A prophet 
 is not without honor save in his own country." 
 Had they not known him from his youth, had he 
 come to them from afar, had they been unable 
 to say, " Whose father and mother we know, and 
 his brethren and sisters, are they not with us ?" 
 he would have met with a different reception. 
 They would not have had these prejudices to 
 hoodwink their eyes and thus prevent their see- 
 inof the excellences which shone out from Him 
 ao^ainst whom their rao^e was so aroused. 
 
 It shows us lastly the unfaltering perseverance 
 of Satan In his attempts to break down Jesus. 
 
 He had instigated Herod the king to destroy 
 the infant Jesus, but had been thwarted by the 
 flight into Egypt. He had tried to overthrow 
 his moral and Messianic character and brinof 
 him into allegiance to himself by his three 
 temptations in the wilderness. Routed in this 
 conflict by '' the sword of the Spirit " as wielded 
 by Jesus, he now employs new measures of as- 
 sault, and stirs up the jealousy and prejudice of 
 his townspeople as a means of destroying him, 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH AT NAZARETH 8 1 
 
 maklnof them the instruments of his hate. In 
 this our Lord is an example to all his followers, 
 who must expect and be prepared for all kinds 
 of temptations and assaults from the enemy of 
 their souls, for " the disciple is not above his mas- 
 ter, nor the servant above his lord." It is, how- 
 ever, comforting to know that as Christ over- 
 came in every conflict, directly from. Satan or 
 indirectly through his emissaries, so we are as- 
 sured that we shall finally conquer through him, 
 '' for in that he himself hath suffered, being 
 tempted, he is able to succor them that are 
 tempted." That succor, given in answer to 
 prayer, will enable us to come off more than 
 conquerors through Christ that loved us. 
 
 F 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 
 
 HIS PREACHING. 
 
 " And they went into Capernaum ; and straightway on the Sabbath 
 day he entered into the Synagogue and taught. And they were aston- 
 ished at his doctrine, for he taught them as one that had authority, and 
 not as the scribes. And there was in their Synagogue a man with an 
 unclean spirit; and he cried out, saying, Let us alone; what have we 
 to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth ? art thou come to destroy us ? 
 I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked 
 him, saying. Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the 
 unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud voice, he came out 
 of him. And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned 
 among themselves, saying. What thing is this ? what new doctrine is 
 this ? for with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and 
 they do obey him. And immediately his fame spread abroad through- 
 out all the region round about Galilee." MARK i. 21-28. 
 
 " And came down to Capeiniaum, a city of Galilee, and taught them 
 on the Sabbath days. And they were astonished at his doctrine, for 
 his word was with power. And in the Synagogue there was a man 
 which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and he cried out with a loud 
 voice, saying. Let us alone ; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus 
 of Nazareth ? art thou come to destroy us ? I know thee who thou art, 
 the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy 
 peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in 
 the midst, he came out of him and hurt him not. And they were all 
 amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this ! for 
 with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they 
 come out. And the fame of him went out into every place of the 
 country round about. LuKE iv. 31-37. 
 82 
 
CAPERNAUM AND SEA OF GALILEE. 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 83 
 
 ROM St. Luke's narrative we are led 
 to infer that our Lord, after he was 
 driven from Nazareth, crossed the 
 plain of Galilee, and descending the western 
 slope of the sea of Tiberias, went to Caper- 
 naum and there took up his temporary abode. 
 This place is often mentioned in connection with 
 the residence and teaching and miracles of 
 Jesus, though its exact position is nowhere given 
 in the New Testament. Biblical geographers 
 are still uncertain as to its location, some advo- 
 cating Khan Minyeh as the site, though the 
 weight of evidence places'it at Tel-Hum, on the 
 northern shore of the sea of Galilee, and not 
 far west of the entrance of the river Jordan into 
 that sea. It was in the land of Gennesaret, 
 which, according to Josephus, was the most 
 populous, busy and wealthy part of Palestine, 
 and was one of several cities which almost lined 
 the western and northern shores of that lake. 
 It was a sort of common mart for all that dis- 
 trict, and hence gathered to its shops and ware- 
 houses merchants and artisans from all the sur- 
 rounding nations. 
 
 Nothing but a mass of crumbling ruins now 
 exists to mark a spot once the busiest in all 
 
84 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 northern Palestine. Its glory has departed, and 
 desolation occupies its site. 
 
 When our Lord came to Capernaum, he came 
 to a large and flourishing town, which, by its 
 ships and its caravans, had commercial relations 
 with all the region round about ; and here he 
 came in contact with the upland farmers, the 
 city mechanics, the lake fishermen, the Gaulon- 
 ite traders, the merchants from Damascus, the 
 Roman soldiers from Tiberias, the hated publi- 
 can, the courtly nobleman, the learned scribe, 
 the haughty Pharisee. Jew and Gentile, bond 
 and free, all were found here. It was just the 
 kind of centre, therefore, which Jesus would 
 choose for the better dissemination of his word 
 and works. It was a great distributing point of 
 thought and influence, and hence by putting 
 himself there he was enabled to scatter more 
 widely the seed of the word, and to do more to 
 attract attention and mould the thought of Jew 
 and Gentile than if he had restricted himself to 
 Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the sacred city, the mu- 
 nicipal guardian of the Temple, was under- the 
 dominion of the Priests, the Pharisees and the 
 Herodians. Against Jesus, as a common enemy, 
 they all combined, and he could not, therefore. 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 85 
 
 with any prospect of success, have estabhshed 
 himself there. Their subsequent treatment of 
 him showed what spirit they were of. His aim 
 during his earthly ministry was to get a hearing. 
 His miracles were wrouo^ht to attract attention 
 to his words and to certify their divinity. He 
 wanted the people to see his works and hear 
 his words, and nowhere could this so well be 
 accomplished as by taking up a temporary abode 
 in this commercial town, which is accordingly 
 spoken of as " His own city." 
 
 St. Mark says, " Straightway on the Sabbath 
 day he entered into the Synagogue and taught." 
 St. Luke says that he came down to Capernaum 
 and "• taught them on the Sabbath days " — i, e., 
 on more Sabbaths than one. This was doubt- 
 less our Lord's usual Sabbath duty. He had 
 been anointed by the Holy Ghost to preach glad 
 tidings, and he availed himself of the Synagogue 
 to do so week after week while he dwelt in Ca- 
 pernaum. Neither St. Mark nor St. Luke tells 
 us what was the subject-matter of his teaching, 
 but St. Matthew incidentally gives it when 
 (chap. iv. 13), after saying that Jesus, ''leaving 
 Nazareth, came and dwelt in Capernaum," and 
 then telline us that this act was a fulfillment of 
 
 8 
 
S6 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 the prophecy of Isaiah In the opening of his 
 ninth chapter, he goes on to state, "From. that 
 time (i. e., from the time of his going to Caper- 
 naum) Jesus began to preach and to say, Re- 
 pent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." 
 This accords with what St. Mark (I. 14, 15) tells 
 us was the general theme of his discourses In 
 Galilee ; viz., " preaching the kingdom of God 
 and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom 
 of God Is at hand. Repent ye and believe the 
 gospel." 
 
 . Thus John the Baptist began his ministry as 
 the voice crying In the wilderness, " Repent ye, 
 for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Thus 
 the apostles began their ministry on the day of 
 Pentecost by preaching the fulfillment of the old 
 prophecies In Jesus of Nazareth, and the neces- 
 sity of repentance and faith to all who would 
 obtain salvation. The summary of the preach- 
 ing of Jesus, as recorded by St. Mark, embraces 
 the whole gospel. In declaring that " the time 
 is fulfilled," he claimed that all the Messianic 
 prophecies had culminated in him. In saying 
 that '' the kingdom of God," or '' of heaven," 
 *'Is at hand," he plainly showed that his office 
 was that of an inaugurator of this "fifth, unlver- 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 8/ 
 
 sal, heavenly and everlasting kingdom foretold 
 by Daniel (ii. 44; vil. 14, 27), which Is to super- 
 sede all kingdoms of the earth, and to destroy 
 all that resist it," and that he came to earth, 
 therefore, with the authority of God and the en- 
 dorsement of Heaven. In calllnof men ''to re- 
 pent," he announced the initial act which all 
 must do before they can enter into that king- 
 dom, and he clearly declared thereby that an 
 unrepenting and an unbelieving man — i. c, man 
 by nature— man unrenewed by the Holy Ghost 
 — had no place therein ; while in requiring all 
 who would become partakers of that heavenly 
 kingdom to "believe the gospel," or the glad 
 tidings which he proclaimed, he taught the abso- 
 lute necessity of faith as a constant accompani- 
 ment of repentance, and as that without which 
 " it is impossible to please God." 
 
 Looking at the gospel, as we look at it, 
 through the glass of revelation, and remember- 
 ing that Jesus regarded It as he and his Apostles 
 have since taught us to regard it, the gospel is 
 but a concrete term for the incarnate Christ. 
 The gospel is "God manifest in the flesh." The 
 gospel is the personal God-man, in whom only 
 is found salvation and eternal life; for Jesus is 
 
88 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 at once the object of our faith, the fountain of 
 our salvation, the procurer of our pardon, the 
 embodiment of all truth, the one only way to 
 God, the .eiver of eternal life, the one in whom 
 dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. 
 To believe the gospel is, then, to believe in 
 Jesus — to believe in and accept him, in his per- 
 son, as God manifest in the flesh ; in his office, 
 as the Saviour of the world, the anointed Mes- 
 siah ; and in his work as the reconciler of man 
 to God, the destroyer of the works of the devil 
 and the author of eternal salvation. 
 
 In what a glorious attitude does this present 
 our dear Lord ! An incarnate God ! Every 
 gospel blessing, every gospel truth, every gos- 
 pel grace, every gospel glory, .meeting in and 
 dwelling permanently in him, even as all light, 
 all heat, all the elements of beauty, all the con- 
 stituents of bodily life, dwell in and flow from 
 the central sun. Jesus, in his conscious divinity, 
 knew this, and hence he required all his disci- 
 ples to believe in him, to honor him, to drink of 
 him as out of a living well-spring, to feed on 
 him as a living bread sent down from heaven, 
 to abide in him as the branch abideth on the 
 vine, and to grow up into him as head over all 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 89 
 
 things to the Church which is his body." Had 
 Plato or Socrates, or any of the great teachers 
 of ancient philosophy, thus spoken, how would 
 they have been derided and come to naught ! 
 They told men to believe in certain dogmas 
 elaborated In certain schools, but never did they 
 say to their disciples In the porch, the grove or 
 the academy. Believe in me, "I am the' way, 
 the truth, the life. No man cometh unto the 
 Father but by me." This separates Jesus from 
 all other teachers, and this lifts up his truth 
 above all human doctrines, and gives to the 
 humble Preacher in the Synagogue of Caper- 
 naum a power and a glory, before which the 
 proudest names of human philosophy fade away 
 as do the stars before the light of a noonday 
 sun. 
 
 With reference to the effect of Christ's teach- 
 ing on the Sabbath in Capernaum two facts are 
 stated. 
 
 First, it Is said " that they were astonished at 
 his doctrine." This might mean either that the 
 people were astonished that one In such humble 
 life should be able to speak so well and fluently, 
 or else Indicates their surprise at the new truths 
 which he proclaimed. 
 
 8* 
 
go THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Either of these would constitute a good 
 ground of astonishment to the Capernaumites, 
 for, to all outward appearance, he was but an 
 ordinary workman from despised Nazareth, who 
 neither by birth, social standing nor education 
 had any special claim to their regard. 
 
 But much as they were surprised at the force 
 and authority with which he spoke, there is no 
 doubt that the real ground of their astonish- 
 ment was the astounding truths which he ut- 
 tered. 
 
 These, as we have just seen, though only 
 hinted at by the Evangelist, were yet the great 
 themes of Hebrew prophecy and Hebrew hope 
 for thousands of years, and therefore all true 
 Jewish hearts must have been stirred up by 
 their new proclamation. But then the way in 
 which these Messianic prophecies were fulfilled, 
 and the manner in which the kinc^dom of the 
 
 o 
 
 lonof looked-for Messiah was to be entered and 
 enjoyed, was something entirely different from 
 all their preconceived notions, and offended 
 their pride and all the instincts of the natural 
 heart. 
 
 Our Lord, in his several discourses in Caper- 
 naum, doubtless went into most Interesting un- 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 9 1 
 
 foldings of type and prophecy and ritual of the 
 Old Testament, and of the Jewish economy. 
 He explained to them the hitherto obscure pas- 
 sages of the Scriptures ; he applied to himself 
 their words as they taught the doctrine of the 
 Messiah and his holy and universal reign. 
 
 And then, too, he urged them to repentance, 
 to faith or belief in the gospel. He did not 
 urge more frequent attendance at the Syna- 
 gogue, more frequenjt sacrifices at the altar, 
 more fastings, more tithings, more pilgrimages 
 to the holy city. He did not flatter their na- 
 tional pride as Jews or foster their false hopes 
 of salvation because they were the children of 
 Abraham. On the contrary, passing by all those 
 things in which the Jews most prided themselves, 
 and by which he might gain for himself personal 
 popularity, he, like John the Baptist, lays the 
 axe at the root of the tree, and declares that 
 entrance into the kingdom of God Is not ob- 
 tained by being a Jew simply, by the sacrifices 
 of the law, by accepting the traditions of their 
 fathers, by any of the works which they do " to 
 be seen of men," by the most rigid Phariseeism 
 or by the most scrupulous Judaism, but only by 
 repentance and faith — a ''repentance" which Is 
 
92 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 the result of conscious sin and guilt in the sight 
 of God, which brings to one moral level Jew and 
 Gentile, which respects not words, but the in- 
 most feelings of the soul, which makes one feel 
 his vileness and causes him to cry out for mercy ; 
 and a *' faith," or belief, in the gospel which ena- 
 bles one. to recognize Jesus as the Saviour 
 whom "God hath set forth to be the propitiation 
 for sin," and to accept him as a personal Saviour 
 in all the fullness and freeness of his divine 
 grace. These were new truths to the Caper- 
 naumites, and well might they be "astonished" 
 at their bold enunciation, for it is said that " His 
 word was with power." 
 
 The second marked effect of his preaching 
 was that they immediately drew a distinction 
 between the teaching of Jesus and that of the 
 scribes: "He taught as one that had authority, 
 and not as the scribes." 
 
 This contrast is exceedingly interesting, as It 
 unlocks to us the wretched state of public 
 teaching then common in the Synagogues and 
 schools, and places it in strong opposition to 
 the pure, clear, pungent doctrine of the blessed 
 Jesus. 
 
 The scribes were the learned class anions the 
 
 o 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 93 
 
 Jews, and were the recognized custodians and 
 expounders of the law of Moses and of the 
 prophets. They were usually of Priestly or Le- 
 vitical rank ; to them was specially entrusted the 
 multiplication of copies of the Old Testament, 
 to the study of which they devoted themselves 
 with much assiduity. " Our fathers," said Simon 
 the Just, one of their great scribes, 300 years 
 B. C, "have taught us three things — to be cau- 
 tious in judging, to trg-in many scholars and to 
 set a fence about the law." As transcribers of 
 the law they acquitted themselves with wonder- 
 ful accuracy and conscientiousness. Nothing 
 could exceed their care of the sacred text. 
 They were scrupulously minute as to words, 
 letters and points. To their minute accuracy 
 and watchful fidelity we owe the preservation 
 of the very w^ords of the Old Testament. They 
 looked with superstitious reverence upon every 
 letter and numeral of the divine word, and 
 guarded it from any admixture of man with 
 jealous care. Yet while thus vigilant as to the 
 letter of Scripture, and while nothing w^ould 
 have induced them to add a "jot" or "tittle" to 
 the text, they virtually made void the law by 
 their traditions. These traditions, or current 
 
94 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 precepts, which had been handed down to them 
 from their fathers, were concreted Into the 
 Mishna. To this code was added the Gemara, 
 in which were gathered the decisions of Rabbis, 
 the fables of Jewish superstition, and together 
 these constituted the Tahnud, or the great body 
 of rabbinical law. This work, the Jerusalem Tal- 
 mud, though not published until the fourth cen- 
 tury after Christ, is a transcript, however, of what 
 was held and taught orally in our Lord's day, and 
 enables us to see the puerility, the superstition, 
 the folly, the blasphemy even, of those traditions 
 of the scribes and elders which Jesus so re- 
 buked in his sermon on the mount and in all his 
 interviews with this class. Witness his denun- 
 ciation of them as recorded in the twenty-third 
 chapter of St. Matthew, where, after saying that 
 " the scribes and Pharisees sit In Moses' seat. 
 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, 
 that observe and do," he goes on to say, " But 
 do not ye after their works, for they say and do 
 not, for they bind heavy burdens and grievous 
 to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders, 
 but they themselves will not move them with 
 one of their fingers ; but all their works they 
 do for to be seen of men ; they make broad 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 95 
 
 their phylacteries and enlarge the borders of 
 their garments, and love the uppermost rooms 
 at feasts, and the chief seats in the Synagogues, 
 and greetings in the market, and to be called of 
 men. Rabbi, Rabbi." Then, warning his hearers 
 against following them, our Lord utters eight 
 woes against them, which may be considered as 
 eieht counts in his indictment ao^ainst this law- 
 
 o o 
 
 perverting and soul-destroying class. In these 
 denunciations against these hypocrites he thus 
 charges them : *' Ye shut up the kingdom against 
 men, for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suf- 
 fer ye them that are entering to go in." " Ye 
 devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make 
 long prayers." "Ye compass sea and land to 
 make one proselyte, and when he is made ye 
 make him twofold more the child of hell than 
 yourselves." " Ye blind guides which say. Who- 
 soever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing, 
 but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the 
 temple, he is a debtor. Whosoever shall swear 
 by the altar, it is nothing, but whosoever swear- 
 eth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty. Ye 
 pay tithes of mint and anise and cummin, and 
 have omitted the weightier matters of the law, 
 judgment, mercy, faith." " Ye strain at a gnat 
 
96 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 and swallow a camel." *' Ye make clean the 
 outside of the cup and of the platter, but within 
 they are full of extortion and excess." '' Ye are 
 like whited sepulchres, which indeed appear 
 beautiful outward, but are within full of dead 
 men's bones and of all uncleanness ; even so ye 
 also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but 
 within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." 
 " Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can 
 ye escape the damnation of hell.*^" This was 
 the deliberate judgment of Him who "knew^ 
 what was in man," who knew the thoughts and 
 intents of the heart, and whose judgment was 
 just and true. We can scarcely imagine a class 
 of men who, considering their official position, 
 their social standing and their avowed sanctity, 
 were more thoroughly rotten and morally lep- 
 rous than these blind guides who sat in Moses' 
 seat, and who were the recognized expounders 
 of God's holy law. How great and deep-seated 
 must have been the crimes of these people to 
 call out from the meek and lowly Jesus such 
 maledictions ! How he rose above all personal 
 considerations of interest or of fear, when he 
 thus publicly, and renewedly, denounced such 
 woes, not against the lowest orders of society, 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 97 
 
 but against the highest and most learned class, 
 the most powerful in State and Synagogue, the 
 very men whom he knew would in a few days 
 crown their life of infamy by putting him to a 
 death of shame ! 
 
 Of the puerility of the teachings of these 
 scribes instances miorht be adduced sufficient to 
 fill a volume ; only a few need be inserted here 
 as indicative of all. From the text, " Thou hast 
 fashioned me behind and before," they deduced 
 the conclusion that Adam was made with tv/o 
 faces, and that Eve was made by sawing him 
 asunder. 'Tf a man should be born with two 
 heads, on which forehead should he bind the 
 phylacteries ?" is a sample of the subjects of 
 their most serious discussions. On the feast of 
 Purim the pious Jew was recommended to 
 make himself so mellow that he should not be 
 able to distinguish between " Cursed be Haman" 
 and " Blessed be Mordecai." 
 
 From the Mosaic provision of divorce the 
 
 conclusion was drawn that a man might divorce 
 
 his wife whenever he found a woman handsomer 
 
 and more to his liking, since his wife no longer 
 
 found favor In his eyes. But enough of this. 
 
 Yet with few exceptions such was the general 
 9 G 
 
98 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 tone of the teachinor in the schools and in the 
 Synagogues, by the scribes and Pharisees, the 
 recoo^nized doctors of the law. 
 
 It required, therefore, not much sagacity to 
 discern the difference between our Lord's teach- 
 ing and theirs, and to contrast the power of the 
 truth and the authority of the speaker with the 
 emptiness of the doctrines and the hesitancy and 
 uncertainty of those who thus taught for com- 
 mandments the traditions of men. 
 
 They were doubtful teachers, not fully believ- 
 ing the truths they pretended to expound. They 
 were false teachers, setting aside the great truths 
 of Jehovah for the puerile comments of men, 
 exalting the ceremonial over the moral law, and 
 makinof the essence of relio^ion to consist in 
 washing of hands and pots and kettles, in the 
 breadth of the border of the garment, in the 
 size and number of the phylacteries, in the tith- 
 ing of anise and mint and cummin, rather than 
 In love to God and in a life of obedience to his 
 commandments. This led to the complete ig- 
 norinof of that o^rand Messianic scheme which 
 was the central theme of all their law, their 
 prophecy, their ritual, their theocracy, and which, 
 had it been rightly taught, would have fired their 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 99 
 
 hearts, quickened their mnids and inspired them 
 with hohest hopes and a hving faith. 
 
 For this was the "power" that accompanied 
 Jesus' teaching. He taught not the- silly sput- 
 terings of babbling scribes, but the great utter- 
 ances of God as comprehended by his divine 
 mind. 
 
 He spoke not doubtingly or with uncertainty 
 as to what was or was not right and good and 
 true, as they did, but with the "authority" and 
 the positiveness of incarnate truth, speaking, as 
 he said to Nicodemus, "that w^e do know, and 
 testifying that we have seen." 
 
 Could there be greater contrasts as to the 
 persons who taught, the manner in which they 
 spoke, the doctrines they inculcated, and the ef- 
 fects which followed ? . 
 
 Well might they be " astonished at his doc- 
 trine, for his word was with power." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 
 
 (Continued.) 
 
 CHRIST'S WORKS IN THE SYNAGOGUE. 
 
 E have seen the ''power" of Christ's 
 word on the Sabbath : let us now con- 
 sider the "power" of Christ's deeds 
 at the same time and place. 
 
 The subject thus introduced is that of per- 
 sons possessed with devils, or demoniacal pos- 
 session. That there were such cases in our 
 Lord's day is proven by the frequent mention 
 of them in the New Testament. In the Gospels 
 generally, in James ii. 19, and in Rev. xiv. 15 
 the demons are spoken of as spiritual beings at 
 enmity with God, and having power to afflict 
 man, not only with disease, but, as is marked by 
 the frequent epithet, ''unclean," with spiritual 
 pollution also. They "believe" in the exist- 
 ence of Christ, " and tremble." They recognize 
 
 Jesus as the Son of God, and acknowledge the 
 
 100 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 1 01 
 
 power of his name used in exorcism by his ap- 
 pointed ministers as equal to the name of Jeho- 
 vah (Acts xix. 15), and look forward in terror 
 to the judgment to come. The description is 
 precisely that of a nature akin to the angelic in 
 knowledge and power, but with the emphatic 
 addition of the idea of positive and active 
 wickedness. That these evil spirits were per- 
 mitted by God at that time to possess certain 
 persons does not, in the face of the facts of the 
 New Testament, admit of a doubt. That they 
 are not merely "symbolic utterances," ''unreal 
 in actual life," as the mythical school teaches, is 
 evident from the way in which all these narra- 
 tives are introduced, so that, if they are myths, 
 all else is mythical ; they are part and parcel of 
 the same Aveb of history, and are with other 
 facts its warp and woof Take one set away, 
 and you destroy the whole texture. If these 
 are myths, then all that is miraculous in the 
 Bible is a myth, and Judaism as the conservator 
 of the covenant promises of God, of the truth 
 of God, of the worship of God and the usherer 
 in of the Messiah ; and Christianity as the ripe 
 fruit of that budding and blossoming Judaism, 
 
 with all its grand and elevating influences upon 
 9* 
 
102 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 the world of politics, the world of letters, the 
 world of morals, the world of art, are no better 
 than the mythology of Homer or the theogony 
 of Hesiod. That they were not, as some sup- 
 pose, mere cases of moral Insanity, though they 
 have many symptoms in common, Is proved by 
 the fact that our Lord addresses himself several 
 times to the demon itself, speaks to him and of 
 him as something distinct from the man himself, 
 as when he said (Mark I. 25), "Hold thy peace 
 and come out of him ;" from the fact, that they 
 had a personal knowledge of Christ as being 
 not as the Jews generally called him, " the Son 
 of David," but as "the Son of God;" and again 
 they said, " We know thee who thou art, the , 
 holy One of God ;" from the fact, tliat they 
 asked questions aside from anything that could 
 have been personal to the man possessed, and 
 they marked their own individualism and their 
 perfect distinctness of personality from the un- 
 fortunates whom they temporarily subjected to 
 their thrall, by asking, " If thou cast us out, suf- 
 fer us to go away into the herd of swine." 
 These, with many other facts and reasons, abun- 
 dantly discriminate these cases from those which 
 in our day are classed under the head of moral 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. IO3 
 
 insanity. That theory completely fails to meet 
 and satisfy all the demands of the various cases 
 stated in the Gospels. 
 
 That our Lord fell in with the common belief 
 of the day, and used the superstitious language 
 of the times in order not only not to run coun- 
 ter to the Jewish prejudices, but also and espe- 
 cially thereby to augment the 'greatness of his 
 pretended cures, is to attribute to him falsehood 
 in speaking what he knew to be untrue ; dissimu- 
 lation in countenancing gross error; and a pan- 
 dering to the popular taste and sentiment such 
 as can be found in no one act of his whole life. 
 
 It would make our blessed Lord deceitful, 
 cringing, hypocritical and false. " The alle- 
 giance we owe to Christ as the Kino- of truth, 
 who came not to fall in with men's errors, but to 
 deliver men out of their errors, compels us to 
 believe that he would never have used lanoruaQ^e 
 which would have upheld and confirmed so se- 
 rious an error in the minds of men as the belief 
 in Satanic influences which did not in truth exist, 
 for this error, if it was an error, was so little an 
 innocuous one, such as might be left to drop 
 naturally away, did, on the contrary, reach so far 
 in its consequences, entwined its roots so deeply 
 
I04 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 among the very ground truths of religion that 
 he would never have suffered It to remain at 
 the hazard of all the mlsQfrowths which it could 
 not fail to occasion." 
 
 ''Even had not the moral interests at stake 
 been so transcendent, our Idea of Christ's abso- 
 lute veracity, apart from the value of the truth 
 which he communicated, forbids us to suppose 
 that he could have spoken as he did, being per- 
 fectly aware all the while that there was no cor- 
 responding reality to justify the language which 
 he used. Take, for instance, his words (Luke 
 xi. 17-26. His reply to those who said he cast 
 out devils by Beelzebub the prince of devils), 
 and assume him to have known all the while he 
 was thus speaking that the whole Jewish belief 
 of demoniac possessions was utterly baseless, 
 that Satan exercised no such power over the 
 bodies or spirits of men, that, indeed, properly 
 speaking, there was no Satan at all, and what 
 should we have here for a kinof of truth?" 
 
 It involves more difficulties and requires more 
 credulity to accept the rationalistic and mythical 
 explanations of these passages, than to believe 
 the generally received and literal interpretation 
 of them as declaring '' that there are evil spirits, 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. I05 
 
 subjects of the evil one, who In the days of the 
 Lord himself, and his Apostles especially, were 
 permitted by God to exercise a direct and con- 
 trolllnof Influence over the souls and bodies of 
 certain men, producing violent agitations and 
 great sufferings both mental and corporeal." 
 
 While we confess, then, that there Is much 
 that Is mysterious and Inexplicable In the sev- 
 eral narratives of the demoniacs, we are bound 
 by all the laws of evidence and reason to accept 
 their statements, not only because they are part 
 and parcel of one grand revelation, and so can- 
 not be disjointed and removed without detri- 
 ment to the whole, but also because they are 
 more easily explained In the position they hold, 
 and by their surroundings In the several Gos- 
 pels, than by any other system of interpretation. 
 
 "■ For this purpose," says St, John, " the Son 
 of God was manifested, that he might destroy 
 the works of the devil ;" and surely by no 
 method could our Lord make this appear more 
 visible or tangible to men, than by healing 
 all manner of diseases which constituted one 
 crop of Satan's sowings In our bodies, and by 
 casting out devils from those, whom the prince 
 of darkness had brought under his thrall; for in 
 
I06 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 both cases there was a direct appeal to men's 
 senses — to their absolute knowledge of things 
 as an evidence of good results effected — which 
 they could not, in the face of the facts, deny. 
 
 Let us now consider the miracle itself. In 
 the Capernaum Synagogue, drawn thither by 
 impulses which we cannot know, was one of the 
 demoniacs — one who, as St. Mark says, had "an 
 unclean spirit," or, as St. Luke writes, he " had a 
 spirit of an unclean devil." 
 
 The terms ''clean" and "unclean" are bor- 
 rowed from the Levitical law, where certain 
 things, certain acts and certain conditions were 
 termed by that law as being "unclean" or defil- 
 ing, and as necessarily excluding such persons 
 or things from participation and use in the rites 
 and ceremonies of that ritual. David used the 
 terms to express spiritual purity or holiness. 
 Hence he says, " Create in me, O God, a clean 
 heart." " Cleanse thou me from my secret 
 faults ;" and in reply to the question, " Who 
 shall ascend into the hill of the Lord ?" the 
 Psalmist replies, " He that hath clean hands and 
 a put-e heart," etc. 
 
 The gospel use of the term unclean is equiva- 
 lent to sinful, or unholy, and means the absence 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 10/ 
 
 of purity, of soundness, of goodness, of holi- 
 ness. 
 
 All sin is uncleanness, and it is thus spoken 
 of in a general term by the apostle when he 
 says, "God hath not called us unto uncleanness, 
 but unto holiness." 
 
 Our blessed Lord also, speaking to his disci- 
 ples, said of them, after he had washed their 
 feet (John xiii. lo, ii), "Ye are clean, but not 
 all, for he knew who should betray him, there- 
 fore said he. Ye are not all clean." 
 
 The uncleanness of sin results from the fact 
 that it attacks the- holiness of God, and would, 
 were it universally prevalent, eradicate all purity 
 from the world. Sin is the work of the devil, 
 for the apostle says (i John iii. 8), "He that 
 committeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sin- 
 neth from the beginning." He is the moral an- 
 tagonist of Jehovah. He is, therefore, by this 
 very antagonism, unclean, unholy, the opposite 
 of whatever God is in his perfection. There is 
 in him no moral uprightness, no truth, no purity, 
 no goodness. He is " the enemy and the oppo- 
 nent of all righteousness," and all the deeds he 
 has done since his rebellion in heaven, and all 
 the deeds which he has instigated his servants 
 
I08 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 to do on this earth, from the temptation of Eve 
 in the o^arden of Eden to this hour, have been 
 unclean, a defiHng of man made in the image of 
 God, a dehhng of God's law, the reflection of 
 the holiness of God ; a defiling of the character 
 and work of Jesus, the brightness of the Fath- 
 er's glory and the express image of his person ; 
 a defiling of the revealed will of God as holy 
 men wrote it as they were moved by the Holy 
 Ghost; a defiling of the Church of the living 
 God, the mystical body of Christ, by polluting it 
 with heresy and superstition and evil living of 
 its professors. Thus sin, unclean in its nature, 
 its origin, its influence, seeks ever to make un- 
 clean what it touches, and gives to each soul that 
 moral defilement, that spiritual pollution, which 
 makes it in the sight of God unclean, and which 
 requires for its cleansing that, and that alone, 
 which can change its character and give it 
 purity — viz., atoning blood ; for it is a great and 
 a sublime and a most comforting truth " that the 
 blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from 
 all sins." 
 
 Every sinner is thus the servant of an "un- 
 clean" master. Every sin is an ''unclean" act, 
 and a life of sin is a daily adding of uncleanness 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. IO9 
 
 to uncleanness until both the substance and the 
 surface of the soul, its inward principles and its 
 outward manifestations, are full of pollution, an 
 object of just abhorrence to holy angels and a 
 holy God, who, we are told, cannot look upon 
 sin but with abhorrence. The man thus pos- 
 sessed "with the spirit of an unclean devil" 
 had, it may be, lucid intervals, and in one of 
 these temporary lulls perhaps he went to the 
 Synagogue. During the teaching of Jesus the 
 man began to manifest symptoms of demoniacal 
 possession ; and though it does not appear that 
 our Lord had addressed a word to him, yet he 
 cried out with a loud voice, "Let us alone. 
 What have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of 
 Nazareth ? art thou come to destroy us ? I 
 know thee who thou art, the holy One of God." 
 Such an interruption of the discourse of Jesus 
 must have spread terror in the minds of the 
 congregation, and we may readily imagine the 
 alarm that would be produced by the presence 
 of a dem.oniac under the active spell and po- 
 tency of an unclean spirit, not knowing what he 
 might say or what he might do. 
 
 To reassure the trembling audience ready to 
 break away from so dreaded a spectacle, to stop 
 
 10 
 
no THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 the iindesired confession and acknowledgment 
 of the evil one, and to manifest his own power 
 over the unseen spirits thus working their foul 
 work through human agencies, our Lord calls 
 out, not to the man, but to the devil within him, 
 "• Hold thy peace and come out of him." He 
 thus recognized the presence within the man of 
 a spiritual agent separate and apart from the 
 man, a duality of existence wherein the human 
 Vv'as subjected and captive to the demon who In- 
 habited him, the subordination of the whole man 
 to the power of the devil. To the command of 
 Jesus, " Hold thy peace and come out of him," 
 there was an immediate though reluctant obe- 
 dience. The unclean spirit w^as not willing to 
 go, and yet go he must, but go he would not until 
 he had done all the hurt which his limited and 
 impotent rage permitted, and hence it is stated by 
 St. Mark that "when he had torn him and cried 
 out with a loud voice, he came out of him," and 
 by St. Luke, "When the devil had thrown him 
 in the midst, he came out of him and hurt him 
 not." These accounts seem to show that as 
 soon as the unclean spirit heard the word of 
 Christ he threw the man into violent convulsions, 
 during the paroxysm of which he was torn with 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. Ill 
 
 pain and suffering, so that he fell writhing in the 
 midst of the people, and uttering the loud and 
 terrifying, though inarticulate, cry of blended 
 rage on the part of the devil and torture on the 
 part of the demoniac, so that it sounded through 
 the Synagogue like the yell of a defeated yet 
 still defiant spirit, the unclean spirit departed 
 from him. We have at Mark ix. 26 (cf. Luke 
 ix. 42) an analogous case, although there a par- 
 oxysm more violent still accompanies the going 
 out of the foul spirit, "for what the devil cannot 
 keep as his own he will, if he can, destroy ; even 
 as Pharaoh never treated the children of Israel 
 so ill as then, when they were just escaping 
 from their grasp. Something similar is ever- 
 more finding place, and Satan tempts, plagues 
 and buffets none so fiercely as those who are in 
 the act of being delivered from his tyranny for 
 ever." The exclamation of the man, "Let us 
 alone, thou Jesus of Nazareth; art thou come 
 to destroy us ? I know thee who thou art, the 
 holy One of God," showed that the evil spirits 
 knew Christ even in his guise of humanity, as 
 if this man had said, "You appear outwardly as 
 only Jesus of Nazareth, but I know thee who 
 thou art, the holy One of God ;" and with this 
 
112 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 confession as to the person of Jesus there was 
 also implied an acknowledgment of his power 
 and authority over them, for the unclean spirit 
 asked, ''Art thou come to destroy us?" They 
 knew that it was the work of the Messiah, whose 
 presence under the garb and name of Jesus of 
 Nazareth they recognized, to destroy the work 
 of the devil and to bind hand and foot and cast 
 into outer darkness, where their worm dieth not 
 and the fire is not quenched, all those his ene- 
 mies, men or devils, who will not submit lovingly 
 to his sceptre and dominion. 
 
 This and other similar confessions of the 
 unclean spirits show also that the devils know 
 what is to be their ultimate fate, that they are to 
 be destroyed ; not destroyed by annihilation — 
 that is directly contrary to the clear teaching 
 of the Bible — but destroyed In a sense corre- 
 sponding with the term "second death;" that 
 destruction of all hope, all love, all peace, 
 all joy, all rest, which will be the doom of the 
 wicked, that dying out within them of every- 
 thing that once was good, that deadness of the 
 soul to all the high and holy bliss of heaven, 
 that entombment of the disembodied spirit in 
 the eternal prison-house of the lost, where the 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. II3 
 
 smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and 
 ever. 
 
 In dlrectino^ the devil who had made this con- 
 fession concerning Jesus to " hold his peace," or, 
 literally, " be muzzled," Jesus showed that he 
 wanted not his testimony to His divine mis- 
 sion. The truth needed no witness to it 
 from the " father of lies ;" nor was Jesus to be 
 bought off from his purpose of dispossessing 
 this poor man by the flattery of the unclean 
 spirit within him, saying that he was the holy 
 One of Cod, and that he had the power to 
 destroy him. 
 
 What Jesus did in this case we find he did also 
 in others, for it is said in another place, " He suf- 
 fered not the devils to speak, because they knew 
 him," conscious, perhaps, that their attestation 
 might w^eaken the force of his words, and subject 
 his ministry and his works to the charge of col- 
 lusion with the spirits whom he thus appeared to 
 cast out. Indeed, we find that this was at length 
 distinctly charged upon him : " He casteth out 
 devils by Beelzebub, the prince of devils ;" and 
 on another occasion, after listening to words 
 which because of their spirituality and power 
 they could not comprehend, the people said, 
 
 10* 
 
114 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 " He hath a devil, and is mad ; why hear ye 
 him ?" 
 
 The credentials which Jesus demanded of 
 these unclean spirits were not confessions as to 
 his person and his power, but obedience to his 
 word. By going out of men at his bidding, they 
 gave a higher proof of Jesus' divinity and cha- 
 racter as the Redeemer from sin, than could pos- 
 sibly arise from all the confessions of all fallen 
 angels. By going out at Jesus' bidding they 
 showed to the world that in him lay a higher 
 power — a power they could not resist, a power 
 that only temporarily held back their foretold 
 destruction — that they and their master and the 
 whole realm of evil which they represented were' 
 subordinated to the word of Jesus, and thus ac- 
 knowledged his superiority. 
 
 And when we ponder on it for a moment, 
 what a wonderful testimony to Christ was thus 
 borne to his Messiahship, by the fact that in 
 every instance mentioned in the Gospels, the 
 devils hieii) him, feared him, obeyed him, fled 
 from his presence, and deprecated his poiver ! 
 How it tells of the inherent divinity that was 
 thus temporarily overshadowed by his humanity 
 which could speak with such authority ! How 
 
^THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. II5 
 
 it tells of his supreme dominion over the whole 
 world of spirits, the good and the bad being 
 alike subjects of his universal rule — the angels 
 to minister unto him, the devils to believe and 
 tremble, both to bow before him ! 
 
 The effects of this act of Jesus produced great 
 amazement and great questionings. As this 
 was doubtless the first time that he had wrought 
 such a miracle, and the first tim.e that any such 
 dispossession of evil spirits had taken place, 
 they w^ere entirely unprepared for such a mxani- 
 festation of divine power, such a grappling with 
 the spirits of evil, such an assertion of control 
 over the unseen world, such a concentrating- of 
 power in speech, as they then saw in their Syna- 
 gogue. No wonder they were amazed, con- 
 founded, alarmed. No wonder that they ques- 
 tioned with themselves. What a word is this ? 
 what new doctrine is this ? what thinp- Is this ? 
 for with authority and power he commandeth 
 the unclean spirits and they do obey him. 
 
 Thus wonderlnof and discussing among them- 
 selves at what they had seen and heard, the 
 congregation of the Synagogue broke up into 
 little knots of eager talkers and listeners, 
 and as they went their several ways, they 
 
Il6 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 told all they met of what had been done, until 
 the city was rife with the story, arid all Caper- 
 naum heard with astonishment that the new citi- 
 zen, Jesus, who had so recently come to their 
 town from Nazareth, had that day spoken words 
 such as their ears never before heard — words of 
 truth and holiness and power — and done a deed 
 that day such as had never been wrought in all 
 Israel, the tanoible and livincr evidence of which 
 was before them in the dispossessed man and 
 the hundred witnessing people, so that they 
 could not gainsay or disbelieve without distrust- 
 inof the evidence of their senses and the credi- 
 billty of their friends. This miracle and this 
 teaching gave to Jesus a prominence which drev/ 
 to him all eyes, all ears, as a great wonder- 
 worker in Israel, for " his fame spread abroad 
 throuo^hout all the reo^ion round about Galilee." 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM, 
 
 (Continued.) 
 
 CHRIST OUTSIDE THE SYNAGOGUE. 
 
 " And when Jesus was come into Peter's house, he saw his wife's 
 mother laid and sick of a fever. And he touched her hand, and the 
 fever left her, and she arose and ministered unto them. When the 
 even was come, they brought unto him many' that were possessed with 
 devils, and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that 
 were sick : that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the 
 prophet, saying. Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." 
 Matt. viii. 14-17. 
 
 " And forthwith, when they were come out of the Synagogue, they 
 entered into the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 
 But Simon's wife's mother lay sick of a fever; and anon they tell him 
 of her. And he came and took her by the hand, and lifted her up, and 
 immediately the fever left her, and she ministered unto them. And at 
 even, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were dis- 
 eased, and them that v.ere possessed with devils. And all the city was 
 gathered together at the door. And he healed many that were sick of 
 divers diseases, and cast out many devils, and suffered not the devils to 
 speak, because they knew him." Mark i. 29-34. 
 
