macy of His disapproval was in exact proportion to the boundlessness of their own arrogant self-assertion; and turning away from them as though they were hopeless, He summoned the multitude, whom they had trained to look up to them as little gods, and spoke these short and weighty words:

"Hear me, all of you, and understand! Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth the man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, that defileth a man."

The Pharisees were bitterly offended by this saying, as well indeed they might be. Condemnatory as it was of the too common sacerdotal infatuation for all that is merely ceremonial, that utterance of Jesus should have been the final death-knell of that superfluity of voluntary ceremonialism for which one of the Fathers coins the inimitable word ἐθελοπερισσοθρήσκεια. His disciples were not slow to inform Him of the indignation which His words had caused, for they probably retained a large share of the popular awe for the leading sect. But the reply of Jesus was an expression of calm indifference to earthly judgment, a reference of all worth to the sole judgment of God as shown in the slow ripening of events. "Every plant which my Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up. Let them alone. They be blind leaders of the blind; and if the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch ?"

A little later, when they were in-doors and alone, Peter ventured to ask for an explanation of the words which He had uttered so emphatically to the multitude. Jesus gently blamed the want of comprehension among His Apostles, but showed them, in teaching of deep significance, that man's food does but affect his material structure, and does not enter into his heart, or touch his real being; but that "from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, theft, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness."

Evil thoughts-like one tiny rill of evil, and then the burst of all that black overwhelming torrent!

"These are the things which defile a man; but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man."

THERE was to be one more day of opposition-more bitter, more dan gerous, more personal, more implacable-one day of open and final rupture between Jesus and the Pharisaic spies from Jerusalem-before He yielded for a time to the deadly hatred of His enemies, and retired to find in heathen countries the rest which He could find no longer in the rich fields and on the green hills of Gennesareth. There were but few days of His earthly life which passed through a series of more heart-shaking agitations than the one which we shall now describe.

Jesus was engaged in solitary prayer, probably at early dawn, and in one of the towns which formed the chief theatre of His Galilæan ministry. While they saw Him standing there with His eyes uplifted to heaven-for standing, not kneeling, was and is the common Oriental attitude in prayer-the disciples remained at a reverent distance; but when His orisons were over, they came to Him with the natural entreaty that He would teach them to pray, as John also taught his disciples. He at once granted their request, and taught them that short and perfect petition which has thenceforth been the choicest heritage of every Christian liturgy, and the model on which all our best and most acceptable prayers are formed. He had, indeed, already used it in the Sermon on the Mount, but we may be deeply thankful that for the sake of His asking disciples He here brought it into greater and more separate prominence. Some, indeed, of the separate clauses may already have existed, at least in germ, among the Jewish forms of prayer, since they resemble expressions which are found in the Talmud, and which we have no reason to suppose were borrowed from Christians. But never before had all that was best and purest in a nation's prayers been thus collected into one noble and incomparable petition-a petition which combines all that the heart of man, taught by the Spirit of God, had found most needful for the satisfaction of its truest aspirations, In the mingled love and reverence with which it teaches us to approach our Father in heaven-in the spirituality with which it leads us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness-in the spirit of universal charity and forgiveness which it iuculcates-in that plural form throughout it, which is meant to show us that selfishness must be absolutely and for ever excluded from our petitions, and that no

man can come to God as his Father without acknowledging that his worst enemies are also God's children-in the fact that of its seven petitions one, and one only, is for any earthly blessing, and even that one is only for earthly blessings in their simplest form-in the manner in which it discountenances all the vain repetitions and extravagant self-tortures with which so many fanatic worshippers have believed that God could be propitiated-even in that exquisite brevity which shows us how little God desires that prayer should be made a burden and weariness-it is, indeed, what the Fathers have called it, a breviarium Evangelii-the pearl of prayers.

Not less divine were the earnest and simple words which followed it, and which taught the disciples that men ought always to pray and not to faint, since, if importunity prevails over the selfishuess of man, earnestness must be all-powerful with the righteousness of God. Jesus impressed upon them the lesson that if human affection can be trusted to give only useful and kindly gifts, the love of the Great Father, who loves us all, will, much more certainly, give His best and highest gift-even the gift of the Holy Spirit-to all that ask Him.

