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No doubt the words were difficult, and, to those who came in a hard and false spirit, offensive; no doubt also the death and passion of our Saviour Christ, and the mystery of that Holy Sacrament, in which we spiritually eat His flesh and drink His blood, has enabled us more clearly to understand His meaning; yet there was in the words which He had used, enough, and more than enough, to shadow forth to every attentive hearer the great truth, already familiar to them from their own Law, that "Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proccedeth out of the mouth of God;" and the further truth. that eternal life, the life of the soul, was to be found in the deepest and most intimate of all conceivable communions with the life and teaching of Him who spake. And it must be remembered that if the Lord's Sapper has, for us, thrown a clearer light upon the meaning of this discourse, on the other hand the metaphors which Jesus used had not, to an educated Jew, one-hundredth part of the strangeness which they have to us. Jewish literature was exceedingly familiar with the symbolism wi..ch represented by "eating" an entire acceptance of and incorporation with the truth, and by "bread" a spiritual doctrine. Even the mere pictorial genius of the Hebrew language gave the clue to the right interpretation. Those who heard Christ in the synagogue of Capernaun. must almost involuntarily have recalled similar expres sions in their own prophets; and since the discourse was avowedly parabolic-sine Jesus had expressly excluded all purely sensual and Judaic fancies-it is quite clear that much of their failure to comprehend Him rose not from the understanding, but from the will. His saying was hard, as St. Augustine remarks, only to the hard; and incredible only to the incredulous. For if bread be the type of all earthly sustenance, then the "bread of heaven" may well express all spiritual sustenance, all that involves and supports eternal life. Now the lesson which He wished to teach them was this-that eternal life is in the Son of God. They, therefore, that would have eternal life must partake of the bread of heaven, or-to use the other and deeper image-must eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man. They must feed on Him in their hearts by faith. They might accept or reject the truth which He was revealing to their consciences, but there could be no possible excuse for their pretended incapacity to understand its meaning.

There is a teaching which is, and is intended to be, not only instructive but probationary; of which the immediate purpose is not only to teach, but to test. Such had been the object of this memorable

discourse. To comprehend it rightly required an effort not only of the understanding, but also of the will. It was meant to put an end to the merely selfish hopes of that "rabble of obtrusive chiliasts " whose irreverent devotion was a mere cloak for worldliness; it was meant also to place before the Jewish authorities words which they were too full of hatred and materialism to understand. But its sifting power went deeper than this. Some even of the disciples found the saying harsh and repulsive. They did not speak out openly, but Jesus recognised their discontent, and when He had left the synagogue, spoke to them, in this third and concluding part of His discourse, at once more gently and less figuratively than He had done to the others. To these He prophesied of that future ascension, which should prove to them that He had indeed come down from heaven, and that the words about His flesh-which should then be taken into heaven-could only have a figurative meaning. Nay, with yet further compassion for their weakness, He intimated to them the significance of those strong metaphors in which He had purposely veiled His words from the curious eyes of selfishness and the settled malice of opposition. In one sentence which is surely the key-note of all that had gone before -in a sentence which surely renders nugatory much of the pseudomystical and impossibly-elaborate exegesis by which the plain meaning of this chapter has been obscured, He added

"It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." Why then had they found His words so hard? He tells them: it was because some of them believed not; it was because, as He had already told the Jews, the spirit of faith is a gift and grace of God, which gift these murmurers were rejecting, against which grace they were struggling even now.

And from that time many of them left Him; many who had hitherto sought Him, many who were not far from the kingdom of heaven. Even in the midst of crowds His life was to be lonelier thenceforth, because there would be fewer to know and love Him. In deep sadness of heart He addressed to the Twelve the touching question, "Will yo also go away?" It was Simon Peter whose warm heart spoke out impetuously for all the rest. He at least had rightly apprehended that strange discourse at which so many had stumbled. "Lord," he exclaims, "to whom shall we go? THOU HAST THE WORDS OF ETERNAL LIFE. But we believe and are sure that Thou art the Holy One of God."

It was a noble confession, but at that bitter moment the heart of Jesus was heavily oppressed, and He only answered

"Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?"

The expression was terribly strong, and the absence of all direct parallels render it difficult for us to understand its exact significance. But although it was afterwards known that the reproach was aimed at Judas, yet it is doubtful whether at the actual time any were aware of this except the traitor himself.

Many false or half-sincere disciples had left Him: might not these words have been graciously meant to furnish one more opportunity to the hard and impure soul of the man of Kerioth, so that before being plunged into yet deeper and more irreparable guilt, he might leave Him too? If so, the warning was rejected. In deadly sin against his own conscience, Judas stayed to heap up for himself wrath "against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God."