 " And he arose out of the Synagogue and entered into Simon's 
 house. And Simon's wife's mother was taken with a great fever, and 
 they besought him for her. And he stood over her and rebuked the 
 fever, and it left her, and immediately she arose and ministered unto 
 them. Now, Avhen the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with 
 divers diseases brought them unto him, and he laid his hands on every 
 one of them and healed them. And devils also came out of many, 
 crying out and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God. And he, re- 
 buking them, suffered them not to speak, for they knew that he was 
 Christ." Luke iv. 38-41. 
 
 117 
 
Il8 THE SAB BATHS OF- OUR LORD, 
 
 |HE service of the Synagogue, conform- 
 ing to the hours of temple worship, 
 began at nine o'clock, the third hour 
 of the clay, and would ordinarily end before 
 noon. On this occasion, however, the exercises 
 were interrupted by the demoniac and the con- 
 sequent act of Jesus in casting out the unclean 
 spirit, and the people dispersed in astonishment, 
 without waitincr for the usual benediction. 
 
 Jesus had already called Peter and Andrew, 
 James and John, the two pairs of brothers, from 
 their fishing boats and nets to be his disciples 
 and to become " fishers of men," and now, ac- 
 cepting an invitation from the two elder breth- 
 ren, he goes to the house of Simon Peter for 
 the Sabbath meal, which, according to Josephus, 
 was usually eaten at the sixth hour, or twelve 
 o'clock. The dwellinof which he entered is called 
 by St. Matthew ''the house of Peter," by St. 
 INIark, '* the house of Simon and Andrew," and 
 by St. Luke, " the house of Simon." The two 
 latter evangelists speak of Peter (i.e., rock), 
 surnamed thus by our Lord after his memorable 
 confession of him as " the Christ," by his earlier 
 Syriac name of Simon (i.e., hearer). 
 
 St. Mark, who wrote under the special direc- 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. II9 
 
 tion of St. Peter, and who, therefore, In the facts 
 concerninor hini, wrote with orreater minuteness 
 of detail, says that the building was ''the house 
 of Simon and Andrew," as If It was the joint 
 property of the sons of Jonas, or at least occu- 
 pied by the families of each. 
 
 Here, then, was the home of the two first- 
 called apostles. There is nothing to Indicate 
 whether it was large or small, well or poorly 
 furnished, in a prominent or a retired part of 
 the town. All that we know with certainty of 
 their worldly condition Is that they were fisher- 
 men, that they owned one of the fleet of fishing- 
 smacks, or small vessels, which sailed on the 
 lake, that they owned a dwelling in Capernaum, 
 that Peter was a married man, that Peter's wife's 
 mother was living with them, that they extended 
 their plain hospitality to Jesus by asking him to 
 take his mid-day Sabbath meal with them, that 
 they included James and John In this Invitation, 
 and that our Lord rewarded their hospitality by 
 a miracle of mercy to the sick mother-in-law of 
 Peter. 
 
 We Infer from St. Mark's record that Jesus 
 was not informed of the sickness of Peter's 
 wife's mother until after he had gone to the 
 
120 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 house, for he says, *' He entered Into the house 
 of Simon and Andrew, . . . and anon they tell him 
 of her." She was " laid," or prostrate, thrown 
 down, on a bed, " sick of a great fever." From 
 the term translated " great," by which St. Luke, 
 himself a physician, characterizes this fever, fol- 
 lowing therein the distinction made by Galen 
 and the Greek physicians of "great" and 
 "small" fevers, we Infer that the sickness was a 
 high grade of Syrian fever, such as Is often met 
 with at this day In those regions, and which was 
 frequently and rapidly fatal. No sooner Is he 
 Informed of her Illness than he goes to her 
 room, and standing by her bed, takes her hand, 
 rebukes the fever, gently lifts her up (for all 
 these acts are hinted at by the several writers), 
 and Immediately the fever left her and she arises 
 well and strong. The healino- medicine here 
 was Christ's rebuklno^ word to the fever. This 
 word "rebuked" Is surely worthy of special no- 
 tice here, for It Implies the presence of some 
 hostile power and the rebuking or turning back 
 that power by a superior and controlling power. 
 The word Is the same as that used In quelling 
 the storm upon the Sea of Galilee, when It is 
 said, " Then he arose and rebuked the wind and 
 
777^ FIRST SABBATH TV CAFERNAUM. 121 
 
 the sea, and there was a great calm." In the 
 case of the stormy sea there was a great tem- 
 pest above, together with the raging of the 
 water dashing over the ship, and the rebuke 
 was couched in the words, " Peace, be still." 
 The immediate subsidence of winds and waves 
 into "a ofreat calm" showed how obedient these 
 powers of nature, even in their wildest and 
 most furious state, are to their Lord and Master, 
 and how he makes them, as servitors of his will, 
 do his bidding and submit to his sway. Just so 
 with one tempest-tossed with a raging fever, 
 restless, delirious, so that the whole surface of 
 his being is furrowed with the waves of pain as, 
 like successive billows, they roll over the system 
 in the exacerbations of fever. The rebuke of 
 Jesus to the assailing fever, this boisterous and 
 disturbing power, "Peace, be still," hushes at 
 once its violence, breaks at once its force, drives 
 away at once its pain, restores at once the 
 poised mind, the steady will, the strong limbs, 
 the quiet heart. 
 
 The results of this beneficent act of Jesus 
 were immediate : '' the fever left her." But it 
 did not leave her, as fevers ordinarily do, with an 
 
 exhausting weakness after the artificial strength 
 11 
 
122 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 of the febrile attack. It did not leave her pros- 
 trated in the contest, requiring care, nursing, 
 food, in order to build up the system and repair 
 the wasted strength through the usual process 
 of slow convalescence, for we are told that not 
 only did the fever leave her, but '' she arose and 
 ministered unto them." She proved the sound- 
 ness and the quickness of her recovery by at 
 once doing the personal services which the rites 
 of hospitality required. Thus the word of Christ 
 not only rebuked the fever, but Invoked health, 
 not only banished pain and suffering and weak- 
 ness, but infused strength, activity and all ma- 
 tronly energy. It was a double miracle. Jesus 
 had, perhaps, never been under that roof before, 
 yet what a blessing he brought to that house ! 
 and how the miracle-healed mother must have 
 rejoiced that her son-in-law was the professed 
 disciple of Him who could command not only 
 the wind and the waves, but diseases and devils, 
 and they obey him ! 
 
 This narrative Is also Interestlnof as it IncI- 
 dentally brings out two facts : first, that the 
 apostle Peter was a married man. It was his 
 " wife's mother " that was healed. If Peter, the 
 head of the college of the apostles, the '' Rock '* 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 1 23 
 
 on which, as so many contend, the Lord biiilded 
 his Church, the "founder," as is claimed by self- 
 styled infallibilists, of "the Church of Rome," 
 from whom the pope derives his power of the 
 keys, and up to whom he traces his ecclesias- 
 tical lineage, — if Peter could be married, and, 
 as St. Paul says (i Cor. ix. 5), "Lead about a 
 wife," surely his successors may do the sam.e, 
 for they are not more pure and holy than he, 
 and to forbid any to do it, is to forbid what 
 our Lord himself countenanced and approved. 
 . The second fact is, that by his presence in that 
 house, and by his miracle wrought there under 
 those circumstances, he evinced his approval of 
 the marital state in which he found his servant 
 Peter. If Jesus had disapproved of marriage 
 and of marriage feasts, would he have wrought 
 his "beofinninor- of miracles" to enhance the 
 pleasure of a bridal banquet? and if Jesus had 
 disapproved of his ministers having wives and 
 desired them to be celibates, would he have ac- 
 cepted the hospitality of a married apostle and 
 wrought a miracle to heal his wife's mother? 
 Most certainly not. 
 
 But the work of the day is not yet over. 
 The Jewish style of reckoning was from sunset 
 
124 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 to sunset, hence the Sabbath ended with the 
 ooniof down of the sun. The strictness which 
 
 o o 
 
 till that hour had been so scrupulously observed 
 was then relaxed, and works might be done then 
 which It w^ould have been unlawful to do an 
 hour before. But thouoh the solemn observ- 
 ances of the day were over, yet the sacred influ- 
 ence of the Sabbath still lingered, as did the 
 twilight of the Sabbath sun, and while strictness 
 was relaxed, hallowed feelings and words still 
 llnorered above the horizon which had hid the 
 setting Sabbath. So soon, therefore, as this 
 hour arrived, we find that all Capernaum is astir. 
 The streets are being filled, and the throngs are 
 directing their steps tow^ard Peter's house. But 
 what a strange motley of people ! Not only the 
 usual elements of a crowd, the young and old, 
 man and v;oman, the higher and the lov/er 
 classes, the rude and the refined, but see ! there 
 is one mother carrying in her arms a sick infant, 
 there is a person leading a blind man, there is a 
 litter borne by two persons on which lies a pa- 
 tient deathly sick, there is a group struggling to 
 get along with them a raving maniac, there is a 
 helpless paralytic carried by his friends, there 
 goes the cripple slowly crawling over the rough 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. I 25 
 
 pavement. What a strange congregation of 
 sick and diseased and maimed and deaf and 
 dumb and blind and epileptic and demonized 
 persons, yet all eager, all anxious, all with faces 
 set toward one spot ! What means this unusual 
 sight, never before seen in that city ? Why this 
 o^atherinor to the house of this fisherman ? It is 
 because Jesus is there. They have heard of his 
 mornincf miracle, thev have caucyht rumors of 
 other wondrous works, they recognize among 
 them the presence of One who can do what hu- 
 man love and tenderness, human physicians and 
 surgeons, cannot do, and they come In crowds, 
 some to ask his help for themselves and friends, 
 and others prompted by curiosity to see whether 
 or no this Jesus of Nazareth can do what report 
 says he has done in other places ; and so it came 
 to pass, as St. Mark has it, "All the city was 
 gathered too-ether at the door." 
 
 Nor were they gathered in vain. The Lord 
 Jesus goes out to them as they crowd the streets 
 and open spaces, and passing from one to an- 
 other, lays his hands on every one — not one 
 overlooked — and heals them all. He also cast 
 out many devils "with his word," who, as they 
 
 came out of their victims, cried out, saying, 
 11* 
 
126 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 '' Thou art Christ, the Son of God ; but Jesus 
 rebuked them and suffered them not to speak, 
 for they knew that he was Christ;" and he was 
 not wiUIng that their impure tongues should 
 proclaim his holy mission, lest, in the perverted 
 minds of those who were ever seekinor occasion 
 to denounce him, the testimony of these unclean 
 spirits to his person and mission might mar the 
 work which he came to accomplish. 
 
 What a Sabbath eveninor scene was that ! As 
 one after another was healed and stood up in 
 the full flush of -health, as the cripple walked, as 
 the blind saw, as the dumb spake, as the crook- 
 ed was made straight, as the paralytic became 
 strong, as the sick were made well, how each In 
 turn must have added to the common stock of 
 joy, each caused fresh wonder to the gaping 
 crowd, each observed the exhaustless fullness 
 of healing grace which showed Itself as strong 
 in castinor out the last devil as in curinof the first 
 fever ! The shadows of the evening crept over 
 the surrounding hills, the short but lovely \xA- 
 light had departed, and the stars looked down 
 and classed themselves in the mirror-like lake 
 below them, before the loving work of Jesus was 
 over, and there remained not a sick or demoniac 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 12/ 
 
 person In that whole city of Capernaum except 
 such as may have refused to go to Jesus. Who 
 can tell the joy that Jesus thus sent into many 
 hearts and many homes? Who can measure 
 the sorrow and the suffering which thus, at a 
 word, he drove away ? and as the citizens after 
 such intense excitement settled themselves to 
 their nightly sleep, they must have wondered at 
 the marvelous change which one short hour had 
 wrought in their social life, leaving not a sick 
 person to be watched over or cared for, but all, 
 without exception, could lie down in health and 
 sleep in peace, because the great Healer had 
 scattered broadcast his blessings and taken 
 away the long-existing evils, and given freely, 
 without money and without price, life, health 
 and soundness of mind and body to all who 
 sought his healing power. 
 
 St. Matthew gives the keynote to this whole 
 transaction when he adds to his account of it 
 these remarkable words : " That it might be ful- 
 filled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, 
 saying. Himself took our infirmities and bare 
 our sicknesses." The words of Isaiah (liii. 4), 
 in our English version, are, "Surely he hath 
 borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." The 
 
128 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 chapter in which these words occur is one of the 
 most touchingly Messianic of all his prophecies. 
 
 From the be£rinninor to the end the one theme 
 is the Messiah — Messiah rejected, Messiah suf- 
 fering, Messiah in his vicarious redemption, 
 Messiah the sin-bearer, Messiah conquering and 
 Messiah in final triumph. 
 
 The words, as originally uttered, evidently 
 had a double meaning, referring primarily to 
 Christ's bearing away or carrying away our sins, 
 an act typified by the scapegoat on the great 
 day of atonement, when the selected victim, 
 having had, as it were, laid upon his head by 
 the imposition of the high priest's hands " all 
 the sins of the children of Israel" which they 
 had before confessed, was given over to the 
 hand of a special messenger to be led away into 
 the wilderness, '' into a land not inhabited," and 
 was there let loose. Thus symbolically the 
 scapegoat bore away the sins of the people. 
 All this was a figure of Christ, the true sin- 
 bearer, to whom all the types of the Levitical 
 ritual pointed, and who alone "bore away" our 
 sins. 
 
 Isaiah uses the words, "griefs," "sorrows," 
 putting the effect for the cause. Sin always, 
 
 ^ 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. I 29 
 
 however sweet at the first taste, brings eventual 
 grief and sorrow, and the root of every grief 
 and sorrow that afflicts man is sin. St. Mat- 
 thew appHes it to another form of sin's doings, 
 and still, like Isaiah, putting the effect for the 
 cause, says, after the wondrous putting forth of 
 healing power on that Sabbath evening, '' Him- 
 self took our infirmities and bare our sick- 
 nesses." Sin brings in infirmities and sickness. 
 There is not a cause of human sufferinof that 
 does not find its origin in sin, and it is the mani- 
 fold and wide-branching results of sin which 
 cover the earth as with sackcloth, which fill It 
 v/ith sick bodies and diseased souls, which make 
 It a vast lazar-house of infirmity and woe. It is 
 all sin's work. Its fruit. Its wages. 
 
 The taking away of these physical effects of 
 sin — an act beyond all human power — proved 
 that he could take away sin Itself, the parent of 
 this progeny of disease and death. 
 
 Our Lord himself appeals to this in the case 
 of the man sick of the palsy, for when the 
 scribes objected to his saying to the paralytic, 
 " Thy sins be forgiven thee," charging him with 
 speaking blasphemies and declaring that God 
 only can forgive sin, Jesus simply adds, " But 
 
130 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 that ye may know that the Son of man hath 
 power on earth to forgive sin, he saith to the 
 sick of the palsy, I say unto thee, arise and take 
 up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house." 
 As if he had said. You challenge my right to 
 forgive sin, you accuse me of blasphemy in say- 
 ing what I did, because it is the sole preroga- 
 tive of God to forgive sin. I will, therefore, 
 prove to you that I have the power to forgive 
 sins, and that I am not, as you think, a blas- 
 phemer, by giving immediate cure to this para- 
 lytic confessedly beyond the reach of all human 
 skill, and the imxmediate response to the word 
 of Jesus by the paralytic, now no longer crip- 
 pled with palsy, but suddenly starting up Into 
 full health, was the divine attestation and cre- 
 dential of his power to forgive sin. 
 
 In a secondary sense, therefore, when Jesus 
 took away the resulting evils of sin, he did fulfill 
 a prophecy which foretold that he should " bear 
 our griefs and carry our sorrows," so that St. 
 Matthew might in truth say, " Himself took our 
 infirmities and bare our sicknesses." 
 
 There is no doubt that the healing power 
 which our Lord exercised In and around Peter's 
 house was also accompanied with deep personal 
 
 ^ 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. I3I 
 
 consciousness of the evil of sin as thus worklnof 
 ' out these sad results, and with intense compas- 
 sion for those afflicted with the grievous mala- 
 dies. These two feelings, a consciousness of 
 the full evil of sin and a true sympathy with the 
 sufferer from sin, blended in one strong emo- 
 tion, must have weighed heavily upon the ten- 
 der and holy heart of Jesus, and burdened his 
 spirit with a grief too deep for human compre- 
 hension. It was not with him a cold, mechanical 
 bestowal of healing power. In the giving out of 
 which he was an impassive agent. He did not 
 regard himself as a walking battery of vital 
 forces, needing only a- physical, tactual applica- 
 tion, to receive the energizing and health-beget- 
 ting influence, but in all his acts and works we 
 everywhere discover that he weeps with those 
 who weep, mourns v/Ith those who mourn, re- 
 joices with those who rejoice, brings his heart 
 in living contact with other hearts, and touches 
 all the faculties and affections of the soul by the 
 manifestations of his sympathetic spirit. 
 
 " He realized, as no one else ever did, the 
 law of all true helping, namel}^ that the burden 
 which you v/ould lift you must yourself stoop to 
 and come under (Gal. vi. 2), the grief which you 
 
132 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 would console you must yourself feel with ; a 
 law which we witness to as often as we use the 
 words ''sympathy" and "compassion" was tru- 
 est of all in him upon whom the help of all was 
 laid. Not in this single aspect of his life alone 
 were these words of the prophet fulfilled, but 
 rather in the life itself, which brought him in 
 contact with the thousand forms of want and 
 woe, of discord in man's outer life, of discord in 
 man's inner being. Every one of these, as a 
 real consequence of sin, and at every moment 
 contemplated by him as such, pressed with a 
 living pang into the holy soul of our Lord. " He 
 could therefore heal neither bodily nor spiritual 
 disease without a deep consciousness of his spe- 
 cial relation to man as the Substitute, the Re- 
 deemer, the Lamb of God, who was to bear the 
 penalty of the world's guilt. And it is not, we 
 believe, too much to suppose that by a super- 
 human and perfect compassion he took into his 
 own holy consciousness and truly realized the 
 bodily as well as the spiritual suffering which he 
 removed from others." 
 
 What an ennobling idea does this give us of 
 the height and depth and length and breadth of 
 our Lord's compassion ! How beautifully does 
 
THE FIRST SABBATH IN CAPERNAUM. 1 33 
 
 It Interpret those heart-soothing words, "We 
 have not a high priest which cannot be touched 
 with the feeling of our Infirmities, but was In all 
 points tempted like as we are, yet without sin," 
 and those other words, '' For verily he took not 
 on him the nature of angels, but he took on him 
 the seed of Abraham. Wherefore In all things 
 It behooved him to be made like unto his breth- 
 ren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high 
 priest In things pertaining to God. For in that 
 he himself hath suffered, being tempted, he is 
 able to succor them that are tempted." 
 
 " When gathering clouds around I view, 
 And days are dark and friends are few, 
 On Him I lean who not in vain 
 Experienced every human pain ; 
 He feels my griefs, he sees my fears, 
 And counts and treasures up my tears." 
 
 Such is the record of the first Sabbath of our 
 
 Lord at Capernaum, full of holy words, whose 
 
 power thrilled hundreds of hearts ; full of holy 
 
 deeds, whose healing effects reached hundreds 
 
 of the sick and the possessed of devils ; and the 
 
 personal presence of Jesus speaking these holy 
 
 words, and doing these wondrous deeds, and 
 
 diffusing these marvelous blessings, made that 
 
 Sabbath the most noted day ever known In the 
 
 history of that city. 
 12 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE SABBATH AT THE 
 
 BETHESDA. 
 
 POOL OF 
 
 "After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to 
 Jerusalem. Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, 
 which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. 
 Ill these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, 
 waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a 
 certain season into the pool, and troubled the water : \vhosoever then 
 first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of what- 
 soever disease he had. And a certain man was there, which had an 
 infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew 
 that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt 
 thou be made whole ? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have 
 no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool : but while 
 I am coming, another steppeth down before me. Jesus saith unto him. 
 Rise, take, up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made 
 whole, and took up his bed, and walked : and on the same day was the 
 sabbath. The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, It is the 
 sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed. He answered 
 them. He that made me whole, the same said unto me. Take up thy 
 bed, and walk. Then asked they him. What man is that which said 
 unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk ? And he that was healed wist 
 not who it was : for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude 
 being in that place." John v. 1-13. 
 
 N reference to the opening verse of 
 this chapter, Chrysostom says, "Jesus 
 went up to the feast at Jerusalem to 
 show his reverence for the law of Moses, and in 
 
 134 
 
 
 SB 
 
 1 
 
n itufiin I'l i*yiaii,!'!i'ij,„j|:':! 
 
 tr' 
 K 
 
THE SABBA TH AT BE THESDA. I 3 5 
 
 order to preach to the multitudes then assem- 
 bled there." Certainly he never lost an oppor- 
 tunity of "preaching the kingdom of God," and 
 ever availed himself of casual events and way- 
 side scenes to do o:ood to the souls and to the 
 bodies of men. This is illustrated by his Sab- 
 bath work at the pool of Bethesda. This pool 
 or reservoir was situated near St. Stephen's 
 gate — the old sheep-gate — and just outside of 
 the northern wall of the Haram Area. There 
 was evidently a spring or fountain here, which 
 for sanitary purposes had been converted 
 into a large tank by excavating and building 
 around it with solid masonrv, so as to hold a 
 large supply of water. On the border of this 
 pool were erected colonnades or porches, con- 
 sistinof of several archwavs or cloisters, for the 
 use and enjoyment of those frequenting that 
 attractive spot. 
 
 It seems that the popular opinion was, as the 
 legend recorded in the fourth verse shows, that 
 at a certain season an angel troubled the water, 
 and then whosoever first stepped in afterward 
 was healed of whatsoever disease he had. This 
 pool was resorted to, therefore, by multitudes of 
 impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, "waiting 
 
136 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 for the movinof of the waters." That this was 
 the common beUef among the Jews cannot be 
 denied. What grounds there were for it we do 
 not know, though the legend must have had 
 some basis or root out of which the widespread 
 superstition as to the angeHc troubUng and heal- 
 ing grew. 
 
 There is some doubt as to the authenticity of 
 this fourth verse, founded on the fact that the 
 words are not found in some verv old and im- 
 portant manuscripts and versions, and hence by 
 those who reject the verse it is supposed to be 
 the interpolation of a transcriber, who incor- 
 porated into the sacred text what was origin- 
 ally only a marginal gloss of a commentator 
 explaining the healing virtue of the water by 
 statine the current legend of the troublino; of 
 it by the angel who periodically bathed in its 
 waters. 
 
 Thou eh the absence of this verse from some 
 first-class manuscripts. Uncial as well as Cursive, 
 casts some suspicion on its genuineness, yet there 
 is ereat weight of evidence on the other side, 
 and the words are found in copies of the gospel 
 in the time of Tertullian, and are quoted as 
 canonical Scripture by some of the earliest and 
 
THE SABBATH AT BE THE SB A. I 3/ 
 
 most cautious of the Christian Fathers. The 
 presence or absence of this verse, however, has 
 little to do with the narrative of the miracle, as 
 it only accounts for the poor infirm man being 
 where he was and for so long a time. The mir- 
 acle which our Lord wrought rests not upon that 
 verse, and hence its omission or retention does 
 not affect the divine transaction. 
 
 The traditional pool of Bethesda, called the 
 Birket Israil^ is now in ruins. Its once capa- 
 cious basin Is nearly filled with rubbish, its once 
 populous colonnades are now fallen, and only two 
 so-called porches or arched recesses are visible. 
 But its locality, its proportions, its surroundings, 
 seem to indicate that that, and not, as some sup- 
 pose, the Fountain of the Virgin, outside of the 
 gate, in the valley of the Kedron, is the real 
 pool of Bethesda by the sheep-gate or market 
 mentioned by St. John. 
 
 The objection made by some to the state- 
 ment that only one person was healed after 
 each troublinor of the water does not neces- 
 
 o 
 
 sarily militate with the reception of the verse, 
 because it does not say how often that " cer- 
 tain season " was at which the angel went down 
 into the pool, and it may have been once a 
 
138 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 month, or once a week, or at irregular but yet 
 
 numerous times, so that during the year a score 
 
 or more persons might have been thus healed. 
 
 Besides, is not the fact as it is recorded, like 
 
 many other of God's providential dealings with 
 
 his people ? Had not our Lord a little while 
 
 before, in his discourse in the Synagogue at 
 
 Nazareth, mentioned two almost analogous 
 
 cases of God's sovereignty in the disposition 
 
 of his gifts of grace and healing? "Many 
 
 widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, 
 
 when the heaven was shut up three years and 
 
 six months, when great famine was throughout 
 
 all the land ; but unto none of them was Elias 
 
 (Elijah) sent save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, 
 
 unto a woman that was a widow. And many 
 
 lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus 
 
 (Elisha) the prophet, and none of them was 
 
 cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian." God 
 
 thus gives or withholds at his pleasure, with 
 
 or without human or angelic instrumentalities, 
 
 and none can say. What doest thou ? or question 
 
 his right to do what he will with his own gifts 
 
 of healine or of erace ; and our Lord himself, 
 
 be it remembered, only healed one of all the 
 
 multitudes which lay there. Besides, this was 
 
THE SABBATH AT BETHESDA. I 39 
 
 a period In the Jewish history when angehc 
 Interpositions and miracles were looked for, 
 and did actually occur; and by them, Infre- 
 quent as they were, the minds of the people 
 w^ere made conversant w^th them, were pre- 
 pared to receive them, and the more readily 
 accredited the truths or facts they were de- 
 slo^ned to herald or attest. 
 
 The attempt of some commentators to take 
 the healing efficacy of the waters out of the 
 category of miracles, and attribute It to mere 
 medicinal qualities In the spring, such as are 
 found In the chalybeate or sulphur or other 
 mineral springs In our day, not only conflicts 
 with the words of the text, but suggests the 
 unanswerable questions. If the healing virtue 
 lay in the medicinal character of the water, 
 why were not all \\\\o stepped Into It healed ? 
 Why was It restorative only at certain seasons ? 
 Why exhaust Its efficacy on one case ? 
 
 Let us now look at the scene which presented 
 itself to our Lord on that Sabbath morning. 
 On his way to the temple he had to pass 
 Bethesda. In its many porches he saw "a 
 great multitude of Impotent folk, of blind, halt, 
 withered, waltlncr for the moving of the water." 
 
140 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 There were no hospitals then where the sons 
 and daiiorhters of sickness could be housed and 
 cared for. Those who had money or friends 
 might receive due attention, but the poor and 
 the friendless crawled into the streets or open 
 places of the city, or lay along the highway, ob- 
 jects of pity and compassion, begging alms, im- 
 ploring relief, exhibiting their sores and deform- 
 ities, and indebted to the passing stranger for the 
 daily sustenance of a wretched, homeless life. 
 We see much of this at the present time in 
 the East. It is a calamity to be sick anywhere — 
 to be blind or halt under any the most favorable 
 circumstances ; but to be diseased and have no 
 hand of friendship to mitigate your suffering, 
 to be blind or deaf or dumb or paralytic and 
 have no commiseration of kindly companionship, 
 to be left all broken down in body and mind 
 to grope along life's pathway halting, stum- 
 bling, suffering, dying, with no word of com- 
 fort and no arm of succor, — oh, this Is wretch- 
 edness indeed ! This the climax of sorrow ! 
 Christ's conduct toward the sick and the afflicted 
 has given birth to all the hospitals and asylums 
 and benevolent Institutions of the world. They 
 are the outo^rowth of the words and the deeds 
 
THE SABBATH AT BETHESDA. ■ I4I 
 
 of Jesus. But for them the world would be 
 now what It was before the advent of Christ, 
 without a hospital or an asylum or a reforma- 
 tory or any association banded together to dis- 
 pense relief or comfort to the needy and the 
 disconsolate. 
 
 The world owes all the brio-htness of its be- 
 nevolence and the glory of Its great eleemosy- 
 nary institutions, and the lofty compassion that 
 rules the minds of thousands, and the grand 
 philanthropy that sees In every hum^an face " a 
 brother," and In every wayside sick man a 
 "neighbor," to the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 All this Is his work — a work, too. Incidental to 
 his higher work, though necessarily flowing out 
 of that, for, as that love which brought him to 
 eardi to be man's redeemer was infinite, so Its 
 overflowings to the sinful and unworthy, even to 
 those who will not receive his offered salvation, 
 are fraught with copious blessings, diffusing their 
 virtue throuo^h that network of Christian be- 
 nevolence which now spreads Its meshes over 
 all classes and conditions and makes all whom 
 It can reach the objects of Its benedictions. 
 
 The sight of so much misery as grouped It- 
 self within the porches of Bethesda excites our 
 
142 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Lord's compassion, and he pauses to look upon 
 the heart-sickenuig scene. Conversing, per- 
 haps, with one and another, he finds a poor 
 cripple who '' had an infirmity thirty and eight 
 years," one who in answer to our Lord's question, 
 "Wilt thou be made whole?" told Jesus, "Sir, 
 I have no man when the water is troubled to 
 put me into the pool, but while I am coming an- 
 other steppeth down before me." The question 
 which our Lord asked of this man, "Wilt thou 
 be made whole ?" was put, not because he did 
 not know the desires of this man, but in order, 
 doubtless, to draw the attention of the man to 
 himself as one unusually interested In his case, 
 and also to rouse up perhaps the almost extinct 
 hopes of the man, in whom, after thirty and 
 eight years of suffering, there remained but lit- 
 tle anticipation of effectual relief. He wanted 
 to concentrate the man's thoughts and looks 
 upon himself as preliminary to the putting forth 
 of divine healing, just as he asked the blind man, 
 on another occasion, " What will ye that I shall 
 do unto you?" There must be a felt need of 
 outward help on the part of the recipient of 
 Christ's favor, so as to make the favor received 
 recognized as a divine interposition. When 
 
THE SABBATH AT BETHESDA. 1 43 
 
 jesus had broucrht this infirm man to this state 
 of conscious need and expectance of some kind 
 of blessing (for he must have read the premoni- 
 tion of it in Jesus' benevolent face and kindly 
 words), he said to him, "Rise, take up thy bed, 
 and walk." Instead of stopping to say, " Sir, 
 have I not just told thee that I cannot rise, that 
 if moved at all it must be by the help of others, 
 and that this is the very reason why I cannot 
 avail myself of the troubled waters ?" as he 
 might have done, he makes the effort to obey 
 the divine mandate " Rise," and in the effort finds 
 the strength, waiting not until it consciously 
 comes before he puts it forth, but in the act of 
 obedience, finds the power to obey. And so the 
 poor impotent cripple, who had not walked per- 
 haps for thirty-eight years, who was so utterly 
 poor and helpless that he could not command 
 the services of a man to put him into the pool, 
 and who was thus perhaps rendered as hopeless 
 as he was helpless, now stands erect, to the 
 wonder of all around him. He took up the- 
 pallet, or rug, on which he had been so long 
 lying, and walked forth in perfect soundness of 
 health and limbs. The chanore was immediate. 
 It was not the current of returnino; strenorth 
 
144 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 flowing first into one member of the body and 
 giving motion to that, and then into another, 
 swelKnor out its lonsf-withered muscles, but it 
 was an instantaneous chano^e, brinmnof with it 
 the full and complete restoration of every physi- 
 cal power to that emaciated, shriveled, weak- 
 ened, crippled, helpless body. One moment an 
 object of intense pity by reason of his intensi- 
 fied infirmity, the next standing up stalwart and 
 strong in all the freshness and fullness of reju- 
 venated life ! 
 
 One would have thouoht that such a marked 
 manifestation of divine powder would have called 
 forth admiration at the deed of Jesus, and that 
 he would have been praised for his abounding 
 mercy. But whatever may have been its effect 
 on some, on others it had the effect of arousing 
 opposition ; and unable to find fault with Jesus 
 for speaking a healing word, they turned upon 
 the healed man and accused him of breakinof the 
 Sabbath because, at the command of Christ, ''he 
 took up his bed and walked." The wonder at 
 the miracle is lost in the pharisaic hypocrisy of 
 zeal for the Sabbath, and hence the Jews said 
 unto him that was cured, " It is the Sabbath 
 day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed." 
 
THE SABBATH AT BETHESDA. 1 45 
 
 According to the strict construction of the 
 fourth commandment, and accordine to the di- 
 rections of Nehemiah (xiii. 19) and Jeremiah 
 (xvii. 21, et seq.), ''to bear no burden on the 
 Sabbath day," it was true that the man was 
 breaking the Sabbath by carrying a "burden," 
 even his bed, on that day. But this declaration 
 of these Sanhedrists, or persons connected with 
 the supreme council of the Jews (for it is to 
 these that St. John refers when he uses the 
 term ''Jews"), is a very narrow and carping 
 view to take of that commandment. It was 
 evidently a cover under which to attack Jesus 
 himself, as it subsequently comes out in the six- 
 teenth verse, where the apostle says, "Therefore 
 did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to 
 slay him, because he had done these things on 
 the Sabbath day." How intense must their 
 bigotry have been, when it made them blind to 
 the wondrous miracle and keen-sicrhted as to a 
 supposed breaking of the traditions of their 
 fathers ! failing to recognize the blessing vouch- 
 safed in the desire to find fault with the eracious 
 Giver. 
 
 The reply of the healed man is at once sim- 
 ple and conclusive : " He that made me whole, 
 
 13 K 
 
146 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and 
 walk." In his mind, evidently, the authority 
 which could work the cure was quite sufficient 
 authority for his carrying his bed. Foiled here, 
 they turn upon the man again and ask, ''What 
 man is that which said unto thee take up thy 
 bed, and walk ?" The animosity of the Jews 
 leaks out here in the suppression of all allusion 
 to the work of mercy, and in dwelling only on 
 the declared infraction of the law. They ask, 
 not, " What man is that which made thee whole 
 that we may see and admire so gracious a 
 being?" Oh no ! they doubtless knew very well 
 who It was, and were only concerned to fix on 
 Jesus the charge of breaking the Sabbath. It 
 seems not a little remarkable, on first thought, 
 that the once impotent man did not know who 
 had healed him. One would have supposed 
 that receiving so great a boon he would at least 
 have Inquired the name of the giver, but In the 
 flush and excitement of his cure, the sudden In- 
 flux Into his almost hopeless mind of so unex- 
 pected a blessing, he forgot, as It were, all the 
 proprieties of gratitude, and he was more anx- 
 ious to realize his new-found strength by at once 
 doing what he was told, take up his bed and 
 
THE SABBA TH AT BE THESDA. 1 47 
 
 walk, than to delay for the purpose of ascertaln- 
 inof who was his benefactor. The man was evi- 
 dently bewildered by the tumultuous emotions 
 which then filled his mind, as we can easily im- 
 am ne what a whirl there would be in our feel- 
 inors under similar circumstances. It must be 
 
 o 
 
 remembered, also, that before the man could 
 recover from his astonishment and collect his 
 thoughts, "Jesus had conveyed himself away, a 
 multitude being in that place." The working 
 of a miracle in so' public a spot necessarily 
 drew a large crowd together, and Jesus, unwill- 
 ing to remain in their midst, glided away, avail- 
 ing himself of the excitement to pass quickly 
 through the multitude, and went onward to the 
 house of God. Thus he did not stop long 
 enough to let the healed man show his gratitude 
 or learn his true character. 
 
 Afterward the two, the Healer and the healed, 
 stand together again. They are in the temple. 
 The Healer on his mission of grace, the healed, 
 doubtless, to give thanks for his cure. But the 
 latter does not recognize the former, and not 
 until Jesus speaks to him does he ascertain who 
 it was that had healed him. 
 
 The purpose of Jesus in finding him in the 
 
I4S THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 temple was to let the man know his benefactor, 
 and specially to give him warning for the future. 
 "Behold," says our Lord, ''thou art made whole. 
 Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto 
 thee." 
 
 In these words there Is a clear recoo^nition of 
 the fact that the man's long infirmity was the 
 result of his youthful sins. This, in one sense, 
 is true of all sickness and suffering ; they result 
 from the violation of the laws of our physical 
 being, and he who sins against these laws sins 
 against God their author, and violation of law 
 always exposes to punishment. How frequently 
 do we see in daily life this truth sadly worked 
 out in the lives of the sick and the suffering ! 
 How much force of meaning is thus given to 
 that expression of the law of the perpetuating 
 of evil, " Thou makest me to possess the iniqui- 
 ties of my youth" (Job xiii. 26), and that other 
 declaration of Job, "His bones are full of the 
 sin of his youth" (xx. ii)! For medical men 
 will tell us with one voice that the larger part 
 of the maladies of the human family are the re- 
 sults of youthful excesses and indiscretions, the 
 open or secret violations of the laws by which 
 God had hedged in and protected our health 
 
THE SABBATH AT BE THE SB A. 1 49 
 
 and happiness, but which passion, self-indul- 
 gence, waywardness, had caused us to break 
 through, reaping at the time, perhaps, no Imme- 
 diate evil from our transgressions, but yet cer- 
 tainly laying up In store future evils that would 
 surely vindicate the broken law. 
 
 This truth has forced Itself even upon heathen 
 minds. Cicero, In his " De Senectute," not only 
 tells us that the loss of strength Is more fre- 
 quently the fault of youth than of old age, but 
 he adds that a youth of sensuality and Intem- 
 perance transmits to old age a worn-out, used- 
 up body. 
 
 The author of Lacon (Colton), when he says 
 that '' the excesses of youth are bills drawn by 
 Time, payable thirty years after date, with Inter- 
 est," only paraphrases the terse Latin proverb 
 that we pay when old, for our sins when young. 
 
 Even when a man repents of his sins and be- 
 comes a new creature In Christ Jesus, breaking 
 off from all former Indulgences, he does not 
 thereby secure Immunity from the operation of 
 this law ; for while the religion of Jesus Christ 
 saves the soul. It does not repair the wastes and 
 Inroads upon the body which sin has already 
 made. The vices which had undermined the 
 
 13* 
 
150 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 constitution before he became a Christian still 
 show the gaps and weakness of It, even after 
 he becomes a child of God through faith in 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 These thoughts are borne out by that other 
 declaration of God's word, " His own iniquities 
 shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be 
 holden with the cords of his sin." We suffer 
 for our own misdoings even on earth. We braid 
 together by the strands of our little and almost 
 unnoticed youthful sins, the cords which bind us 
 so tightly about with pain and discomfort and 
 remorse in middle life or old as^e. It is retribu- 
 tive justice finding us out on earth, and by its 
 chastenings warning us to immediate repent- 
 ance, to flee from the deeper and more en- 
 during wrath that will, if unrepenting, overtake 
 us in the world to come. 
 
 And then again these words of Jesus, "Sin no 
 more, lest a worse thing come unto thee," imply 
 that to sin afresh, after receiving signal mer- 
 cies, is but to incur more grievous judgment. 
 Surely it was a bad thing that thirty and 
 eight years of this cripple's life had been made 
 full of pain and misery, and had been rendered 
 utterly useless by reason of his early sins ; but 
 
THE SABBATH AT BETHESDA. 151 
 
 bad as was that almost life-long suffering, 
 wretched and des^raded as he had become 
 through helplessness and poverty, there was a 
 ''worse thing" yet in reserve if he again went 
 back to his sins, "like a sow that was washed 
 to her wallowing in the mire." For in sinning 
 afresh, after receivinof crreat blessin^-, the man 
 commits a twofold wronof : he icrnores the bless- 
 
 o o 
 
 ings received from their divine Author, and in 
 spite of warnings, breaks away into new trans- 
 gressions. Hence the moral force which he 
 must necessarily put forth to do these things, in 
 spite of blessings, in spite of warnings, in spite of 
 the lashings of conscience, gives to him such an 
 impetus, such a momentum, as it were, that he 
 is carried beyond all his former bounds of guilt, 
 and finds himself in new fields of sin, and 
 under a deeper spell of evil. This truth our 
 Lord illustrated with startling force, and in a 
 manner which should awaken most serious con- 
 sideration, when he speaks of the cast out 
 devil returninor aj^ain to the house whence he 
 was ejected. "When he cometh back," saith 
 our Lord, "he findeth it empty — swept and 
 garnished ; then goeth he and taketh to himself 
 seven other spirits worse than the first, and 
 
152 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 they enter in and dwell there, and the last state 
 of that man is worse than the first." We 
 cannot too often call to mind these truths. Let 
 us never forget that much — yea, probably (could 
 we see the subtle connection), all — of our pains 
 and sicknesses are directly or indirectly the 
 result of our sins or the sins of our parents. 
 " However unwilling we may be to receive this, 
 brineine, as it does, God so near, and makinor 
 retribution so real and so prompt a thing, yet it 
 is true notwithstanding. As some eagle pierced 
 with a shaft feathered from its own wing, so 
 many a sufferer even in this present time sees 
 and is compelled to acknowledge that his own 
 sin fledged the arrow which has pierced him 
 and brought him down." Historv, sacred and 
 profane, abounds with illustrative instances of 
 this truth, and each one can perhaps find still 
 further confirmation in the experiences of his 
 own life. 
 
 As soon as the rhan ascertained the name 
 of his benefactor, he "departed and told .the 
 Jews that it was Jesus who had made him 
 whole." Not as a heartless wretch wishing to 
 betray, but as a grateful man anxious to make 
 known the name and fame of Him who had 
 
THE SABBA Til AT BE THE SB A . I 5 
 
 ') 
 
 clone so great things unto him. The effect of 
 this communication so stirred up this priestly 
 party that they manifested at once a hatred 
 which eagerly sought to catch him and slay him 
 '* because he had done these things on the 
 Sabbath day." 
 
 According to the Levltical law (Ex. xxxl. 14, 
 Num. XV. 35), the penalty of breaking the Sab- 
 bath was death by stoning. They regarded Jesus 
 as having broken the Sabbath, and hence " they 
 sought to slay him." But the violator of the 
 Mosaic law could only be stoned to death judi- 
 cially — /. e., after a fair trial — and the witnesses 
 of his oruUtwere to be the first to cast the death- 
 
 o 
 
 dealing stones. But the power of life and death 
 had been taken away from the Jews by their 
 Roman masters, and as the rulers confessed to 
 Pilate, " It Is not lawful for us to put any one to 
 death." What these enraged "Jews" wanted 
 was, to wreak their vengeance on Jesus, whose 
 words, whose works, whose life, was a daily re- 
 proach to them, a constant galling of their pride, 
 their presumption, their pretended piety ; and 
 unable to brook his reproaches or to turn away 
 the people from following him, they determined, 
 if possible, by any means to get rid of him. 
 
