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Lord, I believe," he answered; and he did Him

reverence.

It must have been shortly after this time that our Lord pointed the contrast between the different effects of His teaching-they who saw not, made to see; and those who saw, made blind. The Pharisees, ever restlessly and discontentedly hovering about Him, and in their morbid egotism always on the look-out for some reflection. on themselves, asked "if they too were blind." The answer of Jesus was, that in natural blindness there would have been no guilt, but to those who only stumbled in the blindness of wilful error a claim to the possession of sight was a self-condemnation.

And when the leaders, the teachers, the guides were blind, how could the people see?

The thought naturally led Him to the nature of true and false teachers, which He expanded and illustrated in the beautiful apologue-half parable, half allegory-of the True and the False Shepherds. He told them that He was the Good Shepherd,1 who laid down His life for the sheep; while the hireling shepherds, flying from danger, betrayed their flocks. He, too, was that door of the sheepfold, by which all His true predecessors alone had entered, while all the false-from the first thief who had climbed into God's fold-had broken in some other way. And then He told them that of His own

revelation to the outcast from the synagogue finds its only parallel in the similar revelation (John iv. 26) to the outcast from the nation" (Characteristics of the Gosp. Miracles, p. 61).

1

Speaking of this allegory, Mr. Sanday points out the circumstance that the only other allegory in the Gospels is in John xv. "The Synoptists have no allegories as distinct from parables. The fourth Evangelist no parables as a special form of allegory" (Fourth Gospel, p. 167). As the phrase is ouǹv å kaλds, not àya@ds, perhaps it had better be rendered "true shepherd," rather than "good." But kaλds is untranslateable.

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1

free will He would lay down His life for the sheep, both of this and of His other flocks, and that of His own power He would take it again. But all these divine mysteries were more than they could understand; and while some declared that they were the nonsense of one who had a devil and was mad, others could only plead that they were not like the words of one who had a devil, and that a devil could not have opened the eyes of the blind.

Thus, with but little fruit for them, save the bitter fruit of anger and hatred, ended the visit of Jesus to the Feast of Tabernacles. And since His very life was now in danger, He withdrew once more from Jerusalem to Galilee, for one brief visit before He bade to His old home His last farewell.

1 In John x. 16, there is an unfortunate obliteration of the distinction between the avλn, "fold," and Toiμvn, "flock," of the original.

CHAPTER XLII.

FAREWELL TO GALILEE.

"I see that all things come to an end: but thy commandment is exceeding broad."-Ps. cxix. 96.

IMMEDIATELY after the events just recorded, St. John narrates another incident which took place two months subsequently, at the winter Feast of Dedication.1 In accordance with the main purpose of his Gospel, which was to narrate that work of the Christ in Judæa, and especially in Jerusalem, which the Synoptists had omitted, he says nothing of an intermediate and final visit to Galilee, or of those last journeys to Jerusalem respecting parts of which the other Evangelists supply us with so many details. And yet that Jesus must have returned to Galilee is clear, not only from the other Evangelists, but also from the nature of the case and from certain incidental facts in the narrative of St. John himself.2

1 John x. 22-42. The Feast of Tabernacles was at the end of September or early in October. The Dedication was on December 20.

2 See John x. 25 (which evidently refers to His last discourse to them two months before) and 40 ("again"). Besides, the expression of John x. 22, "And it was the Dedication at Jerusalem," would have little meaning if a new visit were not implied; and those words are perhaps added for the very reason that the Dedication might be kept anywhere else.

It is well known that the whole of one great section in St. Luke-from ix. 51 to xviii. 15-forms an episode in the Gospel narrative of which many incidents are narrated by this Evangelist alone, and in which the few identifications of time and place all point to one slow and solemn progress from Galilee to Jerusalem (ix. 51; xiii. 22; xvii. 11; x. 38). Now after the Feast of Dedication our Lord retired into Peræa, until He was summoned thence by the death of Lazarus (John x. 40-42; xi. 1-46); after the resurrection of Lazarus, He fled to Ephraim (xi. 54); and He did not leave His retirement at Ephraim until He went to Bethlehem, six days before His final Passover (xii. 1).

This great journey, therefore, from Galilee to Jerusalem, so rich in occasions which called forth some of His most memorable utterances, must have been either a journey to the Feast of Tabernacles or to the Feast of Dedication. That it could not have been the former may be regarded as settled, not only on other grounds, but decisively because that was a rapid and a secret journey, this an eminently public and leisurely one.

Almost every inquirer seems to differ to a greater or less degree as to the exact sequence and chronology of the events which follow. Without entering into minute and tedious disquisitions where absolute certainty is impossible, I will narrate this period of our Lord's life in the order which, after repeated study of the Gospels, appears to me to be the most probable, and in the separate details of which I have found myself again and again confirmed by the conclusions of other independent inquirers. And here I will only premise my

conviction

1. That the episode of St. Luke up to xviii. 30,

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mainly refers to a single journey, although unity of subject, or other causes, may have led the sacred writer to weave into his narrative some events or utterances which belong to an earlier or later epoch.1

2. That the order of the facts narrated even by St. Luke alone is not, and does not in any way claim to be, strictly chronological; so that the place of any event in the narrative by no means necessarily indicates its true position in the order of time.

3. That this journey is identical with that which is partially recorded in Matt. xviii. 1-xx. 16; Mark x. 1-31.

4. That (as seems obvious from internal evidence1) the events narrated in Matt. xx. 17-28; Mark x. 32 45; Luke xviii. 31-34, belong not to this journey, but to the last which Jesus ever took-the journey from Ephraim to Bethany and Jerusalem.

Assuming these conclusions to be justified and I

1 E.g., ix. 57-62 (cf. Matt. viii. 19-22); xi. 1-13 (cf. Matt. vi. 9—15; vii. 7—12); xi. 14—26 (cf. Matt. ix. 32—35); xi. 29-xii. 59 (compared with parts of the Sermon on the Mount, &c.). Of course the dull and recklessly adopted hypothesis of a constant repetition of incidents may here come in to support the preconceived notions of some harmonists; but it is an hypothesis mainly founded on a false and unscriptural view of inspiration, and one which must not be adopted without the strongest justification. The occasional repetition of discourses is a much more natural supposition, and one inherently probable from the circumstances of the case.

E.g., x. 38-42; xiii. 31–35; xvii. 11–19.

3 The notes of time and place throughout are of the vaguest possible character, evidently because the form of the narrative is here determined by other considerations (see x. 1, 25, 38; xi. 1, 14; xii. 1, 22; xiii. 6, 22; xiv. 1; xvii. 12, &c.). There seems to be no ground whatever for supposing that St. Luke meant to claim absolute chronological accuracy by the expression, τаρηкоλоvůŋкóтι dкρißŵs, in i. 3; and indeed it seems clear from a study of his Gospel that, though he followed the historical sequence as far as he was able to do so, he often groups events and discourses by spiritual and subjective considerations.

* See, among other passages, Mark x. 17; Matt. xix. 16.