he had been lying, and, while now the crowd opened a passage for him, he went to his house glorifying God; and the multitude, when they broke up to disperse, kept exchanging one with another exclamations of astonishment not unmixed with fear, "We saw strange things to-day!" "We never saw anything like this before!"

From the house-perhaps to allow of more listeners hearing His words-Jesus seems to have adjourned to His favourite shore; and thence, after a brief interval of teaching, He repaired to the house of Matthew, in which the publican, who was now an Apostle, had made a great feast of farewell to all his friends. As he had been a publican himself, it was natural that many of these also would be “ publicans and sinners "—the outcasts of society, objects at once of hatred and contempt. Yet Jesus and His disciples, with no touch of scorn or exclusiveness, sat down with them at the feast: "for there were many, and they were His followers." A charity so liberal caused deep dissatisfaction, on two grounds, to two powerful bodies-the Pharisees and the disciples of John. To the former, mainly because this contact with men of careless and evil lives violated all the traditions of their haughty scrupulosity; to the latter, because this ready acceptance of invitations to scenes of feasting seemed to discountenance the necessity for their half-Essenian asceticism. The complaints could hardly have been made at the time, for unless any Pharisees or disciples of John merely looked in from curiosity during the progress of the meal, their own presence there would have involved them in the very blame which they were casting on their Lord. But Jesus probably heard of their murmurs before the feast was over. There was something characteristic in the way in which the criticism was made. The Pharisees, still a little dubious as to Christ's real character and mission, evidently overawed by His greatness, and not yet having ventured upon any open rupture with Him, only vented their ill-humour on the disciples, asking them "why their Master ate with publicans and sinners?" The simple-minded Apostles were perhaps unable to explain; but Jesus at once faced the opposition, and told these murmuring respectabilities that He came not to the self-righteous, but to the conscious sinners. He came not to the folded flock, but to the straying sheep. To preach the Gospel to the poor, to extend mercy to the lost, was the very object for which He tabernacled among men. It was His will not to thrust His grace on those who from the very first wilfully steeled their hearts against it, but gently to extend it to those who needed and felt their need of it. His teaching was to be "as the small rain upon the tender

M

herb, and as the showers upon the grass." And then, referring them to one of those palmary passages of the Old Testament (Hos. vi. 6) which even in those days had summed up the very essence of all that was pleasing to God in love and mercy, He borrowed the phrase of their own Rabbis, and bade them-these teachers of the people, who claimed to know so much-to "go and learn" what that meaneth, "I will have mercy, and not sacrifice." Perhaps it had never before occurred to their astonished minds, overlaid as they were by a crust of mere Nevitism and tradition, that the love which thinks it no condescension to mingle with sinners in the effort to win their souls, is more pleasing to God than thousands of rams and tens of thousands of rivers of oil.

The answer to the somewhat querulous question asked Him by John's disciples was less severe in tone. No doubt He pitied that natural dejection of mind which arose from the position of the great teacher, to whom alone they had as yet learned to look, and who now lay in the dreary misery of a Macharus dungeon. He might have answered that fasting was at the best a work of supererogationuseful, indeed, and obligatory, if any man felt that thereby he was assisted in the mortification of anything which was evil in his naturebut worse than useless if it merely ministered to his spiritual pride, and led him to despise others. He might have pointed out to them that although they had instituted a fast twice in the week, this was but a traditional institution, so little sanctioned by the Mosaic law, that in it but one single day of fasting was appointed for the entire year. He might, too, have added that the reason why fasting had not been made a universal duty is probably that spirit of mercy which recognised how differently it worked upon different temperaments, fortifying some against the attacks of temptations, but only hindering others in the accomplishment of duty. Or again, He might have referred them to those passages in their own Prophets which pointed out that, in the sight of God, the true fasting is not mere abstinence from food, while all the time the man is " smiting with the fist of wickedness; but rather to love mercy, and to do justice, and to let the oppressed go free. But instead of all these lessons, which, in their present state, might only have exasperated their prejudices, He answers them only by a gentle argumentum ad hominem. Referring to the fine image in which their own beloved and revered teacher had spoken of Him as the bridegroom, He contented Himself with asking them, "Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast while

the bridegroom is with them?" and then, looking calmly down at the deep abyss which yawned before Him, He uttered a saying which— although at that time none probably understood it was perhaps the very earliest public intimation that He gave of the violent end which awaited Him-"But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days." Further He told them, in words of yet deeper significance, though expressed, as so often, in the homeliest metaphors, that His religion is, as it were, a robe entirely new, not a patch of unteazled cloth upon an old robe, serving only to make worse its original rents; that it is not new wine, put, in all its fresh fermenting, expansive strength, into old and worn wine-skins, and so serving only to burst the wine-skins and be lost, but new wine in fresh wine-skins. The new spirit was to be embodied in wholly renovated forms; the new freedom was to be untrammelled by obsolete and meaningless limitations; the spiritual doctrine was to be sundered for ever from mere elaborate and external ceremonials.

