is substantially the same.1 The ovπw in the next clause, my time has not yet been fulfilled," distinctly intimated that such a time would come, and that it was not His object to intimate to His brethren-whose utter want of sympathy and reverence had just been so unhappily displayed when that time would be. And there was a reason for this. It was essential for the safety of His life, which was not to end for six months more—it was essential for the carrying out of His Divine purposes, which were closely enwoven with the events of the next few days-that His brethren should not know about His plans. And therefore He let them depart in the completest uncertainty as to whether or not He intended to follow them.2 Certain as they were to be asked by multitudes whether He was coming to the feast, it was necessary that they should be able to answer, with perfect truthfulness, that He was at any rate not coming with them, and that whether He would come before the feast was over or not they could not tell. And that this must have occurred, and that this must have been their

1 Tischendorf reads our with &, D, K, the Cureton Syriac, &c.; on the other hand, oлw is the reading of B, E, F, G, H, &c. What seems decisive in favour of our is that it was more likely to be altered than the other; "proclivi lectioni praestat ardua."

2 As early as the third century after Christ, the philosopher Porphyry, one of the bitterest and ablest of those who assaulted Christianity, charged our blessed Lord with deception in this incident; and it is therefore clear that in his time the reading was ovк (ap. Jer. Adv. Pelag. iv. 21). And even an eminent Christian commentator like Meyer has supposed that, in this instance, Jesus subsequently changed His purpose. The latter supposition is precarious, perhaps wholly irreverent; the former is utterly senseless. For even if Porphyry supposed that it could have happened, he must have seen how preposterous was the notion of St. John's holding such a view. It therefore seems to me a matter of no consequence whatever whether ouk or obлw be read; for it is quite clear that the Evangelist saw nothing in the language of our Lord but the desire to exclude His brethren from any certain knowledge of His plans.

THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES.

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answer, is evident from the fact that the one question buzzed about from ear to ear in those gay and busy streets was, "Where is He? is He here already? is He coming ?" And as He did not appear, His whole character, His whole mission, were discussed. The words of approval were vague and timid, " He is a good man;" the words of condemnation were bitter and emphatic, "Nay, but He is a mesith-He deceiveth the people." But no one dared to speak openly his full thought about Him; each seemed to distrust his neighbour; and all feared to commit themselves too far while the opinion of the "Jews," and of the leading Priests and Pharisees, had not been finally or decisively declared.

And suddenly, in the midst of all these murmurs and discussions, in the middle of the feast, Jesus, unaccompanied apparently by His followers, unheralded by His friends, appeared suddenly in the Temple, and taught. By what route He had reached the Holy City-how he had passed through the bright thronged streets unnoticedwhether He joined in the innocent mirth of the festival -whether He too lived in a little succah of palm-leaves during the remainder of the week, and wandered among the brightly-dressed crowds of an Oriental gala day with the lulab and citron in His hands-whether His voice was heard in the Hallel, or the Great Hosanna-we do not know. All that is told us is that, throwing himself, as it were, in full confidence on the protection of His disciples from Galilee and those in Jerusalem, He was suddenly found seated in one of the large halls which opened out of the Temple courts, and there He taught.

For a time they listened to Him in awe-struck silence;

1 John vii. 11, ἐζήτουν αὐτὸν καὶ ἔλεγον, κ.τ.λ.; "they kept locking for flim, and saying," &c.

but soon the old scruples recurred to them. "He is no authorised Rabbi; He belongs to no recognised school; neither the followers of Hillel nor those of Shammai claim Him; He is a Nazarene; He was trained in the shop of the Galilæan carpenter; how knoweth this man letters, having never learned ?" As though the few who are taught of God-whose learning is the learning of a pure heart and an enlightened eye and a blameless life did not unspeakably transcend in wisdom, and therefore also in the best and truest knowledge, those whose learning has but come from other men! It is not the voice of erudition, but it is, as the old Greek thinker says, the voice of Inspiration-the voice of the divine Sibyl-which, uttering things simple and unperfumed and unadorned, reacheth through myriads of years.