154 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 There could be no peace to the scribes and 
 the Pharisees while he was alive. His very 
 presence revealed all their darkness and 
 iniquity, just as the presence of light makes 
 visible all the foul and noisome things upon 
 which it shines. Their rage had been excited 
 aeainst him from the time he made a scourore 
 of small cords and cleansed the temple by 
 driving out of it the sheep and oxen and the 
 money-changers, and denouncing them as 
 havinof made his " Father's house a den of 
 thieves." From that hour their rancor knew 
 no bounds. They hunted diligently for evi- 
 dence to convict him of some o-reat crime. 
 They cared not what it was If it would only 
 secure his destruction. Hence they sent 
 Herodians "to entangle him in his talk" that 
 they might accuse him to Herod of political 
 crime ; and hence by artful ways they sought to 
 brine him into conflict with the orreat Sanhedrim 
 that that powerful body might secure from 
 Pilate his longed-for death. This was the spirit 
 which now possessed these ''Jews," and under 
 the influence of which they sought to slay Him 
 whose daily life and teaching were so obnoxious 
 to them. 
 
THE SABBA TH AT BE THESDA. I 5 5 
 
 Jesus flinches not at their presence. He 
 boldly confronts them and meets their objections 
 by an argument of the most dignified and pro- 
 found character. 
 
 This vindication of himself is found in John 
 V. 1 7-47. Whether spoken on the Sabbath day 
 in the temple, or afterward when arraigned per- 
 haps before the lesser Sanhedrim on the judicial 
 charge of breakinor the Sabbath, we cannot tell. 
 Whenever or wherever uttered, it is one of 
 Christ's most sublime discourses, and constitutes 
 a thorough defence of himself, first against the 
 charge of Sabbath-breaking and secondly against 
 the subsequent charge growing out of Jesus' 
 refutation of the first — viz., blasphemy, "making 
 himself equal with God." 
 
 As to the first charge, of breaking the Sab- 
 bath, God the Father, who ordained the Sabbath 
 to commemorate his resting on the seventh day, 
 not from fatigue, but from active creative effort, 
 "worketh hitherto" in the upholding and con- 
 servinof and eovernine the world which he made 
 in six days, and thus ceaselessly doing good to 
 all his creatures, and " I," his Son in all the divine 
 fullness which that relation implies, "work" — 
 work as he works in doincr crood, not in servile 
 
156 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 work for selfish ends, but in Godlike works for 
 holy ends ; not as a breaker of the law of the 
 Sabbath, as if it required complete passiveness 
 and abstinence from good deeds even, but as a 
 true keeper of the law in the spirit of Him who 
 gave the law — a spirit of ceaseless benevolence 
 and love flowing out in active blessings, not for 
 six days and then ceasing, but on the seventh 
 day as well as on the sixth, because the work 
 done was as holy as the day, and as the God 
 who did it. 
 
 This line of defence, placing himself as " equal 
 with God" in the right and purpose to w^ork as 
 the Father worked, so far from being accepted 
 by these Judaists, was made the ground of the 
 second charge against him of blasphemy, as 
 thus "making himself equal with God." This 
 second charge Jesus quickly meets by asserting 
 his equality with God in "work" (verses 17, 19, 
 20), in the power to raise the dead (v. 21), in 
 the power to judge the world (v. 22), in the 
 honor Vv^hich it behoved men to bestow (v. 23), 
 in the power to give eternal life (v. 26). This 
 claim to divine Messiahship by doing all the 
 w^orks that their longed-for Messiah was to do, 
 he confirms by the specific testimony of John 
 
777^ SABBATH AT BETHESDA. I 57 
 
 the Baptist (v. 32-35), the testimony of Moses 
 (v. 45-47), the testimony of all the scriptures 
 (v. 39), the testimony of his own miraculous 
 works (v. 36-38), and in the witness of God the 
 Father (v. ^^1^. 
 
 To this triumphant and unanswerable vindica- 
 tion of himself, the Jews — the spiritual rulers 
 of the people — could give no reply. John the 
 Baptist, to whom they had appealed, was against 
 them. Moses, In whom they trusted, was against 
 them. The Scriptures, In which they sought 
 eternal life, were against them. God, whom 
 they claimed as their Father, was against them. 
 Every ground of opposition to, and of condem- 
 nation of, Jesus was taken away by this dis- 
 course, and there remained only the deadly ani- 
 mosity of obdurate hearts and rebellious minds. 
 
 They who accused Jesus are now accused by 
 him for their lack of the knowledge of the Scrip- 
 tures, for their unwillingness to follow the lead 
 of Moses, for their virtual rejection of the testi- 
 mony of John the Baptist, and for their keeping 
 away from Christ, the source of all spiritual life 
 and light. They had arraigned him at their tri- 
 bunal ; he arraigns them at his. They had ac- 
 cused him of deeds worthy of temporal death ; 
 
 14 
 
158 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 he accuses them of deeds worthy of eternal 
 death. There is somethlnor- sublime in this atti- 
 tude of Jesus in the presence of his accusers, 
 quietly turning against them their own witnesses, 
 convicting them of the very crimes which they 
 charged ao^ainst him, showino^ himself before 
 them by many infallible proofs as their Messiah, 
 claiming equality with God, and that " all men 
 should honor him, even as they honor the 
 Father." Had not Jesus been divine, this lan- 
 o-uaofe would have been the most insufferable 
 arrogance and blasphemy, but he was *' God 
 manifest in the flesh," and hence it is all true, 
 and harmonizes with, and illustrates, both the 
 human and the divine in the redeeming, the me- 
 diatorial and the judicial work of Christ. 
 
mm 
 
 I— I 
 
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 H 
 
 M 
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 02 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE SABBATH IN THE CORN-FIELDS. 
 
 " At that time Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the corn ; and 
 his disciples were ahungered, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and 
 to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy 
 disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day. But 
 he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did when he was 
 ahungered, and they that were with him; how he entered into the 
 house of God and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him 
 to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests? 
 Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the Sabbath days the 
 priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless ? But I 
 say unto you. That in this place is one greater than the temple. But 
 if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacri- 
 fice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man 
 is Lord even of the Sabbath day. And when he M'as departed thence, 
 he went into their Synagogue." Matt. xii. 1-9. 
 
 " For verily I say unto you. That whosoever shall say unto this moun- 
 tain. Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not 
 doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith 
 shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say 
 unto you. What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye 
 receive them, and ye shall have them. And when ye stand praying, 
 forgive, if ye have aught against any, that your Father also which is in 
 heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, 
 neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses. 
 And they come again to Jerusalem ; and as he was walking in the tem- 
 ple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders, 
 and say unto him. By what authority doest thou these things ? and who 
 gave thee this authority to do these things?" Mark xi. 23-2S. 
 
 159 
 
l6o THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 " And it came to pass on the second Sal)bath after the first, that he 
 went through the corn fields; and his disciples plucked the ears of 
 corn and did eat, rubbing them in their hands. And cex'tain of the 
 Pharisees said unto them, Why do ye that which is not lawful to do on 
 the Sabbath days ? And Jesus answering them said. Have ye not read 
 so much as this, what David did, when himself was ahungered, and 
 they which were with him; how he went into the house of God, and 
 did take and eat the shewbread, and gave also to them that were with 
 him, which it is not lawful to eat but for the priests alone? And he 
 said unto them. That the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.'" 
 Luke vi. 1-5. 
 
 HE period referred to by the opening 
 sentence of St. Matthew, ''At that 
 time," was when, after calHng and 
 commissioning his twelve disciples as recorded 
 in the tenth chapter, Jesus " departed thence to 
 teach and to preach in their cities " — i. e., it was 
 during one of his missionary circuits among 
 the towns on the western shore of the Sea of 
 Galilee. 
 
 St. Luke marks it as "the second Sabbath 
 after the first," being a ''great Sabbath," as it 
 was the first Sabbath " of a year that stood sec- 
 ond in a sabbatical cycle." On this Sabbath 
 day, as Jesus and his disciples passed through 
 the corn-fields (not what we in America term 
 such, filled with maize or Indian corn, but fields 
 of wheat and barley, which in that country at 
 that time, being in all probability about the first 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE CORX-FIELDS. l6l 
 
 of April, were then just ripening into harvest), 
 his disciples, being hungry, "began to pluck the 
 ears of corn and did eat, rubbing them in their 
 hands " to remove the husk. This it was lawful 
 for them to do, for the direction in Deut. xxiii. 
 25 reads, ''When thou comest into the standing 
 corn of thy neighbor, then thou mayest pluck 
 the ears with thy hand ; but thou shalt not move 
 a sickle unto thy neighbor's standing corn." In 
 that country, it must be remembered, the fields 
 are not enclosed with fences, as with us, but are 
 separated one from the other by certain stones, 
 stakes, ridges or ditches which constitute the 
 " land-marks " of the several owners. The ef- 
 fect of this is, to make a whole plain or valley, 
 preceding harvest-time, appear as one vast un- 
 enclosed field, and never did that verse of Da- 
 vid's In which he says, in order to indicate fer- 
 tility and luxuriance, "The valleys also stand so 
 thick with corn that they shall laugh and sing " 
 (Ixv. 13, Pr. Bk. vers.), come out to our mind 
 with such pastoral beauty as when, looking down 
 over the large corn-fields just waiting for the 
 sickle, we saw them rollinof to and fro in the 
 wind with that billowy motion which, like a glee-= 
 ful smile, dimpled and rippled over the waving 
 
1 62 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 p-raln, while the rusdlnof of the stalks and leaves 
 swaying in the breeze rose up like the voice of 
 sineine. To this harmless act of our Lord's 
 disciples, and done for the purpose of satisfying 
 their hunger, the Pharisees objected because 
 done on the Sabbath day. 
 
 One of the laws of the Pharisees, as subse- 
 quently embodied in the Talmud, was, *' He that 
 reapeth corn on the Sabbath to the quantity of 
 a fig is guilty; and plucking corn is as reaping, 
 and whosoever plucketh up anything growing is 
 guilty under the notion of reaping." 
 
 In reply to this pharisaical objection, our Lord, 
 justifies the act of his disciples In what they did 
 by citing cases and principles which entirely set 
 aside their rigorous literalism, and placed the 
 day and its observance on their true basis. 
 " Have ye not read," he asks, " what David did 
 when he had need and was anhungered, and 
 they that were with him, how he went into the 
 house of God in the days of Abiathar the high 
 priest, and did take and eat the shewbread which 
 is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave 
 also to them that were with him ?" The refer- 
 ence here is to the transaction recorded in 
 I Samuel xxi. i, et seq., when David, fleeing 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE CORN-FIELDS. 1 63 
 
 from the persecution of Saul, went to the sacer- 
 dotal city of Nob, situated in the tribe of Benja- 
 min, and there begged of the high priest the 
 shewbread (the ''bread of faces" as it was 
 called) for himself and hungry companions. 
 
 The shewbread consisted of twelve cakes or 
 loaves made of fine flour and set '' in two rows, 
 six on a row, upon the pure table before the 
 Lord, and thou shalt put pure frankincense upon 
 each row that it may be on the bread for a me- 
 morial, even an offering made by fire unto the 
 Lord. Every Sabbath he shall set it in order 
 before the Lord continually. And it shall be 
 Aaron's and his sons', and they shall eat it in 
 the holy place, for it is most holy unto him of 
 the offerings of the Lord made by fire." Lev. 
 xxiv. 5-9. At the time of the weekly renewal 
 of the shewbread the incense upon each row 
 was burned before the Lord, and the loaves 
 were eaten by the priests in the temple. 
 
 It was this shewbread, just removed from the 
 table to give place to the fresh and hot, which, 
 in his extreme necessity, David asked for and 
 received, and of which he and his hungry men 
 partook. Though ordinarily unlawful for him to 
 eat it, as he was not of the Levitical priesthood, 
 
164 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 yet his pressing need made it right both for the 
 priest to give and for him to take the hallowed 
 loaves, because it was better to prolong life and 
 meet the Imperious demands of hunger at the 
 expense of a ceremonial law, than by keeping 
 the law of sacrifice subject man to suffering, and 
 thus break the higher law of mercy. 
 
 From the narrative in Samuel we may rightly 
 infer that It w^as on the Sabbath that David and 
 his men went into the sanctuary and ate this 
 bread, thus intensifying the crime, if crime it 
 was; but our Lord showed conclusively, by cit- 
 ing this case with approval, that neither David 
 nor the priest had violated the spirit of the cere- 
 monial law in the transaction, and that there 
 were human necessities which rightfully set aside, 
 all Levltlcal regulations. 
 
 Rising from a personal and exceptional act, 
 our Lord cites another case of a general charac- 
 ter, where the apparent violation of the sabbatic 
 law is done, not by a few lay people, but by all 
 the priests ; not in Nob alone, but In Jerusalem 
 the holy city; not in a humble Synagogue, but 
 in the Temple itself, and that, too, in the very act 
 by which they profess to worship Jehovah. 
 
 " Or have ye not read In the law how that on 
 
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THE SABBATH IN THE CORN-FIELDS. 1 65 
 
 the Sabbath clays the priests in the temple pro- 
 fane the Sabbath and are blameless ? But I say 
 unto you, That in this place is one greater than 
 the temple. But if ye had known what this 
 meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, ye 
 would not have condemned the guiltless." 
 
 St. Matthew only records these words of our 
 Lord, yet they are most significant and pungent 
 in their bearing on the question before him. As 
 if he had said, You say no burdens shall be 
 borne, no fire kindled, no utensil handled, no 
 manual labor performed, yet the priests in the 
 discharge of their duties in the temple carry in 
 wood, lay it on the altar, slay the victims, kindle 
 fires, handle the sacrificial knives, carve up the 
 offered lambs and goats, and therefore, accord- 
 ing to your views, profane or secularize and 
 make unholy the Sabbath ; yet you say that they 
 are blameless, for the maxim of the Jews in 
 reference to this very temple-work was, that 
 there is no Sabbath in the temple, and that the 
 temple sanctified the work. Indeed, so far from 
 remitting labor on this day because it was the 
 Sabbath, the labor was doubled by reason of the 
 double sacrifices which were required by the 
 Levitical law (Num. xxviii. 9, 10). Yet they 
 
1 66 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 "are blameless," yourselves being judges, for 
 you never thought of arraigning a priest as a 
 Sabbath-breaker because he killed and flayed 
 and quartered a burnt- offering, and you never 
 thought of interdicting the temple-worship be- 
 cause it required double toil and service of its 
 ministers on the seventh day. Now, then, if 
 the fact that these works are blameless because 
 they were done in and for the temple, the tem- 
 ple thus giving sanctity to the act, so I, who am 
 here with you "in this place," am "greater than 
 the temple," and can give to works done by me, 
 or with my permission, that sanctity, that they 
 shall not profane, but hallow, the Sabbath, for 
 being done by or for me, they are lifted out of 
 the level of secular things and partake of the 
 holiness of the person they are designed to 
 serve. If the temple, therefore, makes the 
 priests blameless, I, who am "greater than the 
 temple," hold my disciples blameless ; for not 
 only have they done no more than David did, 
 satisfying hunger by doing what was technically 
 and traditionally unlawful, but they have done 
 their works as the priests did their service, for 
 the Lord of the temple himself, now standing 
 before you. 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE CORN-FIELDS. 1 67 
 
 To understand in what respect Jesus was 
 "greater than the temple," we must consider a 
 moment what the temple was in his eye. With- 
 out eoine into the structure of the tabernacle in 
 the wilderness, or the temple which succeeded 
 it, and which loomed up like a cloud of glory on 
 Mt. Moriah, or marking their numerous typi- 
 cal relations to, and prefigurings of, Christ, it will 
 suffice to say, as St. Paul does in the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews (ix. 9-12), that it "was a figure for 
 the time then present, in which were offered 
 both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make 
 him that did the service perfect as pertaining to 
 the conscience ; which stood only in meats and 
 drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordi- 
 nances, imposed on them until the time of refor- 
 mation. But Christ being come an high priest 
 of good things to come, by a greater and more 
 perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is 
 to say, not of this building, neither by the blood 
 of goats and calves, but by his own blood he 
 entered in once into the holy place, having ob- 
 tained eternal redemption for us." The temple, 
 then, in its structure, its ritual, its sacrifices, its 
 priests, was designed to present to the eye and 
 mind of the Jew the one great doctrine of the 
 
1 68 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 atonement of sin through vicarious blood — viz., 
 the unforfeited Hfe or blood of the guiltless and 
 the innocent, shed for the forfeited life or blood 
 of the guilty and the sinning. The temple was 
 the embodiment of this atonlne idea. It was 
 God's thought of mercy to man, put into shape 
 and made visible before the nation for hundreds 
 of years by means of priest and sacrifice and 
 incense and holy and most holy place, and all 
 the rites, personalities and buildings which made 
 up what we express by one word, " the temple." 
 In this aspect the things of the temple were, as 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews states, '' patterns of 
 things in the heavens," ''figures of the true," 
 '' a shadow of good things to come, and not the 
 very image of the things." But Christ was the 
 substance which forecast this shadow. He was 
 the antitype of which these earthly structures 
 and emblems were "the figures." He was the 
 original of that of which the temple was but an 
 imperfect " pattern." Christ, in his person and 
 his work, was not only all that the temple 
 adumbrated, but infinitely more. Hence he 
 speaks of himself as a " temple " in that pas- 
 sage w^hich so puzzled the Jews, " Destroy this 
 temple, and in three days will I raise it again," 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE CORN-FIELDS. 1 69 
 
 but "he spake of the temple of his body." If 
 the temple, then, was but a shadowing forth of 
 what the Messiah should be and do, the Mes- 
 siah who was thus prefigured, or who thus cast 
 this shadow, must be greater than the temple, 
 so that Jesus, knowing that he was -the Messiah 
 and having declared it openly in his conversa- 
 tion with the woman of Samaria at Jacob's well, 
 could truly say, as he stood before his carping 
 enemies, '' In this place is one greater than the 
 temple." 
 
 If those who served on the Sabbath about the 
 earthly, the material temple, did so and Vv^ere 
 blameless, those, therefore, who ministered to 
 and about him the living Temple, *' greater than 
 the temple" which sanctifies priestly service, can 
 supply their necessities, and make themselves 
 more ready to discharge their duties, and also 
 be blameless. 
 
 Jesus then tells them, '' If ye had known what 
 this meaneth, I v\^Ill have mercy and not sacri- 
 fice, ye would not have condemned the guilt- 
 less." This Is a quotation from the prophet 
 Hosea (vl. 6) : " For I desired mercy and not 
 sacrifice," placing the higher value on the In- 
 ward affection of the heart and not on the out- 
 
 15 
 
170 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 ward and visible act. It is couched in one of 
 those forms of Hebrew nesfation where the use 
 of the negative (not) is not designed to express 
 that the "sacrifice" is unnecessary or improper, 
 but to intensify that with which sacrifice is con- 
 trasted, " mercy," and to show that in the com- 
 parison of the two "mercy" will take the su- 
 premacy. Thus " sacrifice," good in itself, or- 
 dained by God, held a lower place in God's view 
 than "mercy," that emotion of a tender, loving, 
 considerate soul. 
 
 The " mercy " which the Pharisees showed was 
 limited to external acts — feeding the hungry, 
 blowing a trumpet before them when they gave 
 alms, and such-like. There was in their doing 
 these outward and visible things no mercy, for 
 all their acts were done " to be seen of men ;" 
 the true spirit of kindness and charity Vv^as ab- 
 sent. So our Lord says to these Jews, If you 
 had only known this truth (brought out so 
 clearly by Hosea and Micah, vi. 6, 8), you would 
 have put a kindly interpretation on this act of 
 my disciples, and not treated as guilty those 
 whom I pronounce guiltless. It is the absence 
 of this spirit among Christians now, which is 
 productive of so much evil and faultfinding and 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE CORN-EIELDS. I/I 
 
 dissensions. It is this spirit of legalism ever 
 striving against the spirit of a merciful liberalism 
 which Is doing so much to check the growth of 
 the Church and bind upon the conscience "bur- 
 dens grievous to be borne," which tithes anise 
 and mint and cummin and neglects the weightier 
 matters of the law, judgment, mercy and truth. 
 It Is a harsh, technical, faultfinding spirit. It 
 looks solely to " the letter of the law " and the 
 outside of the ceremonial. But the law of 
 mercy looks at the state of the heart, and busies 
 Itself more about the aspect of the soul toward 
 God than about Its appearance toward men. 
 Micah brlnQ^s out this truth with ereat force 
 when he asks, " Wherewith shall I come before 
 the Lord and bow m3^self before the high God ? 
 Shall I come before him with burnt- offerings, 
 with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be 
 pleased with thousands of rams or with ten 
 thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my 
 first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my 
 body for the sin of my soul ? He hath showed 
 thee, O man ! what is good ; and what doth the 
 Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love 
 mercy and to walk humbly with thy God ?" 
 These grand utterances of the old prophet, 
 
172 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 seven hundred years before Christ, find thelr 
 full echo and response In the equally strong 
 declaration of St. Paul : " Though I speak with 
 the toneues of men and of anorels, and have not 
 charity (that inner love of the soul out of which 
 mercy grows), I am become as sounding brass 
 or a tinkling cymbal ; and though I have the 
 gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries 
 and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, 
 so that I could remove mountains, and have not 
 charity, I am nothing. And though I give all 
 my goods to feed the poor, and though I give 
 my body to be burned, and have not charity, I 
 am nothine." What strides onward the Church 
 would make if ministers and people would only 
 cultivate more of this "mercy" which '' rejoiceth 
 against judgment," and would put on this charity 
 which the apostle tells us '' is the very bond of 
 perfectness " ! for mercy would assimilate our 
 character to that of God, and charity (love) is 
 " the fulfilling of the law." 
 
 After speaking this deserved rebuke to these 
 unmerciful Pharisees, our Lord enunciates the 
 truth, "The Son of man is Lord even of the 
 Sabbath day." This assertion is recorded by 
 the three writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke, and 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE CORN-FIELDS. 1/3 
 
 nearly in the same words. In making this as- 
 sertion he wanted his hearers to know that he 
 regarded himself as '' the Lord of the Sabbath," 
 and could, out of himself, give the laws which 
 should regulate its observance, and therefore 
 that nothincr that he did could break an institu- 
 tion of which he was Lord or Ruler. 
 
 St. Mark prefixes this declaration with an- 
 other — viz., "The Sabbath was made for man, 
 not man for the Sabbath." Judging from the 
 pre-eminence given by the scribes and Pharisees 
 to the fourth commandment, and the excessive 
 care shown in fencing it around with all kinds 
 of restrictions, so that the memory could neither 
 retain them nor the people fully observe them, 
 it was needful that our Lord should take just 
 such a common-sense view of the Sabbath as 
 he does take in these v/ords. So unjustly had 
 they magnified this law, not only out of propor- 
 tion to the others, but in contravention of the 
 others, that they declared, "He who shall duly 
 observe all the rites and customs of the Sabbath 
 shall obtain the pardon of all his sins, even 
 though he hath been guilty of idolatry." The 
 Sabbath was thus bound hand and foot in the 
 o^rave-clothes of stringent traditions. Its oriof- 
 
 C> i> o 
 
 15 * 
 
174 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 inal and benignant purpose had been overlooked 
 
 in their rabbinical glosses, and it was time that 
 
 the order should go forth from the Lord of the 
 
 Sabbath, '* Loose it and let it go," that it might 
 
 stand forth untrammeled by the swathings and 
 
 bandages of those scribes who had on this, as 
 
 on many other subjects, taught for doctrines the 
 
 commandments of men, and thus ''made the 
 
 word of God of none effect throuQ-h their tra- 
 
 <_> 
 
 ditions." The Sabbath, or a rest one day in 
 seven, was made and ordained by God for man's 
 physical, mental and moral good. It was to 
 give him rest from earthly toils and cares, and 
 time for heavenly thoughts and acts. It was to 
 be, not a burden, but a comfort. It was to be a 
 means to an end; that end man's highest earthly 
 and eternal good. "Wherever, therefore, the 
 keeping of the Sabbath in the Avay prescribed, 
 instead of promoting would frustrate that end, 
 it was more honored in the breach than in the 
 observance. It was never to be reo^arded as 
 itself an end. Apart from the physical, social, 
 moral and religious benefits to be thereby real- 
 ized, there was no merit in painfully doing this 
 one thing, or rigorously abstaining from that 
 other. The Sabbath was made to serve man. 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE CORN-FIELDS. 1 75 
 
 but not man to serve, or be a slave to, the Sab- 
 bath. And just because it is an institution 
 which, when rightly used, is so eminently fitted 
 to minister to man's present and eternal good, 
 the Son of man, who came not to be ministered 
 unto, but to minister as the Head of our hu- 
 manity, to render to it the greatest of all ser- 
 vices and to take all other servants of it under 
 his care and keeping, would show himself to be 
 '' Lord also of the Sabbath/' 
 
 It is worthy of note here, in passing, that with 
 one exception (Acts vii. 56), our Lord only speaks 
 of himself as the "Son of man." It is a term 
 used by none of the apostles, but fifty different 
 times by Jesus himself, as if it was the favorite 
 title by which he would designate himself. It is 
 a name which the prophet Daniel (vii. 13) gives 
 to the Messiah, and hence was a name recoe- 
 nized by the Jews as a designation of the Mes- 
 siah. As the phrase, " Son of God," when ap- 
 plied to Jesus, meant the full and perfect com- 
 munication to him of the divine nature, with all 
 its attributes and functions, so that we could 
 truly say as St. Paul does, " In him dwelleth all 
 the fullness of the Godhead bodily," so the 
 phrase, '' Son of man," when used by him, indi- 
 
lyG THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 cated the full and perfect communication to him 
 of the human nature, with all its attributes and 
 functions, sin only excepted, so that he is indeed 
 " the second Adam, the Lord from heaven." In 
 his human nature he *' was made of a woman — 
 made under the law," " for verily he took not 
 on him the nature of angels, but he took on him 
 the seed of Abraham, wherefore In all things it 
 behoved him to be made like unto his brethren," 
 and he was therefore m.ade In the likeness of 
 men. It Is a term that thus Identifies Christ 
 with the men whom he came to save. He has 
 taken to himself our humanity. He has ex- 
 alted and glorified It, and lifted It up out of the 
 depths into which sin had degraded It, and 
 brought us into the light and liberty of the chil- 
 dren of God ; — while it also shows, that as the 
 Son of man he was the hiorhest and fullest em- 
 bodlment of humanity — man without sin, man 
 perfectly holy, man with no physical defect, no 
 mental idiosyncrasies, no class, national or re- 
 ligious prejudices ; man In the full, rounded 
 and complete development of all his mental and 
 moral faculties, Incorporating In himself all the 
 glories and perfections of a sinless and unfallen 
 manhood ; the ideal of what man would have 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE CORN-FIELDS. 1 7/ 
 
 been had he not sinned ; the pattern of what 
 man ought to be on earth; — the type of what man 
 will be In the heavenly regeneration. 
 
 As " the Son of man " gathering up Into him- 
 self all the Interests of our common humanity 
 and ruling over everything that bore upon Its 
 welfare here, and destiny hereafter, he had the 
 right of Lordship and sovereignty over an In- 
 stitution "made for man" — the Sabbath — and 
 hence could do with it whatever his holy will 
 pleased without breaking Its sanctity or enfee- 
 bling its power. He Is the Arbiter of his own 
 ordinance, the interpreter of his own law, and 
 he therefore, by the bold declaration that " the 
 Sabbath was made for man," reinstates it in its 
 primitive design, and re-enforces its claims by 
 his own authority and example. It becomes no 
 longer, under this interpretation of Jesus, a day 
 of burdensome exactions and tedious ceremo- 
 nies, hampering the free spirit and fettering 
 every natural emotion by traditional restrictions 
 or the tightened ligatures of pharisaic formal- 
 ism ; but it is made a day of joy, of freedom 
 from servile work, of social and domestic happi- 
 ness, of personal and private communion with 
 God, of public worship with the assemblies of 
 
 M 
 
1/8 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 God's people, of doing works of mercy and 
 charity, of reading and meditating on God's 
 word and works. There is nothing rigid or 
 straitlaced about it. It is enfranchised from 
 all Jewish glosses, and man is called upon to 
 use and enjoy this Sabbath in a manner that 
 shall at once glorify and honor the Lord of the 
 Sabbath, and secure the highest welfare of man 
 for whom this Sabbath was made. 
 
 In reference to what is called the Sabbath 
 question, we should ever keep these two cardi- 
 nal facts before us, that Jesus is the Lord of 
 the Sabbath, and that the Sabbath was made for 
 man. 
 
 The first fact being true, it follows that we 
 must use the Sabbath for the service and glory 
 of him who is its Lord ; otherwise we fail to 
 recognize his Lordship over it, and set at naught 
 his divine authority. 
 
 It follows further that the hours of the Sab- 
 bath are Jesus' special gift, and we must do 
 nothing" in its hours that will contravene its sa- 
 credness, such as appropriating them to mere 
 secular purposes or the advancement of secular 
 ends. 
 
 It follows still further that the example of 
 
THE SABBA Til IN THE CORN-FIELDS. 1 79 
 
 Christ, in so far as it is applicable to us, must 
 be our pattern. He employed its hours in be- 
 ing in the places of worship, whether Synagogue 
 or Temple, where he happened to be in minis- 
 tering to the sick and suffering; in preaching 
 and teaching the gospel of the kingdom ; in con- 
 soling the afflicted, and in partaking of the so- 
 cial hospitality offered to him. He swept away 
 with one wave of his hand the cumbrous tradi- 
 tions which had encrusted themselves about this 
 fourth commandment, and because he did so he 
 involved himself in frequent conflicts with the 
 scribes and Pharisees, who judged his actions 
 according to the letter of their traditions, rather 
 than by the spirit of the law itself 
 
 The second fact being true, that "the Sabbath 
 was made for man," it follows that man ought 
 to regard it as a divinely ordained institution for 
 his special enjoyment and blessing. It is an 
 ordinance indissolubly bound up with man's best 
 and highest interests. It was made to give him 
 what, but for this day of rest, he would not have — 
 a periodical remission of work, a periodical sea- 
 son of worship. It is a day for him to put the 
 world aside and bring heaven into view ; to let 
 the body rest, that the soul may wing its way 
 
l80 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 upward before the throne ; that soiled and be- 
 grimed, as it were, by his six days* work, he 
 might wash off the earthiness from his spirit and 
 bring his heart into the house of God, to hear 
 the word of God, to engage in the worship of 
 God and to Hsten to the preaching of the am- 
 bassador of God. 
 
 It would be impossible to tell a tithe of the 
 blessings which result to man from a riorht en- 
 joyment of this Lord's day. Are we slaves to 
 business all the week ? This rest-day enables us 
 to stand up the Lord's freemen. Is our mind 
 all the week immersed in worldly cares and 
 studies ? On this rest-day we fling open the win- 
 dow of the soul and let the light of the celestial 
 city stream in upon it. It is a clay which comes 
 to us laden with blessings. It brings in its hands 
 all eood thinors and all lovable thincrs and all 
 holy things for our souls and for our bodies. It 
 offers us rest, retirement, spiritual refreshment, 
 a feast of fat things in God's earthly house. It 
 invites us to holy domestic and social gatherings 
 where all the finer and nobler feelings of our 
 nature can have free exercise. It shuts the gate 
 upon the world, and swings open for a time the 
 gate of pearl that we may look in upon the glo- 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE CORN-FIELDS. l8l 
 
 ries of the New Jerusalem. He who spends the 
 Lord's day In a manner that will honor the Lord 
 of the Sabbath stands, as It were, In the ante- 
 chamber of heaven, and Is thereby becoming 
 more and more meet for the Inheritance of the 
 saints In llo^ht and for " the rest that remalneth 
 
 o 
 
 for the people of God." 
 
 16 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CHRIST HEALING THE WITHERED HAND 
 IN THE SYNAGOGUE ON THE SABBATH 
 
 " And when he was departed thence, he went into their Synagogue ; 
 and, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they 
 asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath days ? that they 
 might accuse him. And he said unto them, What man shall there be 
 among you that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the 
 Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it and lift it out ? How much 
 then is a man better than a sheep ? Wherefore it is lawful to do well 
 on the Sabbath days. Then saith he to the man. Stretch forth thine 
 hand. And he stretched it forth, and it was restored whole, like as the 
 other. Tlien the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, 
 how they might destroy him." Matt. xii. 9-14. 
 
 " And he entered again into the Synagogue ; and there was a man 
 there which had a withered hand. And they watched him, whether he 
 woidd heal him on the Sabbatli day, that they might accuse him. And 
 he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth. And 
 he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath days, or to 
 do evil ? to save life, or to kill ? But they held their peace. And 
 when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved 
 for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man. Stretch forth 
 thine hand. And he stretched it out; and his hand was restored whole 
 as the other. And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took 
 counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him." 
 Mark iii. 1-6. 
 
 " And it came to pass also on another Sabbath that he entered into 
 
 the Synagogue and taught ; and there was a man whose right hand was 
 
 withered. And the scribes and Pharisees watched him, whether he 
 
 would heal on the Sabbath day, that they might find an accusation 
 
 1S2 
 
THE WITHERED HAND HEALED. 1 83 
 
 against him. But he knew their thoughts, and said to the man which 
 had the withered hand, Rise up, and stand forth in the midst. And he 
 arose and stood forth. Then said Jesus unto them, I will ask you one 
 thing: Is it lawful on the Sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to 
 save life, or to destroy it? And looking round about upon them all, 
 he said unto the man, Stretch forth thy hand. And he did so, and his 
 hand was restored whole as the other. And they were filled with 
 madness, and communed one with another what they might do to 
 Jesus." Luke vi. 6-1 1. 
 
 HE narrative of this Sabbath is placed 
 by the three Evangelists in close con- 
 nection with the Sabbath which we 
 have just considered. Still, It is entirely dis- 
 tinct, as St. Luke tells us that it was upon "an- 
 other Sabbath." 
 
 Where the Synagogue was is not stated, 
 though it was doubtless in or near Capernaum. 
 From the tenor of the lano^uaore used we can 
 
 o o 
 
 Infer that, knowing our Lord would visit this 
 Synagogue on this day, the scribes and Phari- 
 sees had brought there a man whose right hand 
 was withered, as a bait to catch him In some 
 work of healing, for It Is stated that '' they 
 watched him whether he would heal on the Sab- 
 bath day," not that they might applaud him for 
 his work of mercy, but "that they might find an 
 accusation against him." The man with the 
 withered right hand was evidently a prominent 
 object, and they Inferred from our Lord's ready 
 
1 84 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 exercise of mercy that he would most likely 
 display it on his behalf. Jesus knew their evil 
 thoughts, the aim and purpose of their plans, 
 and as if to anticipate any movement on their 
 part, and to make the transaction the more con- 
 spicuous, he said to the man, " Rise up and 
 stand forth in the midst, and he arose and stood 
 forth." 
 
 All was now excitement and expectation. 
 The looks of the audience were passing rapidly 
 from Jesus to the man, and from the man to the 
 rulers of the Synagogue, in the consciousness 
 that a great event was at hand. 
 
 Knowing, doubtless, our Lord's purpose in 
 telling the man to '' rise up and stand forth," 
 they put to him the question, ''Is it lawful to 
 heal on the Sabbath day ?" with the design of 
 entrapping him Into an answer which would fur- 
 nish the ground of accusation against him as a 
 breaker of the law of Moses. He, however, as 
 St. Luke tells us, " knew their thoughts ;" their 
 wicked hearts and perverted minds lay bare and 
 open before his piercing eyes, so that neither 
 their feigned courtesy nor their hypocritical 
 righteousness deceived him. And so, after the 
 man had at Christ's command risen from his place 
 
THE WITHERED HAKD HEALED. 1 85 
 
 and gone into the open space in the Synagogue 
 where all could see his withered and useless 
 arm, he replied to the question by saying, " I 
 will also ask you one thing : is it lawful on the 
 Sabbath days to do good or to do evil, to save 
 life or to destroy it ?" The question itself car- 
 ried its own answer, but without waiting for 
 them to reply, he proceeds to illustrate his 
 meaning by an appeal to their own experience 
 in the common transactions of that sheep-raising 
 country. " What man shall there be among you 
 that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a 
 pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on 
 it and lift it out? How much, then, is a man 
 better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to 
 do well on the Sabbath days." What argument 
 could be clearer, stronger, more convincing, than 
 this ? It was an appeal to their common-sense 
 view of things, and to their pecuniary interests, 
 which they could not gainsay, and so it is re- 
 corded of them that '' they held their peace." 
 They had nothing even plausible to object to 
 such a putting of the truth, and so kept silence. 
 But it was not the silence of assent, but the 
 sullen silence of conscious defeat. They were 
 baffled, but not convinced, and He who read 
 
 16 * 
 
1 86 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 their inmost thouQrhts knew the evil feelinors that 
 were roused within them by this thwarting of 
 their well-laid plot, and hence he " turned and 
 looked upon them with anger, being grieved for 
 the hardness of their hearts." 
 
 This is the only place in which it is said that 
 our Lord was angry. Yet, in saying that he 
 "looked upon them with anger," we must not 
 attach to it those ideas which we have of man's 
 anger. 
 
 Anger v/hich excites evil passions against the 
 peace, the comfort, the life, of persons, which 
 leads to words of wrath and deeds of violence, 
 which stirs up enmity and revenge, which hur- 
 ries one out of self-control into hasty and fool- 
 ish actions, and which leaves its sad virulence 
 behind, — such anger is sinful. But no such an- 
 ger as this ever took possession of Jesus. 
 
 On the other hand, there is an anger which is 
 just and sinless — an anger against sinful deeds, 
 purposes, characters ; an anger which is but 
 righteous indignation against ungodly words 
 and works, such as the apostle speaks of when 
 he says, " Be ye angry and sin not." When St. 
 Mark speaks of Jesus being angry, he means 
 that his holy mind was deeply disturbed as he 
 
THE WITHERED HAND HEALED. 187 
 
 saw with his omniscient eye the evil thoughts 
 and purposes of his enemies against himself, 
 and therefore against man's Redeemer, and con- 
 sequently against man's highest and eternal in- 
 terests. It was at the sin which lay in the hearts 
 of these men, and which broke out so fiercely in 
 their words and acts, that he was angry — not at 
 the poor sinners, but at that which made them 
 such. "Indeed, with Him who was at once per- 
 fect love and perfect holiness, grief for the sin- 
 ner must ever o-o hand in hand with aneer 
 again-st the sin ; and this anger, which with us 
 is in danorer of becomino^ a turbid thine, of 
 passing into anger against the man who is God's 
 creature, instead of beinor ancrer against the sin 
 which is the devil's corruption of God's crea- 
 ture, with him was perfectly pure, for it is not 
 the agitation of the waters, but the sediment at 
 the bottom, which troubles and defiles them, and 
 where no sediment is, no impurity will follow on 
 their agitation." 
 
 With this ano^er was minorled erief — " beinof 
 grieved for the hardness of their hearts." Sin- 
 ful anger never could mingle itself with holy 
 grief, and this grief was holy because it was ex- 
 cited by seeing the hard, callous, impenetrable 
 
1 88 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 hearts of these men, who, while professing to 
 keep the law In its letter, were breaking it con- 
 stantly in spirit, who were mistaking shadows 
 for the substance, and who were thus "blind 
 leaders of the blind," remaining willfully blind 
 when they might see, and refusing to come to 
 the lieht "lest their deeds should be made mani- 
 fest that they are out of God." 
 
 After surveying the audience with this all- 
 comprehending look of blended anger and 
 grief — a look which they all saw and felt — he 
 said to the man, " Stretch forth thine hand." 
 There w^as here no manipulating of the hand, 
 no touch, no rubbings, no embrocations, but a 
 simple direction to the man to do what, under 
 other circumstances, it would have been impos- 
 sible to do ; and in doing as he was bid, in 
 stretching it forth, it was restored whole as the 
 other. The cure was instantaneous. So sur- 
 prising an act of mercy, wrought so conspicu- 
 ously in their midst, beyond all possible cavil as 
 to Its being effected by other agencies than by 
 the word of Jesus, ought to have called out 
 their admiration and praise. So far from it that 
 St. Luke says that " they were filled with mad- 
 ness." The pent-up rage excited by his foiling 
 
THE WITHERED HAND HEALED. 1 89 
 
 all attempts to entangle him in his talk or works, 
 and the conscious rebuke which they felt at his 
 look and his words, and the fearlessness of 
 Jesus which quailed not before their scrutiny, 
 and stopped not in his works of mercy because 
 they objected to his healing on the Sabbath, 
 now burst forth with volcanic force. The words 
 are emphatic, " filled with madness." Their 
 hearts were overflowing with hate, rancor, dis- 
 appointment, mortified pride, conscious guilt, so 
 that they were beside themselves with rage. 
 There was no room in their bosoms for a single 
 feeling of kindness or mercy. In the great out- 
 burst of indignation all other emotions were ab- 
 sorbed, and to give efficacy to their rage and 
 wreak their vengeance on their holy Victim w^as 
 now the one aim and purpose of the maddened 
 Pharisees. 
 
 To this end they "communed" first "one 
 with another" as to what had best now be done, 
 and then, calling together the Herodians, " took 
 counsel against him how they might destroy 
 him." 
 
 The Herodians were a body of men among 
 the Jews who were the political partisans of 
 Herod Antipas. This Herod, who married He- 
 
IQO THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 rodias, his brother Philip's wife, beheaded John 
 the Baptist ; and to him Pilate sent our Lord on 
 the day of his crucifixion. Aiming at higher 
 power, he was banished to Lugdunum (Lyons), 
 and died In exile about A. D. 40. 
 