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ALTHOUGH the discourse which we have just narrated formed a marked period in our Lord's ministry, and although from this time forward the clouds gather more and more densely about His course, yet it must not be supposed that this was the first occasion, even in Galilee, on which enmity against His person and teaching had been openly displayed.

1. The earliest traces of doubt and disaffection arose from the expression which He used on several occasions, "Thy sins be forgiven thee." It was in these words that He had addressed the woman that was a sinner, and the sick of the palsy. On both occasions the address had excited astonishment and disapproval, and at Simon's house, where this had found no open expression, and where no miracle had been wrought, Jesus gently substituted another expression. But it was not so at the healing of the palsied man; there an open murmur had arisen among the Scribes and Pharisees; and there, revealing

more of His true majesty, Jesus, by His power of working miracles, had viudicated His right to forgive sins. The argument was unanswer able, for not only did the prevalent belief connect sickness in every instance with actual sin, but also it was generally maintained, even by the Rabbis, "that no sick man is healed from his disease until all his sins have been forgiven." It was, therefore, in full accordance with their own notions that He who by His own authority could heal diseases could also by His own authority pronounce that sins were forgiven. It was true that they could hardly conceive of either healing or forgiveness conveyed in such irregular channels, and without the paraphernalia of sacrifices, and without the need of sacerdotal interventions. But, disagreeable as such proceedings were to their well-regulated minds, the fact remained that the cures were actually wrought, and were actually attested by hundreds of living witnesses. It was felt, therefore, that this ground of opposition was wholly untenable, and it was tacitly abandoned. To urge that there was "blasphemy" in His expressions would only serve to bring into greater prominence that there was miracle in His acts.

Nor, again, do they seem to have pressed the charge, preserved for us only by our Lord's own allusion, that He was "a glutton and a wine-drinker." The charge was far too flagrantly false and malicious to excite any prejudice against one who, although He did not adopt the stern asceticism of John, yet lived a life of the extremest simplicity, and merely did what was done by the most scrupulous Pharisees in accepting the invitations to feasts, where He had constantly fresh opportunities of teaching and doing good. The calumny was, in fact, destroyed when He had shown that the men of that generation were like wayward and peevish children whom nothing could conciliate, charging Jesus with intemperance because He did not avoid an innocent festivity, and John with demoniac possession because he set his face against social corruptions.

3. Nor, once more, did they press the charge of His not fasting. In making that complaint they had hoped for the powerful aid of John's disciples; but when these had been convinced, by the words of their own prophet, how futile and unreasonable was their complaint, the Pharisees saw that it was useless to found a charge upon the neglect of a practice which was not only unrecognised in the Mosaic law, but which some of their own noblest and wisest teachers had not encouraged. The fact that Jesus did not require His disciples to fast would certainly cause no forfeiture of the popular sympathy, and

could not be urged to His discredit even before a synagogue or a Sanhedrin.

4. A deeper and more lasting offence was caused, and a far more deadly oppositior. stimulated, by Christ's choice of Matthew as an Apostle, and by His deliberate tolerance of-it might almost be said preference for the society of publicans and sinners. Among the Jews of that day the distinctions of religious life created a barrier almost as strong as that of caste. No less a person than Hillel had said that "no ignorant person could save himself from sin, and no 'man of the people' be pious." A scrupulous Jew regarded the multitude of his own nation who "knew not the Law" as accursed; and just as every Jew, holding himself to be a member of a royal generation and a peculiar people, looked on the heathen world with the sovereign disdain of an exclusiveness founded on the habits of a thousand years, so the purist faction regarded their more careless and offending brethren as being little, if at all, better than the very heathen. Yet here was one who mingled freely and familiarly-mingled without one touch of hauteur or hatred-among offensive publicans and flagrant sinners. Nay, more, He suffered women, out of whom had been cast seven devils, to accompany Him in His journeys, and harlots to bathe His feet with tears! How different from the Pharisees, who held that there was pollution in the mere touch of those who had themselves been merely touched by the profane populace, and who had laid down the express rule that no one ought to receive a guest into his house if he suspected him of being a sinner!

Early in His ministry, Jesus, with a divine and tender irony, had met the accusation by referring them to His favourite passage of Scripture -that profound utterance of the prophet Hosea, of which He bade them "go and learn" the meaning "I will have mercy and not sacrifices." He had further rebuked at once their unkindliness and their self-satisfaction by the proverb, "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." The objection did not, however, die away. In His later days, when he was journeying to Jerusalem, these incessant enemies again raised the wrathful and scornful murmur, "This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them;" and then it was that Jesus answered them and justified His ways, and revealed more clearly and more lovingly than had ever been done before the purpose of God's love towards repentant sinners, in those three exquisite and memorable parables, the lost sheep, the lost piece of money, and, above all, the prodigal son. Drawn from the simplest elements of daily

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