It was a wise and merciful provision that He sent them out two and two; it enabled them to hold sweet converse together, and mutually to correct each other's faults. Doubtless the friends and the brothers went in pairs; the fiery Peter with the more contemplative Andrew ; the Sons of Thunder-one influential and commanding, the other emotional and eloquent; the kindred faith and guilelessness of Philip and Bartholomew; the slow but faithful Thomas with the thoughtful and devoted Matthew; the ascetic James with his brother the impassioned Jude; the zealot Simon to fire with his theocratic zeal the dark, flagging, despairing spirit of the traitor Judas.

During their absence Jesus continued his work alone, perhaps as He slowly made His way towards Jerusalem; for if we can speak of probability at all amid the deep uncertainties of the chronology of His ministry, it seems extremely probable that it is to this point that the verse belongs-"After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem." This nameless feast was in all probability the Feast of Purim.

But how came Jesus to go up to Jerusalem for such a feast as this -a feast which was the saturnalia of Judaism; a feast which was without divine authority, and had its roots in the most intensely exclusive, not to say vindictive, feelings of the nation; a feast of merriment and masquerade, which was purely social and often discreditably convivial; a feast which was unconnected with religious services, and was observed, not in the Temple, not even necessarily in the synagogues, but mainly in the private houses of the Jews?

The answer seems to be that, although Jesus was in Jerusalem at this feast, and went up about the time that it was held, the words of St. John do not necessarily imply that He went up for the express purpose of being present at this particular festival. The Passover took place only a month afterwards, and He may well have gone up mainly with the intention of being present at the Passover, although He gladly availed Himself of an opportunity for being in Judæa and Jerusalem a month before it, both that He might once more preach in those neighbourhoods, and that He might avoid the publicity and dangerous excitement involved in His joining the caravan of the Passover pilgrims from Galilee. Such an opportunity may naturally have arisen from the absence of the Apostles on their missionary tour. The Synoptists give clear indications that Jesus had friends and wellwishers at Jerusalem and in its vicinity. He must therefore have paid visits to those regions which they do not record. Perhaps it was

among those friends that He awaited the return of His immediate followers. We know the deep affection which He entertained for the members of one household in Bethany, and it is not unnatural to suppose that He was now living in the peaceful seclusion of that pious household as a solitary and honoured guest.

But even if St. John intends us to believe that the occurrence of this feast was the immediate cause of this visit to Jerusalem, we must bear in mind that there is no proof whatever of its having been in our Lord's time the fantastic and disorderly commemoration which it subsequently became. The nobler-minded Jews doubtless observed it in a calm and grateful manner; and as one part of the festival consisted in showing acts of kindness to the poor, it may have offered an attraction to Jesus, both on this ground and because it enabled Him to show that there was nothing unnational or unpatriotic in the universal character of His message, or the all-embracing infinitude of the charity which He both practised and enjoined.

There remains then but a single question. The Passover was rapidly drawing near, and His presence at that great feast would on every ground be expected. Why then did He absent Himself from it? Why did He return to Galilee instead of remaining at Jerusalem ? The events which we are about to narrate will furnish a sufficient answer to this question.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE MIRACLE OF BETHESDA.

THERE was in Jerusalem, near the Sheep-gate, a pool, which was believed to possess remarkable healing properties. For this reason, in addition to its usual name, it had been called in Hebrew "Bethesda," or the House of Mercy, and under the porticoes which adorned the pentagonal masonry in which it was enclosed lay a multitude of sufferers from blindness, lameness, and atrophy, waiting to take advantage of the bubbling and gushing of the water, which showed that its medicinal properties were at their highest. There is no indication in the narrative that any one who thus used the water was at once, or

miraculously, healed; but the repeated use of an intermittent and gaseous spring-and more than one of the springs about Jerusalem continue to be of this character to the present day-was doubtless likely to produce most beneficial results.

A very early popular legend, which has crept by interpolation into the text of St. John, attributed the healing qualities of the water to the descent of an angel who troubled the pool at irregular intervals, leaving the first persons who could scramble into it to profit by the immersion. This solution of the phenomenon was in fact so entirely in accordance with the Semitic habit of mind, that, in the universal ignorance of all scientific phenomena, and the utter indifference to close investigation which characterise most Orientals, the populace would not be likely to trouble themselves about the possibility of any other explanation. But whatever may have been the general belief about the cause, the fact that the water was found at certain intervals to be impregnated with gases which gave it a strengthening property, was sufficient to attract a concourse of many sufferers.

Among these was one poor man who, for no less than thirty-eight years, had been lamed by paralysis. He had haunted the porticoes of this pool, but without effect; for as he was left there unaided, and as the motion of the water occurred at irregular times, others more fortunate and less feeble than himself managed time after time to struggle in before him, until the favourable moment had been lost.