 The Jews, as a people, chafed under the Ro- 
 man yoke ; and the Galileans particularly, a 
 rough, easily excited and turbulent people, often 
 rose up against the local Roman rulers, and 
 were as often put down and reduced to still 
 more galling bondage by the Roman soldiers. 
 It was a stigma upon a Jew to point to him as a 
 partisan of Herod, the tool of the Roman em- 
 peror. It was like deserting the standard of the 
 Hon of the tribe of Judah and ranging himself 
 under the labarwn of a heathen empire. It was 
 a virtual confession of the failure of all Messi- 
 anic prophecies and Messianic hopes, a sort of 
 giving up In despair that, after all, the long- 
 promised One, who was the hope of Israel, 
 would not appear, and that It was best to accept 
 the present order of things even though It placed 
 a heathen governor over the royal generation 
 of Jacob. The Herodlans, as the upholders of 
 heathen royalty In opposition to their old theoc- 
 racy, and the supporters of a foreign prince 
 
Herod demands of the scribes where Christ should be born." 
 
THE WITHERED HAND HEALED. I9I 
 
 rather than a prince of the house of Judah, 
 were shunned by the scribes and Pharisees, who 
 decried them as infidels and profane, as wilHng 
 for selfish and political ends to sacrifice all that 
 w^as dear to the Je\V, if the favor and protection 
 of Rome might thereby be secured. 
 
 Notwithstanding this deep-rooted aversion of 
 the rulers of the Jews to this political sect, we 
 find now a ready coalescence with them on the 
 part of the scribes and Pharisees in the common 
 cause of destroying Jesus. 
 
 To get rid of Jesus they were willing for a 
 time to sink all antipathies and opposition, and 
 to use even the detested Herodians, if they 
 might relieve themselves of the presence and 
 teaching of the still more despised Nazarene. 
 On a later occasion, toward the last days of our 
 Lord's life, w^e find the Pharisees again making 
 the same coalition, when ''they sent out unto 
 him their disciples with the Herodians" that 
 " they might entangle him in his talk." Matt. 
 xxii. 16. 
 
 How this shows the intensity of their opposi- 
 tion to our dear Lord ! They were indeed " filled 
 with madness." In seeking the aid of the 
 Herodians they doubtless hoped to find some- 
 
192 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 thing In the words or works of Jesus that might, 
 by a forced interpretation, be made to show that 
 he was disloyal to the powers that be — some- 
 thin or that would brinor him under the surveil- 
 lance and condemnation of the Roman authori- 
 ties. This is evident from the question which 
 the Herodians put to him in their interview with 
 him shortly before his death. With mock rever- 
 ence and hypocritical words of courtesy they 
 come to him, '' saying, Master, we know that 
 thou art true and teachest the wav of God in 
 truth, neither carest thou for any man, for thou 
 regardest not the person of men. Tell us, 
 therefore, what thinkest thou ? Is it lawful to 
 give tribute unto Caesar or not?" Here was 
 presented to him a dilemma on one or the other 
 horn of which the Herodians felt sure that they 
 would impale him ; for if he answered, No, it is 
 not lawful to give tribute to Caesar, they could 
 at once accuse him to the Romans as a sedition- 
 ist and a refuser of tribute, which constituted a 
 grave political crime punishable with death. If 
 he said. Yes, it is lawful to give tribute, then 
 they would accuse him of being a traitor to the 
 Jewish theocracy, an enemy to Jewish independ- 
 ence and a supporter of Roman ascendency. 
 
THE WITHERED HAND HEALED. 1 93 
 
 which would destroy all his influence widi the 
 people. Our Lord ''perceived their wickedness, 
 and said, Why tempt ye me, hypocrites ?" They 
 could not so disguise their minds by honeyed 
 words and flattering compliments as to hide 
 from Him "who knew what was in man" the 
 hypocrisy of these questions, and hence he re- 
 veals them to themselves as hypocrites, and 
 makes them conscious of their duplicity before 
 he answers their catching question. The man- 
 ner of his reply is a marvel of wisdom. He 
 calls for a piece of the " tribute money," not the 
 Jewish shekel, but a Roman denarius or penny, 
 the money in which the tax was paid and which 
 had stamped on it Caesar's image, and some- 
 times heathen emblems and superscriptions. 
 Holding this before them, he simply asked, 
 '* Whose is this image and superscription ?" 
 They say unto him, " Caesar's." Then saith he 
 unto them, " Render unto Caesar the things which 
 are Caesar's," as if he had said. The current coin 
 of your country is Caesar's, and its circulation, 
 displacing as it did, for nearly all purposes ex- 
 cept that of the temple-service, the Jewish coin, 
 proves your subjection to Caesar and his right 
 to levy tribute. But if our Lord had stopped 
 
 17 N 
 
194 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 here, he would have at once been accused by 
 the Pharisees of siding with the Herodians, and 
 so been brought into disgrace with all pious 
 Jews. He does not, however, stop, but adds 
 the markedly significant words, "and unto God 
 the thincTs that are God's." As made in the im- 
 age of God and bearing, as it were, his super- 
 scription, "Pioly to the Lord," give yourselves to 
 him as the tribute due to your divine Creator 
 and King. 
 
 These two instances in which the proud Phari- 
 sees made common cause with the hated Hero- 
 dians for the purpose of destroying Jesus evince 
 the animosity of both parties, and their readi- 
 ness to forget lifelong hatreds if they may but 
 slay their common enemy. 
 
 Such is always the attitude which sin takes 
 toward holiness. The presence of holiness in- 
 variably draws out the opposition of sin. Sin 
 hates light, '' neither cometh to the light lest its 
 deeds should be made manifest that they are not 
 of God." Holiness is spiritual light. It is a 
 revealing power, making known on the one 
 hand the beauty and excellency of God, and on 
 the other the heinoushess of sin as " that abom- 
 inable thing which God hateth." They ever 
 
THE WITHERED HAND HEALED. 1 95 
 
 have been, and must necessarily ever continue 
 to be, antagonistic. In the case before us Jesus 
 had done nothing which was wrong. He had, 
 Indeed, gone contrary to the traditions of their 
 elders, but his vindication of himself had com- 
 pletely silenced their lips. He had done no 
 works but those of mercy. He had spoken no 
 words but those of purity and compassion. He 
 had allied himself to no sect, political or theo- 
 cratic. Why then this enmity, this continual 
 plotting against his life, as If he were a robber 
 or a murderer? It was because of the hard- 
 ness of their hearts and the blindness of their 
 eyes, which refused to recognize his Messianic 
 claims, though fortified by such a holy life, such 
 godly wisdom and such supernatural works. 
 
 The same effect, though not manifesting itself 
 In the same way. Is seen now, as It was then. 
 The holding up of Jesus, and the truth as it is 
 In Jesus ; the declaring that unless men believe 
 in him they will be damned ; that " he that hath 
 the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son 
 hath not life, but the wrath of God abldeth on 
 him;" — these truths, when read In the Bible or 
 proclaimed from the pulpit or uttered In private, 
 will always arouse the hatred of the unrenewed 
 
ig6 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 heart and provoke deadly opposition to the Lord 
 Jesus. The spirit that now ruleth in the hearts 
 of the children of disobedience is not going to 
 yield its claims, or its domicil, without stout op- 
 position. Hence, any attack upon the heart 
 under the influence of sin by truth, wakes up the 
 enmity of that heart to God, and manifests its 
 deeply-seated guilt. 
 
 What a comment is this on sin ! .t hates 
 God, the great and glorious Being who is the 
 author of every good and perfect gift. It hates 
 Jesus, the holy One of God — holy, harmless, un- 
 defiled — who, when on earth, went about doing 
 good and gave his life a ransom for many. It 
 hates the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of 
 life, the spirit of truth and holiness, the renewer 
 and sanctifier of the heart. It hates God's word, 
 which reveals his nature, man's sin and the 
 world's Saviour. It hates God's Church, the 
 blessed company of all faithful people, with its 
 divine ordinances of grace. It hates God's min- 
 isters, the heralds commissioned by him to 
 preach, saying, '' Repent, for the kingdom of 
 heaven is at hand." It hates all good men whose 
 daily lives bud and blossom with grace and bring 
 forth the fruit of the Spirit. There is nothing 
 
THE WITHERED HAND HEALED. 1 9/ 
 
 good and holy and divine which sin does not 
 hate, and \vould not, if it could, destroy. What 
 it cannot destroy it will seek to defile ; what it 
 cannot defile it will vilify ; what it cannot vilify 
 it will mock or counterfeit. It is an ever-active 
 hatred, and in the individual man begins with 
 the first dawnings of spiritual life, and follows 
 the soul through all its pilgrimage days until 
 death ends the conflict. Yet all who are out of 
 Christ, who have not a lively faith in him, and 
 whose life is not answerable to this faith, are 
 servants of sin, slaves of the prince of the 
 power of the air, '' the spirit that now ruleth in 
 the hearts of the children of disobedience." 
 What a master to serve ! a fallen angel cast 
 down from heaven. What a service to engage 
 in ! a daily slavery in working against every- 
 thing good and holy. What wages to receive 
 at the end of this servile toil ! death ! " The 
 wagfes of sin is death." 
 
 So soon as our Lord perceived the spirit of 
 these Pharisees, and that they had taken coun- 
 sel with the Herodians against him, " he with- 
 drew himself with his disciples." His time was 
 not yet come. He would not, by remaining and 
 contending with these adversaries, precipitate 
 
 17* 
 
198 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 events, and hence went down to the seaside and 
 thus thwarted their murderous plans. 
 
 This narrative teaches us the Winding nature 
 of sin. It causes the eye of the mind to look at 
 the highest moral beauties and see no beauty in 
 them ; to behold the most holy characters and 
 mark no excellences therein ; and attributes to 
 mean and unworthy motives the most exemplary 
 and charitable acts. Grace long resisted is sure 
 to beget judicial blindness, for God's Spirit will 
 not -always strive with man. 
 
 This narrative also teaches us that the heart 
 of Jesus is grieved by the perversity of men. 
 When Christ exhibits himself to men in his 
 word, his Church, his sacraments, his Spirit, and 
 they reject him and seek only how to rid them- 
 selves of him, then is the holy heart of the Sa- 
 viour grieved at the hardness and impenitency 
 of those whom he came to save, but who say, 
 "Away with him." "We will not have this man 
 to reign over us." May God save us from the 
 doom of rejecting an offered, loving, bleeding, 
 divine Saviour ! 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 THE SECOND SABBATH IN NAZARETH. 
 
 " And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in 
 their Synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished and said, Whence 
 hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works ? Is noi; this the 
 carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, 
 James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they 
 not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? And 
 they were offended in him But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is 
 not without honor save in his own country, and in his own house. 
 And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief," . 
 Matt. xiii. 54-58, 
 
 • " And he went out from thence and came into his own country, and 
 his disciples follow him. And when the Sabbath day was come, he 
 began to teach in the Synagogue; and many hearing him were aston- 
 ished, saying. From whence hath this man these things ? and what 
 wisdom is this which is given uiito him, that even such mighty works 
 are Avrought by his hands ? Is not this the carpenter, tlie son of M_ary, 
 the brother of James and Joses, and of Juda and Simon ? and are not 
 his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. But Jesus 
 said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, but in his own coun- 
 try, and among his own kin, and in his own house. And he could 
 there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick 
 folk and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. 
 And he went round about the villages, teaching." Mark vi. 1-6. 
 
 ROM the treatment which cur Lord 
 received after his first preaching in 
 Nazareth, recorded in the fourth chap- 
 ter of St. Luke, we should hardly have supposed 
 
 199 
 
200 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 that he would so soon have gone thither again. 
 But no doubt his heart was specially drawn to- 
 ward those who had been his townsmen for so 
 many years, and whom he knew in all the inti- 
 macies of social life ; and he yearned for their 
 salvation. Hence he was wllllnof to make an- 
 other effort to disciple them to his faith. This 
 was in accordance with his conduct on a later 
 occasion, when his disciples would dissuade him 
 from going into Judea again by saying, " Master, 
 the Jews of late sought to kill thee, and goest 
 thou thither again ?" he heeded not the sup- 
 posed danger, and went where duty called. 
 
 Having, then, v/aited a sufficient time after 
 his first repulse at Nazareth, for reflection to 
 have sobered their minds, and for rumor to have 
 borne to their ears the wonderful things which 
 he had done in all the region of Galilee, he now 
 bends his steps thither. 
 
 The day before he took this journey had wit- 
 nessed some of his mio-htiest works. He had 
 crossed the Sea of Galilee to the country of the 
 Gadarenes on the eastern side, and there had 
 cast out " the legion of devils " from him who 
 was possessed, and who, in consequence, dwelt 
 in tombs, and by his fierceness and strength had 
 
THE SECOND SABBATH IN NAZARETH. 201 
 
 become the terror of the whole country. This 
 legion of devils Jesus had not only cast out, but 
 permitted, at their own request, to go into a 
 herd of swine two thousand in number, which, 
 contrary to Jewish law, were kept in the vicinity, 
 " and the whole herd ran violently down a steep 
 place into the sea and were choked in the sea." 
 Returning to Capernaum, he was there met by 
 Jairus, the ruler of the Synagogue, with the 
 touching appeal, " My little daughter lieth at the 
 point of death. I pray thee come and lay thy 
 hands on her that she may be healed and she 
 shall live." Not only did he comply, and raise 
 her from the dead (for the servant of the ruler 
 announced to the ao^onized father before he 
 reached the house, "Thy daughter is dead ; 
 trouble not the master"), but on the way to the 
 house of Jairus he healed also, through the vir- 
 tue that pervaded his very dress, the woman 
 with an Issue of blood twelve years, who with 
 great faith, but modest secresy, had come be- 
 hind and touched the hem of his garment in the 
 assured conviction, " If I may but touch his 
 clothes, I shall be whole." 
 
 After a day full of such deeds of divine mercy 
 he ascends the steep hillsides of Tiberias, moves 
 
202 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 across the plain of Galilee, toils up the rugged 
 hills that shut in Nazareth on the north, and 
 from their summit looks down once more on his 
 childhood's home. In this journey his disciples 
 are with him. He returns to Nazareth not 
 alone, but with the twelve com^panions and wit- 
 nesses of his word and works. He goes there 
 also preheralded by the mighty works which he 
 had done elsewhere — works which rumor bore 
 to all ears, but which rumor could not magnify 
 because they already exceeded human imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 He went there a few days, doubtless, before 
 the Sabbath, as if to show that he harbored no 
 malice against those Avho would have cast him 
 down from the brow of the hill on which the 
 city was built, and that, despite their ill-treat- 
 ment, he still sought their salvation. "When 
 the Sabbath was come," he went, as had been 
 his custom from childhood, to the Synagogue 
 and "began to teach." It was the same Syna- 
 gogue out of which he had been hustled a few 
 months before, and before the same congrega- 
 tion which had been "filled with wrath" at his 
 first discourse. 
 
 There is no intimation here of what he taught, 
 
THE SECOND SABBATH IN NAZARETH. 20 
 
 o 
 
 as there was before, but we know that wherever 
 he went he was '' teaching and preaching the 
 gospel of the kingdom." 
 
 The effect of it is, however, noted. It pro- 
 duced first astonishment, then distrustful ques- 
 tionings, then offence. Astonishment, or that 
 confusion of mind under the blended influence 
 of wonder and fear at some unexpected appear- 
 ance or event, was often produced in the minds 
 of his hearers by the strong, bold, true, life- 
 giving words of Jesus. 
 
 Though the people of Nazareth had heard 
 him before, yet they listened again with new as- 
 tonishment. Their minds seemed to be per- 
 plexed at such a phenomenon. They wonder 
 how it could be that He who had lived nearly 
 all his life among them, receiving no higher ad- 
 vantages than they, reading no more learned 
 books than they, taught In no school beyond 
 that of the village rabbi, and brought up to the 
 trade of a carpenter, should suddenly appear so 
 Vv^se, so wonderful, so influential, as to fill all 
 Galilee and Judea with the rumor of his words 
 and deeds. '' Whence," they ask, " hath this 
 man this wisdom ?" They acknowledged the 
 wisdom, but wanted to know "■ whence It was," 
 
204 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 and how is it that "such mighty works are 
 wrought by his hands ?" Here again the mighty 
 works are acknowledged, but they cannot solve 
 their origin. They thus give unconscious testi- 
 mony to both, while yet they seek to bring both 
 into discredit by asking, " Is not this the carpen- 
 ter?" *'Is not this the carpenter's son?" "Is 
 not his mother called Mary ?" Is he not " the 
 brother of James and Joses, and of Juda and 
 Simon ? and his sisters, are they not all with 
 us?" "Whence hath this man these thinors?" 
 
 From these carping questions we learn inci- 
 dentally several things : that Jesus was not only 
 the reputed son of a carpenter, but was himself 
 a carpenter — learned the trade as a youth and 
 wrought at it as a man ; that his reputed father, 
 Joseph, was dead, as no mention is made of him 
 in these questions; that our Lord had brothers 
 and sisters, four being named of the former 
 and several of the latter, whose names are 
 not given ; that the family of Mary, the moth- 
 er of Jesus, was still living at Nazareth, and 
 was one well and reputably known to all the 
 people. 
 
 It is not necessary to discuss the question 
 w^hether the brothers and sisters spoken of 
 
THE SECOND SABBATH IN NAZARETH. 20$ 
 
 here' were the children of Joseph and Mary, or 
 the children of Joseph by a former wife, or 
 whether they were merely, as the usage of lan- 
 guage would warrant us in believing, the cousins 
 of our Lord, the children of Cleopas or Alpheus. 
 This is a question about which much has been 
 written, concerning which little is known and 
 where conjecture is fruitless. In whatever sense 
 they were related to Mary, they evidently con- 
 stituted her family, and among the people they 
 passed as the brothers and sisters of our Lord, 
 and this without any rebuke or explanation from 
 Jesus or his disciples. 
 
 St. John mentions that the people of Caper- 
 naum asked on one occasion nearly the same 
 question as the people of Nazareth: "Is not 
 this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and 
 mother we know ? How is It then that he saith, 
 I came down from heaven ?" 
 
 To these questionings our Lord simply re- 
 plied, "A prophet Is not without honor save In 
 his own country and among his own kin and in 
 his own house." The tenor of the objections, 
 veiled under the questions which they asked 
 among themselves, was that of depreciating his 
 character and works by referring to the lowness 
 
 18 
 
206 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 of his origin and the humbleness of his occupa- 
 tion and the scantiness of his learning. They 
 thus sought to take away from the force of his 
 teaching and the greatness of his miracles, be- 
 cause they could not comprehend the wisdom or 
 the mighty works which he showed forth. 
 
 The reply of our Lord was evidently prover- 
 bial. It is one of those truths which have passed 
 into the current thought of all languages, los- 
 m<y nothinor-of its truth as it flows from ag^e to 
 aofe and nation to nation. 
 
 Every day illustrates the accuracy of this 
 proverb. Few great men can bear the close in- 
 spection of social and domestic life. There is a 
 certain perspective point from which you have 
 to look at greatness. If too near, it reveals mi- 
 nute defects — if too distant, you lose some of 
 the finer lineaments ; and so a just mean is re- 
 quired between the microscopic, that would 
 dwell on the details, and the telescopic, which 
 notes only large outlines, in order to get a just 
 estimate of real excellence. The treatment 
 which the ancient prophets received from those 
 of their own kin and nation fully illustrates the 
 truth of the sentiment of our Lord. Secular 
 history confirms what Jesus so broadly asserts. 
 
THE SECOND SABBATH IN NAZARETH. 20/ 
 
 St. Mark says that " they were offended at hhn " 
 — i. c, scandahzed at him. He became to them 
 a subject of gossip and tattle and misrepresen- 
 tation and contumely. He was talked against 
 and misrepresented and traduced. His words 
 were twisted Into wrong meanings. His won- 
 drous miracles were distorted Into the working 
 out of evil agencies. This Is always the aim of 
 the evil one, a purpose known to our Lord and 
 against which he warned his followers when, 
 after bidding the disciples of John to go and 
 show him what things they had seen and heard, 
 he adds the significant w^ords, " And blessed is 
 he whosoever shall not be offended In me." 
 
 It was prophesied (Isa. viil. 14, 15) that Mes- 
 siah would " be for a stone of stumbllnc^ and a 
 rock of offence," that which would be a scandal 
 and a tripping to those who were so blinded by 
 worldliness and self- righteousness that they 
 could not or would not see this " tried stone," 
 this '* precious corner-stone," which God laid in 
 Zion for a foundation. What St. Paul calls "the 
 offence of the cross" still exists, and it will con- 
 tinue so long as there Is an unrenewed heart on 
 earth, for the same apostle gives us the true 
 reason of it when he says, "The natural mind 
 
208 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 is enmity against God ; it is not subject to the 
 law of God, neither indeed can be." Blessed 
 indeed are those whose eyes have been opened 
 to see the preciousness of that Corner-stone at 
 which the ungodly stumble, and to embrace with 
 loving hearts Him who is to the Jew a stumbling- 
 block and to the Greek foolishness, "but to them 
 that are called, both Jew and Greek, Christ, the 
 wisdom of God and the power of God." 
 
 The result of this offence toward Jesus, and 
 unbelief in him, was a depriving them of many 
 temporal blessings which would doubtless have 
 attended his ministry among them, for St. Mat- 
 thew says, "He did not many mighty works 
 there because of their unbelief" St. Mark uses 
 language which implies an inability to do mighty 
 works resulting from lack of faith in the people : 
 " He could there do no mighty works," etc. It 
 is to be observed here that nearly all the mani- 
 festations of the miraculous power of Jesus 
 were made at the solicitation of others, and as 
 an indication of their belief in his ability to do 
 as they desired. It was the response of Jesus 
 to their faith in him. " Believest thou that I am 
 able to do this ?" was his question to one. " If 
 thou canst believe, all things are possible to him 
 
THE SECOND SABBATH IN NAZARETH. 209 
 
 that believeth," was his rejoinder to another. 
 According to your faith be it unto you, were the 
 terms of his healing grants to others. " O 
 woman, great Is thy faith; be It unto thee even 
 as thou wilt," Is his language to her whose per- 
 sistent entreaty told her persisting faith. If the 
 blessings which he had so lavlshlngly bestowed 
 were desired, they were worth asking for, and 
 In the absence of the faith of the Nazarethltes 
 we see the almost total absence of his mighty 
 works. Yet even In that city he left not him- 
 self without witness, for he did '* lay his hands 
 upon a few sick folk and healed them." There 
 were a few who believed even In the midst of 
 unbelief, and to these sick ones the compassion- 
 ate Jesus went and laid his holy hands on them. 
 Their faith -was rewarded with heakh, and thus 
 he left a testimony behind him of his mingled 
 compassion and power. 
 
 Even these miracles made. It seems, but 
 slight Impression, for St. Mark Immediately 
 adds, "And he marveled because of their 
 unbelief." In the case of the Centurion of 
 Capernaum whose servant he healed. It Is 
 said by St. Matthew that " he marveled " at the 
 
 greatness of his faith ; here we learn " he mar- 
 is* 
 
210 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 veled " at the want of faith In the people of Naz- 
 areth. 
 
 The Centurion was a Roman, had only heard 
 of Jesus or seen a few of his works, and yet 
 had such faith in him that he did not deem it 
 necessary for Jesus to go to his house to heal 
 his sick servant, but only to give an order to the 
 palsy to go, as he, a soldier, would give an order 
 unto a soldier under him to go, and the palsy, 
 like the soldier, would do the bidding of the 
 Master's word. It was a faith that invested our 
 Lord with the whole command of life and death, 
 and hence he '' said to them that follov/ed. Ver- 
 ily I say unto you, I have not found so great 
 faith, no, not in Israel." 
 
 The people of Nazareth, however, had seen 
 him, knovv^i him, heard him. There was no ex- 
 cuse for their not believino^ in him save the so- 
 cial jealousies which would not concede the pos- 
 sibility of greatness to one on a social level with 
 themselves, and who could receive their homacre 
 only at the cost of their self-disparagement. 
 Hence in this case the wonder of Jesus was ex- 
 cited at their allowing so small an obstacle to 
 hinder their recognition of his mighty v/orks, 
 and for the sake^ perhaps, of personal or family 
 
THE SECOND SABBATH IN NAZARETH. 211 
 
 pride, refuse to acknowledge the claims of the 
 Son of Mary. It should be stated here, also, 
 that St. John tells us (vii. 5), "Neither did his 
 brethren believe in him " — /. e., did not at that 
 time (though they did afterward, Acts i. 14), ac- 
 cept him as the Messiah, did not give full cre- 
 dence to his claims and become his active disci- 
 ples. This declaration gives deeper intensity to 
 the meaning of the proverb, "A prophet is not 
 without honor but in his own country and among 
 his own kin and in his own house." Not unfre- 
 quently the nearest relatives throw more obsta- 
 cles in the way of God's children than strangers. 
 That hardness of heart which could not be 
 penetrated either by the gracious words or the 
 mighty deeds of Jesus might well excite his 
 w^onder. It shows, however, that persons may 
 live in the house v/ith Jesus, be his kinsmen ac- 
 cording to the flesh, work with him at the same 
 trade, dwell with him many years, worship to- 
 gether Sabbath after Sabbath in the same Syna- 
 eocrue, blend in the intimacies of domestic and 
 social ties, and yet not believe on him. How 
 often have men said, " Oh, if I had only lived 
 in Christ's day and seen his miracles and 
 heard his preaching, I certainly would have been 
 
212 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 his disciple !" Yet the probabilities are that you 
 would not. The adage, " Familiarity breeds 
 contempt," would have been as active in its 
 workings in your minds as in the minds of the 
 citizens of Nazareth. The heart is fertile in 
 findine excuses for not believino- and, left to it- 
 self, seeks darkness rather than light, because 
 its deeds are evil. 
 
 The fact is, that we at the present day are in 
 a better attitude for receivincr the truth as it is 
 in Jesus than those were who saw and heard 
 and dwelled with him when on earth. To us he 
 is taken out of the common family, social, na- 
 tional surroundings in which he appeared to the 
 Jews. He is lifted above all the extraneous in- 
 fluences which at that time warped and preju- 
 diced the minds of those around him. He is no 
 longer to us the Son of the widow Mary, the 
 brother of James and Joses and Simon and 
 Judas, the carpenter of Nazareth, the peasant 
 of Galilee. To us he no lono^er wears the ordi- 
 nary dress of men, followed about from place 
 to place by a retinue of plain fishermen and 
 publicans. To us he does not stand out as 
 the opponent of the scribes and the Pharisees, 
 the rich and the powerful classes, withering 
 
THE SECOND SABBATH IN NAZARETH 213 
 
 them by his woes and exposing their hypocri- 
 sies, and receiving in return their poured-out 
 wrath, waxing greater and fiercer until it com- 
 passes his death. The sharp outlines of these 
 passing events, stirring to their depths all Syria, 
 commented on from Dan to Beersheba, bruited 
 about with maledictions by scribe and Pharisee, 
 have, with their deteriorating effect on the 
 then acceptance of his person and mission, 
 all passed away ; and that which then lessened 
 the proportions of his character, because it 
 was viewed only In a partial light, now aug- 
 ments its greatness, when we see it in its 
 true position and magnitude and under Its 
 fully-developed glory. 
 
 We are therefore far better off in our real 
 knowledge of Jesus than the people of Naza- 
 reth, or than even his brethren were. We have 
 all the testimony which they had, and manifold 
 more. We have the culminating records of 
 centuries of the practical effect of his life and 
 work. We have his atonement as unfolded In 
 the types of Leviticus and aS practically at work 
 in reconciling the world unto God. We have 
 his Messiahship as depicted in the glowing words 
 of the old Jewish seers, and as testified to by 
 
214 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 th<^ wonders of his life and the marvels of his 
 kingdom. 
 
 We have his doctrines, not as he dropped his 
 gracious words here and there in the Syna- 
 gogue, on the mountain-top, by the seashore, at 
 the table, but gathered up in one repository, 
 by holy men writing as they were moved by the 
 Holy Ghost, working out their silent but regen- 
 erating effect upon cities, nations and the w^orld. 
 
 The thousands of hearts in every age which 
 have drunk in the water of life as it flowed from 
 him, testify that he is precious. The thousands 
 of minds which have bent with intense study 
 upon all the points of his character and his 
 teaching, testify this is the Christ. The thou- 
 sands of churches, with their ministry and sac- 
 raments throughout the world, testify this is the 
 Saviour of men. 
 
 Painting, and Sculpture, and Architecture, and 
 Music, and Poetry, and History, and Jurispru- 
 dence, and Literature, and Science, in all their 
 higher and truer developments, each pays 
 tribute by their noblest works to " Him in whom 
 are hid all the treasures of wisdom and know- 
 ledge." Thus, wherever we look over Christen- 
 dom, we see proofs of Christ's greatness and 
 
THE SECOND SABBATH IN NAZARETH 21 5 
 
 glory. From him, as from the world's centre, 
 have gone out the elevating, refining, enlight- 
 ening, humanizing forces which have driven 
 back ignorance, oppression, and heathenism, 
 with their foul and trooping evils. From him, 
 as from the world's centre, has shot out " the 
 light of the knowledge of the glory of God in 
 the face of Tesus Christ," which is the true lieht 
 
 •J o 
 
 of the mind and heart of men. 
 
 And here I cannot but quote the words 
 of one (Theodore Parker) who, having put 
 the life and teachings of Jesus into the cru- 
 cible of his own free-thinking philosophy, 
 and having subjected them to the test and 
 force of a scorching criticism, finds yet this 
 residuum, which he thus eloquently describes: 
 "How vast has the Influence of Jesus been! 
 How It has wrouo^ht in the world I His words 
 judge the nations. The wisest son of man 
 has not measured their height. They speak 
 to what Is deepest in profound men ; to what is 
 holiest In good men ; to what is divinest in re- 
 ligious men. They kindle anew the flame of 
 devotion in hearts long cold. They are spirit 
 and life. His truth was not derived from Mo- 
 ses and Solomon ; but the lls^ht of God shone 
 
2l6 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 through him, not colored nor bent aside. His 
 Hfe is the perpetual rebuke of all time since. It 
 condemns ancient civilization ; it condemns 
 modern civilization. Wise men we have since 
 had, and good men, but this Galilean youth 
 strode before the world whole thousands of 
 years, so much of divinity was in him. His words 
 
 solve the questions of this present age 
 
 Let men improve never so far in civilization, or 
 soar never so high on the wings of religion and 
 love, they can never outgo the flight of truth and 
 Christianity. It will always be above them. It 
 is as if we were to fly toward a star, which be- 
 comes the larger and more bright the nearer we 
 approach, till we enter and are absorbed in its 
 glory." 
 
 If, therefore, Jesus marveled at the unbelief of 
 those around him then, may he not, does he not, 
 wonder still more at your unbelief, with your 
 great light and knowledge ? You do not enough 
 think how many more reasons to believe in 
 Christ press upon us in the nineteenth century 
 than existed in the first. How the weight of 
 evidence is rolling itself up more and more with 
 each advancing age ! Standing, then, before 
 the Bible, with all the light of eighteen hun- 
 
THE SECOND SABBATH IN NAZARETH. 21/ 
 
 dred years of Christian hope and achievement 
 thrown upon its sacred pages, how can you re- 
 sist its claims, reject its enshrined Christ, and 
 remain an unbeUever ? A great responsibiHty 
 is thus laid upon all who dwell in Christian 
 lands, and under the influences of the Church of 
 God. The possession of a Bible lifts you up 
 into a degree of moral accountability before God 
 truly astounding. For in that Bible you find an 
 offered Saviour and a free salvation. Reject it, 
 disuse it, and you cannot be saved, for Jesus 
 only is " the way, the truth, the life." Accept it, 
 use it prayerfully, believe it fully, and it will lead 
 you to the cross here, and to a crown hereafter. 
 
 19 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE HEALING OF THE BLIND 
 
 THE SABBA TH 
 
 MAN ON 
 
 " And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his 
 birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did this sin, 
 this man, or his parents, that he was born blind ? Jesus answered, 
 Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of 
 God should be made manifest in him. I must work the works of him 
 that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can 
 work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. 
 When he had thus spoken he spat on the ground, and made clay of 
 the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man M'ith the clay, 
 and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which is by inter- 
 pretation. Sent). He went his way, therefore, and washed, and came 
 seeing. The neighbors therefore, and they which before had seen him 
 that he was blind, said, Is not this he that sat and begged? Some said, 
 This is he : others said, He is like him : but he said, I am he. There- 
 fore said they unto him. How were thine eyes opened ? He answered 
 and said, A man that is called Jesus, made clay, and anointed mine 
 eyes, and said unto me. Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash : and I 
 went and washed, and I received sight. Then said they unto him, 
 Where is lie ? He said, I know not. They brought to the Pharisees 
 him that aforetime was blind. And it v.-as the sabbath-day when Jesus 
 made the clay, and opened his eyes. Then again the Pharisees also 
 asked him how he had received his sight. He said unto them. He put 
 clay upon mine eyes, and I washed, and do see. Therefore said seme 
 of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he keepeth not the 
 sabbath-day. Others said, How can a man that is a sinner do such 
 miracles? And there was a division among them. They say unto the 
 blind man again. What sayest thou of him, that he hath opened thine 
 eyes ? He said. He is a prophet. But the Jews did not believe con- 
 cerning him, that he had been blind, and received his sight, until they 
 218 
 
02 
 
 p— ( 
 
 o 
 > 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN 219 
 
 called the parents of him that had received his sight. And they asked 
 them, saying, Is this your son, who ye say was born blind ? How then 
 doth he nov/ see? His parents answered them and said, We know 
 that this is our son, and that he was born blind : but by what means he 
 now seeth, we know not ; or who hath opened his eyes, we know not : 
 he is of age; ask him : he shall speak for himself. These words spake 
 his parents, because they feared the Jews : for the Jews had agreed al- 
 ready, that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put 
 out of the Synagogue. Therefore said his parents. He is of age; ask 
 him. Then again called they the man that was blind, and said unto 
 him, Give God the praise : we know that this man is a sinner. He 
 answered and said, Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one 
 thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see. Then said they 
 to him again. What did he to thee ? how opened he thine eyes ? He 
 answered them, I have told you already, and ye did not hear; where- 
 fore would ye hear it again ? will ye also be his disciples ? Then they 
 reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we ar,e Moses' disci- 
 ples. We know that God spake unto Moses ; as for this fellow, we 
 know not from whence he is. The man answered and said unto them. 
 Why, herein is a marvelous thing, that ye knov.^ not from wlience he is, 
 and yet he hath opened mine eyes. Now we know that God heareth 
 not sinners : but if any man be a worshiper of God, and doeth his will, 
 him he heareth. Since the world began was it not heard that any man 
 opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this man were not of 
 God, he could do nothing. They answered and said unto him, Thou 
 wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us ? And they cast 
 him out. Jesus heard that they had cast him out : and when he had 
 found him, he said unto him. Dost thou believe on the Son of God ? 
 He answered and said. Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him ? 
 And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that 
 talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshiped 
 him. John ix. 1-38. • 
 
 HESE passages bring before us the 
 transactions and words of Jesus on 
 the Sabbath after the Feast of Taber- 
 nacles, in or near. the temple. 
 
 The man whose case is here recorded was 
 probably one of that class of beggars who were 
 
220 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 accustomed to frequent the gates of the temple, 
 that they might do as the lame man healed by 
 Peter and John did, " ask alms of them that en- 
 tered into the temple." 
 
 The cry of the man for help, coupled perhaps 
 with his own sad plight, arrested the attention of 
 the disciples, and prompted it may be by what 
 our Lord not long before had said to the impo- 
 tent man, when he found him in the temple, 
 *' sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon 
 thee," they were induced to ask the question, 
 '' Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, 
 that he was born blind?" The connection of 
 sin with disease was a doctrine well known to 
 the Jews, and had been taught to them by type 
 and precept for many hundred years. They 
 were made to feel that sin, disobedience to 
 God's law, brought upon man its sore temporal 
 chastenings, and that the evils thus visited upon 
 themselves for their transgressions were trans- 
 mitted to their children and children's children. 
 
 This biblical truth had, however, been much 
 perverted, and had given rise to fanciful theories 
 by which to account for the presence of sickness 
 and calamities of various kinds. The question 
 of the disciples brings out two forms of this 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIXD MAN. 221 
 
 false theory : first, that the congenital blindness 
 of the man might be the result of sin on the part 
 of '' his parents " before he was born, thus visit- 
 ing directly and personally the sin of the father 
 upon the child. Second, that the blindness of 
 the man now might perhaps have been caused 
 by some sin of his in a former state of being. 
 For though the Jews generally did not believe 
 in the pre-existence or transmigration of souls, 
 yet the Essenes and Caballsts did hold these 
 views, and by them interpreted and accounted 
 for the evils of this present being. To this ques- 
 tion of the disciples our Lord at once replies, 
 " Neither did this man sin, nor his parents." 
 Not that they were not sinners, " for there is no 
 man that liveth and sinneth not," but that they 
 were not sinners in the sense which their ques- 
 tion implied, as drawing down upon themselves 
 as parents, or upon this man as their son, this 
 specific evil for some supposed specific sin be- 
 fore he was born. The man was not born blind 
 for any offence committed either by himself or 
 his parents. Thus that whole class of ideas 
 which cropped out in this question, and which 
 evidently had found entrance into the disciples' 
 minds, was swept away by a single sentence. 
 
 19* 
 
222 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 This negation of the question was made stronger 
 by an affirmation which declared that the bhnd- 
 ness of the man was a result of God's providen- 
 tial ordering, " that the works of God should be 
 made manifest in him," the idea doubtless be- 
 ing that this blindness would be overruled by 
 God for the showing forth of his glory in his 
 restoration to sight. Thus the physical and tem- 
 poral evil would be transmuted into a spiritual 
 and eternal blessing, not to the man only, but, 
 through the record of his cure, to the whole 
 world. Recosfnizinsf in this blind man a condi- 
 tion of things in the relief of which he could 
 manifest a work of God, Jesus said, as if address- 
 ing those who would dissuade him (in conse- 
 quence of the Jews having just before taken up 
 stones to stone him) from doing any further act 
 of mercy on the Sabbath, " I must work the 
 work of Him that sent me while it is day : the 
 nio^ht cometh in which no man can work." In 
 speaking of himself as being " sent " into the 
 v/orld, he speaks in reference to that voluntary 
 subordination of himself as Mediator and Re- 
 deemer, which he made when He " who was in 
 the form of God thought it not robbery to be 
 equal with God, but made himself of no reputa- 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN 223 
 
 tion and took upon him the form of a servant 
 and was made in the hkeness of men." That 
 self-humiKation which he manifested when he 
 said, as is recorded by the Psalmist (xl. 6) and 
 St. Paul (Heb. x. 7), ''Lo, I come to do thy will, 
 O God ; yea, thy law is within my heart." 
 
 ''The works" of God which he was thus 
 " sent " to do, were those works of grace, 
 mercy, truth, which were so fully illustrated 
 in the gracious words which proceeded out 
 of his mouth, in the many mighty works of 
 healing mercy, and in the enunciation of those 
 divine truths, the concrete of which he himself 
 summed up in the one grand declaration, " I am 
 the way, the truth, the life." His wondrous 
 miracles did this, and accredited him as one 
 " sent from God," even as Nicodemus reasons, 
 " for no man can do the works that thou doest 
 except God be with him." 
 
 But Christ's spiritual work was to have, as it 
 were, its parallel physical work running along- 
 side of the spiritual, and attesting and authenti- 
 cating at every step his divinity, headship and 
 power. Our Lord gave a synopsis of this work 
 in the text of his first sermon in the Synagogue 
 of Nazareth, where, quoting from Isaiah, he said, 
 
224 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he 
 hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the 
 poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken- 
 hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives 
 and recoverincf of sio^ht to the blind, to set at 
 liberty them that are bruised, to preach the ac- 
 ceptable year of the Lord ; " and he announced 
 himself as doing this work when he said, " This 
 day is this Scripture fulfilled In your ears." 
 Christ's working day was then drawing to a 
 close. But a few months intervened between 
 him and the cross, when the night of death 
 would put an end to his earthly work, for before 
 he died on that cross he uttered words which 
 showed that his work was done, as he cried, " It 
 Is finished!" and ''gave up the ghost." This al- 
 lusion to his life-work as a "day" is several 
 times made by him, and in reference to his 
 labors therein he declares, " My meat is to do 
 the will of Him that sent me and to finish his 
 work." 
 
 Having thus spoken of the necessity of work- 
 ing " while it Is day," he then makes the sublime 
 assertion, "As long as I am In the world I am 
 the light of the world." It was prophesied of 
 the Messiah that he should " open the blind eyes, 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN. 225 
 
 bring out the prisoners from the prison, and 
 them that sit In darkness out of the prison 
 house." Isa. xHI. 7, 8. It was declared In refer- 
 ence to him that "the people that walked in 
 darkness have seen a great light : they that 
 dwell In the land of the shadow of death, upon 
 them hath the light shined ;" and the same 
 prophet, casting his vision across the ages, calls 
 out to Israel, in view of the advent of Jesus, 
 "xA.rIse, shine, for thy light is come, and the 
 glory of the Lord Is risen upon thee ! Gentiles 
 shall come to thy light, and kings to the bright- 
 ness of thy rising." 
 
 He was announced also figuratively as "the 
 star out of Jacob," " the day star," " the day- 
 spring from on high," "the sun of righteous- 
 ness" that should arise "with heallnof In his 
 wings," or beams. In making the assertion, then, 
 " I am the light of the world," Jesus had gath- 
 ered up into himself the predictions and symbols 
 of the olden seers, and gave them a personal 
 and corporate form. 
 
 On several occasions he applies the term 
 "light" to himself. In his conversation with 
 Nicodemus, and also in those discourses re- 
 corded in the 12th chapter of John, when he 
 
226 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 said, " Yet a little while is the light with you ; 
 walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come 
 upon you. While ye have light believe in the 
 light, that ye may be the children of light." And 
 then, that there might be no question as to who 
 or what this light was, he adds, " I am come a 
 light into the world, that whosoever believeth 
 on me should not abide in darkness." 
 
