"turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks.” The heart of Jesus, familiar as He was with all ingratitude, was yet moved by an instance of it so flagrant, so all but unanimous, and so abnormal. Were not the ten cleansed?" He asked in sorrowful surprise; "but the nine-where are they? There are not found that returned to give glory to God save this alien." "It is," says Lange, "as if all these benefits were falling into a deep silent grave." The voice of their misery had awaked the instant echo of His mercy; but the miraculous utterance of His mercy, though it thrilled through their whole physical being, woke no echo of gratitude in their earthy and still leprous hearts. But, nevertheless, this alien shall not have returned in vain, nor shall the rare virtue-alas, how rare a virtue of his gratitude go unrewarded. Not his body alone, but the soul-whose value was so infinitely more precious, just as its diseases are so infinitely more profound should be healed by His Saviour's word. "Arise and go," said Jesus; "thy faith hath saved thee." 1 Luke xvii. 17, οὐχὶ οἱ δέκα ἐκαθαρίσθησαν; οἱ δε ἐννέα, ποῦ; 2 ἀλλογενής. 3 Wordsworth's lines "I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning, Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning," have been often quoted; but if he found gratitude a common virtue, his experience must have been exceptional. CHAPTER XLIV. TEACHINGS OF THE JOURNEY. mini 10 1001, “And make a fence for the Law."-Pirke Abhôth, i. 1. EVEN during this last journey our Lord did not escape the taunts, the opposition, the depreciating remarks— in one word, the Pharisaism-of the Pharisees and those who resembled them. The circumstances which irritated them against Him were exactly the same as they had been throughout His whole career-exactly those in which His example was most lofty, and His teaching most beneficial-namely, the performance on the Sabbath of works of mercy, and the association with publicans and sinners. One of these sabbatical disputes occurred in a synagogue. Jesus, as we have already remarked, whether because of the lesser excommunication (the cherem), or for any other reason, seems, during this latter period of His ministry, to have entered the synagogues but rarely. The exclusion, however, from one synagogue or more did not include a prohibition to enter any synagogue; and the subsequent conduct of this rosh hakkenéseth seems to show that he had a certain awe of Jesus, mingled with his jealousy and suspicion. On this day there sat ;* 1 Luke xiii. 10—17. The compassionate mute appeal of her among the worshippers a poor woman who, for eighteen long years, had been bent double by "a spirit of infirmity," and could not lift herself up. heart of Jesus could not brook the presence. He called her to Him, and saying to her, "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity,"1 laid His hands on her. Instantly she experienced the miraculous strengthening which enabled her to lift up the long-bowed and crooked frame, and instantly she broke into utterances of gratitude to God. But her strain of thanksgiving was interrupted by the narrow and ignorant indignation of the ruler of the synagogue. Here, under his very eyes, and without any reference to the "little brief authority" which gave him a sense of dignity on each recurring Sabbath, a woman-a member of his congregation-had actually had the presumption to be healed. Armed with his favourite "texts," and in all the fussiness of official hypocrisy, he gets up and rebukes the perfectly innocent multitude, telling them it was a gross instance of Sabbath-breaking for them to be healed on that sacred day, when they might just as well be healed on any of the other six days of the week. That the offence consisted solely in the being healed is clear, for he certainly could not mean that, if they had any sickness, it was a crime for them to come to the synagogue at all on the Sabbath day. Now, as the poor woman does not seem to have spoken one word of entreaty to Jesus, or even to have called His attention to her case, the utterly senseless address of this man could only by any possibility mean either "You sick people must not come to the synagogue 1 Luke xiii. 12, àwoλéλvσai. The perfect implies the instantaneousness and permanence of the result. THE HYPOCRITICAL PHARISEE. 115 at all on the Sabbath under present circumstances, for fear you should be led into Sabbath-breaking by having a miraculous cure performed upon you;" or If any one wants to heal you on a Sabbath, you must decline." And these remarks he has neither the courage to address to Jesus Himself, nor the candour to address to the poor healed woman, but preaches at them both by rebuking the multitude, who had no concern in the action at all, beyond the fact that they had been passive spectators of it! The whole range of the Gospels does not supply any other instance of an interference so illogical, or a stupidity so hopeless; and the indirect, underhand way in which he gave vent to his outraged ignorance brought on him that expression of our Lord's indignation which he had not dared openly to brave. "Hypocrite!" was the one crushing word with which Jesus addressed him. This silly official had been censorious with Him because He had spoken a few words to the woman, and laid upon her a healing hand; and with the woman because, having been bent double, she lifted herself up and glorified God! It would be difficult to imagine such a paralysis of the moral sense, if we did not daily see the stultifying effect produced upon the intellect by the "deep slumber of a decided opinion," especially when the opinion itself rests upon nothing better than a meaningless tradition. Now Jesus constantly varied the arguments and appeals by which He endeavoured to show the Pharisees of His nation that their views about the Sabbath only degraded it from a divine benefit into a revolting bondage.1 To the Rabbis of Jerusalem He justified Himself by an appeal to His 1 It is a curious but instructive fact that the Jews of Palestine to this day greatly resemble their Pharisaic predecessors. "I have no heart,” says 3 own character and authority, as supported by the triple testimony of John the Baptist, of the Scriptures, and of the Father Himself, who bore witness to Him by the authority which He had given Him. To the Pharisees of Galilee He had quoted the direct precedents of Scripture,2 or had addressed an appeal, founded on their own common sense and power of insight into the eternal principles of things. But the duller and less practised intellect of these Peræans might not have understood either the essential love and liberty implied by the institution of the Sabbath, or the paramount authority of Jesus as Lord of the Sabbath. It could not rise above the cogency of the argumentum ad hominem. It was only capable of a conviction based on their own common practices and received limitations. There was not one Dr. Thomson, "to dwell on their absurd superstitions, their intense fanaticism, or their social and domestic institutions and manners, comprising an incredible and grotesque mélange of filth and finery, Pharisaic selfrighteousness and Sadducean licentiousness. The following is a specimen of the puerilities enjoined and enforced by their learned Rabbis :-A Jew must not carry on the Sabbath even so much as a pocket-handkerchief, except within the walls of the city. If there are no walls it follows, according to their perverse logic, that he must not carry it at all! To avoid this difficulty, here in Safed, they resort to what is called eruv. Poles are set up at the ends of the streets, and strings stretched from the one to the other. This string represents a wall, and a conscientious Jew may carry his handkerchief anywhere within these strings. I was once amused by a devout Israelite who was walking with me on his Sabbath. When we came to the end of the street the string was gone, and so by another fiction he was at liberty to go on without reference to what was in his pocket, because he had not passed the wall. The last time I was here they had abandoned this absurdity, probably to avoid the constant ridicule it brought upon them" (Thomson, Land and Book, II., ch. xix.). What a commentary on the kind of Sabbatarianism which Christ combated! For abundant further instances, which descend into details not only puerile but disgusting, see Buxtorf, Syn. Jud., capp. xiv.-xvi. 1 John v. 17-47, supra, Vol. I., p. 379. 2 Luke vi. 3-5, supra, Vol. I., p. 437. 3 Luke vi. 9, supra, Vol. I., p. 440. |