PART V.

FROM THE THIRD PASSOVER TO THE ENSUING FEAST OF TABERNACLES.

FROM APRIL TO OCTOBER, A.D. 29-ABOUT SIX MONTHS.

CHAPTER I.

UNSETTLED.

Jesus remains in Capernaum.

Ir does not appear that Jesus went up to Jerusalem to the Passover of this year, but it is supposed that his disciples did. There must have been multitudes at the great national celebration who had seen or heard of the feeding of the five thousand, and who knew the intense desire of the people to make Jesus king. Such things would be much talked of and most eagerly listened to. The intense interest excited by these reports probably hastened the determination of the hierarchic party to destroy Jesus. Jesus knew it, and ceased to travel in Judæa proper, confining himself to Galilee.

Soon after the Passover a deputation from the Pharisees and Scribes, being charged to ascertain some ground of accusation against Jesus, were dogging his steps and watch

Matt. xv.; Mark ing his movements; and spies of that character vii. The deputanever fail to find in the most spotless life some- tion from the thing to which they can take exception.

Pharisees.

In addition to the Scriptures, which contained the moral law in writing, the Pharisees endeavored to bind upon the consciences of the people certain unwritten traditions of the

elders, oral precepts, which they attributed to the

Tradition.

assistants of Moses. After the time of Jesus these were collected

into a book, consisting of two parts: the Mishna, the text of the supposed original precepts of the elders, and the Gemara, the comments on the text by the chief rabbies-the whole being called THE TALMUD.

Among the requirements of these traditions were many which obliged the Jews to wash often, and to wash many things, and to wash in peculiar ways. Mark has a note to that effect, inserted parenthetically in his history: "For the Pharisees and all Jews, except they wash their hands often, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders, and on coming from the market, if they sprinkle not, they eat not. And many other things there are which they have received to hold, as baptisms of cups and of pots and of vessels of brass." On coming from any public assembly it was in accordance with this ceremonial law that the whole body be washed, because it could not be known what defilement may have been contracted by contact with the common people. When this deputation of spies saw that Jesus and his disciples paid no regard to these requirements they catechized him, saying, "Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?" The plain intimation is, that the Master was held responsible for at least the known and unrebuked acts of his disciples.

Jesus rebukes

the Pharisees.

The stern reply of Jesus was, "Well has Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites when he said (representing Jehovah as speaking), "This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.' For you, leaving the commandment of God, hold the tra dition of men. Well do you reject the commandment of God that ye may keep your own tradition. For Moses said, 'Honor thy father and thy mother, and he who resisteth father or mother let him end by death.' But you say that if a man shall say to his father or mother, 'Corban (which means a gift), by whatever thou mightest be profited by me,' ye suffer him no longer to do anything for his father or his mother, making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered. And many such like things ye do."

This was a severe rebuke, and struck at the sorest spot of Pha risaism. The hold of the hierarchic clique upon the people lay in continuing in them a superstitious regard for the "traditions."

So long as the people were traditionists and ritualists, and the Pharisees held in their hands the interpretation of the tradition and the arrangement of the ritual, they could lord it over the consciences of the populace. And we see in this rebuke of Jesus that churchism is the same in all ages of the world. The spies from Jerusalem indirectly rebuked Jesus, not because he did not regard personal cleanliness, but because he did not conform to the minute directions of the ceremonial laws which had been built up by the doctors of the law. In this they were hypocrites. They had made canons which were contrary to God's express cominandments. They had been described by Isaiah, and a telling passage was quoted against them. Jesus cites a case in which the terrible injury of churchism is seen. According to the law of God, a man was to honor his parents. But these "churchmen" taught that if a man said "Corban" over any property, it was thenceforth devoted to "the church," and no matter how much the parents might be in need, this property was interdicted and alienated to "the church." Jesus regarded this as simply horrible. Nothing taken from a needy father or mother could be made acceptable to God by being devoted to what are called sacred purposes.

What defiles a

man.

Then calling to the crowd that was near, Jesus said, “Hear and understand: There is nothing from without the man which entering into him can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are what defile the man." The comparison of this address to the multitude with the speech to the Pharisees shows to us, that Jesus would not be understood as undervaluing purity in any sense, as not abolishing any law which God had given, but that purity was not to be attained and maintained by outward washings, and by observance of what meats a man should eat, but rather by keeping the soul, the source of life, all clean. But this is expressed in a par

able.

His disciples told him that he had offended the Pharisees by his speech to them. He answered, "Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind leaders. And if a blind man lead a blind man both shall fall into the ditch." Which reply seems to mean that whatever might come to him from so doing, he should not hesitate to root up such noxious weeds as these false teachers, but seems also to imply that no special violence would be requisite. Do you

see a blind man leading a blind man? There is a pit in their path. Why should one push them forward? They are going to destruction of themselves. So of these false teachers, and, alas! of their followers.

his saying.

But when they reached the house, Peter, who still had traditionary ideas, and regarded the manner of eating as not an indifferent subject, asked his Master to explain to the Jesus explains disciples this parable about the food. And he said, “Are you yet also without understanding?" They had been so near him, had so long heard his expressions of thought that they should have been able at once to know what he meant, and not compel him to go into a detailed explanation, which, however, he does not withhold. "Do you not understand that whatsoever enters the mouth goes into the stomach, and is evacuated into the draught? But the things coming out of the mouth come from the heart, and they profane the man. For out of the heart come forth evil purposes, murders, adulteries, forni cations, thefts, false testimonies, blasphemies: these are the things that profane a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not." This is consistent with all his teachings, that a man's purity must be that of the character interfused through the whole life.

Matt. xv.; Mark

vii. In Phoenicia.

It was quite apparent now that the Jewish ecclesiastical authorities meditated extreme measures. The labors of Jesus and his Apostles had been exhaustive. There was a fearful ordeal in advance of them: Jesus manifestly saw that, whether it was apparent to the others or not. His field of operations was daily more and more circumscribed by his enemies. He could not "walk" in Judæa nor in Galilee without being beset by his ecclesiastical foes. Capernaum could no longer be a retreat to him. It would seem that in view of these things Jesus meditated a season of retirement, and so withdrew his disciples up towards the confines of Phoenicia, designated in Matthew and Mark by the names of the two principal cities, Tyre and Sidon.

It has been a question whether Jesus ever crossed the boundary of his native country during his public ministry. It is not necessarily implied in the words of Matthew and Mark, "into the coasts," "into the borders of Tyre and Sidon." The word may be as well translated "towards," or "unto," as "into." That he had declared his ministry to be confined to the Jewish people