 As he stood in the temple on one of the 
 mornings of this Feast of Tabernacles, he said 
 to those around him, " I am the light of the 
 world ; he that follov/eth me shall not walk in 
 darkness, but shall have the light of life." The 
 next clay, standing beside the blind man in the 
 temple, he repeats the same declaration, " I am 
 the lieht of the world," as if he had said, I am in 
 the moral and spiritual firmament what the sun 
 is in the physical firmament, the source and 
 centre of all light. I am the moral and spiritual 
 light of the world. 
 
 This must have seemed to those who heard 
 him, and who saw in him little to distinguish him 
 from other men, a very bold, self-assertive, even 
 arrogant claim. When had any of their re- 
 nowned rabbis, Hillel or Shammai or Gamaliel, 
 ever spoken of themselves in this manner? 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN. 22/ 
 
 When had ever any of the great philosophers 
 of the world, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, ever put 
 forth such pretensions ? and who was this Gali- 
 lean carpenter that he should make this asser- 
 tion of claims that could exist only in the Mes- 
 siah? Accustomed as we are to regard Christ 
 as the li^ht of the world, is It difficult for us to 
 enter into the astonishment of those who heard 
 him first lay claim to be this light of the world, 
 and how their national pride, and their personal 
 prejudices, and their sectarian views, stoutly rose 
 up in resistance of any such Messianic assump- 
 tions by this son of a carpenter ! Looking back 
 as we can over a space of eighteen hundred 
 years, and interpreting Jesus' words in the light 
 of fulfilled prophecy and a triumphing Christian- 
 ity, we can see how literally true they were, and 
 that look at him in any and every aspect,^ he is 
 indeed, as St. John declared he was, "the true 
 light that lighteth every man that cometh into 
 the world." 
 
 Take the revealing power of light and examine 
 Jesus' character in that phase, and see how well 
 the term applies to him. Light, as we know, 
 reveals or makes manifest things ; the opposite 
 of darkness, which covers up and hides them. 
 
228 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Now with all that the human intellect had done 
 in the regions of mind and morals, with all the 
 great philosophical discoveries of the sages and 
 magi in Egypt, in Persia, in Greece, in Rome, 
 there were certain regions into which their spec- 
 ulations had not penetrated, and certain topics 
 which they had in vain labored to comprehend 
 or explain. There was, with all their metaphys- 
 ical acquisitions, a large terra incognita in the 
 region of mind and morals. There were undis- 
 covered continents of man's spiritual relation- 
 ship lying unknown beyond the ultima tJmIe of 
 Seneca's visions, or the half-ventured hopes of 
 Socrates. As to the cause and consequences 
 of man's fall ; as to the origin and prevalence of 
 evil; as to the knowledge of the true God, the 
 way to reach him, the way to worship him, his 
 attributes, his manifestations ; as to the real ob- 
 ject and aim of this present life, with its unsolv- 
 able mysteries ; as to any future life beyond 
 the grave ; as to all the great problems of life 
 and death, good and evil, soul and body, men 
 and angels, future rewards and punishments, — 
 the universal mind was in darkness and needed 
 revelation, light— revealing light. And just 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN. 229 
 
 here it is that upon each and all these points 
 Christ sheds li^ht. 
 
 o 
 
 He reveals to us "the way" to God, "the 
 truth" of God, "the Hfe" of God. He has 
 " brought life and immortality to light in the 
 gospel." He has taught us that "' God is a 
 spirit, and must be worshiped in spirit and in 
 iruth." He has made known to us the true 
 aims and destinies of our mortal being. He has 
 revealed the erace of God in the salvation of 
 fallen man, through the terms and conditions of 
 repentance and faith, and thus shown us that 
 sin can be conquered, that death can be van- 
 quished, that the grave can be stripped of its 
 victory, so that, in the strong language of the 
 apostle, " the light of the knowledge of the 
 glory of God is revealed to us in the face of 
 Jesus Christ," "who is the brightness of the 
 Father's glory, the express image of his person." 
 He is thus the Revealer, the light-dispenser, 
 the scatterer of darkness and doubt, and the 
 bringer-in of a bright and eternal day. From 
 the face of the Sun of righteousness are shot 
 out those widespread and deep-penetrating 
 beams of light which drive away the trooping 
 
 shadows of superstition and error, and which 
 
 20 
 
230 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 will eventually fill the earth with *' the light of 
 Jesus Christ." 
 
 Or, take again the life-giving power of light, 
 and see how true it is that Jesus is, in this 
 aspect, " the light of the world." 
 
 The researches of modern chemistry prove 
 what experience has for long ages taught men, 
 that there are certain kinds of rays in the beams 
 of the sun which are absolutely necessary to 
 ensure vegetable and animal life and growth. 
 Could these peculiar rays be removed from the 
 sun, though an illuminating quality might re- 
 main, its life-giving and sustaining power would 
 be lost, and man, and beast, and bird, and tree, 
 and flower, would wilt and die. 
 
 Just so with the light which Jesus sheds. It 
 is not merely enlightening, it is life-giving. This 
 St. John brings out most clearly in the opening 
 chapter of his Gospel. " In him," he says, " was 
 life, and the life was tJie light of men." The 
 argument is, Christ is the light, but the light of 
 Christ is seen by us finite beings only in his 
 life. That life becomes our light, our gicide. 
 It is the lamp in the tall tower of his holy charac- 
 ter which reflects that inner lio^ht in its outlook 
 over the sea of humanity. It is his own life, the 
 
THE HEALIXG OF THE BLIND MAN. 23 1 
 
 life spiritual, that Jesus imparts to all his follow- 
 ers ; and because they seek to imitate him in his 
 shining Virtues, they become themselves "chil- 
 dren of light," and their light shines before men, 
 that men seeing their good works may glorify 
 their Father which is in heaven. Thus the light 
 of Christ in the soul is always life-giving, life- 
 sustaining and life-developing. 
 
 Yet once more, look upon the. beaiUifying 
 power of light, and mark how, in this aspect also, 
 Jesus is " the light of the world.'* All the beau- 
 tiful coloring of nature, from the gorgeous clouds 
 to the seven-listed rainbow ; from the most del- 
 icate penciling of the tiniest flower to the broad 
 bands of rosy glory which flash up in the restless 
 northern lights ; all the thousand-tinted glories 
 which have been lavished in the painting of field, 
 and forest, and fiower, and sky, and sea, and the 
 works of man's device, — all these are due to the 
 beautifying power of light, to the divisibility of 
 •its rays, to the different angles of its refraction, 
 to the varying velocities of its ethereal waves as 
 they pulsate from the sun, and to the manifold 
 densities and reflecting or refracting power of 
 the objects on which those rays impinge. So 
 that if the light be taken away, all tint and color 
 
232 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 is gone, the beautifying power is withheld, and 
 colorless patches and tintless fields, and a dull, 
 unvarying uniformity of darkness, would clothe 
 all nature. And as we look at the moral world, 
 do we not find that all its beauty is derived from 
 Jesus, the light of the world ? Sin is deformity, 
 derangement, darkness, death. Sin is error, per- 
 version, untruthfulness, doubt. Sin is foul, pol- 
 luting, defiling, wrecking alike to soul and body. 
 
 Sin defies God, rejects Christ, quenches the 
 Spirit, kills the body and destroys the soul in 
 hell! 
 
 What are all the loathsome and vile and 
 abominable scenes in daily life ? What are all 
 the ereat diseases and sores and wounds of our 
 common humanity? What are all the waste 
 places and deserts and wildernesses of poverty 
 and ignorance and superstition ? What are all 
 the Stygian lakes of human lusts and bestial 
 crimes ? What, we ask, are all these, and every- 
 thing else that disfigures our once fair earth, but 
 sin's work ? 
 
 But where the light of Christ shines, there 
 these darksome and doleful things flee away, 
 and beauty, moral beauty, springs up. As the 
 liofht of Christ shines into the individual heart it 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN 233 
 
 decks the heart with unearthly beauty, and a 
 character that grows silently and symmetrically 
 as the palm tree, developing all its beauty out 
 of an inner life "hid with Christ in God," towers 
 up in graceful luxuriance before us, and the 
 world says. What a beautiful character ! 
 
 As the light of Christ shines into a family, 
 making father, mother, child, brother, sister, 
 luminous wath the holy light of truth and purity 
 and love, how the elements of that family har- 
 monize and commingle into exquisite pictures of 
 domestic life under the sweet groupings and the 
 rich colorings of the Holy Ghost ! As the light 
 of Christ shines into and permeates society, how 
 it purifies, ennobles and then beautifies it ! 
 
 It is his light that has vivified and quickened 
 into life all the native excellences of heart and 
 mind, because even what was good in human 
 nature could not develop itself amid the dark- 
 ness of heathenism, and only comes out under 
 the light of pure religion ; and not only so, but 
 by resolving the entire duty of man to man, and 
 man to God, into one great commandment, 
 whose root principle is love, as Jesus did, he 
 has bound society together by this love-tie, 
 which, in its daily effects on the individual cha- 
 
 20 « 
 
234 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 racter, Is gradually expelling all that is contrary 
 to this " first and great commandment," and 
 cementing together heart to heart, and rank to 
 rank, and class to class, and tribe to tribe, until 
 love shall rule all hearts in their dealino^s one 
 with another, and love pervade all hearts in their 
 actings toward God ; and thus love will be "the 
 fulfilling of the law." What a beautiful aspect 
 will a family, a society, a nation, a world, present 
 to the eye human, as v/ell as to the eye divine, 
 when all shall be illuminated by the light of 
 Christ, when all shall seek to walk in that 
 lieht, and as children of lifjht hold forth, each in 
 the candlestick of his own profession, the word 
 of life as the law of his heart and the hope of 
 hi^s soul ! 
 
 There were many founders of religion and 
 philosophy who styled themselves, or were styled 
 by others, '' the lights of the world." Confucius, 
 who lived five hundred years before Christ and 
 founded the great state religion of China, is 
 mostly represented in Chinese pictures in the 
 attitude of prayer, while a beam of light from 
 heaven descends upon his book of wisdom, out 
 of which he teaches, his scholars as they stand 
 admiringly around, showing that the popular 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN. 235 
 
 idea of the Chinese concerninor their hio^hest 
 sage was that of the receiver and imparter of 
 liofht from heaven. 
 
 Zoroaster, who Hved about the same century 
 and founded the rehgion of the Parsees, as de- 
 veloped in the sacred books of the Zendavesta, 
 made hght the pure and eternal source of all 
 perfection. He considered himself as belonging 
 to the kingdom of light, and felt called upon to 
 fieht with all his strength acralnst the kinordom 
 of darkness ; and hence the good principle of 
 his religion, or Ormuzd, is termed the light of 
 the world, w^hich by its working seeks to trans- 
 form everything to light. 
 
 Apollo, the most influential god in the re- 
 ligion of Greece, and concerninof whom it has 
 been justly said "that the Greeks would never 
 have become what they were without the wor- 
 ship of Apollo," is always represented as born 
 of light and as being the god of light, and his 
 work, according to the mythology of the day, 
 was to diffuse light in all the regions of mind, 
 and in all the arts and sciences of men. Hence 
 the sun is the emblem of this powerful divinity. 
 Indeed, all the religious systems of the world 
 sought to establish themselves as the light of 
 
236 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 the world. But they signally failed. Their light 
 did not illumine the hearts of their founders. 
 The brilliancy of their thoughts and the flashes 
 of their yearning spirits, like the shimmer of 
 heat-lightning in the evening, only made the 
 surroundino- darkness more dark bv contrast 
 with their fitful and unprofitable light. 
 
 But it Is not so with Jesus, and the religion 
 which he established. 
 
 Let us not forget, too, the Intense force of the 
 definite article ''the " here, that Jesus Is tJie light 
 of the world. Not a light, one among many oth- 
 ers and of equal value, and no more, but the 
 article tJie, being exclusive as well as empJiatiCy 
 shows that Jesus, and yesus only, Is the light of 
 the world. There Is no other source and foun- 
 tain of spiritual light. All comes from him, and 
 other lights, like the planets of the solar system, 
 shine only In his light, and show forth, therefore, 
 only a reflected glory. In saying, '' As long as I 
 am in the w^orld I am the light of the world," 
 Jesus did not mean to convey the idea that his 
 light-Imparting power was tied to his earthly 
 life, and would cease when that terminated. Far 
 from It ; for though he is taken bodily from us, 
 he is still here by hi§ Spirit, by his Word, by his 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN. . 237 
 
 Sacraments, by his Church, by his Ministers. 
 His assurance to his disciples, and through them 
 to all the spiritual generations of men, was, 
 **Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of 
 the world," " I will not leave you comfortless 
 (orphans), I will come unto you," "Where two 
 or three are gathered together in my name, 
 there am I in the midst of them." 
 
 The meaning, then, is that he would ever be 
 the enlightening power of the world. He would 
 never cease to shine on men as the light of life, 
 the light-giving life and the life-imparting light. 
 In the days of his flesh he shone on only a lim- 
 ited circle ; his light was circumscribed ; its 
 beams shot into and were almost lost in the thick 
 fogs and haze of Jewish prejudice and hatred 
 and unbelief. Now, however, he is lifted above 
 his earthly surroundings. He is no longer girt 
 around by the hills of Galilee or Judea. He 
 has ascended on high, "gone up with a shout, 
 and our God with the voice of a trump," and 
 from the heaven above, and from before the 
 throne, he still shines out the " light of life," be- 
 cause he is ever " the King of glory." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN ON 
 
 THE SABBATH. 
 
 (Continued.) 
 
 AVING thus prepared his auditors by 
 tellinof them that he was " the Hp-ht of 
 the world," Jesus proceeds to give 
 them ocular proof of the truth of his assertion 
 by a miracle which would at once illustrate his 
 meaning and demonstrate his power. 
 
 '' He spat on the ground and made clay of 
 the spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind 
 man with the clay, and said unto him, Go wash 
 in the pool of Siloam." The question at once 
 arises, Why did our Lord interpose three dis- 
 tinct instrumentalities between himself and the 
 completed miracle, the clay, the spittle, the 
 washing In Siloam ? The reply is that at times 
 he chose to work with means, and at times with- 
 out means, and the reason of his doing so may 
 
 238 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND AIAN. 239 
 
 generally be found in some circumstance con- 
 nected with the specific case before him. The 
 miracle was not the less a putting forth of divine 
 power, in that he chose to use intermediaries 
 which of themselves, and without the divine 
 power operating through them, were yet power- 
 less to heal. The use of these media was in 
 accommodation to the request of those asking 
 the miracle, or to the weak faith of the patient. 
 Jesus needed them not. He could heal at a 
 distance and without seeing the object of his 
 miraculous cure, as he did the nobleman's son 
 (John iv. 46-53) and the centurion's servant. 
 Luke vii. i-io. He could heal with a word, 
 without a touch, as he did the ten lepers (Luke 
 xvii. 11-19) and the two blind men near Jeri- 
 cho. Matt. XX. 29-34. Hg could heal without a 
 word, or a conscious touch on his part, as in the 
 case of the woman havinsr an issue of blood. 
 Matt. ix. 20-22. He could heal with a touch 
 and a word, as in the case of Peter's wife's 
 mother (Matt. viii. 14-17) and the woman with 
 a spirit of infirmity eighteen years. Luke xiii. 
 11-13. 
 
 We find two other cases in the New Tes- 
 tament somewhat analoofous to the one un- 
 
240 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 der consideration. One was as he was passing 
 through the coast of Decapolis, where "they 
 bring unto him one that was deaf and had an 
 impediment in his speech, and they beseech him 
 to put his hand upon him." Mark vii. 31-37. 
 The other was wrought in the vicinity of Beth- 
 saida, where "they bring a Wind man unto him, 
 and they besought him to touch him." Mark 
 viii. 22-26. It will be observed as to both these 
 cases that the men were brought to Jesus, that 
 in each case he was asked to touch them by 
 those who brought them. Hence in each case 
 our Lord accommodated his work of healing to 
 the apprehension of his auditors, and used such 
 interventions as would arrest their attention, 
 while yet their use would take off nothing from 
 the ereatness of the miracle. So in the case 
 
 o 
 
 before us. The man had not asked to be 
 healed, nor had any one asked healing on his 
 behalf Indeed, it appears that he had perhaps 
 never before heard of Jesus, and hence could 
 have no faith in him. It was necessary, there- 
 fore, in such a case, to implant the beginnings of 
 hope and faith in his mind by calling the man to 
 him, and thus raise an expectation in him of 
 some relief; then, having prepared the unguent 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN. 24I 
 
 and anointed his eyes, deepening that expecta- 
 tion into hope ; then preparing him for the final 
 blessing by putting his just developing faith into 
 action, and telling him to "go to the pool of 
 Siloam and wash." The call, the anointing, the 
 command, the going, the washing, were so many 
 ascending steps in the development of that 
 man's faith ; each was based on the former, and 
 all together rendered easy the ascent from 
 ignorance of Jesus to that full belief in him 
 which he so speedily manifested. The several 
 processes of healing corresponded to the sev- 
 eral processes in the blind man's mind, just as 
 they evidently did in the case of the blind man 
 near Bethsaida. The cure lay in neither the 
 clay, the spittle nor the pool, but in the doing 
 of what Jesus told him to do, and while obeying 
 he reaped the blessing. 
 
 The pool of Siloam, mentioned as far back as 
 Nehemiah (iii. 1 5), to which he was sent to wash, 
 still exists, just outside the southern wall of 
 Jerusalem, in the village of Siloam, and is one 
 of the few undisputed localities in that region. 
 It seems to have been connected with the tem- 
 ple mount by a rocky, sinuous conduit which 
 
 brought to a lower and walled-in basin, called 
 21 Q 
 
242 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 '' the pool," the waters that flowed from the 
 spring beneath the temple area above. It is 
 to this that Milton alludes when he speaks of 
 
 " Siloa's brook, that flowed 
 " Fast by the oracle of God." 
 
 It is now a mere ruin of crumbling walls, 
 broken columns, decaying steps. The water it- 
 self is brackish and unclean, the place is dank 
 and filthy, and the whole surroundings are as 
 unromantic in fact as Milton has made it ro- 
 mantic in sonof. 
 
 Jesus, having anointed the eyes of this man 
 with 'the clay, told him to go and wash in Si- 
 loam, but did not tell him what would result 
 therefrom. ''He went his way therefore and 
 washed, and came seeing." The result was not 
 only sight to the eyes of the body, but to the 
 eyes of the soul, for he saw at one and the same 
 time the light of day — the sun ; and the light of 
 the world — Jesus ; and at once, in the presence 
 of Pharisees and doubters, he acknowledged his 
 cure as a miracle done by a prophet come from 
 God. Now follows a most interestinof and life- 
 like dialogue, first with his neighbors, then with 
 the Pharisees, then with Jesus. It is related by 
 St. John with all the vividness of an eye-witness 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN. 243 
 
 and with the graphic pen of a word-painter, set- 
 ting before us the ensuing events with pictu- 
 resque beauty and fideHty. 
 
 We judge from the narrative that immedi- 
 ately on his regaining his sight the man went to 
 his home, as the first attestants to the reaUty 
 of his cure are his "neighbors." They "which 
 before had seen him that he was bhnd, said. 
 Is not this he that sat and begged?" They 
 saw a change so great in the whole aspect 
 of the man, that some could scarcely say 
 whether it were he or not. In this variance 
 of opinions they resort to the blind man* him- 
 self, and he promptly tells them, " I am he." 
 At once they ask, " How were thine eyes 
 opened?" He answers, "A man that is called 
 Jesus made clay and anointed mine eyes, and 
 said unto me. Go to 'the pool of Siloam and 
 wash, and I went and washed and received 
 sight." This is clear and succinct, and yet it 
 implies that the man probably had never heard 
 of Jesus before that day, and knew perhaps 
 nothing of his character and fame. The neio^h- 
 bors immediately inquire where Jesus is, but 
 the man can only reply, " I know not." 
 
 Unwilling to let the matter rest here, the 
 
244 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 once blind man was brouo^ht before the Pharl- 
 sees — /. e., to the lesser Sanhedrhn. This body 
 consisted of twenty-three members in every city 
 in Palestine in which there were not less than 
 one hundred and twenty householders, and its 
 office was to determine minor cases of civil and 
 ecclesiastical law, carrying up to the greater 
 Sanhedrim of seventy-one members, as to a 
 court of appeal, the weightier cases beyond the 
 province of the lesser Sanhedrim. Before this 
 tribunal this once blind man is brouorht, not so 
 much, as it would seem, to punish him for any- 
 thing done on the Sabbath day, as to get his tes- 
 timony to what Jesus did, that they might have 
 whereof to accuse him of Sabbath-breaking. 
 
 Standing before this judicial body, he gives to 
 their query " how he had received his sight " 
 (for the fact itself was never disputed) nearly 
 the same answer as to his neighbors. This 
 answer produced a division in the council. One 
 party, looking at it only in its bearing on the 
 Sabbatic law, said, " This man is not of God, be- 
 cause he keepeth not the Sabbath day ;" while 
 another party, looking at it from its miraculous 
 side, argued, '' How can a man that is a sinner 
 do such miracles ?" 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN. 245 
 
 Unable to reach any unanimity, they turn to 
 the man standinof in their midst and ask him 
 how he regards the person who wrought this 
 cure. At once, without a moment's hesitation, 
 he repHes, '' He is a prophet." His process of 
 reasoninof seems to be not unhke that of Nico- 
 demus, who said, "We know that thou art a 
 teacher come from God, for no man can do 
 these miracles that thou doest except God be 
 with him" — a sound conclusion from right prem- 
 ises. This confession of the man, however, did 
 not satisfy them, and so they tried another de- 
 vice. They rejected the story that the man had 
 been blind and had received his sight, thus vir- 
 tually making Jesus and the blind man conspire 
 together to impose a false miracle on the peo- 
 ple. Hence they summon before them the 
 parents of the man, in the hope that they may 
 perhaps secure from them such a confession as 
 will enable them to proclaim the whole transac- 
 tion fraudulent. To the question of the tribunal, 
 " Is this your son ?" the parents promptly reply, 
 *' We know that this is our son." To the ques- 
 tion. Do ye say he was born blind? they as ex- 
 plicitly answer, '' He was born blind ;" and to 
 the last question, " How then doth he now see '^.'' 
 
 21* 
 
246 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 they could only say, whether from Ignorance or 
 fear, " By what means he now seeth we know 
 not, or who hath opened his eyes we know not ; 
 he is of age, ask him ; he shall speak for him- 
 self." The testimony that he was born blind is 
 now conclusive. Yet how completely did his 
 parents truckle to their fears of being excom- 
 municated, in the thoroughly evasive, if not ab- 
 solutely false, answer as to the person by whom 
 their son had been healed ! They knew that it 
 was Jesus, for their son had told them so ; they 
 knew the method by which it was done, for that 
 also had been told them. But the hostile party 
 to Jesus in the council had already agreed to 
 " cast out of the Synagogue " any that should 
 confess that Jesus was the Christ; and knowing 
 this, they evaded any such confession by throw- 
 ing the burden of proving the miracle upon 
 their son, who was of age and who could speak 
 for himself. 
 
 Failing here to get any evidence of collusion 
 or deceit, they recall the son ; and addressing 
 him with apparently devout, yet really hypocrit- 
 ical, words, and uttered in a manner as if to 
 convey to him the idea, Well, we have found out 
 the trick and have adjudged this Jesus a sinner, 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN. 247 
 
 and you must therefore side with us and con- 
 form to our views, they .say, ^' Give God the 
 praise, we know that this man is a sinner." The 
 direction " Give God the praise " does not 
 mean, as at first sight it might appear, as a call 
 upon the healed man to return thanks to God 
 for his cure, for they could not thus ask him to 
 acknowledge the cure as being worthy of praise 
 to God, while yet he who wrought it was "a 
 sinner." We must put the two parts of the 
 sentence together, and interpret one by the 
 other. Hence we infer that the idea in the 
 minds of the Jews in uttering it was to adjure 
 him to speak the truth, just as Joshua (vii. 19) 
 adjured Achan, who by his deeds had brought 
 such disaster upon Israel, saying, '' My son, give, 
 I pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and 
 make confession unto him, and tell me now 
 what thou hast done : hide it not from me." 
 
 By this solemn adjuration, coupled with their 
 solemn judgment, this "man is a sinner," they 
 hoped to overawe the man, and extort out of 
 him some confession that will break down the 
 force of the miracle and destroy its popular 
 effects. But they signally failed. The man 
 answered, "Whether he be a sinner or no I 
 
248 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 know not," It Is not my province to enter upon 
 that question, but ''one thing I know, that 
 whereas I was blind, now I see." The Jews 
 now resort to a kind of cross-examination, to 
 elicit If possible some discrepancy In his testi- 
 mony on which to Invalidate it altogether; hence 
 they ask him again to go over the matter with 
 them. He 111 brooks this questioning, and re- 
 plies with tartness and Irony, '' I have told ye 
 already, and ye did not hear ; wherefore would 
 ye hear It again : will ye also be his disciples ?" 
 By telling them "ye did not hear" he meant 
 that they did not credit his testimony, hence It 
 was useless to ask again ; and by the question, 
 " Will ye also be his disciples ?" he doubtless 
 meant to Insinuate that all their seeming anx- 
 iety to sift the facts of this miracle was not be- 
 cause of their desire to learn the real truth, and 
 thus. If It proved Jesus to be the Christ, to enrol 
 themselves as his disciples, but was solely 
 prompted by a hatred of him which had already 
 formulated Itself Into a resolve to cast out of 
 the Synagogue any who should become Jesus' 
 disciple. This reply drew forth their Indigna- 
 tion ; and reviling him with opprobrious epithets, 
 they drew the line of distinction between him 
 

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THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN. 249 
 
 and them, saying, "Thou art his disciple, but 
 we are Moses' disciples ; we know that God 
 spake unto Moses, but as to this fellow, we 
 know not whence he is." 
 
 The cogency of the man's reply they could 
 not resist, while yet it not only failed to con- 
 vince their minds, but stimulated them to such 
 rage that they turned upon him in indignation, 
 saying, ''Thou wast altogether born in sin, and 
 dost thou teach us ?" Their rao^e culminated 
 in their casting him out — i. e., not only turned 
 him with violence out of the judgment-hall, 
 where this discussion took place, but also ex- 
 communicated him from the Synagogue. This 
 was as far as they could judicially go — a depri- 
 vation of certain religious privileges coupled 
 with formal maledictions and popular reproach. 
 
 Some one immediately informed Jesus of the 
 result of this trial, and he at once sought the 
 man and "found him." It was for Jesus' sake 
 that he had been cast out, and he never permits 
 a man to suffer for him without the comfort of 
 his presence and support. "The good Shep- 
 herd seeks the poor sheep cast out by the wick- 
 ed ones ; the Son of God will reveal himself to 
 him Yv^ho for his name's sake is reviled and 
 
250 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 evil-entreated of men ;" and he rejoices against 
 the whole host of the Pharisees over this one 
 mendicant soul whom he has won. He was 
 now to experience the truth of what Jesus had 
 said in his sermon on the mount : " Blessed are 
 ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, 
 and shall say all manner of evil against you 
 falsely for my sake ; rejoice, and be exceeding 
 glad, for great shall be your reward in heaven, 
 for so persecuted they the prophets which were 
 before you." He who spoke this eighth beati- 
 tude was now to prove its truth by going at 
 once to this persecuted and cast-out man 
 that he may bring him wholly to himself as a 
 full disciple. His first question to him when he 
 finds him is designed to sound the depth of his 
 faith — to make the man reveal (not to Jesus, for 
 he knows what is in man) to his own conscious- 
 ness the amount of his knowledge of Jesus, and 
 hence he asks, " Dost thou believe on the Son of 
 God?'' In this question is folded up the whole 
 doctrine of the Messiah, of the atonement, of 
 the salvation of mankind ; for as we learn after- 
 wards in. the teaching of our Lord's apostles, to 
 believe on the Son of God is to embrace all the 
 doctrine of Jesus brought to light in the gospel. 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN. 25 1 
 
 - This man evidently understood by the term 
 "Son of God" the promised Messiah, and his 
 mind, softened by the Influences already at work, 
 was In a state of preparation to believe when 
 one sufficiently accredited should claim that be- 
 lief. Hence he appeals to Jesus, and says, " Who 
 Is he. Lord, that I might believe on him ?" 
 
 And now He who revealed light into his 
 bodily eye reveals himself unto the soul of this 
 seeker after God as " the light to lighten the 
 Gentiles of the glory of God's people Israel," 
 for without any paraphrasis he directly unfolds 
 himself to his receptive mind, and tells him, 
 "Thou hast both seen him, and It Is he that 
 talketh with thee." This Is a clear, explicit, 
 straightforward declaration of his Messlahship — 
 as clear as that made to the woman of Sama- 
 ria, and like her this once blind man accepted it 
 as true. Faith immediately sprung up in his 
 soul; he made his lips confess it, saying, "Lord, 
 I believe," and he carried out his subjective faith 
 to an objective act, for he "worshiped him." 
 
 Receiving this divine worship as justly his 
 due, Jesus said to the Pharisees and others who 
 had gathered around him, " For judgment I am 
 come into this world, that they which see not 
 
252 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 might see, and that they which see might be 
 made bhnd."^ These are strano^e and almost 
 paradoxical words, yet they are full of the 
 deepest and most important truth. On reading 
 them the question immediately arises, How can 
 this be reconciled with those passages in which 
 our Lord asserts just the contrary words ? In 
 conversing with Nicodemus, he said, " God sent 
 not his Son into the world to condemn the 
 world," and just before his death he declared, 
 '' If any man hear my words and believe not, I 
 judge him not ; for I came not to judge the 
 world, but to save the world." John xii. 47. 
 These assertions seem to be diametrically op- 
 posite, but it is only a seeming contradiction, 
 not a real one. Both statements are true, and 
 the difference which appears on their face van- 
 ishes when we get beneath the surface and go 
 down to the real meaninof of the words em- 
 ployed. Jesus Christ did not come to this earth 
 for the purpose of executing the office of a 
 judge of men. Hence, when one dissatisfied 
 with the distribution of a father's estate came 
 to him with complaints, and said, "Master, speak 
 to my brother that he divide the inheritance 
 with me," Jesus replied, " Man, who made me a 
 
THE HEALING OE THE BLIND MAN 253 
 
 judge or a divider over you ?" So also when 
 the scribes and Pharisees broucrht to him "a 
 women taken In adultery," and having stated to 
 him the Mosaic penalty of such an act, asked 
 him, " But what sayest thou ?" he declined to 
 act as judge. He knew that they wished to 
 entrap him Into a judicial decision ; and If he had 
 given his opinion for or against the woman, 
 they would In either case have accused him of 
 usurping a power which did not belong to him, 
 and for the exercise of which they would have 
 condemned him. It was not his business to 
 pronounce upon her guilt or innocence. He 
 was not there to act as a judge In such cases, 
 and hence he met their question by the reply, 
 "Let him that Is without sin first cast a stone at 
 her." In this sense, then, as occupying a judicial 
 station, our Lord did not come to judge the 
 world. 
 
 But there is another kind of judgment than 
 forensic or judicial — a judgment which results 
 as an effect from the manifestation of certain 
 principles or doctrines ; a judgment which is 
 ever working Itself out in the development of 
 human character under the presence and teach- 
 ing of certain great truths. For example, take 
 22 
 
254 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 a garment which is full of stains and imperfec- 
 tions, both of fabric and color, but which are in- 
 visible by the light of a candle or in the twilight, 
 and bring it under a mid-day sun, and you at 
 once judge and condemn the garment as un- 
 worthy by the simple fact that you expose its 
 defects by an increase of light. 
 
 Introduce a orreat scientific truth Into the 
 world, like that, for example, of the Copernican 
 system in astronomy, and its very existence 
 and demonstration judges and condemns all pre- 
 vious and later theories, from the world-centred 
 system of Ptolemy to the vortices of Descartes ; 
 for the very demonstration and reception of a 
 great truth, condemns and judges all so-called 
 truths which militate with it. 
 
 Thus it was that the very manifestation of 
 Christ in the flesh did, without any formal sen- 
 tence, condemn the false religions, the false phil- 
 osophies and the false ethics of the world. 
 
 He came as revealing the one living and true 
 God, existing as a spirit, and to be worshiped 
 as a spirit " in spirit and in truth ;" and that 
 great thought will, In its workings, overturn 
 every idol god, every priesthood of sin, every 
 temple of error, every religion of man's device. 
 
THE HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN. 255 
 
 He came as "the way, the truth, the Hfe," the 
 very point about which all the philosophy of the 
 world had busied itself, and concerning which all 
 had erred ; for while to find a zuay to God, to get 
 at the ^nM of God and to obtain a /i/e with 
 God was the one aim of all philosophical In- 
 quiry, not one could say, I have found it, but 
 each seemed in error's wandering maze to be 
 irretrievably lost. 
 
 The centrlne of them all In Christ, and the 
 manifesting them fully in him, was a virtual 
 condemnation of all human philosophy In just 
 so far as that philosophy w^as at variance with 
 divine truth. 
 
 The bringing in of true godliness showed 
 what was false. The manifestation of incarnate 
 truth, virtually condemned all human error, and 
 the Incarnation of the true God, detected as 
 with Ithuriel's spear, the falsities of pagan 
 worship, and made the dark and miserable rites of 
 heathenism start up discovered and amazed, and 
 " return perforce to their own likeness." What- 
 ever, then, is a test of character, or elicits men's 
 views of themselves, or discerns between good 
 and evil, and causes men to show what their 
 real disposition is, is a virtual judgment upon 
 
256 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 men, and these processes of judgment are con- 
 tinually going on in our minds and continually 
 witnessed in daily life, where there can be of 
 course no judicial sentence or formal tribunal. 
 
 These are the meaning of our Lord's words, 
 and he applied these test principles to the 
 Pharisees, and made them realize in their own 
 hearts that they were blind to all that was really 
 good and holy and true, and brought upon 
 themselves a self-pronounced judgment that 
 condemned their errors and their lives. 
 
 Let us see to it that in our clearer light, and 
 fuller truth, we bring not upon ourselves the 
 like condemnation. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE SABBATH ON WHICH JESUS HEALED 
 THE WOMAN WHO HAD A SPIRIT OF IN- 
 FIRMITY. 
 
 " And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath : 
 and, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eigh- 
 teen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up her- 
 self. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, 
 Wom.an, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands 
 on her : and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. 
 And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation because that 
 Jesus had healed on the sabbath-day, and said unto the people, There 
 are six days in which men ought to work : in them therefore come and 
 be healed, and not on the sabbath-day. The Lord then answered him, 
 and said, Thou hypocrite ! doth not each one of you on the sabbath 
 loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering ? 
 And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan 
 hath bound, lo these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the 
 sabbath-day ? And when he had said these things, all his adversaries 
 were ashamed : and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things 
 that were done by him." Luke xiii. 10-17. 
 
 T. LUKE only records this Sabbath 
 work of Jesus. He does not tell us 
 in what city it was done, but only says, 
 " In one of the Synagogues." 
 
 He was there teaching, for we do not doubt 
 
 22* 
 
 R 
 
 257 
 
258 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 that on every Sabbath day after his public en- 
 trance upon his ministry he preached to the 
 people in a Synagogue or in the temple. His 
 work-day, as he knew, was to be brief; hence he 
 filled all its hours with the deeds which advanced 
 the establishment of his kino^dom. His Ian- 
 guage ever was, " I must work the works of 
 Him that sent me while it is day; the night cometh, 
 in which no man can work," and we know that 
 he said, '' My meat is to do the will of Him that 
 sent me and to finish his work." He had ever 
 before him a divine and definite plan. To its 
 accomplishment he bent all the energy of his 
 body and the purpose of his will. In doing this 
 he never flagged in zeal or faltered in purpose. 
 In the singleness of his eye to God's glory, in 
 the fixedness of his will to do God's work, in the 
 untiring industry which marked his labors, he 
 sets us an example that w^e should follow, as 
 near as we can, the steps of Him " who went 
 about doing good." The eye of Jesus was as 
 quick to see, as his heart was quick to feel for, 
 the bodily afflictions of those around him. See- 
 ing in this Synagogue "a woman which had a 
 spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bov/ed 
 together and could in no wise lift up herself, he 
 
THE INFIRM WOMAN. 2$^ 
 
 called her to him." She does not seem to have 
 gone to the Synagogue for the purpose of re- 
 ceiving healing, nor does she appear as one 
 asking a favor of our Lord. Yet Jesus saw in 
 her not only an object of merciful commisera- 
 tion, but a case by and through which he could 
 make known afresh, and with renewed force, the 
 power which he held in his hand as Lord alike 
 of the spirit world and of the Sabbath. At his 
 call, this cripple, bent double, with face earth- 
 ward, with body distorted, in whom hope of 
 relief had died out long ago, and to whom per- 
 haps life was a burden and a grief, came before 
 the assembly, presenting to them all a mourn- 
 ful spectacle that should have excited their ten- 
 derest sympathy. As soon as she had reached 
 Jesus he laid his hand on her and pronounced 
 the healing words, ''Woman, thou art loosed 
 from thine infirmity." The words of our Lord 
 are peculiar, different from those ordinarily used 
 in his miracles of healing. They implied bonds, 
 fetters, and these again implied a binder, a fet- 
 terer, one who had manacled her body with a 
 chain, and bowed it together and kept it bent 
 with a bond which no human power could break. 
 Accordingly, our Lord says subsequently that 
 
26o THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 she had been bound by Satan, that he was the 
 slave-master who had thus chained together, as 
 it were, the head and feet of his victim. Thus 
 her infirmity is traced to Satan, whether di- 
 rectly, through some such permitted agency 
 as Avas allowed to him in the case of Job, or the 
 " thorn in the flesh " of Paul ; or indirectly, to 
 the resultinof evil of some sin into which he 
 tempted her, we cannot tell ; all we know 
 is that "Satan had bound" her, that she had 
 been his bond-woman for eighteen years, that 
 no power of man could loose this bond and 
 make her body straight, and that she was thus 
 in her own eyes and in the judgment of others 
 a helpless, incurable, life-long cripple. 
 
 But no sooner does our Lord pronounce the 
 words which by their potent influence dissolve 
 the bonds than she lifts herself up, finds herself 
 made straight, and at once glorifies God. The 
 strong man, armed, had thus kept and deform- 
 ed the palace of this body for nearly a score 
 of 3^ears, but now a stronger than the prince 
 of this world had come upon him, broken his 
 bands asunder, taken from him his spoil, and 
 let the captive go free, erect, rejoicing. 
 
 This act on the part of Jesus immediately ex- 
 
THE INFIRM WOMAN. 261 
 
 cites the Indignation of the ruler of the Syna- 
 gogue ; and too much overawed by the miracle 
 to say a word against Jesus, he turns upon the 
 people and scolds them, as if they had done an 
 act of wrong. Indeed, he rebukes them as Sab- 
 bath-breakers, saying, "There are six days in 
 which men ouo^ht to work : in them therefore 
 
 o 
 
 come and be healed, and not on the Sab- 
 barii day." He thus sought to do away the 
 effect of the miracle by urging the charge of 
 Sabbath breaking. He seeks to change the 
 current of their thoughts, then doubtless flow- 
 ing Christward in wonder and thankfulness for 
 such display of divine power. Into another chan- 
 nel, whereby the people would reproach both 
 themselves and Jesus as violators of the fourth 
 commandment. Through all this deceit and 
 mock jealousy of the law of Moses our Lord 
 saw, and replied, "Thou hypocrite!" causing 
 the ruler of the Synagogue to feel that he had 
 penetrated Into the secret motives of his heart; 
 and then he establishes the charge of hypocrisy 
 by asking, " Doth not each one of you on the 
 Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall 
 and lead him away to watering? And ought 
 not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, 
 
262 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 whom Satan hath bound, lo ! these eighteen 
 years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath 
 day?" How pertinent and unanswerable was 
 this illustration and question of Jesus ! 
 
 If you can on the Sabbath loose the bonds 
 that bind your beasts in order to give them 
 water — bonds that have tied them to your stall, 
 but a few hours, and beasts that have no souls — - 
 do you blame me for loosing a bond of eigh- 
 teen years' duration, fastened on a daughter of 
 Abraham, and restoring to her the free use of 
 limb and body of which Satan had so long de- 
 prived her ? Well might his adversaries "' be 
 ashamed." Their hypocritical cant about the 
 Sabbath had been exposed, their own works 
 upon their own cattle were made to testify to 
 their hypocrisy. They were ashamed also at 
 being thus exposed to the people, and subjected 
 doubtless to the ridicule of those whose esteem 
 and reverence they so sedulously courted. On 
 the other hand, " all the people " (for we ever 
 find that "the people" flocked to hear him, that 
 "the common people heard him gladly") "re- 
 joiced for all the glorious things that were done 
 by him." Thus shame and joy were mingled 
 in the congregation — shame on the part of the 
 
THE INFIRM WOMAN. 263 
 
 ruler and his friends, arising out of their con- 
 scious exposure and defeat, for truth always ex- 
 poses and defeats error and hypocrisy, and joy 
 on the part of the people, who recognize in 
 these works of Jesus a pledge of love and 
 grace which they eagerly sought, though as 
 yet they understood not the full purport of his 
 holy mission. 
 
 The time is comino^ when there will be a 
 similar exposure of all the hypocrisies of men, 
 when the gloss and glare of sin shall be rubbed 
 off, w^hen the masks it wears shall be removed, 
 when it shall appear in Its naked foulness and 
 filthiness, and when all eyes shall see the mis- 
 erable artifice aad subterfuge which served to 
 disguise euilt and make even sin itself wear the 
 aspect and livery of goodness. 
 