St. Luke also has preserved for us the tender and remarkable addition "No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is excellent." Perhaps the fact that these words were found to be obscure has caused the variety of readings in the original text. There is nothing less like the ordinary character of man than to make allowance for difference of opinion in matters of religion; yet it is the duty of doing this which the words imply. He had been showing them that His kingdom was something more than a restitution (aπоkaтáστaσis), it was a re-creation (waλıyyeveσía); but He knew how hard it was for men trained in the tradition of the Pharisees, and in admiration for the noble asceticism of the Baptist, to accept truths which were to them both new and strange; and, therefore, even when He is endeavouring to lighten their darkness, He shows that He can look on them "with larger other eyes, to make allowance for them all."

CHAPTER XXV.

THE DAY OF MATTHEW'S FEAST (continued).

THE feast was scarcely over at the house of Matthew, and Jesus was still engaged in the kindly teaching which arose out of the question of

John's disciples, when another event occurred which led in succession to three of the greatest miracles of His earthly life.

A ruler of the synagogue-the rosh hakkenéseth, or chief elder of the congregation, to whom the Jews looked with great respect-came to Jesus in extreme agitation. It is not improbable that this ruler of

the synagogue had been one of the very deputation who had pleaded with Jesus for the centurion-proselyte by whom it had been built. If so, he knew by experience the power of Him to whom he now appealed. Flinging himself at His feet with broken words-which in the original still sound as though they were interrupted and rendered incoherent by bursts of grief-he tells Him that his little daughter, his only daughter, is dying, is dead; but still, if He will but come and lay His hand upon her, she shall live. With the tenderness which could not be deaf to a mourner's cry, Jesus rose at once from the table, and went with him, followed not only by His disciples, but also by a dense expectant multitude, which had been witness of the scene. And as He went the people in their eagerness pressed upon Him and thronged Him.

But among this throng-containing doubtless some of the Pharisees and of John's disciples with whom He had been discoursing, as well as some of the publicans and sinners with whom He had been seated at the feast-there was one who had not been attracted by curiosity to witness what would be done for the ruler of the synagogue. It was a woman who for twelve years had suffered from a distressing malady, which unfitted her for all the relationships of life, and which was peculiarly afflicting, because in the popular mind it was regarded as a direct consequence of sinful habits. In vain had she wasted her substance and done fresh injury to her health in the effort to procure relief from many different physicians, and now, as a last desperate resource, she would try what could be gained without money and without price from the Great Physician. Perhaps, in her ignorance, it was because she had no longer any reward to offer: - perhaps because she was ashamed in her feminine modesty to reveal the malady from which she had been suffering; but from whatever cause, she determined, as it were, to steal from Him, unknown, the blessing for which she longed. And so, with the strength and pertinacity of despair, she struggled in that dense throng until she was near enough to touch him; and then, perhaps all the more violently from her extreme nervousness, she grasped the white fringe of His robe. By the law of Moses every Jew was to wear at each corner of

his tallith a fringe or tassel, bound by a riband of symbolic blue, to remind him that he was holy to God. Two of these fringes usually hung down at the bottom of the robe; one hung over the shoulder where the robe was folded round the person. It was probably this one that she touched with secret and trembling haste, and then, feeling instantly that she had gained her desire and was healed, she shrank back unnoticed into the throng. Unnoticed by others, but not by Christ. Perceiving that healing power had gone out of Him, recognizing the one magnetic touch of timid faith even amid the pressure of the crowd, He stopped and asked, "Who touched my clothes ?" There was something almost impatient in the reply of Peter, as though in such a throng he thought it absurd to ask, “Who touched me?" But Jesus, His eyes still wandering over the many faces, told him that there was a difference between the crowding of curiosity and the touch of faith, and as at last His glance fell on the poor woman, she, perceiving that she had erred in trying to filch the blessing which He would have graciously bestowed, came forward fearing and trembling, and, flinging herself at His feet, told Him all the truth. All her feminine shame and fear were forgotten in her desire to atone for her fault. Doubtless she dreaded His anger, for the law expressly ordained that the touch of one afflicted as she was, caused ceremonial uncleanness till the evening. But His touch had cleansed her, not her's polluted Him. So far from being indignant, He said to her, "Daughter"-and at once at the sound of that gracious word scaled her pardon-"go in peace: thy faith hath saved thee; be healed from thy disease."

The incident must have caused a brief delay, and, as we have seen, to the anguish of Jairus every instant was critical. But he was not the only sufferer who had a claim on the Saviour's mercy; and, as he uttered no complaint, it is clear that sorrow had not made him selfish. But at this moment a messenger reached him with the brief message— "Thy daughter is dead;" and then, apparently with a touch of disliko and irony, he added, "Worry not the Rabbi."

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