And with what exquisite yet vivid graciousness are these great lessons inculcated! Had they been delivered in the dull, dry, didactic style of most moral teaching, how could they have touched the hearts, or warmed the imaginations, or fixed themselves indelibly upon the memories of those who heard them? But instead of being clothed in scholastic pedantisms, they were conveyed in a little tale founded on the most commonplace incidents of daily life, and of a daily life full of simplicity and poverty. Journeying at night to avoid the burning heat, a man arrives at a friend's house. The host is poor, and has nothing for him; yet, because even at that late hour he will not neglect the duties of hospitality, he gets up, and goes to the house of another friend to borrow three loaves. But this other is in bed; his little children are with him; his house is locked and barred. To the gentle and earnest entreaty he answers crossly and roughly from within, "Trouble me not." But his friend knows that he has come on a good errand, and he persists in knocking, till at last, not from kind motives, but because of his pertinacity, the man gets up and gives him all that he requires. "Even so," it has been beautifully observed "when the heart which has been away on a journey, suddenly at midnight (ie., the time of greatest darkness and distress) returns home to us—that is, comes to itself and feels hunger-and we have nothing

wherewith to satisfy it, God requires of us bold, importanste faith." If such persistency conquers the reluctance of ungracious man, how much more shall it prevail with One who loves us better than we ourselves, and who is even more ready to hear than we to pray!

It has been well observed that the narrative of the life of Christ on earth is full of lights and shadows-one brief period, or even one day, starting at times into strong relief, while at other times whole periods are passed over in unbroken silence. But we forget-and if we bear this in mind, there will be nothing to startle us in this phenomenon of the Gospel record--we forget how large and how necessary a portion of His work it was to teach and train His immediate Apostles for the future conversion of the world. When we compare what the Apostles were when Jesus called them-simple and noble indeed, but ignorant, and timid, and slow of heart to believe-with what they became when He had departed from them, and shed the gift of His Holy Spirit into their hearts, then we shall see how little intermission there could have been in His beneficent activity, even during the periods in which His discourses were delivered to those only who lived in the very light of His divine personality. Blessed indeed were they above kings and prophets, blessed beyond all who have ever lived in the richness of their privilege, since they could share His inmost thoughts, and watch in all its angelic sweetness and simplicity the daily spectacle of those "sinless years." But if this blessing was specially accorded to them, it was not for their own sakes, but for the sake of that world which it was their mission to elevate from despair and wickedness into purity and sober-mindedness and truth-for the sake of those holy hearts who were henceforth to enjoy a Presence nearer, though spiritual, than if, with the Apostles, they could have climbed with Him the lonely hills, or walked beside Him as He paced at evening beside the limpid lake.

The day which had begun with that lesson of loving and confiding prayer was not destined to proceed thus calmly. Few days of His life during these years can have passed without His being brought into distressing contact with the evidences of human sin and human suffering; but on this day the spectacle was brought before Him in its wildest and most terrible form. A man blind and dumb and mad, from those strange unaccountable influences which the universal belief attributed to demoniac possession, was brought before Him. Jesus would not leave him a helpless victim to the powers of evil. By His look and by His word He released the miserable sufferer from the

horrible oppression-calmed, healed, restored him-"insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw.”

It appears from our Lord's own subsequent words that there existed among the Jews certain forms of exorcism, which to a certain extent, at any rate, were efficacious; but there are traces that the cures so effected were only attempted in milder and simpler cases. The dissolution of so hideous a spell as that which had bound this man-the power to pour light on the filmed eyeball, and to restore speech to the cramped tongue, and intelligence to the bewildered soul-was something that the people had never witnessed. The miracle produced a thrill of astonishment, a burst of unconcealed. admiration. For the first time they openly debated whether He who had such power could be any other than their expected Deliverer. "Can this man," they incredulously asked, can he be the son of

David?"

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His enemies could not deny that a great miracle had been performed, and since it did not convert, it only hardened and maddened them. But how could they dissipate the deep impression which it had made on the minds of the amazed spectators? The Scribes who came from Jerusalem, more astute and ready than their simple Galilæan brethren, at once invented a ready device for this purpose. "This fellow hath Beelzebul"-such was their notable and insolent solution of the difficulty, "and it is only by the prince of the devils that He casteth out the devils." Strange that the ready answer did not spring to every lip, as it did afterwards to the lips of some who heard the same charge brought against Him in Jerusalem, "These are not the words of one that hath a devil." But the people of Galilee were credulous and ignorant; these grave and reverend inquisitors from the Holy City possessed an immense and hereditary ascendancy over their simple understandings, and, offended as they had been more than once by the words of Jesus, their whole minds were bewildered with a doubt. The awfulness of His personal ascendancy -the felt presence, even amid His tenderest condescensions, of something more than human-His power of reading the thoughts-the ceaseless and sleepless energy of His beneficence-the strange terror which He inspired in the poor demoniacs-the speech which some. times rose into impassioned energy of denunciation, and sometimes, by its softness and beauty, held them hushed as infants at the mother's breast-the revulsion of their unbelieving hearts against that new world of fears and hopes which He preached to them as the kingdom