 The time is coming when all Christ's "ad- 
 versaries" shall "be ashamed" — ashamed at 
 their folly in ever trusting to the lures of the 
 " father of lies ;" ashamed at their guilt in per- 
 sistently rejecting so glorious and merciful a 
 Saviour; ashamed of their personal sins, which 
 will then lie naked and open before the eyes of 
 the universe, when the secrets of all hearts shall 
 be revealed. How will those who now reject 
 
264 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Jesus then "call on the rocks and the moun- 
 tains, Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him* 
 that sitteth upon the throne, for the great day 
 of his wrath is come, and we are not able to 
 stand !" It is a hard position to occupy, that 
 of an " adversary " of Christ. Yet all are ad- 
 versaries who are not his professed and faith- 
 ful friends. His words are, '' He that Is not 
 with me is against me," and you can be with 
 Christ only by a living faith that unites. you to 
 him even as the branch is united to the vine, 
 and of all who are not thus "with Christ" he 
 has declared, " Those mine enemies who would 
 not that I should reign over them, bring them 
 hither and slay them before me." 
 
 On the other hand, it will be a day of intense 
 rejoicing when Jesus shall rule king of nations as 
 he now does king of saints, when his word will 
 be the world's law, his life the world's example, 
 his truth the world's light, his salvation the 
 world's hope, his kingdom the world's glory. 
 Then how desirable will it be to be found 
 among the "friends" of Jesus, to realize that 
 the ereat Redeemer is our Elder Brother, one 
 who has borne our nature, who has atoned for 
 our sin, v/ho has graven our names on the 
 
THE INFIRM WOAIAN. 26$ 
 
 palms of his hands, and who has prepared for 
 us the many mansions in the "Father's house" 
 in heaven ! In that ** Father's house of many 
 mansions " we doubt not that the ransomed 
 souls will study over and over again " all the 
 glorious things that were done by him." Not 
 the few specimen Instances recorded in the 
 gospels, but those innumerable acts and words 
 of love and mercy of which St. John says, " The 
 which, if they should be written every one, I 
 suppose that even the world itself could not 
 contain the books that should be written." 
 
 The two parables which follow were evident- 
 ly part of our Lord's teachings on the Sab- 
 bath ; and though St. Matthew records both and 
 St. Mark one (that of the mustard seed) In 
 somewhat different connections, yet that con- 
 stitutes no reason why they should not have 
 formed part of his discourse on this day. For 
 it seems that they naturally sprang up out of the 
 bitter opposition of the Jews to Jesus, and are 
 designed to show, first, by the parable of the mus- 
 tard seed, that though the kingdom of God, as 
 represented now by Jesus and his few followers, 
 might seem small and insignificant even as a 
 grain of mustard seed, yet by and by it would 
 
 23 
 
266 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 become a great tree, " greater than all herbs ;'' 
 and second, by the parable of the leaven, that 
 though the teaching of Jesus seemed to find but 
 small lodgment in the hearts of the people now, 
 yet, like a small piece of leaven, it would ere 
 long leaven the whole lump and assimilate all 
 to itself. 
 
 Our Lord introduces these parables with the 
 questions, *' Unto what is the kingdom of God 
 like? and whereunto shall I liken it?" Not that 
 he was at any loss to state what it was like, but 
 for the purpose of eliciting their attention and 
 to awaken thouo^ht in their minds as to the 
 nature of that kino^dom. Not waiting- for an 
 answer, he delivers the two brief but most sig- 
 nificant parables to which we have already 
 alluded. 
 
 Without going into any formal exposition of 
 them, let us note a few of their more salient 
 points. The mustard seed is, indeed, " the least 
 of all seeds that are down in the earth " which 
 produce ligneous stems and branches, and It 
 was in this sense, doubtless, that our Lord spoke 
 of it, alluding rather to the relative difference 
 between the seed and the full-grown plant than to 
 the seed in the abstract, because the seeds of 
 
THE INFIRM WOMAN, 26/ 
 
 poppy and rue are smaller still, though the 
 plants never rise above' humble herbs, whereas 
 the mustard seed " becometh a ereat tree and 
 shooteth out great branches, so that the birds 
 of the air came and lodo^ed in the branches 
 thereof." This, of course, refers to its growth 
 in warm climates, of which we have authentic 
 accounts ; thus a traveler in South America says : 
 *'The mustard plant thrives so mightily in Chili 
 that it- is as biof as a man's arm and so hio-h and 
 thick that it looks like a tree, and the birds 
 build their nests in them, as the gospel men- 
 tions." The exceedingly small, and to human 
 aspect Insignificant, beginning of the kingdom 
 of God, Is thus strongly brought out when It is 
 compared to a mustard seed. And looking at 
 It with merely human eyes, what could be more 
 small and inslo^nificant than this first seed of 
 the kingdom of God in its earthly manifesta- 
 tion ? The idea, humanly speaking, was absurd, 
 that less than a dozen illiterate Galileans, the 
 disciples of a crucified Jew, could overthrow the 
 old religions of the world and set up a new 
 one which should extend from the rising to the 
 setting sun. They were to conquer the world 
 to the sceptre of Jesus, and yet Immediately 
 
268 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 after his death they shut themselves up In an 
 upper room " for fear of the Jews." Great 
 names, literary honors, the patronage of kings, 
 the favor of the people, they did not possess. 
 To mortal view it was the veriest absurdity to 
 commission such men to convert the world, 
 then just passing through its Augustan age, to 
 the faith of the son of a carpenter whom the 
 Jews had excommunicated, and the Romans 
 nailed to the accursed tree. 
 
 Yet see how soon this small seed became a 
 great tree ! Fifty days after the ascension of 
 Jesus three thousand were converted under the 
 preaching of Peter. In less than three years 
 churches were gathered throughout all Judea, 
 Galilee and Samaria, and in thirty years Chris- 
 tianity had spread over Asia Minor and Greece, 
 southward to Egypt and westward to Rome. 
 In a hundred years Justin Martyr declared in 
 an epistle to the emperor Adrian, " There is 
 not a nation, either Greek or barbarian, or of 
 any other name, even of those who wander in 
 tribes and live in tents, among whom prayers 
 are not offered to God the Father in the name 
 of the crucified Jesus." In the fourth century 
 the golden-mouthed John of Antioch (Chrys- 
 
THE INFIRM WOMAN. 269 
 
 ostom) wrote, " The apostles of Christ were 
 twelve, and they gained the whole earth. If you 
 go to India, to Scythia, to the uttermost part 
 of the world, you will everywhere find the doc- 
 trine of Christ enlightening the souls of men." 
 Eighteen hundred years have passed away, 
 and how stands the religion of Jesus now? 
 Take a map of the world, mark on it the 
 countries most celebrated for law, order, mo- 
 rality, domestic virtue, refinement, intellect- 
 ual culture, free government, and there you 
 will find that the religion of Jesus prevails. 
 Why is this ? Why is all that is great and 
 good and lofty and inspiring in law, govern- 
 ment, literature, art, science and morality only 
 found among the nations of Christendom, while 
 all that is debasing in intellect, tyrannical In 
 power, degrading in morals, whatever strips 
 man of his glory, society of Its safeguards, gov- 
 ernment of its paternal care, woman of her 
 true position, is found where the religion of 
 Jesus Christ does not {)revail ? Can we 
 solve the problem of the extension of Chris- 
 tianity on the principles of human philosophy ? 
 Gibbon tried it in his five celebrated reasons, 
 and failed. Is it solved by the maxims of po- 
 
 23* 
 
2/0 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 lltical science ? ]\'Iachiavel and Montesquieu 
 and Bacon and Guizot each assert that Its 
 wondrous development Is an anomaly In the 
 world. Can we match It by any parallel fact 
 In any country, In any religion, by any founder 
 of a new sect ? The voice of universal history 
 answers, No ! It stands alone, the wonder of 
 the nations, *as the triumphal monument of 
 Jesus on the plains of a fallen humanity. " Of 
 the Increase of his government there shall be 
 no end." This religion of Jesus will advance 
 steadily, surely, triumphantly, over all the bar- 
 riers and obstacles of earth and hell and Satan, 
 until it shall become the one only religion of 
 everv kinordom and tribe and nation on the 
 o^lobe. 
 
 The parable of the " leaven hid In three 
 measures of meal " refers to this same spiritual 
 kingdom, but under another aspect. The mus- 
 tard seed represented its outward groivth and 
 enlargement In the eyes of men, the leaven 
 Its iirward zvoi^king In the individual heart, Its 
 assimilative, rather than Its accretive, power — 
 the Internal penetrating and diffusing energy 
 of its truth, rather than Its external outspread- 
 ing and greatness. It Is the property of the 
 
THE INFIRM WOMAN. 2/1 
 
 grace of God, when It finds a lodgment in the 
 heart, to change the heart into the character 
 of that which is thus leavening it, just as it is 
 the property of leaven hid in a measure of 
 meal to change the character of the whole lump 
 of dough in the midst of which it was placed. 
 Like leaven, it works silently, imperceptibly, 
 surely, transforming little by little the entire 
 affections of the soul ; and without imparting to 
 it any new faculties or affections gives new force 
 and direction to their outofoinofs and influence, 
 so that the thinors in which the natural man 
 once took delight now afford no joy ; the emo- 
 tions v/hich he once cherished he now repress- 
 es ; the plans which once absorbed his energies 
 are now laid aside ; the passions which once 
 raged in his heart are now tamed ; while the 
 things he formerly hated he now likes ; what 
 he once shunned he now rejoices in — prayer, 
 praise, reading God's word, attendance on the 
 means of grace, the cultivating of a meek and 
 quiet spirit, the bridling.of his tongue, the effort 
 to grow in grace, are now sought for and cul- 
 tivated with diligence and delight. " Old things 
 have passed av/ay ; behold, all things have be- 
 come new." 
 
2/2 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 As the operation of the Holy Ghost is thus 
 leaven-hke In Its worklno^s In the Individual 
 heart, so It Is also In Its effects upon the mass 
 of mankind. For the Church, which Is the aggre- 
 gate of Individuals, the blessed company of all 
 faithful people, Is In Its Inner life sustained and 
 developed by the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 
 This work is going on simultaneously in tens 
 of thousands of hearts, effecting there those 
 changes and brlnorlnor out those results which 
 in their aggregation are to alter the face of the 
 earth and make It "a dwelling-place of right- 
 eousness." And as the woman in the parable 
 took and ''hid'' this leaven in the meal, so the 
 leaven-like grace of the Holy Ghost is hidden 
 from the carnal eye ; for St. Paul tells us, "The 
 natural man understandeth not the thino^s of 
 the spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto 
 him, neither can he know them, because they 
 are spiritually discerned." The working of this 
 gospel leaven does not appear upon the surface 
 of society — it is covered up from outward ob- 
 servation ; but beneath the surface, at the centre 
 of the mass, at the core of humanity, it is doing 
 its assimilating and transforming work, chang- 
 inof into its own likeness and character that 
 
THE LVFIRM WOMAN. 2/3 
 
 with which It is brought in contact, and so this 
 process will go on '* until the whole " — the whole 
 elect of God — " is leavened." 
 
 These parables are prophecies as well as 
 didactic lessons. They were true then, and 
 they foretell what has come and what will yet 
 come to pass. This shows the prophetic ken of 
 Jesus as well as his self-confidence in the tri- 
 umph and regenerating power of his religion. 
 Out of these homely truths and illustrations — 
 so homely that the delicate-fingered rhetoricians 
 would hardly have touched them because of 
 their extreme plainness and commonness — out 
 of these homely incidents Jesus has shadowed 
 forth the inner force and the outward o^rowth 
 of his kingdom. And though he stood in that 
 Synagogue on that Sabbath day, hated by the 
 rulers and Jews, having made but little pro- 
 curess in Q^aininof disciples, havinof aroused the 
 enmity of the learned, the wealthy and the gov- 
 erning classes ; yet he knew, in his prescience, 
 that though he appeared to men then as in- 
 significant as a mustard seed, yet that the relig- 
 ion which he was establishing would eventually 
 spread far and wide, and gather the nations 
 
 beneath its branches ; that the doctrine which 
 
 s 
 
2/4 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 he then taught, as disagreeable to them then as 
 leaven, offensive to their natural taste, would 
 yet, in its silent operation, change the great 
 mass of humanity and make it sweet and 
 wholesome with the sanctifying power of the 
 Holy Ghost. Blessed be God that these things 
 are so ! 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 DINING WITH ONE OF THE CHIEF PHARF 
 SEES ON THE SABBATH. 
 
 And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief 
 Pharisees, to eat bread on the Sabbath day, that they watched him. 
 And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the 
 di'opsy. And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, 
 saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day ? And they held their 
 peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go; and 
 answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen 
 into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day ? 
 And they could not answer him again to these things. And he put 
 forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they 
 chose out the chief rooms; saying unto them, When thou art bidden 
 of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room ; lest a 
 more honorable man than thou be bidden of him ; and he that bade 
 thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place ; and thou 
 begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, 
 go and sit down in the lowest room ; that when he that bade thee 
 Cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher : then shalt thou 
 have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee. For 
 whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth 
 himself shall be exalted. Then said he also to him that bade 
 him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, 
 nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors; 
 lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But 
 when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the 
 blind: and thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee; 
 for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just. And 
 when one of them that sat at meat with him heard these things, he 
 
 275 
 
276 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 said unto him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. 
 Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade 
 many : and sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bid- 
 den, Come ; for all things are now ready. And they all with one con- 
 sent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a 
 piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me 
 excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go 
 to prove them : I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have 
 married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. So that servant came, 
 and showed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being 
 angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the 
 city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and 
 the blind. And the servant said. Lord, it is done as • thou hast com- 
 manded, and yet there is room. And the Lord said unto the servant, 
 Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, 
 that my house may be tilled. For I say unto you. That none of those 
 men which were bidden shall taste of my supper." St. Luke xiv. 1-24. 
 
 HE incident which St. Luke thus de- 
 scribes evidently took place in Perea. 
 This name (which is of Greek origin 
 and signifies "beyond") \vas given to that por-. 
 tion of the country lying east of the Jordan, 
 and includincr the Old Testament districts of 
 Bashan and Gilead ; the former, celebrated for 
 its cattle, so often alluded to by the psalmist ; 
 the latter, for its medicinal gums and spices, 
 which were exported by caravans to all the 
 surrounding nations, and even as far south as' 
 Egypt. 
 
 It is exceedingly difficult and dangerous to 
 visit that country now. It is wild and desolate, 
 the home of marauding Bedouins, and shadowed 
 
DINING WITH THE PHARISEE. 2 77 
 
 here and there by the black encampments of 
 these nomads, and uninviting, save to the anti- 
 quarian, who seeks amid its hills and plains 
 and deserts, to explore the ruins of its once 
 giant cities. It was in this region that Jephthah 
 gathered his host wherewith to invade Ammon ; 
 that Ish-bosheth, the son of Saul, was taken by 
 Abner after his father's death on Gilboa and 
 made king of Gilead ; that David, fleeing before 
 his rebellious son Absalom, passed over Jordan 
 by night and sought there a temporary shelter ; 
 and Elijah, " the grandest and most romantic 
 character that Israel ever produced," lived 
 amidst its wild people and wild scenery, and 
 derived thence perhaps mmch of that rugged 
 and uncouth aspect which made this man of 
 God terrible to Ahab and Jezebel and the 
 votaries of Baal. 
 
 At the time of our Lord the people were a 
 mixed race, blending Jev/ and Gentile, that 
 kind of half-breed border population which 
 always fringes the edge of distinct national- 
 ities and distinct religions as they touch each 
 other. 
 
 A.S part of the lost sheep of the house of 
 Israel he must needs visit these also, and hence 
 
 24 
 
278 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 he made a circuit '' throucrh all that rcQ^ion round 
 about." 
 
 Accepting on one Sabbath day the invita- 
 tion of one of the chief Pharisees " to eat bread" 
 with him, he went to the Pharisee's house and 
 sat down to meat. It shows our Lord's ap- 
 preciation of courteous hospitality, and his 
 readiness to mingle with all classes, and his 
 fearlessness in the presence of even his most 
 pronounced enemies, as the Pharisees surely 
 were, that he should promptly accept the in- 
 vitation thus tendered to him. We find him 
 accepting hospitalities from various classes — the 
 publicans, the peasants, the citizens, the Phari- 
 sees, the rich and the poor, restraining himself 
 to no conventional limits or national prejudices. 
 
 It seems that the rich men in our Lord's time, 
 acting on the glosses and teachings of the scribes, 
 made Sabbath feasts not only for personal en- 
 joyment, but for sacred hospitality. Special 
 directions were given by the rabbins for the 
 preparation of the Sabbath table : " Let a man 
 arrange his table and spread the couches, and 
 order all the affairs of his house, that he may 
 find it ready and ordered when he returns from 
 the Synagogue, for Rabbi Joses says that two 
 
DINING WITH THE PHARISEE. 2/9 
 
 angels accompany a man on the Sabbath even- 
 ing on his return from the Synagogue, the one 
 good, the other evil. When he comes to his 
 house, if the Sabbath lamps be found lighted 
 and the table prepared and the couch spread, 
 the good angel says, God grant that it may be 
 on the next Sabbath ; and the evil angel must 
 say Amen in spite of himself. But if this be 
 not the case, then the evil angel says, God grant 
 that it may be so (i. e., no feast and no prepara- 
 tion for it) the next Sabbath, and then the good 
 spirit must say Amen in spite of himself" The 
 Sabbath feast was cheerful, but religious. A 
 priest or scribe was usually invited to ask a 
 blessing and guide the conversation, and so we 
 find Jesus bidden as a guest to the tables of the 
 rich, with the design, it may be, of securing a 
 blessing from his presence, for the people gene- 
 rally recognized in him a great prophet and a 
 good man. 
 
 During this meal Jesus sees "before him," 
 not probably one of the guests, but one who 
 had perhaps been aided in getting there by his 
 friends, "a certain man which had the dropsy." 
 Addressing the lawyers and Pharisees who were 
 at the table with him, he asks the question, " Is 
 
2 So THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day ?" This 
 question was one to which different Rabbis had 
 eiven different answers, and was considered 
 therefore as still unsettled. The question w^as 
 propounded, not perhaps so much for the pur- 
 pose of getting an answer from them, as to call 
 their attention to what he was about to do, and 
 to brine the act into the closest relation with 
 the Sabbath day. It w^as a premonition to them 
 that he was going to do one of his mighty 
 works, and demandinof their attention. To the 
 question of Jesus no one replied. If they had 
 answered " No," it is not lawful, they knew 
 doubtless that Jesus w^ould answer them to their 
 own confusion. If they said " Yes," it was law- 
 ful, then they would put themselves in opposi- 
 tion to many of the received traditions of the 
 scribes, and thus bring upon themselves their 
 reproach and displeasure, so "they held their 
 peace," watchinsf doubtless with intense interest 
 wdiat he would do. 
 
 What he did, takes only one line to relate, 
 but oh how much does it convey ! " He took him 
 and healed him and let him go." The long- 
 suffering patient, burdened with a distressing 
 and most uncomfortable disease, v/as at once 
 
DINING WITH THE PHARISEE. 28 1 
 
 relieved. The long process of absorption which 
 takes place under the best medical treatment 
 was here accomplished in a moment. The mian 
 who had come into Jesus' presence swollen, 
 panting, heavy, hopeless of cure, went from that 
 presence erect, Vv^ith natural form, perfectly re- 
 stored to health and strengrth. What a chancre ! 
 Beyond physicians' skill ! beyond the healing 
 virtue of anything in the materia micdlca of 
 nature ! Only divine power could disperse the 
 tumid waters and restore the diseased functions 
 to their wonted action. It was another of the 
 many unsolicited works of mercy which Jesus 
 wrought on the Sabbath day. 
 
 So soon as he had made this cure and let the 
 man go — a cure wrought under their full inspec- 
 tion as to all its circumstances — he resumed his 
 conversation with those who sat at meat with 
 him and asked another question, in asking which 
 he placed his whole justification in one pointed 
 interrogatory: "Which of you shall have an ass 
 or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straight- 
 way pull him out on the Sabbath day ?" The 
 immediate reply in their minds, though it rose 
 not to their lips, was doubtless. We would in 
 such a case pull him out on the Sabbath, and 
 
 24 * 
 
282 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD, ' 
 
 " They could not," says St. Luke, " answer 
 him again to these things." It is not to be 
 supposed here that silence implied consent ; 
 on the contrary, the language shows that they 
 w^ould have answered if they had dared, and 
 were only withheld by a consciousness that by 
 so doing they would encounter defeat. The 
 miracle had been wrought, the man had been 
 let go, the scoffers and objectors were silenced 
 by an apposite question which carried with it 
 an unanswerable argument ; and so, dismissing, 
 as it were, the case, our Lord now turns to an- 
 other subject. 
 
 He had observed how the several o^uests who 
 had been invited to this feast chose out the 
 chief rooms or places at the couches or tables 
 set for them, marking their petty rivalries and 
 jealousies as to precedence and rank, and in 
 that spirit which sought to improve every oc- 
 casion for the teaching of sound truth, " he put 
 forth a parable unto them that were bidden, 
 saying unto them, "When thou art bidden of 
 any man to a wedding, sit not down in the 
 highest room, lest a more honorable man than 
 thou be bidden of him ; and he that bade thee 
 and him come and say to thee, Give this man 
 
DINING WITH THE PHARISEE. 283 
 
 place, and thou begin with shame to take the 
 lowest room. But when thou art bidden go 
 and sit down in the lowest room, that when he 
 that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, 
 Friend, go up higher; then shalt thou have 
 worship in the presence of them that sit at meat 
 with thee. For whosoever exalteth himself shall 
 be abased ; and he that humbleth himself shall 
 be exalted." 
 
 The term " parable " here, as applied to this 
 discourse, does not mean that kind of utterance 
 so common to our Lord, whereby by similitudes 
 taken from natural things he Instructed In things 
 spiritual, for in this instance It was a simple 
 direction how to proceed in an imaginary case 
 which might any day become a real one, and 
 for the purpose of illustrating the Important 
 principle, that man rises to greater height by 
 humility than by self-advanced claims to honor 
 and precedence. The parable borrows Its force 
 from the social usaQ^es of Eastern life. The 
 " rooms," or places at the triclinium or table, 
 were graded according to the nicest distinctions 
 of rank and worth, and the most scrupulous 
 regard to etiquette was observed, especially on 
 wedding occasions, to which Jesus here referred. 
 
284 THE SABBATHS OF OJJR LORD. 
 
 Instead of choosing for themselves what 
 places they should occupy at the table, and 
 thus distincrulshinor between themselves and 
 others, they should feel that, as all had the same 
 invitation to the same feast, so they should all 
 take at first a common level, and let the places 
 of honor be assigned by the lord of the house, 
 who, having all the guests under his eye, and 
 knowing their respective places in the social 
 scale, would be better able to say to one, " Give 
 this man a place," or to another, " Friend, come 
 up higher." Thus self-judgment, self-assump- 
 tion, were condemned. The pride of rank that 
 creates so many heart-burnings, especially when 
 self-asserted in public places and in an offensive 
 way, is here rebuked, and justly so; for, what is 
 so offensive as bloated pride pufiing up its self- 
 judged pretensions, and insisting on passing 
 current among men, according to its own false 
 estimate and self-esteem ? 
 
 Having thus quietly yet effectively rebuked 
 this unseemly contest for " the chief rooms " of 
 the feast, Jesus then turns to the host and gives 
 him a principle or rule by which to regulate his 
 conduct on festive occasions: "When thou 
 makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, 
 
DINING WITH THE PHARISEE. ' 285 
 
 nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy 
 rich neighbors ; lest they also bid thee again, 
 and a recompense be made thee. But when 
 thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, 
 the halt, the blind ; and thou shalt be blessed, 
 for they cannot recompense thee, for thou shalt 
 be recompensed at the resurrection of the just." 
 The design of our Lord by these directions, 
 judging from the tenor of these words and of 
 words of somewhat similar import used on other 
 occasions, was not to condemn those social 
 gatherings of friends and neighbors which are 
 so common (for he was then himself a guest 
 at one), nor was It to declare when dinners 
 or suppers were given that only the poor and 
 cripples were to be invited, but it was to show 
 the paramount duty of practical kindness and 
 sympathy with the children of want and afflic- 
 tion, over the lesser duty of entertaining friends 
 at set feasts, to the complete exclusion from 
 heart and home of the poor and suffering. By 
 putting the first part of his direction In a nega- 
 tive form, it was doubtless Intended to Intenslf}^ 
 the affirmed duty of care for the neglected 
 classes — not that all such feasts were prohibited 
 or sinful, but such feasts alone, with nothing for 
 
286 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 the relief of the poor, the maimed, the halt, the 
 blind, were sinful. The Mosaic law made spe- 
 cial provision for entertaining the fatherless, 
 the widow, the stranger, the poor, at their social 
 feasts, and our Lord enlarges and amplifies and 
 Dlaces on a Christian basis, what was local and 
 exceptional in the Levitical code. 
 
 To spread a feast for those who will invite you 
 in return is only to aggrandize yourself, and to 
 seek the honor which cometh of men. To make 
 a feast and call to it those whose poverty will 
 not permit them to make any return in kind, is 
 to be like God himself, who sendeth his bless- 
 ings upon the unthankful and unholy — those 
 who will not return him praise — as well as upon 
 those who recognize his favor and thank him for 
 his grace. Yet he tells us in a very marked 
 way that, though the poor objects of our com- 
 passion can give us no recompense, we shall not 
 go unrewarded, for "we shall be recompensed 
 at the resurrection of the just." The deed will 
 not be forgotten. He who provideth for the 
 poor and needy wins thereby a blessing from 
 God ; and though he receive not any return In 
 this life, yet come it will, when at the resurrec- 
 tion, all that they did for Christ's poor shall be 
 
DINING WITH THE PHARISEE. 28/ 
 
 adjudged as done for Christ himself, and so 
 meet with a full recompense of reward. This 
 was doubtless the scope and purport of our 
 Lord's teaching. 
 
 The effect of these sentiments on one of 
 those who sat at meat with Jesus was such 
 that he broke forth Into an exclamation : *' Bless- 
 ed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of 
 God !" This interjection, from whatever motive 
 it sprung, was seized upon by our Lord, who 
 always found texts for his discourses in the 
 words and scenes which daily met his ear and 
 eye, to set before the guests the nature of the 
 kinodom of heaven and the conduct of men in 
 reference to their invitation to its blesslnors. 
 
 o 
 
 This parable, suggested by the then surround- 
 ing circumstances of our Lord, and fitting in 
 most strikingly with the time, the place and the 
 words already spoken by him, is to be dis- 
 tinguished from the parable of " the marriage 
 of the king's son" recorded In the twenty-second 
 chapter of Matthew, though there are several 
 strikinof similarities between them. 
 
 The parable of the royal marriage was spoken 
 at a later period of our Lord's ministry, under 
 circumstances different from those in which he 
 
288 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 was now placed, and Is, In all Its aspects, severer 
 in Its condemnation and results upon those who 
 refuse the Invitation of the great King. 
 
 The parable of "The Great Supper " sets forth 
 the rich spiritual provisions which God has pro- 
 vided for his people under the figure of a ban- 
 quet of fat things, the various calls sent by his 
 older and later servants, the manner In which 
 these invitations were received by those Invited, 
 the subsequent calling of others to supply the 
 deficiency of the self-excused guests, and the 
 final exclusion of those who v/ere Invited, but 
 declined. 
 
 In Oriental countries, on occasions of great 
 feasts, whether nuptial or social, the first invita- 
 tion or notice that It will be given, is sent out 
 long In advance of the time, to give to those in- 
 vited opportunity to prepare themselves for the 
 occasion. When the feast is prepared, then a 
 second call is made by servants in the words of 
 the parable : *' Come, for all things are now ready," 
 or as It says in the parable of the marriage of 
 the king's son, " Behold, I have prepared my 
 dinner, my oxen and fatlings are killed, and all 
 things are ready : come unto the marriage." 
 
 To the first announcement of the great sup- 
 
DINING WITH THE PHARISEE. 289 
 
 per there was no objection. The difficulties 
 arose when " the fullness of time had come," 
 and the second set of messenorers were sent 
 forth with the invitation, " Come, for all things 
 are now ready." Then " they all with one con- 
 sent began to make excuses." The excuses 
 were trivial and unsatisfactory. What though 
 one had "bought a piece of ground"? The ground 
 was not movable or perishable, that he " must 
 needs ofo and see it " now. It would lie in the 
 same situation and have the same soil to-mor- 
 row that it had to-day, and it was not necessary, 
 therefore, to excuse himself on this account. 
 What though another had " bought five yoke of 
 oxen "? He could test their strength and quality 
 to-morrow as well as now, and there was no 
 pressing reason, therefore, why he should neglect 
 the supper to "go and prove them." What 
 thoueh another had " married a wife "? Was she 
 not given to him to be his companion for life, 
 and could he not spare a day to attend at the 
 feast? and this excuse, therefore, like the former, 
 was worthless and insulting. _ They were all 
 irrational, in themselves considered, and they 
 were insulting to the Giver of the "great sup- 
 per," as treating lightly and with Indifference 
 
 25 T 
 
290 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 his invitation and his feast. They showed that 
 they preferred farms, and merchandise, and 
 pleasure, to association with him in the festiv- 
 ities which he had been so long and so elabo- 
 rately preparing. 
 
 When these paltry excuses were reported to 
 the " Master of the house," no wonder it made' 
 him angry, for it was treating him with disdain ; 
 and turning to his servant, and changing at 
 once the purpose and character of the feast, he 
 tells him to "go out quickly into the streets and 
 lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor 
 and the maimed and the halt and the blind." 
 The servant obeyed. These last made no ob- 
 jection — they came readily and gladly ; but so 
 extensive had been the preparation for this sup- 
 per that, notwithstanding so many had been 
 thus extemporized as guests, there yet was 
 room. The generous host, not willing that any 
 portion should be wasted or unconsumed, di- 
 rected the servant, who had already, it seems, 
 thoroughly scoured the city, to go out into the 
 highways and hedges, and " compel them to 
 come in, that my house may be filled," while of 
 the originally invited yet refusing guests he 
 said not one of them " shall taste of my sup- 
 
DINING WITH THE PHARISEE. 29 1 
 
 per." Thus our Lord illustrated to his audience 
 the treatment which the gospel feast received 
 at their hands. When first announced, it was 
 heard of with joy, but when in the nearer prep- 
 aration for it, the call came which required of 
 them the giving up of something in which their 
 heart was interested, the temporary forsaking 
 of wife and houses and lands, in order to attend 
 the great '' Master of the house," then their un- 
 willingness and indifference came out into a 
 positive refusal to obey the summons. So it is 
 now. The excuses of the parable are daily 
 repeated, and men still delude themselves with 
 frivolous reasons for not accepting the invita- 
 tions of the gospel, forgetting the while, that 
 Christ sees through their self-cheating hypoc- 
 risy, and knows that at the bottom of the pre- 
 tendedly courteous words, " I pray thee have me 
 excused," lies a bitter hatred of the glorious 
 Giver. Of the great majority of those to whom 
 the gospel invitation comes may it be said that 
 they either ''make light of it" by neglect, or 
 else begin to make excuse for non-acceptance. 
 They are all alive to their temporal interests — to 
 advance these they will toil and make sacrifices ; 
 but when the salvation of the soul is set before 
 
292 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 them, when they are exhorted to repent, and 
 invited to the gospel feast, then they are so 
 pressed down with the cares and business and 
 riches and pleasures of this world, that they 
 have no time for the hlc^her and eternal Interests 
 of their Immortal souls. It Is a sad but true 
 portraiture of the treatment men give to the 
 messengers, the Invitation, and the Giver, of the 
 gospel feast. 
 
 We cannot fall to observe the singular unity 
 of thought which pervades all this discourse of 
 our Lord in the house of this Pharisee, and how 
 admirably the scene and the occasion Is made 
 the web which is so beautifully filled In with 
 Illustration, exhortation and parable. All his 
 talk has some relation to what is going on in 
 his presence. There is nothing far-fetched. His 
 Ideas spring up from the roots of things at 
 hand, and his words, therefore, so far from 
 being forced upon the unwilling ears of his 
 auditors, flow out with a naturalness and grace- 
 fulness inimitably beautiful. We are thus taught 
 by the example of our Lord how to mingle our 
 discourse with the salt of grace if we would have 
 it savory and wholesome. 
 
 What a dignity invests our Lord as he thus 
 
DINING WITH THE PHARISEE. 293 
 
 « 
 
 sits at the Pharisee's table, and without crinorinor 
 to rank, without truckling to Influential men, 
 without lowerlnof himself to the level of their 
 carnal minds and without giving any just offence, 
 he yet tells them great truths In plain language, 
 with pertinent illustration and with the majesty 
 of a teacher sent from God, speaking to them 
 *' as one that had authority and not as the 
 scribes "! If to all our feasts Jesus were Invited, 
 and if his words were the chief words heard 
 there, how would his name be as ointment 
 poured forth, and the whole house where he 
 was thus received, and his w^ords thus honored, 
 would be filled with the fragrance of the oint- 
 ment. So will it be in all its ineffable fullness of 
 joy at the marriage supper of the Lamb in the 
 guest chamber of heaven. 
 
 25 * 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE SABBATH AT BETHANY. 
 
 *' Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, 
 there came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very pre- 
 cious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat. But when 
 his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying. To what purpose is 
 this waste? P'or this ointment might have been sold for much, and 
 given to the poor. When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why 
 trouble ye the woman ? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. 
 For ye have the poor always with you ; but me ye have not always. 
 For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for 
 my burial. Verily \ say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be 
 preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman 
 hath done, be told for a memorial of her. Then one of the twelve, 
 called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, and said imto them. 
 What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you ? And they 
 covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. And from that time 
 he sought opportunity to betray him." St. Matthew xxvi. 6-16, 
 
 " And being in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at 
 
 meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of 
 
 spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his 
 
 head. And there were some that had indignation within themselves, 
 
 and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made ? For it might 
 
 have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been 
 
 given to the poor. And they murmured against her. And Jesus said, 
 
 Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on 
 
 me. For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye 
 
 may do them good : but me ye have not always. She hath done what 
 
 she could : she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. 
 
 Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached 
 
 294 
 
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THE SABBATH AT BETHANY. 
 
 295 
 
 throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be 
 spoken of for a memorial of her. And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, 
 went unto the chief priests, to betray him unto them. And when they 
 heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. And he 
 sought how he might conveniently betray him." St. Mark xiv. 3-11- 
 
 " Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where 
 Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. 
 There they made him a supper ; and Martha served : but Lazarus was 
 one of them that sat at the table with him. Then took Mary a pound 
 of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, 
 and wiped his feet with her hair : and the house was filled with the 
 odor of the ointment. Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscar- 
 iot, Simon's son, which should betray him. Why was not this ointment 
 sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, 
 not that he cared for the poor ; but because he was a thief, and had the 
 bag, and bare what was put therein. Then said Jesus, Let her alone : 
 against the day of my burying hath she kept this. For the poor always 
 ye have with you ; but me ye have not always. Much people of the 
 Jews therefore knew that he was there : and they came not for Jesus' 
 sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had raised 
 from the dead. But the chief priests consulted that they might put 
 Lazarus also to death ; because that by reason of him many of the Jews 
 went away, and believed on Jesus." St. John xii. i-ii. 
 
 E come now to our Lord's last Sabbath 
 before his crucifixion. His earthly life 
 is drawing to its end. In less than six 
 days he will be lying dead in the tomb. It will 
 not be uninteresting, therefore, to mark how he 
 spent this Sabbath, and yet but little Is told us 
 concerning a day which to him must have 
 been one of mingled joy and sorrow — joy. In 
 that his work was so nearly " finished ;" sorrow, 
 in that he had yet to pass such scorching agony 
 on his way to glory. 
 
296 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 He was now in Bethany, a word which means 
 ** the house of dates or pahns," named thus, 
 probably, from the palm-dates which grew there. 
 It is situated on the eastern slope of the Mount 
 of Olives, about three miles distant from Jeru- 
 salem, and not far from the road that leads to 
 Jericho. It was unknown in Old Testament 
 history, and comes into view principally as the 
 home of Lazarus and his sisters Mary and 
 Martha. Whatever may have been the beauty 
 of this mountain hamlet in the palmy days of 
 Israel, when the land teemed with inhabitants 
 and its well-cultivated soil richly repaid the 
 labor of the husbandman, it is now an un- 
 sightly place, with a few wretchedly-built stone 
 houses, and the support of the miserable inhab- 
 itants who kennel there, rather than keep house 
 there, is largely derived from the exactions 
 made upon credulous travelers, in conducting 
 them to the legendary house of Simon the 
 leper, and to the so-called tomb of Lazarus. 
 All that we gather in reference to the family in 
 Bethany, where Jesus spent the last days of his 
 earthly life, leaves the impression of a home of 
 comfort, peace and love ; and in the quiet of 
 this domestic circle he found, doubtless, that 
 
77JE SABBATH AT BETHANY, 297 
 
 repose which seemed so needful to him, amidst 
 the intense labors of Passover week, wherein 
 mind and body were taxed in all their powers. 
 
 Simon the leper Is generally regarded as the 
 father of Lazarus and his two sisters. Whether 
 he was dead, and the name of the father, as 
 was then customary, still clung to the house ; or 
 whether, being a leper, he was then under the 
 ban of the Levitical law, and an exile from his 
 home, a dweller in some waste place void of 
 human habitation, we know not. 
 
 So many fanciful conjectures have been made 
 In reference to him and his children and circum- 
 stances, and that too by commentators who are 
 generally cautious, that pretty romances might 
 be woven out of their speculations, though we 
 must remember that all which they say Is gra- 
 tuitous, and probably apocryphal. 
 
 The household at this visit consisted of Mary, 
 Martha and their brother Lazarus. The cha- 
 racters of the sisters are brought out in some 
 delicate touches of St. John's pencil, and in the 
 records left us by the other Evangelists. Mary, 
 who seems to have been the mistress of the 
 house and dispensed Its hospitalities, was of a 
 gentle, loving, contemplative cast of mind. 
 
2gS THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Anxious to drink In the gracious words of life 
 which fell from Jesus' lips, she sat at his feet, 
 and chose, as our Lord himself told us, " that 
 good part which shall not be taken from her." 
 Martha was of a more active temperament, full 
 of housewifely cares and bustling with all the 
 energies of a hospitable nature : in the words 
 of St. Luke, '' she was cumbered about much 
 serving," was Impatient at the meditative cha- 
 racter of her sister, and hence asked Jesus, 
 with words of haste and censure, *' Lord, dost 
 thou not care that my sister hath left me to 
 serve alone ? Bid her therefore that she help 
 me." To this querulous request, showing how 
 completely worldly things had gained an ascend- 
 ency over her — It being In her estimate more 
 important to serve tables, than sit at Jesus' feet 
 and listen to his words — Jesus, who read hei 
 through and through, replied, not by doing as 
 she wanted him to do, send Mary to her help, 
 and thus countenance her undue secularlty, but 
 he gently reproves her, saying, " Martha ! 
 Martha ! thou art careful and troubled about 
 many things, but one thing is needful" — viz., 
 that "good part" w^hich Mary had chosen, im- 
 plying thereby that Martha had it not. 
 
THE SABBATH AT BETHANY. 299 
 
 The same traits come out as^ain in the man- 
 ner in which the bereaved sisters receive Jesus 
 after the death of the brother, Lazarus. Martha, 
 ''as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, 
 went to meet him ; but Mary sat still in the 
 house" until Martha brought her word, "The 
 Master is come, and calleth for thee. As soon 
 as she heard that she arose quickly and came 
 unto him." When Martha went to Jesus, she 
 refrained from tears, and after giving way to 
 one burst of feeling in the exclamation, " Lord, 
 if thou hadst been here my brother had not 
 died," intimates to him to ask of God to bring 
 him back to her; for it w^as not until after a 
 brief conference on the subject of the resurrec- 
 tion, and Jesus' announcing himself as "the 
 resurrection and the life," that she w^as able to 
 say, " I believe that thou art the Christ." When 
 Mary went at Christ's call, she at once fell down 
 at Christ's feet; and though she greeted him 
 with the same hopeless and sad words as di^d 
 Martha, " Lord, if thou hadst been here my 
 brother had not died," yet she entered into no 
 argument, displayed no doubt, but burst into 
 tears, and thus drew sympathetic tears from 
 the eyes of Jesus — "Jesus wept." 
 
300 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 The Sabbath at Bethany, on which our minds 
 are now bent, was one after Lazarus had been 
 raised from the dead. We do not wonder at 
 the love, devotion and service of the sisters to 
 Jesus, after receiving not only such a boon in 
 the restored life of a beloved brother, but such 
 a sure indication and proof that he was, as 
 Martha said, " the Christ, the Son of God that 
 should come into the world." Gratitude and 
 religion, personal affection and spiritual rev- 
 erence, combined to make him welcome to their 
 house, and love for their risen brother, and love 
 for the Master who raised him from the dead, 
 united to offer joint homage to Him who had 
 so sublimely announced himself to Martha as 
 ''the Resurrection and the Life." 
 
 The supper, or dinner, was given on the Sab- 
 bath. Jesus' disciples were with him. Other 
 euests were doubtless there, as this seems to 
 have been a thanksgiving feast for the recovery 
 of Lazarus from the grave. Lazarus is present, 
 and sits and eats at the table. Martha is there, 
 serving, as is her wont. Mary Is there also, 
 but not servine in the sense that Martha is, nor 
 yet sitting at meat, as her brother did, but dur- 
 ing the progress of the meal she comes in, 
 
THE SABBATH AT BETHANY. 3OI 
 
 brinorlnor with her '*an alabaster box contalnlne 
 a pound of spikenard ointment, very costly." 
 Approaching the table at which Jesus reclined 
 In such a manner as that his feet were projected 
 toward the wall, and thus rendered easily ac- 
 cessible, she goes behind him, breaks the beau- 
 tiful vase in which this most celebrated and 
 most precious of all odoriferous ointments was 
 contained, and pours It out upon his head and 
 feet In such lavish profusion that all "the house 
 was filled with the odor of the ointment/' Not 
 content with this loving tribute, she bends over 
 his sacred feet and wipes them dry " with the 
 hair of her head," as if to show by this unusual 
 service her intense gratitude and devotion to 
 her Lord and Master. She had sat at Jesus' 
 feet as a learner; she now stood there as his 
 lovlnof servant. She had received from him 
 "that better- part," that heavenly portion, more 
 costly and precious than any earthly gift ; and 
 now she seeks to show her sense of Its worth 
 by that costly offering of spikenard, and that 
 servant-like act of anointing his head and feet, 
 and that still more unusual wiping of his feet 
 with her hair, which in the aggregate evinced 
 the most intense self-consecration to his service. 
 