Jesus looked on the man with heartfelt pity. It was obvious that the will of the poor destitute creature was no less stricken with paralysis than his limbs, and his whole life was one long atrophy of ineffectual despair. But Jesus was minded to make His Purim present to the poor, to whom He had neither silver nor gold to give. He would help a fellow-sufferer, whom no one had cared or condescended to help before.

"Willest thou to be made whole ?"

At first the words hardly stirred the man's long and despondent lethargy; he scarcely seems even to have looked up. But thinking, perhaps, with a momentary gleam of hope, that this was some stranger who, out of kindness of heart, might help him into the water when it was again agitated, he merely narrated in reply the misery of his long and futile expectation. Jesus had intended a speedier and more effectual aid.

"Rise," He said, "take thy couch, and walk."

It was spoken in an accent that none could disobey. The manner

of the Speaker, His voice, His mandate, thrilled like an electric spark through the withered limbs and the shattered constitution, enfeebled by a lifetime of suffering and sin. After thirty-eight years of prostration, the man instantly rose, lifted up his pallet and began to walk. In glad amazement he looked round to see and to thank his unknown benefactor; but the crowd was large, and Jesus, anxious to escape the unspiritual excitement which would fain have regarded Him as a thaumaturge alone, had quietly slipped away from observation.

In spite of this, many scrupulous and jealous eyes were soon upon him. In proportion as the inner power and meaning of a religion are dead, in that proportion very often is an exaggerated import attached to its outer forms. Formalism and indifference, pedantic scrupulosity and absolute disbelief, are correlative, and ever flourish side by side. It was so with Judaism in the days of Christ. Its living and burning enthusiasm was quenched; its lofty and noble faith had died away; its prophets had ceased to prophesy; its poets had ceased to sing; its priests were no longer clothed with righteousness; its saints were few. The axe was at the root of the barren tree, and its stem served only to nourish a fungous brood of ceremonials and traditions,

"Deathlike, and coloured like a corpse's cheek."

And thus it was that the observance of the Sabbath, which had been intended to secure for weary men a rest full of love and peace and mercy, had become a mere national Fetish-a barren custom fenced in with the most frivolous and senseless restrictions. Well-nigh every great provision of the Mosaic law had now been degraded into a mere superfluity of meaningless minutiae, the delight of small natures, and the grievous incubus of all true and natural piety.

Now, when a religion has thus decayed into a superstition without having lost its external power, it is always more than ever tyrannous and suspicious in its hunting for heresy. The healed paralytic was soon surrounded by a group of questioners. They looked at him with surprise and indignation.

"It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed." Here was a flagrant case of violation of their law! Had not the son of Shelomith, though half an Egyptian, been stoned to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath day? Had not the prophet Jeremiah expressly said, "Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath day ?"

Yes; but why? Because the Sabbath was an ordinance of mercy

intended to protect the underlings and the oppressed from a life of incessant toil; because it was essential to save the serfs and labourers of the nation from the over-measure of labour which would have been exacted from them in a nation afflicted with the besetting sin of greed; because the setting apart of one day in seven for sacred rest was of infinite value to the spiritual life of all. That was the meaning of the Fourth Commandment. In what respect was it violated by the fact that a man who had been healed by a miracle wished to carry home the mere pallet which was perhaps almost the only thing that ho possessed? What the man really violated was not the law of God, or even of Moses, but the wretched formalistic inferences of their frigid tradition, which had gravely decided that on the Sabbath a nailed shoe might not be worn because it was a burden, but that an un-nailed shoe might be worn; and that a person might go out with two shoes on, but not with only one; and that one man might carry a loaf of bread, but that two men might not carry it between them, and so forth, to the very utmost limit of tyrannous absurdity.

"He that made me whole," replied the man, "He said to me, Take up thy bed and walk."

As far as the man was concerned, they accepted the plea; a voice fraught with miraculous power so stupendous that it could heal the impotence of a lifetime by a word, was clearly, as far as the man was concerned, entitled to some obedience. And the fact was that they were actuated by a motive; they were flying at higher game than this insignificant and miserable sufferer. Nothing was to be gained by worrying him.

"Who is it that "-mark the malignity of these Jewish authorities -not that made thee whole, for there was no heresy to be hunted out in the mere fact of exercising miraculous power-but "that gave thee the wicked command to take up thy bed and walk?"

So little apparently, up to this time, was the person of Jesus generally known in the suburbs of Jerusalem, or else so dull and languid had been the man's attention while Jesus was first speaking to him, that he actually did not know who his benefactor was. But he ascertained shortly afterwards. It is a touch of grace about him that we next find him in the Temple, whither he may well have gone to return thanks to God for this sudden and marvellous renovation of his wasted life. There, too, Jesus saw him, and addressed to him one simple memorable warning, "See, thou hast been made whole: continue in sin no longer, lest something worse happen to thee"