Jesus understood their looks. He interpreted their murmurs. He told them that His learning came immediately from His Heavenly Father, and that they, too, if they did God's will, might learn, and might understand, the same high lessons. In all ages there is a tendency to mistake erudition for learning, knowledge for wisdom; in all ages there has been a slowness to comprehend that true learning of the deepest and noblest character may co-exist with complete and utter ignorance of everything which absorbs and constitutes the learning of the schools. In one sense-Jesus told His hearers-they knew the law which Moses had given them; in another they were pitiably ignorant of it. They could not understand its principles, because they were not "faithful to its precepts." And then He asked them openly, "Why go ye about to kill me ?"

1 Cf. Ecclus. xxi. 11, “He that keepeth the law of the Lord getteth the understanding thereof." (John xiv. 15-17, 20, 21; see too Job xxviii. 28.)

ANGER OF THE JEWS.

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That determination to kill Him was known indeed to Him, and known to some of those who heard Him, but was a guilty secret which had been concealed from the majority of the multitude. These answered the question, while the others kept their guilty silence. "Thou hast a devil," the people answered; "who goeth about to kill Thee?" Why did they speak with such superfluous and brutal bluntness? Do not we repudiate, with far less flaming indignation, a charge which we know to be not only false, but wholly preposterous and foundationless? Was there not in the minds even of this not yet wholly alienated multitude an uneasy sense of their distance from the Speaker-of that unutterable superiority to themselves which pained and shamed and irritated them? Were they not conscious, in their carnal and vulgar aspirations, that this Prophet came, not to condescend to such views as theirs, but to raise them to a region where they felt that they could not breathe? Was there not even then in their hearts something of the half-unconscious hatred of vice to virtue, the repulsion of darkness against light? Would they have said, "Thou hast a devil," when they heard Him say that some of them were plotting against His life, if they had not felt that they were themselves capable at almost any moment of joining in-aye, with their own hands of executing-so base a plot ?

Jesus did not notice their coarse insolence. He referred them to that one work of healing on the Sabbath day, at which they were all still marvelling, with an empty wonder, that He who had the power to perform such a deed should, in performing it, have risen above

1 John vii. 20, ὁ ὄχλος, not of 'Ιουδαῖοι.

2 John v. 5.

their empty, ceremonial, fetish-worshipping notions of Sabbath sanctity. And Jesus, who ever loved to teach the lesson that love and not literalism is the fulfilling of the Law, showed them, even on their own purely ritual and Levitical principle, that His word of healing had in no respect violated the Sabbath at all. For instance, Moses had established, or rather re-established, the ordinance of circumcision on the eighth day, and if that eighth day happened to be a Sabbath, they without scruple sacrificed the one ordinance to the other, and in spite of the labour which it involved, performed the rite of circumcision on the Sabbath day. If the law of circumcision superseded that of the Sabbath, did not the law of Mercy? If it was right by a series of actions to inflict that wound, was it wrong by a single word to effect a total cure ?1 If that, which was at the best but a sign of deliverance, could not even on account of the Sabbath be postponed for a single day, why was it criminal not to have postponed for the sake of the Sabbath a deliverance actual and entire ? And then He summed His self-defence in the one calm word, "Do not be ever judging by the mere appearance, but judge a righteous judgment;"2 instead of being permanently content with a superficial mode of criticism, come once for all to some principle of righteous decision.

His hearers were perplexed and amazed, "Is this He against whose life some are plotting? Can He be the Messiah? Nay, He cannot be; for we know whence this speaker comes, whereas they say that none shall

1 Stier quotes from the Rabbis a remark to this very effect, "Circumcision, which is one of the 248 members of the body, supersedes the Sabbath; how much more the whole body of a man ?"

* John vii. 24, μὴ κρίνετε . . . ἀλλὰ . . . κρίνατε.