 26 
 
302 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Jesus quietly accepted this fragrant tribute of 
 Mary's love. He knew what prompted it, its 
 perfect purity and Its full significance, and we 
 may Imagine that he did not fail to express his 
 emotions In lano^uao^e befittlnof the occasion. 
 In the account of this transaction by St. Mat- 
 thew and St. Mark, Mary's name is not men- 
 tioned. Perhaps she was living when they 
 wrote, and it was not deemed best to attract 
 attention to her at that time of persecution. 
 St. John wrote at a much later date ; and as she 
 had then died, he made known her name, and 
 told us what the other writers omitted, that she 
 "anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped them with 
 the hair of her head" — two incidents, each pecu- 
 liarly expressive and, in their minuteness of detail, 
 addlne much to the Interest of the narrative. 
 
 This act of Mary did not, however, escape 
 condemnation, and even " indignation," on the 
 part of some of the disciples, first "within them- 
 selves" in secret conference, then outspoken 
 through the lips of Judas Iscariot, who, acting 
 as the mouth-piece of the disaffected ones, 
 asked, "Why was this waste of the ointment 
 made? for it miorht have been sold for more 
 than three hundred pence, and have been given 
 
THE SABBATH AT BETHANY. 303 
 
 to the poor;" and thus ''they murmured 
 against " the loving Mary. 
 
 As it is St. John only who mentions the name 
 
 of the speaker, Judas Iscarlot, and as he only 
 
 tells us the hidden motive of his indignation — viz., 
 
 "not that he cared for the poor, but because he 
 
 was a thief and had the bag, and bare what was 
 
 put therein " — we are led to Infer that he first 
 
 suggested the wastefulness of this anointing to 
 
 the other disciples, who thoughtlessly chimed in 
 
 with his ideas, led thereto by the unexampled 
 
 value and profusion of spending a pound of 
 
 spikenard on one person. As the common 
 
 treasurer of the band of the disciples, receiving 
 
 and expending what was put in and taken out 
 
 of the bag or purse for their daily expenses, he 
 
 had already proved himself a thief; and if the 
 
 three hundred denarii, equivalent to about fifty 
 
 dollars, which he says this ointment would have 
 
 brought had it been sold, had been also placed 
 
 in the bag, he would have had larger sums from 
 
 which to peculate, and thus more readily gratify 
 
 his lucre-loving heart. But Jesus rebuked the 
 
 murmurers, saying, ''Let her alone;" "why 
 
 trouble ye the woman ?" as If they were noisily 
 
 reprimanding and faulting her for her conduct. 
 
304 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 and he then declares that her work was a 
 "good" one and met his approval. "The 
 poor," for whose relief you express such con- 
 cern, "you always have with you, and when- 
 soever ye will, ye may do good to them ; but 
 me," he touchingly adds, " ye have not always " 
 — a distinct allusion to his speedy departure 
 from them, the nearness of which no one but 
 himself knew. 
 
 In this rebuke of Jesus to these penurious 
 men, who were so indignant at what to them 
 was wasted wealth, do we not find a virtual ap- 
 proval by him of every costly act which true, 
 love prompts us to bestow upon him ? Is 
 there not an intimation that nothing is too valu- 
 able to be expended on his person ? and that 
 genuine affection will ever lead to generous 
 gifts for his use and service ? And is there not 
 the further intimation that, while the poor are 
 ever to be objects of our compassion and 
 chanty, yet no wrong Is done to them when, 
 under the stress of some great mercy, temporal 
 or spiritual, the heart, stirred to its depths with 
 emotions of o^ratitude, seeks some outward and 
 costly way whereby to show its devotion, and 
 lavishes its wealth upon some work for Jesus in 
 
THE SABBATH AT BETHANY. 305 
 
 a manner which the envious and the unloving 
 and the coldly calculating may denounce as 
 unnecessary and wasteful ? 
 
 We cannot now give personal gifts or person- 
 al service to Jesus Christ, as Mary and Martha 
 did. But in the same spirit which prompted 
 Mary to spend so large a sum In an alabaster 
 box of ointment, which prompted Martha at the 
 same feast to serve — viz., the spirit of grateful 
 recoo^nltlon of divine mercies — we can now 
 commemorate God's loving-kindness to us by 
 building a church, a parsonage, an asylum, an 
 orphan house, by endowing a scholarship or 
 a professorship In some school of the prophets 
 as love's offerlnof, maklnor it our alabaster box of 
 ointment to the risen and ascended Jesus. 
 
 Such gifts as these are often done, doubtless, 
 out of a desire to perpetuate a family name, 
 for mere ostentation, from a spirit of rivalry; 
 but when done because Christ is loved, and the 
 love seeks to express itself in some costly w^ay, 
 then will he approve the gift and accept the 
 service and bless the giver. Nothing is too 
 munificent for Christ if done out of real love 
 for Christ : love consecrates It all to Jesus. 
 
 Having thus vindicated Mary from the Indlg- 
 
 1^=^ u 
 
306 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 nation of these murmurers, Jesus proceeds to 
 speak of the symbolical character of this act: 
 '' She hath done what she could ;" '' aeainst the 
 day of my burying hath she kept this ;" " for in 
 that she hath poured this ointment on my body, 
 she did it for my burial."- 
 
 There is great solemnity and significance in 
 these words. It was a noble commendation for 
 him to say of her, " She hath clone what she 
 could;" no woman could have a higher eulogy, 
 especially when spoken by Him who knows the 
 thoughts and hearts of men and what she had 
 done in his service. May not the words, *' She 
 hath done what she could," looking at this act 
 of Mary from the point of view from which 
 Jesus seemed then to contemplate it, mean that 
 in his estimation, though undesignedly in hers, 
 she, Vv^ho w^ould be unable to be near him when 
 he died, had, almost in prevision of that burial, 
 come now to do what she could do, anoint while 
 living, the body which she could not see or 
 anoint at his death? or had there been given 
 to her that foresight, such as was occasionally 
 given even to women at that day (as to the four 
 daughters of Philip the Evangelist), by which she 
 was able to discern the transaction of Calvary 
 
THE SABBATH AT BETHANY. 307 
 
 and the sepulchre, and conscious that she could 
 not be v/ith Jesus then, came now " beforehand 
 to anoint him for his burial " ? It was thus at 
 least that our Lord accepted the unction and 
 blessed her for it. Nor would he have spoken 
 such unusually commendatory words had he 
 not fully approved the act itself in all its ap- 
 parent prodigality of expense, and in all the 
 depth of its profound symbolism. 
 
 As an offset to his disciples' murmuring, Jesus 
 gives praise, and their momentary indignation 
 is set over aofainst the declaration that the fame 
 of that act would be coincident with the progress 
 of the gospel, and ever redound to the honor 
 of Mary of Bethany. 
 
 Consequent on this Sabbath scene in Beth- 
 any Is Judas' visit to the chief priest for 
 the purpose of negotiating the terms for his 
 betrayal of Jesus. We do not knov/ that he 
 went immediately after being rebuked "to them, 
 though the language strongly implies it. St. 
 John tells us that ''ihen entered Satan into 
 Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number 
 of the twelve." That, doubtless, was the hour 
 and place when, yielding to the temptation, 
 " Satan entered into him." As if from that 
 
308 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 moment his body and soul had become Satan's 
 by right of occupancy and willingly conceded 
 possession. Satan entered that body as its 
 master, and kept possession of it till Judas, 
 under his instigation, ''went and hanged him- 
 self." 
 
 We need not stop to speculate as to the 
 various motives which prompted his immediate 
 communing with the chief priests and captains 
 of the temple guard how he might betray him 
 unto them, for all is explained when we find 
 him yielding up his whole being to Satan, and 
 acting as his agent in this deed of crime. No 
 doubt these enemies of our Lord were glad to 
 find a betrayer, and chuckled with fiendish 
 delight over the fact that one of his own house- 
 hold band — a professed disciple — voluntarily 
 came forward to do what they so much desired — 
 put him into their hands; for "the chief priests 
 and Pharisees had given a commandment (or 
 proclamation) that if any man knew where he 
 were, he should show it, that they might take 
 him." Little did they imagine that such good 
 luck, as they would term it, would enable them 
 to secure, and that too without any public 
 tumult or rising of his friends, their victim. 
 
♦' What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you?" 
 
THE SABBATH AT BETHANY. 309 
 
 But indignant as Judas is, he wants to bargain 
 with them and gain advantage to himself, and 
 so he haggles with them for a price, saying, 
 "What will ye give me, and I will deliver him 
 unto you ?" Here his covetousness, his money- 
 loving heart, showed itself again with fearful 
 significance. It was with that key that Satan 
 unlocked Judas' heart, and went in and took 
 possession of it, already prepared by its love of 
 money for such a guest. Judas enters into 
 covenant with the rulers to betray him to them 
 " for thirty pieces of silver " (eighteen dollars !) ; 
 he thus sells the Lord of glory at the then 
 market-price of a slave, and in so doing uncon- 
 sciously fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah (xi. 
 12, 13), ''So they weighed for my price thirty 
 pieces of silver." 
 
 How little must he have valued Jesus, and 
 how much must he have valued the thirty 
 shekels, when he could barter the one for the 
 other, and accept the latter as an equivalent for 
 the former ! We cannot pause here to discuss 
 the many questions and points which arise out 
 of this transaction. The character of Judas is 
 still a mystery, and the fact that our Lord, with 
 his acknowledged and often manifested omni- 
 
310 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 science, should select him to be one of the 
 twelve, is also a great mystery. It is wonderful 
 that he should have been for three years a 
 chosen companion of our Lord, seeing him in 
 public and in private, hearing him in the house 
 and in the Synagogue, witnessing his miracles 
 of power and of mercy, and yet be so base as 
 to betray him to his enemies. Jesus may well 
 term him " the son of perdition," one who is 
 moved by the spirit of Abaddon (Rev. ix. ii), 
 the king of the bottomless pit, leading others 
 to destruction, and ending himself in perdition. 
 This history furnishes many forcible lessons 
 which it behooves all Christ's professing dis- 
 ciples to learn to their souls' health. How, for 
 example, does his case tell us that outward 
 intimacy with Christ, professing to be his fol- 
 lower, recognition by the world as one of his 
 disciples, do not ensure salvation ! How does 
 it tell us also, that the most blessed privileges 
 of communion with Jesus may yet be perverted 
 to purposes of deadly crime, and, instead of 
 softening, harden the heart ! How does it tell 
 us that the piqued pride or offended dignity 
 will bide its time of vengeance in the hope of 
 more surely compassing its end ! How does it 
 
THE SABBATH AT BETHANY. 31 I 
 
 lell US the tempting power of money, and that 
 the " love " of it is indeed " the root of all evil " ! 
 and how does it warn us with stentorian voice. 
 •* Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed 
 lest he fall " ! These are some of the many 
 teachings of this traitor'5 life and doom. It is a 
 beacon set up on the ledge of covetousness 
 and disappointed ambition, w^hereon even an 
 apostle was wrecked, warning off" others from 
 the treacherous rocks and heraldino^ to all the 
 future, the fearful fate of one nominally Christ's 
 disciple, but really "a son of perdition." "Mark 
 the striking contrast," says Dr. Schaff, " between 
 the money-box of Judas and the alabaster box 
 of Mary ; his thirty pieces of silver and her 
 three hundred pence ; his love of money and 
 her liberality ; his hypocritical profession of 
 concern for the poor and her noble deed for 
 the Lord ; his wretched end and her blessed 
 memory throughout the Christian world to the 
 end of time." 
 
 The character and act of Mary teach us 
 lessons also of inestimable value. They show 
 us how love overcomes natural diffidence in her 
 anxiety to do something for Jesus. They show 
 us that nothing is too costly so long as by it 
 
312 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 we anoint Jesus and make his name and his 
 person "as ointment poured forth." They show 
 us that Jesus appreciates and will reward such 
 service and worship, while sordid parsimony 
 or covetous longing, veiled under the pretence 
 of care for the poor, will receive his just rebuke. 
 And now this feast, "a life-feast over Lazarus," 
 comes to an end. The guests disperse. The 
 crowd which had gathered to Bethany to see 
 Lazarus, the risen from the dead, as well as 
 Christ, the Raiser of the dead, has melted away. 
 The sacred hours are over, and Jesus has num- 
 bered his last Jewish Sabbath. His first re- 
 corded Sabbath was spent in Nazareth, the 
 "city of branches," the last in Bethany, the "city 
 of palms." His first Sabbath was marked by 
 the murderous attempt of his fellow-townsmen 
 to cast him headlonof from the brow of the hill on 
 which their city was built ; his last was marked 
 by that anointing which symbolized that diffu- 
 sive frao^rance of his g^race which would event- 
 ually fill the world, when the name, and work, 
 and glory, of Jesus should be known and loved, 
 as the true Messiah, the anointed One of God. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 OUR LORD'S SABBATH IN THE SEPULCHRE. 
 
 " When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathea, 
 named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple : he went to Pilate 
 and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to 
 be delivered. And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it 
 in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had 
 hewn out in the rock : and he rolled a great stone to the door of the 
 sepulchre, and departed. And there was Mary Magdalene, and the 
 other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre. Now the next day, that 
 followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees 
 came together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver 
 said, while he was yet alive. After three days I will rise again. Com- 
 mand therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest 
 his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the 
 people, He is risen from the dead : so the last error shall be worse than 
 the first. Pilate said unto them. Ye have a watch : go your way, make 
 it as sure as ye can. So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, seal- 
 ing the stone, and setting a watch." Matthew xxvii. 57-66. 
 
 "And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, 
 that is, the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, an honorable 
 counselor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went 
 in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus. And Pilate mar- 
 veled if he were already dead : and calling unto him the centurion, he 
 asked him whether he had been any while dead. And when he knew 
 it of the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph. And he brought fine 
 linen, and took him down, and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him 
 in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone unto 
 the door of the sepulchre. And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother 
 of Joses beheld where he was laid." jNIark xv. 42-47. 
 
 27 313 
 
314 
 
 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 "And, behold, there was a man named Joseph, a counseloi*; and he 
 was a good man, and a just: the same had not consented to the counsel 
 and deed of them : he was of Arimathea, a city of the Jews; who also 
 himself waited for the kingdom of God, This man went unto Pilate, 
 and begged the body of Jesus. And he took it down, and wrapped it 
 in linen, and laid it in a sejDulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein 
 never man before was laid. And that day was the preparation, and the 
 sabbath drew on. And the women also, which came with him from 
 Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and hoyv his body 
 was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments ; and 
 rested the sabbath day according to the commandment." LuKE xxiii. 
 
 50-56. 
 
 " And after this Josej^h of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but 
 secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away 
 the body of Jesus : and Pilate gave him leave. He came therefore, 
 and took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus (which 
 at the first came to Jesus by night), and brought a mixture of myrrh 
 and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight. Then took they the body 
 of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner 
 of the Jews is to bury. Now in the place where he was crucified there 
 was a garden ; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never 
 man yet laid. There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews' 
 preparation day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand." John xix. 38-42. 
 
 E have just been contemplating a Sab- 
 bath of our Lord's in which, at a 
 supper given to him at Bethany, he 
 had been anointed with "a pound of spikenard, 
 very precious," by the loving hands of Mary 
 the sister of Lazarus. On the next Sabbath 
 day He who was thus honored was lying dead 
 in a rock-hewn tomb. The Raiser up of the 
 dead was himself dead. The Lord who had 
 dispensed life to the daughter of Jairus, to the 
 son of the widow of Nain, to the brother of 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE SEPULCHRE. 315 
 
 Martha and Mary, was now himself Hfeless, 
 bound hand and foot with grave-clothes. We 
 need not dwell on the crucifixion scene, nor on 
 the taking down of Jesus' body from the cross, 
 nor on the request of Joseph of Arimathea to 
 Pilate to grant him the corpse that he micdit 
 bury it in his own new sepulchre, for these 
 things belong to the day of preparation rather 
 than to the Sabbath. 
 
 Is it not something more than a coincidence 
 that- we find a Mary and a Joseph both connected 
 with his birth and his death, presiding as it were 
 at the Manger and at the Tomb? 
 
 *'It may be noted," says Wordsworth, "that 
 one Joseph was appointed by God to be the 
 guardian of his body In the virgin womb, and 
 another Joseph was the guardian of his body In 
 the virgin tomb, and each Joseph Is called a just 
 man in holy Scripture." The garden of Joseph 
 of Arimathea, that "honorable counselor who 
 also waited for the kingdom of God," was near 
 " the place whe"re he was crucified," and " In the 
 garden was a new sepulchre wherein was never 
 man yet laid." As the bodies of malefactors 
 after death were at the disposal of the governor, 
 Joseph — one of the great council of the Sanhe- 
 
3l6 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 drim, rich, good, just, and one who, being '*a 
 disciple of Jesus, but secretly," "had not con- 
 sented to the counsel and deed of the" Sanhe- 
 drim — ''went in boldly unto Pilate and craved 
 the body of Jesus." Whatever may have been 
 his "fear of the Jews" before Jesus' death, 
 he had none now. He was willing to let the 
 Roman governor know how he esteemed the 
 crucified One, and was ready to give to the 
 sacred body the repose of his own new tomb. 
 Pilate, having first ascertained from the centu- 
 rion that Jesus was dead, granted his request. 
 Another ruler of the Jews, Nicodemus, " which 
 at the first came to Jesus by night," also came 
 to render such services as were in his power. 
 He came with an ofTerinor of a hundred weiofht 
 of spices (myrrh and aloes) ; and under the 
 direction of these two honorable men, the body 
 was removed from the cross, wrapped in "a 
 clean fine linen cloth with the spices, as the 
 manner of the Jews is to bury," and then they 
 laid him reverently In Joseph's new tomb 
 " hewn out in the rock, and rolled a great 
 stone to the door of the sepulchre." 
 
 This transaction had been carefully watched 
 by Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of 
 
o 
 
 p 
 
 W 
 
 O 
 
 O 
 I— ( 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE SEPULCHRE. 317 
 
 Joses, and the women also which came with him 
 from Gahlee, as they " sat over against the sep- 
 ulchre and beheld how the body was laid." So 
 soon as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus 
 had departed, the women also returned to Jeru- 
 salem, and after preparing their spices and oint- 
 ment for a more thorough embalming of the 
 sacred body, " they rested the Sabbath day ac- 
 cordinor to the commandment." Nothino- could 
 
 o o 
 
 have been more simple and unostentatious than 
 the burial of Jesus. As his birth, in all its 
 earthly aspects, was one that was surrounded 
 with no pomp or worldly display, so the burial 
 was the hurried carrying of him from the cross 
 to the tomb, without parade, without funeral 
 wailing, without any pageant of woe. He was 
 laid for his first earthly sleep In a borrowed 
 manger ; he was laid for his last earthly sleep 
 in a borrowed tomb. 
 
 We cannot fail to note the contrast between 
 the way in which the holy women who attended 
 Christ's burial and the way in which the chief 
 priests and the Pharisees kept that Sabbath. 
 The Marys and the other women from Galilee 
 rested according to the commandment. They 
 would not even anoint the dead body of their 
 
 27* 
 
3l8 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Lord on that holy day. We can imagine with 
 what almost hopeless sorrow they spent its 
 sacred hours — how in the privacy of their 
 home they talked over the mournful scenes of 
 Calvary, and spoke with awe of the wondrous 
 signs in the sky and on the earth which had 
 marked his crucifixion. We can imagine how 
 they recalled one and another of his gracious 
 words and his gracious acts, until their hearts 
 glowed as they mused and spake. On the other 
 hand, the chief priests and Pharisees, notwith- 
 standing that it was the Sabbath, and notwith- 
 standing that they rendered themselves ceremo- 
 nially unclean by so doing, ''came together unto 
 Pilate, saying. Sir, we remem.ber that that de- 
 ceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three 
 days I will rise again. Command therefore that 
 the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, 
 lest his disciples come by night and steal him 
 away, and so the last error shall be worse than 
 the first." Here was a confession that he was 
 dead, as their language and purpose prove. 
 Here was still seen their obduracy, for they 
 style him " that deceiver." Here also was man- 
 ifested a fear lest his prophecy might come 
 true, and hence they would take all human 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE SEPULCHRE. 319 
 
 means to prevent his rising again. Malignity, 
 hate, craft, fear, fill their minds, and make them 
 desecrate the Sabbath with unlawful deeds and 
 words and emotions. 
 
 That Sabbath, we are told, "was an high 
 day." It occurred in the midst of the Passover 
 festival, and her+ce was celebrated with unusual 
 solemnities and reverence. It was one of the 
 three great festivals of the Jews at v/hlch " all 
 the males were to appear before the Lord." 
 It was kept in honor of the deliverance of the 
 children of Israel from the destroying angel ; 
 when, In consequence of the sprinkling of the 
 blood of the paschal lamb on the lintel and 
 doorposts of their houses, he passed over the 
 houses thus blood marked ; and vdiile " there 
 was not an house In Egypt where there was 
 not one dead," there was not a house In 
 Goshen where there were any dead. Jerusalem 
 on this " high day " was full of people who had 
 come up to this holy festival. Many hundred 
 thousand had gathered there to commemorate 
 their national deliverance and fulfill the com- 
 mands of Jehovah. 
 
 Yet how few were Interested in the trans- 
 actions of Golgotha, or comprehended the im- 
 
320 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 port of the wondrous scenes of that day — the 
 darkened sun, the quaking earth, the rended 
 veil of the temple ! They furnished subjects 
 of talk at the Sabbath feast, In the family cir- 
 cle, in the groups at the Synagogue, among 
 the visitors In the courts of the temple, and 
 then the festive hours rolled on as usual, and 
 the Sabbath sun sunk to rest In the waters 
 of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Durlnor the whole of this Sabbath our Lord 
 
 o 
 
 lay In the tomb of Joseph ; the sepulchre had 
 been visited, however, by soldiers and officials ; 
 the latter, to affix seals to the stone that was 
 rolled to the door of the tomb, so that it could 
 not be opened without breaking them ; and 
 the former, to guard the place from any in- 
 trusion, and thus defeat the attempt, should 
 such be made, to steal away his body and 
 then say that It was raised from the dead. 
 With these exceptions, we read of no one 
 visiting the sepulchre on that Sabbath day. 
 Malignant hate pursued him to the tomb, and 
 planted sentinels at his grave to defeat his 
 predicted resurrection, and keep the so-called 
 impostor in his rock-hewn prison. 
 
 Such was the condition of things on that 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE SEPULCHRE. 321 
 
 Sabbath day. It was a period of suspense 
 and awe in the moral universe. There was 
 something subhme in the hush of expectation 
 that filled the hearts of apostles and holy 
 women and ano:els as the hours of that "hiorh 
 day" slowly rolled on, and the Roman guards 
 paced up and down before the sealed and 
 silent sepulchre. 
 
 He whom prophecy had foretold should rise 
 from the dead ; he who had predicted his' own 
 resurrection ; he who had declared himself to 
 be "the resurrection and the life;" he who 
 had proved that he was such, by calling back 
 to life the dead lying on the bed, on the bier, 
 in the grave, — was himself dead and buried. 
 He upon whose return to life hung all the 
 issues of man's salvation was lying in his grave- 
 clothes with his face bound about with a nap- 
 kin. Earth and hell and heaven bent as it 
 were over his tomb in mute expectancy, for 
 that sepulchre wherein he lay as death's great- 
 est victim, and the grave's proudest trophy, was 
 the last stronghold of Satan, and that must 
 be conquered before his atoning work would 
 be completed. 
 
 There is something very solemn in consid- 
 
322 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 erlng Jesus, not only as dead, but buried — as 
 lying for a time under the power of death, as 
 making his grave in an earthly sepulchre. Yet 
 as it was necessary that he should die — for thus 
 only could he bear the penalty due to our sins — 
 so also was it necessary that he should be 
 buried. This was requisite, not only as giv- 
 ing additional proof of his death by increasing 
 the number of witnesses to the fact — not only 
 to fulfill the types of the Old Testament which 
 foreshadowed this burial, as that of Isaac, bound 
 for a time to the altar and then released by 
 divine interposition ; and Jonah, entombed for 
 a season in the whale, to be rendered back 
 to the land on the third day ; not only to fulfill 
 the prophecies which predicted that the Messiah 
 should " make his crrave with the wicked and 
 with the rich in his death," — but it was espe- 
 cially necessary that he should go down to the 
 grave, so that there, in dcatJis own dominion, he 
 might conquer death and the grave and lead 
 them captive at his chariot wheels. As it was 
 only by taking upon him the form of a servant, 
 and coming under all the outward conditions 
 of humanity, that he was able as a man in 
 human form to work out for us redemption 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE SEPULCHRE. 323 
 
 from sin, so only by going down to the state 
 and condition of the dead, and coming under 
 all the conditions of deceased humanity, could 
 he " destroy him who had the power of death " 
 and break the bars of the ofrave. 
 
 The dead of the earth are to rise from their 
 graves, and Christ, as the '* first fruit," must be 
 in a grave before he can rise, as the " wave- 
 sheaf" of the buried generations of men. The 
 final conflict of Christ with the powers of dark- 
 ness was to be made by the buried Christ, and 
 the tomb of Joseph was to be the scene of the 
 struggle. In vain would have been the holy 
 life and divine teachings of Jesus, in vain his 
 many miracles and wondrous works, in vain the 
 agony of Gethsemane, in vain even the blood 
 of Calvary, if, once in the grave, death coitld hold 
 Iiint there. If, voluntarily coming under the 
 power and dominion of death, he had been 
 involuntarily detained there, it would have 
 shown that there was a power there stronger 
 than he to which he must submit. But death 
 gets all its power from sin, sin all its activity 
 from the prince of evil, so that if Jesus had 
 been held in the grave against his will, it would 
 have proved that he was not divine, was not 
 
324 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 the Messiah, and inferior in power even to a 
 fallen angel. It was necessary, therefore, not 
 only that Jesus should die on the cross, but that 
 he should enter into the house of this stronof- 
 armed death and spoil him in his own domain, 
 and bind him there as his conquered foe. It 
 was the last fortress of sin, and it must be 
 broken down before there could be the cry of 
 triumph ; for if Jesus had been held captive in 
 the grave, all his followers would have been held 
 there also, and no Easter morning, with its shout 
 of gladness, would ever have risen upon that 
 dark valley. And how striking is the thought, 
 that as in the garden of Eden " the first man, 
 Adam," lost, by the conquest of him by Satan, 
 original innocence and perfect bliss and com- 
 munion with God, so also in the garden of 
 Joseph, " the second Adam, the Lord from 
 heaven," by his conquest of Satan, gained back 
 our lost inheritance, securing to us thereby an 
 innocence purer than Adam's, a bliss more 
 heavenly, and a union with the divine nature 
 beyond anything that ever could have been in 
 an unsinning and an unredeemed humanity. 
 In the garden of Eden, Satan conquered, and 
 '' brouoht death into the world and all our 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE SEPULCHRE. 325 
 
 woes." In the garden of Joseph, Jesus con- 
 quered Satan, and '' brought life and immor- 
 tality to Hght." 
 
 The two crardens have been the two ofreatest 
 battle-grounds of the moral world. The fall 
 and the recovery of our race date from these 
 two points ; and had not the garden of Joseph 
 reversed the victory of the garden of Eden, the 
 whole world would for ever lie in the reo^ion 
 and shadow of death ; the great stone which 
 lay against the door of the world's sepulchre 
 would never have been rolled away, and the 
 whole race, in all its generations, as they went 
 down to the grave, would have lain there with 
 no hope of a resurrection to eternal life and 
 eternal bliss. 
 
 And this brings before us another, and the 
 only other, fact we shall now mention in con- 
 nection with the scenes of this Sabbath day — 
 viz., the comfort which it gives to the Christian 
 that his dear Lord has himself lain in the tomb. 
 As we look at the grave, in connection with our 
 friends or in reference to ourselves, there is an 
 instinctive shrinkinof back from its coldness, its 
 darkness, its decay. It is so desolate to put the 
 bodies of our dear ones into the deep vault and 
 
 28 
 
^26 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 leave them there all alone — to go away and 
 abandon them, as it were, to the dank earth and 
 the crawling worm. It is painful to think that 
 we ourselves must soon lie down in the dust 
 and turn to corruption ; that this body will be 
 but a handful of ashes ; that all its " beauty will 
 be consumed out of its dwelling-place." We 
 do not wonder, as we look at these things in the 
 light of natural religion, that the ancients, and 
 all who know not the gospel, should depict 
 death as " the king of terrors " and the grave 
 as a devourinof monster. But, blessed be God ! 
 we do not feel thus, now that Jesus has been 
 buried. By lying in the tomb he has, as our 
 forerunner, gone before to show us the way — 
 he has turned its darkness into light, its despair 
 into hope, its gorgon horrors into brightest joys. 
 He has shown us, by his occupancy of a grave, 
 that we need not dread to lie where he lay. Pie 
 has shown us, by his brief stay there, that we 
 also are to rise to newness of life ; and as he 
 passed through the grave to his final glory, so 
 will the grave be to us the gateway to our bliss- 
 ful immortality. The call of Jesus to each one 
 of his disciples is, '' Follow thou me ;" and that 
 following zvill conduct tcs to the tomb before it 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE SEPULCHRE. 32/ 
 
 conducts 7CS to heaven. Death may be bitter to 
 the flesh, but it will only usher the Christian 
 into ''the joy of his Lord." The grave may be 
 repulsive to the natural sensitiveness of the 
 heart, but we only enter there to change our 
 dress, for there we are to put off this body of 
 flesh and corruption and put on the resurrection 
 body, for Jesus "shall change our vile bodies, 
 that they may be fashioned like unto his own 
 glorious body, according to the mighty working 
 whereby he is able to subdue all things unto 
 himself." 
 
 When such joy is before us, who will com- 
 plain that he must reach it by passing through 
 the grave ? Who would refuse to enter the 
 palace of the king because the portal was low 
 and dark and dismal, and he had to wait there a 
 moment before he could be conducted into the 
 throne-room, bright with imperial glory? and 
 who will grieve that he must pass through the 
 erave and eate of death before he can enter the 
 palace of the great King eternal in the heavens ? 
 Our only thought should be to fit ourselves for 
 the hour of death by having our life hid in 
 Christ, for we can die in the Lord only as we 
 live in the Lord; and unless we die in the Lor'd, 
 
328 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 there will be for us no rest, no hope, in the 
 grave, and no resurrection to eternal bliss 
 beyond. But the soul that trusts its all on 
 Jesus, that rests satisfied on his finished work, 
 that pleads nothing for Itself but that Christ 
 died for its sins and rose again for its justifica- 
 tion, — such a soul cares not for what may inter- 
 vene between this life and its joyful resurrection, 
 but goes down into the dark valley undaunted, 
 and crosses fearlessly the cold stream, singing 
 as it Gfoes, "Thanks be unto God who Q^Iveth 
 us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
 With what touching simplicity does Bunyan, 
 in the Pilgrim's Progress, speak of this when 
 he describes the death of Mr. Standfast! 
 
 "When Mr. Standfast had thus set things in 
 order, and the time being come for him to haste 
 him away, he also went down to the river. Now, 
 there was a great calm at that time in the river; 
 wherefore Mr. Standfast, when he was about 
 halfway in, stood a while and talked with his 
 companions that had waited upon him thither. 
 And he said. The river has been a terror to 
 many ; yea, the thoughts of it have also fright- 
 ened me ; but now methinks I stand easy ; my 
 foot is fixed upon that on which the feet of the 
 
THE SABBATH IN THE SEPULCHRE. 329 
 
 priests that bare the ark of the covenant stood 
 while Israel went over Jordan. The waters 
 indeed are to the palate bitter, and to the 
 stomach cold, yet the thoughts of what I am 
 eoinof to, and of the conduct that waits for me 
 on the other side, doth lie as a glowing coal at 
 my heart. I see myself now at the end of my 
 journey ; my toilsome days are ended. I am 
 eoinof to see that head that was crowned with 
 thorns, and that face that was spit upon, for me. 
 I have formerly lived by hearsay and faith, but 
 now I go where I shall live by sight, and shall 
 be with Him in whose company I delight myself 
 I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of; and 
 wherever I have seen the print of his shoe in the 
 earth, there I have coveted to set my foot too. 
 His name has been to me as a civet-box ; yea, 
 sweeter than all perfumes. His voice to me has 
 been most sweet, and his countenance I have 
 more desired than they that have most desired 
 the light of the sun. His words I did use 
 to gather for my food, and for antidotes against 
 my faintings. He has held me and hath kept 
 me from mine iniquities ; yea, my steps hath he 
 strengthened in his way. Now while he was 
 thus in discourse, his countenance changed, his 
 
 28 « 
 
330 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 strono- man bowed under him, and after he had 
 said, Take me, for I come unto thee, he ceased 
 to be seen of them. 
 
 " But glorious it was to see how the open 
 region was filled with horses and chariots, with 
 trumpeters and pipers, with buglers and players 
 upon stringed instruments, to welcome the 
 pilgrims as they went up and followed one 
 another in at the beautiful gate of the city. . . . 
 And, lo ! as they entered they were transfigured, 
 and they had raiment put on them that shone 
 like gold. Then I heard in my dream that all 
 the bells in the city rang again for joy, and that 
 it was said unto them, Enter ye into the joy of 
 your Lord." ^ 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 
 
 I.— THE MORNING HOURS. 
 
 " In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day 
 of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the 
 sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake : for the angel 
 of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the 
 stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like light- 
 ning, and his raiment white as snow : and for fear of him the keepers 
 did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and 
 said unto the women. Fear not ye : for I know that ye seek Jesus, 
 which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. 
 Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his 
 disciples that he is risen from the dead ; and, behold, he goeth before 
 you into Galilee ; there shall ye see him : lo, I have told you. And 
 they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy ; and 
 did run to bring his disciples word. And as they went to tell his dis- 
 ciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying. All hail. And they came and 
 held him by the feet, and worshiped him. Then said Jesus unto them. 
 Be not afraid : go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there 
 shall they see me." St. Matthew xxviii. i-io. 
 
 " And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the 
 mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might 
 come and anoint him. And very early in the morning, the first day of 
 the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And 
 they said among themselves, who shall roll us away the stone from the 
 door of the sepulchre ? And when they looked, they saw that the stone 
 was rolled away : for it was veiy great. And entering into the sep- 
 ulchre, they saw a young m.an sitting on the right side, clothed in a 
 
 331 
 
332 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 long white garment; and tliey were affrighted. And he said unto them, 
 Be not affrighted : ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified : he 
 is risen; he is not here : behold the place where they laid him. But go 
 your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into 
 Galilee; there shall ye see him, as he said unto you. And they w^ent 
 out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre ; for they trembled and were 
 amazed : neither said they anything to any man ; for they were afraid. 
 Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeai'ed 
 first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. And 
 she went and told them that had been with him, as they moux'ned and 
 wept. And they, when they had heard that he was alive, and had 
 been seen of her, believed not. After that he appeared in another 
 form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country. And 
 they went and told it unto the residue : neither believed they them. 
 Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and up- 
 braided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they 
 believed not them which had seen him after he was risen." St. Mark 
 xvi. 1-14. • 
 
 " The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it 
 was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from 
 the sepulchre. Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to 
 the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have 
 taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they 
 have laid him. Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and 
 came to the sepulchre. So they ran both together : and the other dis- 
 ciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he stoop- 
 ing down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he 
 not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the 
 sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was 
 about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in 
 a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple, which came 
 first to the sepulchre, and he saw and believed. For as yet they knew 
 not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead. Then the 
 disciples went away again unto their own home. But Maiy stood 
 without at the sepulchre weeping : and as she wept, she stooped down, 
 and looked into the sepulchre, and seeth two angels in white sitting, 
 the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus 
 had lain. And they say unto her. Woman, why weepest thou? She 
 saith unto them. Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know 
 not Avhere they have laid him. And when she had thus said, she 
 turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was 
 Jesus. Jesus said unto her, Woman, why weepest thou ? whom seekest 
 
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THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 333 
 
 thou? She supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if 
 thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I 
 will take him away. Jesus said unto her, Mary. She turned herself, 
 and sailh unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master. Jesus saith 
 unto her, Touch me not ; for I am not yet ascended to my Father ; but 
 go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and 
 your Father; and to my God, and your God. Mary Magdalene came 
 and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had 
 spoken these things unto her. Then the same day at evening, being 
 the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples 
 were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the 
 midst, and said unto them. Peace be unto you. And when he had so 
 said, he showed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the 
 disciples glad, when they saw the Lord," St. John xx. 1-20. 
 
 HE Jewish Sabbath is passed. The 
 holy women have scrupulously kept 
 its sacred hours, patiently waiting 
 until the morning light of the first day of the 
 week would permit them to go to the sepulchre. 
 "Very early," therefore, *'as it began to dawn," 
 three women, Mary Magdalene and Mary the 
 mother of James and Joses, and Salome, "hav- 
 ing bought sweet spices, that they might anoint 
 the body of Jesus," went thither to do that work 
 of grateful yet sorrowing love. As they walked 
 on, they said among themselves, "Who shall 
 roll us away the stone from the door of the 
 sepulchre ?" They had seen this " very great " 
 stone rolled on Friday to the door of the 
 tomb, and they knew, therefore, that their 
 united strencrth would not suffice to remove 
 
334 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 it. They knew not, however, that the stone 
 had been sealed with the seal of the Sanhedrim, 
 nor that the tomb was guarded by a band of 
 Roman soldiers. Had they known these things, 
 they would not have ventured into the garden 
 of Joseph. When they reached the spot, how- 
 ever, they found the stone rolled away; "for 
 an aneel of the Lord descended from heaven, 
 and came and rolled back the stone from the 
 door and sat upon it. His countenance was 
 like liofhtninof, and his raiment white as snow. 
 And for fear of him the keepers did shake, 
 and became .as dead men." The stone being 
 thus taken away, they were at once enabled 
 to enter into the sepulchre, but when there, 
 " they found not the body of Jesus." They 
 saw, however, two angels in shining raiment, 
 ''sitting, the one at the head, and the other at 
 the foot, where the body of Jesus had lain," 
 who told them, " Be not affrighted : ye seek 
 Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified : he is 
 risen ; he is not here : behold the place where 
 they laid him. Go quickly, and tell his dis- 
 ciples that he is risen from the dead ; and, 
 behold, he goeth before you into Galilee ; there 
 shall ye see him." Hurrying back to the eleven 
 
THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. ' 335 
 
 apostles, the women told them what they had 
 seen and heard, and Peter and John ran to the 
 sepulchre. John reached It first, and " stoop- 
 ing down and looking in, saw the linen clothes 
 lying ; yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon 
 Peter following him, and went into the sep- 
 ulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and 
 the napkin, that was about his head, not lying 
 with the linen clothes, but wrapped together 
 in a place by itself." After this evidence of the 
 truth of what the women had told them, " the 
 disciples went away again to their own house," 
 wondering at that which was come to pass. 
 
 Mary Magdalene, who had gone back to the 
 sepulchre, did not now return with them, but 
 remained. Her mind was perturbed with grief, 
 and she did not take in the full meaning of the 
 transaction. She only seemed to realize that 
 the body of Jesus was gone, and so she lingered 
 there, weeping and stooping to look into the 
 vacant sepulchre. The angels there gently 
 asked, " Woman, why weepest thou ?" She 
 saith unto them. Because " they have taken 
 away my Lord, and I know not where they 
 have laid him." Turning back from the tomb, 
 she saw a person whom she took to be Joseph's 
 
33^ THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 gardener ; and when this supposed gardener 
 asked her the same question that the angels 
 had done, ''Woman, why weepest thou?" she 
 answered, " Sir, If thou hast borne him hence, 
 tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take 
 him away." Jesus said unto her — for he It was 
 to whom she was speaking — " Mary !" That 
 one word, uttered In his well-known tone, dis- 
 closed to her who It was, and she at once — 
 exclaiming " RabbonI !" /. e., my Teacher — 
 sought to embrace him, by casting herself at 
 his feet; but he said unto her, ''Touch me not," 
 cling not to me, " for I have not yet ascended 
 to my Father, but go to my brethren and say 
 unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your 
 Father, and to my God and your God." She 
 then went back to Jerusalem "and told the dis- 
 ciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he 
 had spoken these things unto her." 
 
 As soon as the Roman guard at the sepulchre 
 had recovered from their fright, which for a time 
 almost palsied body and mind, they " went into 
 the city and showed unto the chief priests all 
 the things that were done." A council was Im- 
 mediately called, the facts stated, and the neces- 
 sity of checking their being known at once 
 
THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 33/ 
 
 became apparent. They could not meet this new 
 and strange emergency, and so they resorted to 
 bribery and falsehood, and *'gave large money 
 to the soldiers, saying, Say ye, His disciples came 
 by night and stole him away while we slept ; and 
 if this come to the governor's ears we will per- 
 suade him and secure you. So they took the 
 money and did as they were taught." 
 
 This is a simple record of the events of the 
 early morning of this first Lord's day. How 
 many subjects of deepest interest do they 
 set before us ! Only a few, however, can be 
 noticed. Never did men more thoroughly over- 
 reach themselves than did the chief priests and 
 Pharisees, when they asked Pilate to give them 
 a watch at the sepulchre to prevent " that de- 
 ceiver," as they called him, from rising from the 
 dead. For the very means by which they hoped 
 to prevent the resurrection were made the occa- 
 sion of more firmly establishing it, and we 
 should have lost some of the most striking and 
 irrefragable proofs of this miracle, had not this 
 request been made by the Jews and been 
 granted by Pilate. But for this Roman guard, 
 and the sealed stone, and the bribery of the 
 soldiers by the council to propagate a lie, the 
 
 29 w 
 
33^ THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 testimony to the resurrection would have been 
 wholly from the friends of Jesus, and liable of 
 course to the charge of partisan complicity and 
 design. But now, Roman soldiers and Jewish 
 enemies are made to bear unwilling witness to 
 this event. 
 
 The guard mounted at the sepulchre was 
 probably the usual detachment of sixteen sol- 
 diers, detailed from the castle of Antonio for 
 this special purpose. It is well known that the 
 military discipline of the Romans was severe 
 and exacting. To desert a post, or sleep upon 
 a watch, was punished with death. This, these 
 soldiers well knew, and such was the anxiety of 
 the scribes and Pharisees in this matter that 
 they had doubtless received instructions to be 
 specially vigilant at so important a crisis. How 
 impossible, then, to regard as true the assertion 
 of the chief priests that his disciples came by 
 night and stole him away while the guard slept ! 
 for while the body was gone on the morning of 
 that first day of the week, yet the linen clothes 
 and the spices which had been wound around him 
 were still there, and the napkin that was about 
 his head was folded together or carefully ar- 
 ranged in a place by itself. Had the body been 
 
THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 339 
 
 Stolen, the thieves would, In their haste, have 
 taken the body just as they found It, and se- 
 creted it just as It was ; they would scarcely 
 have had leisure to carefully unwrap It of its 
 bandages, the myrrh and aloes In which would 
 make them stick so closely to the flesh that 
 only with great care and washing could they be 
 removed ; nor would they have deliberately 
 folded up the napkin that bound his head and 
 laid it in a place by Itself The Interior of the 
 sepulchre showed no signs of haste or theft ; on 
 the contrary, there were marks of deliberation 
 and thoughtful care, and proved that the dis- 
 ciples did not come by night and steal him 
 away. 
 
 As to the other assertion, that Jesus was 
 taken ivJiile the soldier's slept, the thing is so pre- 
 posterous as scarcely to deserve an answer. 
 The answer to the statement is, if they all 
 slept (a thing impossible in itself, considering 
 the severe discipline of the Roman soldier and 
 the extreme vigilance required for this service), 
 how could they know that his disciples came 
 and stole him away ? Can a man testify as to 
 what took place when he was asleep ? Go to 
 any court of justice, and offer there the testi- 
 
340 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 •mony of sleeping men for what took place when 
 they were confessedly asleep, w^ould their state- 
 ments be received? There is not a court on 
 earth that would accept or believe such wit- 
 nesses. Yet confessedly, the body of Jesus is 
 gone, and this is their only explanation of the 
 removal. Now, either the soldiers were" asleep 
 or they v/ere not asleep. If they were asleep, 
 as they were taught to say, then their testimony 
 is worthless, because they could not know what 
 transpired in their slumber. If they were not 
 asleep, then a few timid disciples, who had all 
 forsaken Jesus and fled two days before, could 
 not have ventured to assail a band of well- 
 armed soldiers, placed for the very purpose of 
 guarding the tomb of Jesus from spoliation, and 
 could not have stolen the body from their spe- 
 cial guardianship. Thus did God cause the 
 wrath of man to praise him, and the plottings 
 of the enemies of Christ to become some of the 
 strongest props to the doctrine of the resur- 
 rection. 
 
 That the great council of the Jews, the San- 
 hedrim, knew that the disciples not only did not 
 come by night and steal him away, as they 
 bribed the soldiers to say, but that they in their 
 
THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 34I 
 
 hearts believed that Christ had come to life . 
 again, is evident from the fact, that in less than 
 two months after the resurrection Peter and 
 John were arrested in the temple for preaching 
 '* Jesus and the resurrection," and after a night's 
 imprisonment were arraigned before the high 
 priests and the council as to the power and 
 name by which they had wrought the miracle 
 of healing on the lame man at the Beautiful 
 Gate of the temple. They replied : " Be it 
 known unto you all, and to all the people of 
 Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Naz- 
 areth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from 
 the dead, even by him does this man stand here 
 before you whole." A few days after, Peter and 
 the other apostles were again arrested by the 
 authority of the Sanhedrim and put in the com- 
 mon prison. When brought before the council, 
 the high priest asked them, " Did we not 
 straightly command you that ye should not 
 teach in this name ? and behold ye have filled 
 Jerusalem with your doctrine and intend to 
 bring this man's blood upon us." To which 
 the apostles replied: "The God of our fathers 
 raised up Jesus whom ye slew and hanged on a 
 tree. Him hath God exalted to be a Prince and 
 
 29* 
 
342 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 a Saviour, and we are his witnesses of these 
 thino-s." 
 
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 Now, on the theory that his disciples had 
 stolen the body, would they have thus spoken 
 to the council ? or, speaking thus, would not the 
 council at once charge it upon them now that 
 they had them in their grasp, and prove them 
 guilty of the theft? But not a word do we 
 hear from any of the Sanhedrim of any such 
 thing. They commanded them to be silent, 
 they beat them, and were so cut to the heart 
 by what they heard that they took counsel to 
 slay them, but not a word is lisped about 
 their stealing the body, though the apostles 
 on each occasion challenged them to the issue, 
 by declaring that God had raised up Jesus 
 from the dead, and that they were witnesses 
 of the fact. Had the council believed their 
 own story, now was the time to verify it and 
 prove the apostles false. But no ; they knew 
 that their own statement was false, and never 
 even attempted to deny or refute the declara- 
 tion of the apostles. 
 
 Then, again, behold the wonder-working 
 power of God in the circumstances connected 
 with the rolling away of the stone from the 
 
THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 343 
 
 door of the sepulchre ! Had our Lord rolled 
 away the stone, it might have been said that he 
 was not dead, but had only swooned away, and 
 was in a state of asphyxia or trance, and that, 
 reviving under the stimulus of the spices where- 
 with he was swathed, he had by the exercise of 
 desperate strength removed the " very great 
 stone" which guarded the mouth of his tomb. 
 
 But by the earthquake, which evidently was 
 Ioca.1, and by the descending angel with " his 
 countenance like lio^htninor" and his snow-white 
 raiment, there were proofs conclusive of super- 
 natural Interference. Had there not been these 
 prodigies and angelic interpositions, we should 
 have been tempted to doubt the truth of the 
 resurrection, as making it exceptional to all the 
 other great feats of Jesus' life. If when he was 
 conceived by a virgin, it was announced by an 
 angel ; if when he was born, a multitude of the 
 heavenly host sung his advent hymn over the 
 plains of Bethlehem and a new star shone in 
 the east ; if when he was baptized, the heavens 
 opened and the Spirit like a dove lighted upon 
 him ; if after his temptation in the wilderness, 
 ano^els ministered unto him ; if at his transfior- 
 u ration, his very garments and body shone with 
 
344 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 resplendent lustre and a voice from heaven said 
 " This is my beloved Son, hear ye him ;" if in 
 his agony in Gethsemane, an angel appeared 
 strengthening him ; if at his death on the cross, 
 the sun was darkened and the earth quaked 
 and the rocks were rent, — surely it was but in 
 harmony with all these miraculous interposi- 
 tions, that his resurrection should be signalized 
 by angelic visits, and be accompanied by por- 
 tentous signs. Had there been none, the grand 
 climax of Christ's work would have wanted 
 those authenticating seals, which marked the 
 other epochs of his life as marvelous and 
 divine. 
 
 There is something suggestive, also, in the 
 incident that the manifestations of the risen 
 Saviour on the morning of the resurrection day 
 'were to women only. It was by a woman's 
 disobedience, that sin was introduced into Para- 
 dise ; it was to a woman, that the first prophecy 
 was given — that on which the hopes of the world 
 hung for thousands of years, "The Seed of the 
 woman shall bruise the serpent's head ;" it was 
 to a woman, that the announcement of the con- 
 ception of the Messiah was first made ; it was 
 to a woman, that Jesus declared the gracious 
 
THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 345 
 
 truth, ** I am the Resurrection and the Life;" 
 and now to Mary Magdalene and two others 
 the risen Christ first presents himself on the 
 morning of this first Lord's day. He thus ever 
 recognized the moral and social power of woman. 
 He placed her in her true position as a wife, a 
 mother, a daughter, a friend. No one has done 
 so much to elevate and refine woman as Jesus 
 Christ has. His teachings and his Spirit have 
 lifted her up from the degradation into which 
 sin and man, and even the so-called religions of 
 the world, had depressed her, Christianity has 
 reinvested her with her original dignity as she 
 came forth from the hand of God in Eden — to 
 be man's companion in body, mind and soul. 
 Not to be the slave of his power, the creature 
 of his lust, but the handmaid of the Lord in all 
 the high and holy service of a loving heart, and 
 the intelligent companion of man in all the do- 
 mestic and social arrangements of the family 
 organization. The homage paid to woman in 
 civilized nations, the contrasts which mark her 
 position in the scale of heathen and Christian 
 people, the protection which human law and 
 sound education and a healthful public opinion 
 throw around her, are all due to the religion of 
 
34^ THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Jesus Christ and his own line of action and 
 thought in reference to that lonor-humbled sex. 
 This work of Christ in behalf of woman has 
 been recognized by her in all the ways and 
 offices by which holy love could express Itself 
 for a holy Saviour. The history of Christianity 
 shows how Its largest fields of triumph have 
 been amonor women — how some of the crrandest 
 heroines of earth and some of the noblest in the 
 army of martyrs have been women. When men 
 have doubted, w^omen have believed; when men 
 have fled from Jesus, women have fled to him ; 
 when men have sold him for money, women 
 have washed his feet with tears. She has truly 
 won for herself the tribute of the poet: 
 
 " Not she with traitorous kiss her Saviour stung, 
 Not she denied him with unholy tongue : 
 Slie, when apostles shrank, could dangers brave, 
 Last at the cross and earliest at the grave." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 
 
 
 II.— EVENING. 
 
 HE appearances of our Lord after his 
 resurrection thus far related, took 
 place early in the morning of the 
 first day of the week. Several hours passed 
 before he next presented himself. In the mean 
 time the word had passed from one disciple to 
 another, "The Lord is risen." "The angels 
 have told us so." "The women have seen and 
 worshiped him." As the news spread, the 
 hearts of the apostles were stirred with unu- 
 sual emotion. The believing few who still clung 
 to Jesus, despite his crucifixion, were reassured 
 in faith and hope. The despondency and almost 
 despair which brooded over the followers of our 
 Lord on Friday evening, as they learned that 
 he was indeed dead and buried, gave way to the 
 exciting expectation of soon seeing him again 
 
 347 
 
348 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 alive. The rebound of their minds from gloom 
 and sadness to the assurance that he had risen 
 from the dead was great, and produced intense 
 surprise and joy. 
 
 How they must have eagerly talked together, 
 questioning' one with another how it had hap- 
 pened ! How they must have thronged around 
 the women as they returned from the sepulchre 
 to- learn the truth of vvhat they had seen and 
 heard ! How the unbelieving Jews would shake 
 their heads and deny the facts, and perhaps de- 
 ride their words ! When the soldiers returned 
 and told to the council what they knew about 
 the earthquake, the angels, the rolled away 
 stone, the empty tomb, the chief priests and 
 scribes hastily summoned the council, brought 
 before them the still trembling and excited 
 soldiers, saw at a glance that their well-laid 
 plans had been all thwarted, and that they must 
 resort to prompt measures to prevent the sol- 
 diers from tellinor the truth as to the scenes 
 which had transpired at the tomb. Their con- 
 sternation and raere at their baffled schemes, 
 and their hopeless attempts to destroy Jesus, 
 formed a marked contrast to the exulting glad- 
 ness, and the palpitating hopes, and the exciting 
 
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rilE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 349 
 
 suspense of his friends, as they waited and 
 watched for new developments in the wondrous 
 scenes then unfoldinof before them. Between 
 the true narrative of the friends of Jesus, and 
 the false stories of his enemies, the fact, that 
 Jesus' body was not in the tomb, was soon 
 noised abroad, and all Jerusalem listened with 
 mingled incredulity and belief. The angel 
 whom the women had seen at the sepulchre 
 had specially charged them, " Go your way; tell 
 his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you 
 into Galilee : there shall ye see him." It was a 
 touching act of divine favor that Peter, who 
 had thrice denied our Lord, and that too with 
 oaths and cursino^, should have been singled out 
 by name as one to whom the fact of Christ's 
 resurrection should be immediately communi- 
 cated. Our Lord, who knew that he had wept 
 bitter tears of repentance, was thus tenderly 
 anxious to assure him of forgiveness, and not 
 let him give way, as he might otherwise have 
 done, to despair. Accordingly, we find that the 
 next appearance of Jesus, and the first to any 
 of the apostles, was to Simon Peter, as is dis- 
 tinctly stated by St. Luke, who says that he 
 " appeared unto Simon," and by St. Paul in his 
 
 30 
 
350 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 discourse on the resurrection, who says, " He 
 was seen of Cephas (the Syrlac form of Peter), 
 then of the twelve" (i Cor. xv. 5), implying that 
 before Christ appeared to the apostles in a 
 body, called here collectively by the term " the 
 twelve," he did show himself to Simon Peter. 
 This accords with the special message of the 
 angel to Peter, and with our blessed Lord's 
 conduct to him by the Sea of Galilee. How 
 this tender treatment of this grievously sinning 
 apostle, and his gracious words to Mary Mag- 
 dalene, another grievous sinner, proved Jesus to 
 be " the friend of sinners " — " that he came " 
 " to seek and to save that which was lost " ! and 
 what assurance is thus given to the vilest and 
 the most degraded, that he Is ready to receive 
 into his favor even the very " chief of sinners " ! 
 This showing of himself to Peter, which is 
 supposed to have taken place in the afternoon, 
 was followed by his appearing *'in another 
 form unto two" of the disciples ''as they 
 walked and went into the country." The 
 words, " another form," Imply that he seemed 
 to them not In the familiar aspect under which 
 they usually knew him, but as a stranger. 
 These two disciples were on their way to a 
 
THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 35 I 
 
 village called Emmaus, seven or eight miles 
 distant from Jerusalem, and they talked to- 
 gether of all these things which had happened. 
 While thus communing, Jesus drew near, "but 
 their eyes were holden, that they should not 
 know him" — i. e., the appearance of Jesus "in 
 another form," as St. Mark records, put, as it 
 were, a constraint on their eyes, so that they 
 did not recognize him, and regarded him only 
 as a stranger who had come up to Jerusalem 
 to the Passover festival. Perceivinor their sad- 
 ness he said to them, "What manner of 
 communications are these that ye have one to 
 another as ye walk and are sad ?" They re- 
 plied, "Art thou only a stranger at Jerusalem, 
 and hast not known the thinofs which are come 
 to pass there in these days ?" thus showing that 
 all Jerusalem was filled with the exciting topics, 
 and they wondered that, even though but a 
 stranger there, he had not heard of the won- 
 drous events of the past three days. Asking 
 them, for the purpose of drawing out their 
 hearts still more upon the subject, "What 
 things ?" they told him the current story of the 
 crucifixion and the resurrection. They spoke 
 to him of their hopes and their fears — what the 
 
352 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 women at the sepulchre saw and said, and 
 what some of their own number witnessed 
 there. Then he said unto them, *' O fools and 
 slow of heart to believe all that the prophets 
 have spoken!" — ''fools" not in the offensive 
 sense of the English word " fool," but as if he 
 had said, '' O men lacking spiritual understand- 
 ing and discernment, and slow to receive into 
 your mind the deep truths uttered by the pro- 
 phets !" Then he adds — " Ought not Christ to 
 have suffered these thlno^s and to enter into his 
 glory?" Was it not in accordance with the very 
 teachings of the prophets, that Messiah should 
 thus suffer before his exaltation to glory? — and 
 then, " beginning at Moses and all the prophets, 
 he expounded unto them in all the scriptures 
 the things concerning himself" Instinctively 
 there bursts from our lips the exclamation, '' Oh 
 that we had been there, to hear 'the Messiah' 
 explain the Messianic prophecies ! and the pro- 
 phet 'greater than Moses' expound Moses! 
 and the one to whom ' all Scripture '• testified, 
 open to them their whole meaning concerning 
 himself!" 
 
 What a teacher ! What teaching ! 71ie risen 
 Jesus explaining the necessity of his own death 
 
THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 353 
 
 and resurrection ! No wonder that they said 
 afterward, " Did not our heart burn within us 
 while he talked with us by the way, and while 
 he opened to us the scriptures?" It was a 
 rare and gracious privilege, and their glowing 
 hearts, heated with Intense affection, warmed 
 up their whole souls with wonder and joy. 
 
 Emmaus was soon reached — too soon for 
 the ravished travelers, who sought to prolong 
 the pleasing talk ; and hence, when the stranger 
 '' made as though he would go farther," they 
 constrained him, saying, ''Abide with us; for it 
 is toward evening, and the day is far spent." 
 Having sufficiently tested their earnestness to 
 enjoy still further communion with him, he 
 yielded to their request, and sat down with 
 them to their evening meal. - It is a rule of 
 the Jews that where three eat together a 
 thanksgiving shall be pronounced by one. To 
 Jesus, as the honored guest, was accorded this 
 service, and In the performance of it "he took 
 bread and blessed it, and brake and gave to 
 them." Whether In the act of prayer, or in 
 the manner of blessing the bread, or in the 
 lifting up of his hands, whereby the prints of 
 the nails were seen in their palms, or by some 
 
 30* X 
 
354 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 marked word or tone of voice, he made him- 
 self known, we cannot tell. Suffice it to say 
 that "he was made known to them in the 
 breakinor of the bread." For then their eves, 
 which had been " holden " before, were now 
 " opened " — they recognized Jesus, but, alas ! 
 he was gone ; " he vanished out of their sight." 
 Astounded by the whole scene, which had pass- 
 ed away like a glorious vision, the disciples, 
 recalling the glow in their hearts at Jesus' dis- 
 course by the way, rise up "the same hour" 
 and retrace their steps to Jerusalem. There 
 was no abiding in Emmaus that night. What 
 they had heard, what they had seen, must be 
 told to the other disciples. There was no mis- 
 take now. The eyes of their bodies and the 
 eyes of their minds were now fully open. 
 They saw the Scripture in the light in which 
 Jesus saw it; they had seen him also, and had 
 walked with him, and sat with him and talked 
 with him, and there was doubt no longer. The 
 threescore furlongs that lay between Emmaus 
 and Jerusalem were soon passed over — not, as 
 an hour or two ao^o, in sadness and almost 
 hopelessness, but with the quick step of earn- 
 
THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 355 
 
 est, glad-hearted men anxious to carry happy 
 news to heavy hearts. 
 
 It was night when they got back. They 
 found the apostles and disciples assembled to- 
 gether, but with closed doors, "for fear of 
 the Jews." Knocking and telling who they 
 were, they were soon admitted ; but Instead of 
 seeing sorrow on the faces of the assembly, 
 as they expected to do, the two disciples were 
 greeted with the jubilant exclamation, "The 
 Lord has risen Indeed, and hath appeared unto 
 Simon !" It was joy meeting joy, hope clasp- 
 ing hope ; and as they told their own simple 
 story of the walk to Emmaus, and how Jesus 
 was known of them in the breaking of bread, 
 we can imagine that the two currents of holy 
 joy, meeting and commingling, would swell 
 high the tide of holy gladness and make the 
 room vocal with their ecstatic praise. 
 
 While thus engaged, "Jesus himself stood in 
 the midst of them, and said. Peace be unto you !" 
 The closed doors could not keep out the resur- 
 rection body of the divine Jesus, and so, unan- 
 nounced, he stood suddenly before them with 
 the blessing of peace upon his lips. Prepared 
 as they in some measure were for this appari- 
 
35^ ' THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 tion by knowing that he was alive, they were 
 yet unprepared for the manner of his entrance, 
 and perhaps for his peculiar appearance. 
 Hence they "were terrified and affrighted, and 
 supposed that they had seen a spirit." He 
 gently quieted their fears, and sought to re- 
 assure them by telling them not only, '"It is I 
 myself," but added, " Handle me and see, for a 
 spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me 
 have." He then showed them his hands, his 
 feet, his side, bearing the marks of the nails and 
 the spear, as if to say. The same body that was 
 nailed to the cross and pierced by the soldier is 
 here before you. In describing the effect of 
 tliis exhibition of himself to his disciples, St. 
 Luke uses an expression which brings out with 
 much emphasis the tumultuous emotions which 
 then filled the hearts of his followers. His 
 words are, "While they yet believed not for 
 joy" — words which somewhat find their parallel 
 in the homely phrase, " It is too good to be 
 true," spoken of something earnestly desired, 
 but yet hardly expected. The fact that our 
 Lord had risen, and that he stood before them, 
 was overpowering to all their emotional feel- 
 ings ; they could scarcely credit their senses. 
 
THE FIRST LORD'S DAY, 35/ 
 
 The reaction of their minds from the ahiiost 
 despair in which they were in a few hours be- 
 fore nearly unbalanced their minds, and hence 
 the shadows of incredulity still lingered, while 
 yet a full belief had not gained the ascendant. 
 It was just this state which our Lord upbraided 
 them with — " their unbelief and hardness of 
 heart, because they believed not them which 
 had seen him after he was risen." To give 
 still further evidence that it was he, he said to 
 them, " Have ye here any meat ? and they 
 gave him a piece of a broiled fish and of an 
 honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat be- 
 fore them." This act seemed to remove all 
 doubt, and " then were the disciples glad when 
 they saw the Lord." 
 
 Again does he enter into discourse with 
 those present as to the '* things written in the 
 law of Moses and in the prophets and in the 
 Psalms concerning him," thus conclusively 
 showing the Messianic bearing of these por- 
 tions of holy writ. Gladly do they listen as he 
 "opened their understanding, that they might 
 understand the Scriptures." The whole scheme 
 of Christian doctrine seems to have been set 
 before them, as he showed how " it behooved 
 
35^ THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the 
 third day," and that repentance and remission 
 of sins should be preached in his name among 
 all nations, "beginning at Jerusalem." He then, 
 as it were, turns to his selected disciples, and 
 says, " Ye are witnesses of these things," the 
 chosen men to testify to the facts and truths 
 I have now taught. He told them, however, 
 that they were to remain in Jerusalem until 
 they received " the promise of the Father " — 
 viz., the baptism of the Holy Ghost — and thus 
 ' be " endued with power from on high." 
 
 During this interview, also, as St. Mark informs 
 us, Jesus gave them their great commission, pre- 
 mising it with the solemn benediction, '' Peace 
 be unto you ! As my Father hath sent me, even 
 so send I you." The terms of this commission 
 were, '' Go ye into all the world and preach the 
 gospel to every creature. He that believeth 
 and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that 
 believeth not shall be damned." The sio-ns 
 or credentials which were to attest their mis- 
 sion and certify to its authority were these. 
 "In my name," says Jesus, "shall they cast 
 out devils ; they shall speak with new tongues ; 
 they shall take up serpents ; and if they drink 
 
THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 359 
 
 any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them ; they 
 shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall re- 
 cover." Thus their commission was as broad 
 as the world, as lasting as time, as authoritative 
 as Christ's own mission from the Father. The 
 eveninor wore on as these memorable words 
 and scenes were spoken and dorte. At its close 
 he called the eleven apostles close to him, 
 and separating them from the rest, " He breath- 
 ed on them" as a symbol of the divine Spirit 
 which he was to bestow, and said, "Receive 
 ye the Holy Ghost ; whosesoever sins ye remit, 
 they are remitted unto them ; and whosesoever 
 sins ye retain, they are retained." 
 
 By this mysterious act Christ prepared his 
 apostles for " the promise of the Father," and 
 made them receptive of the gift which fifty 
 days after was to descend in Pentecostal full- 
 ness, amidst the sound of ''a mighty rushing 
 wind " and the '' tongue like flames," indicative 
 of the viewlessness, the resistlessness, and the 
 illuminating character of the operations of the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 With this act of Jesus, and with these words, 
 by which he put into the hands of the apostles 
 the keys of the kingdom of heaven, closed 
 
',6o THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 J 
 
 the first Lord's day on earth. UnHke the Jew- 
 ish Sabbath, which began the evening before, 
 this day did not begin until "early in the morn- 
 inor" when Christ rose from the dead. Unlike 
 the Jewish Sabbath, which ended at sunset, this 
 day did not end until after the evening interview 
 of Christ with his disciples in the closed room in 
 Jerusalem. Henceforth the Hebrew division 
 of days gives place to the Roman, and the 
 hours are to be numbered as in the Roman 
 calendar. 
 
 We cannot close the narrative of the events 
 of this first Lord's day without pausing a moment 
 upon their significance and influence. 
 
 The transactions of this day are second in 
 importance to those of no other day since the 
 world began. The nativity of Jesus Christ was 
 a great event, and was signalized by great won- 
 ders, the appearance of an angel of the Lord — 
 a multitude of the heavenly host chanting glory 
 to God in the highest, and the shining out of a 
 new star In the east. 
 
 The death of Jesus Christ was a great event, 
 and was signalized by great wonders — the 
 mid-day darkness, the hiding sun, the rending 
 of the temple veil, the quaking earth, the 
 
THE FIR^T LORD'S DAY. 36 1 
 
 opening graves, the tokens of nature's mourn- 
 img when the Lord of nature died on the cross. 
 
 If the birth and death of Jesus were thus 
 accompanied by such miraculous portents, sure- 
 ly the day on which he rose from the dead 
 ought, by analogy, to be alike signalized by 
 signs and wonders. And so it was, ''for there 
 was a great earthquake," the angel of the Lord, 
 with countenance lik>e lio^htninof and raiment 
 like snow, rolled away the sealed and guarded 
 stone ; two angels remained in the tomb ; and 
 angel lips uttered the first strophe of that an- 
 them, '' The Lord Is risen," which has been the 
 Easter song of the Christian world for eighteen 
 centuries. 
 
 The events of this day prove the divinity of 
 Christ's words, works and person ; for as the 
 raising of his own dead body was a greater 
 miracle than any he had performed in the flesh, 
 hence, this being proved, all the others are 
 proved thereby, inasmuch as the ability to do the 
 greater Includes the ability to do the lesser. It 
 is said, indeed, that " God raised him from the 
 dead" (Acts ii. 24, 32; Hi. 15 ; Gal. I. i), that he 
 was " quickened (or made alive) by the Spirit " 
 (the Holy Ghost), i Pet. Hi. 18. But in the 
 
 31 
 
362 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 unity of will and act which exists in the Holy 
 Trinity, actions and affections are ascribed at 
 times to one and at times to another, according 
 to the phase of truth which the sacred writers 
 wish to present to our minds. And this is one 
 of the leading lines of argument by which we 
 prove the distinctive personality, yet divine 
 unity, of the three persons of the ever adorable 
 Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. 
 
 In saying, then, that the resurrection was the 
 work of God the Father, the apostle means to 
 remove it from its merely human aspect, and to 
 assert it as beinor done in accordance with the 
 will and purpose of almighty God, so that it 
 should receive in the minds of the Jews the 
 sanction and endorsement of Jehovah. 
 
 In saying that Christ "was put to death in 
 the flesh, but quickened by the spirit!' St. Peter 
 doubtless meant to convey the idea that, as he 
 was put to death by a carnal or fleshly power, 
 he was raised up by a divine or spiritual power, 
 of which spiritual power the Holy Ghost, " the 
 Lord and Giver of life," is the divine embodi- 
 ment and representative. 
 
 But when we look at Christ's own words, we 
 shall see clearly that, though in the unity of the 
 
THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 363 
 
 Godhead, die resurrection was ascribed to God 
 the Father, and God the Holy Ghost, yet the ef- 
 ficient and acting agent was God the Son. 
 
 " Destroy this temple," he said on one occa- 
 sion (speaking of the temple of his body), and 
 ** in three days I will raise it up ;" *' I lay down 
 my life that I may take it again." " No man 
 taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself; 
 I have power to lay it down, and I have power 
 to take it again." 
 
 On another occasion he said, " As the Father 
 raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even 
 so the Son quickeneth whom he will." His decla- 
 ration to Martha was, " I am the resurrection and 
 the life." ''It remaineth, therefore," says Bishop 
 Pearson, " that Christ, by that power which he 
 had within himself, did take his life again, which 
 he had laid down, did reunite his soul unto his 
 body, from which he had separated it when he 
 gave up the ghost, and so did quicken and 
 revive himself". Thus, then, by this crowning 
 miracle, wrought in the tomb of Joseph, on this 
 Lord's day morning, did Jesus stamp with the 
 image and superscription of divinity all his 
 previous words and works, and attested as true 
 the glorious gospel of the Son of God. St, 
 
364 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Paul rests the whole superstructure of Chris- 
 tianity on the foundation of the resurrection, 
 saying unqualifiedly, ''If Christ be not raised, 
 your faith is vain : ye are yet in your sins." 
 Hence the efforts which have been so often 
 made to overthrow the truth of the resurrection 
 by the enemies of our holy religion. If that 
 could be disproved, the whole superincumbent 
 mass of the Christian Church would topple down, 
 and the faith, and hope, and love, of the Chris- 
 tian world, would become one world-wide ruin, 
 wrecking alike soul and body, for time and for 
 eternity. 
 
 The events of this first Lord's day prove 
 also that death and the grave are conquered 
 foes. 
 
 If death and the grave had detained Jesus in 
 the tomb, then would it have proved that he 
 was a sinner like other men, and came under 
 the conditions of our common humanity: "Dust 
 thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." But 
 "his soul was not left in hell (the grave), neither 
 did his flesh see corruption." He went down to 
 the domain of death, that in death's own region 
 he might "conquer him who had the power of 
 death." He lay down in the grave that there 
 
THE FIRST LORD'S DAY. 
 
 3^5 
 
 he might wrest victory from the grave ; and 
 there indeed, single-handed, he encountered 
 man's last enemy ; and returning thence with 
 the trophies of his triumph, "leading captivity 
 captive," he puts into our mouths the shout, 
 '' Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory 
 through our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 Do not these facts give to this day a holy 
 pre-eminence and invest it with peculiar glory ? 
 
 31 * 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE CHANGE OF DAY FROM THE SEVENTH 
 
 TO THE FIRST 
 
 HE change of the day of the Sabbath 
 from the seventh day, observed by 
 the Jews, to the first, kept by the 
 Christians, does not affect the binding authority 
 of the command, " Remember the Sabbath day 
 to keep it holy," if it can be shown, that the 
 change was made by competent authority, for 
 sufficient reasons, and without destroying or 
 infringing the two principles at the root of the 
 command, viz., to give one-seventh of our time 
 to God, and to keep this one-seventh portion 
 holy to his name. A change has been made. 
 The Christian world, with scarce an exception, 
 keeps as sacred the first day of the week. Ai.nd 
 we ask. Was the change made by competent au- 
 thority ? 
 
 The only competent authority would be Christ 
 
 366 
 
THE CHANGE OF DAY. 367 
 
 and his apostles : Christ as head over all things 
 to the Church, which is his body; the apostles 
 as commissioned by him to set in order the 
 affairs of his kingdom on earth ; and hence the 
 Chiirch of the livinof God is said to be "built 
 upon the foundation of the apostles and proph- 
 ets, Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone." 
 Whatever ordinances we find, then, established 
 by Christ and his apostles, we hold to be binding 
 on us, as being established directly or indirectly 
 by competent authority. Now, we know that 
 there was no express command to change the 
 day from the seventh to the first, but the absence 
 of an express command does not invalidate the 
 chancre. For be it remembered here that the 
 commandment does not read, Remember the 
 seveiith day, to keep it holy, but. Remember the 
 Sabbath (the rest) day, to keep it holy. Hence, 
 as the essence of the law lay in the setting 
 apart a holy rest, which essence is still un- 
 touched, it was not necessary to make any 
 formal legislation about a day which is, in Its 
 very nature, a variable thing, changing wdth the 
 changing dispensations and' shifting longitudes 
 of earth. 
 
 God, by raising Christ from the dead on the 
 
368 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD, 
 
 first day of the week, set his seal to the change 
 of day. 
 
 Christ, by rising on that day, and by twice 
 specially meeting with his disciples on that day, 
 by imparting to them that day his '* Peace," by 
 breathing on them that day and saying, " Re- 
 ceive ye the Holy Ghost," and by giving to 
 them that day their marvelous commission as 
 heralds of the cross, set his seal to the change 
 of day. - 
 
 The Holy Ghost, by descending on that day 
 in tongue-like flames, and with a rushing mighty 
 wind, imparting to the apostles the promised 
 power of the Spirit, giving to them the gift of 
 tongues, converting three thousand souls, as 
 the "wave-sheaf" of "the feast of first fruits" 
 of the gospel dispensation, set his seal to the 
 change of day. 
 
 The apostles, instructed by our Lord during 
 the forty days which he was with them after his 
 resurrection, when it is recorded that " he spake 
 to them of the things pertaining to his king- 
 dom," instituted the first day of the week as 
 their day of meeting, established this day as 
 the one on which to celebrate the Lord's 
 Supper, ordered it as a day for the special 
 
THE CHANGE OF DAY. 369 
 
 setting apart of benevolent contributions, and 
 so filled its hours with holy remembrances of 
 Jesus and holy doings for Jesus, as to set their 
 seal to the change of day. 
 
 The Church, acting upon apostolic precept 
 and example, established its most solemn and 
 permanent services on the first day of the 
 week, and thus set its seal to the chanee of the 
 day. While the Jews formed so large a part 
 of the Church, it did not ignore altogether the 
 seventh day, because the shock would have 
 been too great to Jewish prejudices, but it 
 gave pre-eminence to the first day, as we learn 
 from Ignatius, Pliny, Justin Martyr, the Apos- 
 tolic Constitutions, Tertullian, Dionysius of 
 Corinth and other early writers. When, by 
 the expansion of the Church among the Gen- 
 tiles, the Jewish element and Jewish obser- 
 vances grew less and less, and when, after the 
 lapse of three centuries, the Christian element 
 had permeated and moulded the political world, 
 the observance of " the first day " was enforced 
 by the imperial edicts of Constantine, Theodo- 
 sius, Valentinian and Honorius, and by the 
 synodal decrees of the councils of Carthage, 
 Illiberis, Sardica, Trullo and Laodicea. 
 
 Y 
 
370 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 There was, therefore, every reason why there 
 should be a change of day from the Mosaic to 
 the Christian dispensation, as the Bible leads us 
 to believe that there was from the Patriarchal 
 to the Mosaic. Nor was the change of day all 
 that marked the introduction of the gospel. It 
 has been well remarked " that the whole state 
 of the Church of God underwent a revolution. 
 Almost everything was changed in some way 
 and to some extent. The Mediator was 
 changed: Moses for Christ. The priesthood 
 was changed : the Aaronic for the Apostolic. 
 The law was changed : the Levitical for the 
 Evangelical. The worship was changed: the 
 gorgeous ritual and bloody sacrifices of the 
 Temple, for the simple rites of the House of 
 Prayer. The sacraments were changed : the 
 Passover for the Lord's Supper, and Circum- 
 cision for Baptism. With all these changes, 
 then, with everything thus made new, is it 
 wonderful that the day of the Sabbath was also 
 chano;ed?" Would it not have been a marvel 
 had it not been chano-ed ? When we remember 
 how the Jewish Sabbath, like the Jewish worship, 
 had become gradually encrusted with the tradi- 
 
THE CHANGE OF DAY. 3/1 
 
 tlons of the elders, so that it was perverted 
 from its original intent of mercy, and void of its 
 original end of holiness, do we not see the pro- 
 priety of laying it and the temple both aside, 
 that the new wine of the gospel might be 
 poured, not into the old bottles, cracked and 
 shriveled in the smoke of Jewish sacrifices and 
 traditions, but into the new bottles of the 
 Christian Church and the Christian Sabbath, 
 untainted by superstition, uncorrupted by rab- 
 binical glosses, and better fitted for the office 
 designed of making the Christian rest day a 
 Sabbath, a Lord's day for all nations, whom the 
 Lord hath redeemed ? 
 
 Had there been no change from the seventh 
 to the first day, the Christian Church would 
 have kept its weekly festival on the day when 
 Christ lay buried in the tomb, that day of sad- 
 ness and sorrow to the Lord's disciples — that 
 day of dark forebodings and sepulchral as- 
 sociations, wherein we should have contem- 
 plated death's power over Christ rather than 
 Christ's power over death ; death's victim in his 
 grave-clothes, rather than death's victor in his 
 resurrection robes ; and have passed over (or 
 else kept two days holy) the day of days 
 
IJ2 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 which commemorates Christ's risinof from the 
 tomb as the conqueror of death and hell. 
 
 And if to this weight of testimony and au- 
 thority, which can neither be reasonably gain- 
 sayed nor resisted, we add the remarkable fact 
 that the Church of Christ has kept this first day 
 of the week as the Lord's day for over eighteen 
 Jutndred years ; that with this Church Christ has 
 promised to be to the end of the world, and yet, 
 so far from reproving or condemning the set- 
 ting aside of the seventh day, and the introduc- 
 tion of the first as the Christian Sabbath, he has 
 more specially blessed that day, has more pecu- 
 liarly been present with his people on that day, 
 has made it more than any other, the birthday 
 of souls into spiritual life, and that these bless- 
 ings have been vouchsafed, not only to the 
 Church on this day, but to the persons, the 
 families, the communities, the nations who have 
 kept this day, — does it not give to the first day 
 of the week the full sanction, as it has ever 
 been marked with the full blessing, of God? 
 
 Can we need further evidence that the day 
 was changed — changed by competent authority, 
 changed for justifiable and appropriate circum- 
 stances, changed without infringing upon the 
 
THE CHANGE OF DAY, 373 
 
 letter or spirit of the Mosaic law, and yet so 
 changed, that the two essential elements of the 
 original Sabbath in Eden and the Sabbath of 
 the Decalogue are strictly preserved — viz., the 
 eivinof of one-seventh of our time to God and 
 the keeping of this one-seventh time holy to the 
 Lord? 
 
 This is the day, then, called " Sabbath," be- 
 cause the word means rest, termed in the Chris- 
 tian dispensation '^ the Lord's day," because 
 especially consecrated by and devoted to Christ, 
 of which God says, " Hallow the Sabbath day." 
 To hallow a thing is to sanctify or make it holy, 
 or to treat it as a holy thing and to use toward 
 it reverence and devotion. It is in this latter 
 way that we are to hallow God's name — a name 
 holy in itself as expressive of the essence and 
 attributes of a Holy God, but a name which 
 we are ever to treat as hallowed, and toward 
 which we are ever to conduct ourselves with 
 reverence and devotion. But the Sabbath is a 
 day that we can hallow or profane as we list, 
 and hence, when we are called upon to hallow 
 it, it is enjoined upon us to make It holy by 
 hallowing it with public worship, with private 
 devotion, with holy conduct and meditation, 
 
 32 
 
374 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 with abstinence from secular work and duties, 
 and with an entire consecration of it to the 
 Lord. The care with which God legislated for 
 the Jewish Sabbath proves how jealous he was 
 of its sacred character. In it they were to do 
 no manner of work, " thou, nor thy son, nor thy 
 daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maid ser- 
 vant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is 
 within thy gates." No burdens were to be 
 borne on that day. No fire was to be kindled 
 on that day. In earing-time and in harvest 
 they were to rest on that day. Buying and sell- 
 ing on that day were unlawful, and whosoever 
 did any work therein was to be put to death ; 
 and a case of this sort is recorded in the Book 
 of Numbers, where a man found gathering 
 sticks on the Sabbath was by the express 
 command of God stoned to death without the 
 camp. 
 
 As if to give greater solemnity to this day, 
 additional sacrifices were offered on it, and holy 
 convocations, or assemblies for public worship, 
 were to be holden, especially when the Sabbath 
 was a high day, as at the feasts of Passover, 
 Pentecost and Tabernacles. The Jewish rab- 
 bins had gradually so overlaid the law of the 
 
THE CHANGE OF DAY. 375 
 
 Sabbath with glosses and traditions that our 
 Saviour truly stigmatized them as " teaching for 
 doctrine the commandments of men." Thus, 
 according to the Jerusalem Gemara, " they must 
 not blow the fire with a pair of bellows, because 
 that was too much like the labor of smiths, but 
 they might blow it through a hollow cane." 
 They might make a fire and set on their pot, 
 but they must not lay on their wood like the 
 structure of a house — that is, too artificially. 
 They might wash their feet, but not their whole 
 body. Other rabbinical writers say that it is 
 not lawful to roast an apple, nor to climb a tree 
 lest they break a bough, nor to sing a lullaby to 
 a crying babe. He who took corn from his 
 field to the quantity of a fig was deemed guilty, 
 and he who plucked up anything growing was 
 regarded as reaping, and consequently guilty. 
 These, with many other puerile and senseless 
 additions, had been affixed to the observance 
 of the Sabbath, by which, so far from hallowing 
 it, they desecrated it, and made it a bondage 
 and a o^rlevance rather than a delight. 
 
 Our blessed Lord swept away many of these 
 glosses, both by his word and his example, and 
 restored the Sabbath to its leoltlmate end when 
 
3/6 THE SABBATHS OF OUR LORD. 
 
 he declared that "the Sabbath was made for 
 man, not man for the Sabbath ;" and he exer- 
 cised his Lordship, not only by reclaiming- it 
 from Jewish traditions under which it lay smoth- 
 ered and distorted, but by showing us in his 
 life how we should regard the day — with wdiat 
 works of love and mercy we should occupy its 
 sacred hours. As he kept the Sabbath holy 
 by meeting with the congregation for holy 
 w^orship ; by offices of holy benevolence and 
 mercy ; by seasons of holy meditation and de- 
 votion ; by abstaining from all secular pursuits, 
 and by honoring the day with the reverence 
 which it claimed, so should we. Then, like the 
 beloved disciple, shall we be in the Spirit on 
 the Lord's day, and thus fulfill the command. 
 Hallow the Sabbath day. 
 
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