VI. CHAP. certainty to assign those events, which filled up the period between the autumnal Feast of Tabernacles and that of the Dedication of the Temple, which took place in the winter. Now, however, Jesus appears more distinctly to have avowed his determination not to remain in his more concealed and private character in Galilee: but when the occasion should demand, when, at the approaching Passover, the whole nation should be assembled in the metropolis, he would confront them, and at length bring his acceptance or rejection to a crisis.* He now, at times at least, assumes greater state; messengers are sent before him to proclaim his arrival in the different towns and villages; and as the Feast of Dedication draws near, he approaches the borders of Samaria, and Samaria. sends forward some of his followers into a neigh Near bouring village, to announce his approach. † Whether the Samaritans may have entertained some hopes, from the rumour of his former proceedings in their country, that, persecuted by the Jews, and avowedly opposed to the leading parties in Jerusalem, he might espouse their party in the national quarrel, and were therefore instigated by disappointment as well as jealousy; or whether it was merely an accidental outburst of the old irreconcileable feud, the inhospitable village refused to that the " village of Martha and * By taking the expression of St. Luke "he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem," in this more general sense, many difficulties, if not avoided, are considerably diminished. † Luke, ix. 51–56, receive him.* The disciples were now elate with the expectation of the approaching crisis; on their minds all the dispiriting predictions of the fate of their Master passed away without the least impression; they were indignant that their triumphant procession should be arrested; and with these more immediate and peculiar motives mingled, no doubt, the implacable spirit of national hostility. They thought that the hour of vengeance was now come; that even their gentle Master would resent on these deadliest foes of the race of Israel, this deliberate insult on his dignity; that, as he had in some respects resembled the ancient prophets, he would now not hesitate to assume that fiercer and more terrific majesty, with which, according to their ancient histories, these holy men had at times been avenged; they entreated their Master to call down fire from heaven to consume the village. Jesus simply replied by a sentence, which at once established the incalculable difference between his own religion and that which it was to succeed. This sentence, most truly sublime and most characteristic of the evangelic religion, ever since the establishment of Christianity has been struggling to maintain its authority against the still-reviving Judaism, which, inseparable it should seem from * The attendance of the Jews at the Feast of the Dedication, a solemnity of more recent institution, was not unlikely to be still more obnoxious to the possessors of the rival temple, than the other great national feasts. This consideration, in the want of more decisive grounds, may be some argu ment for placing this event at the VI. } CHAP. uncivilised and unchristian man, has constantly endeavoured to array the Deity, rather in his attributes of destructive power than of preserving mercy. "The Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." So speaking he left the inhospitable Samaritans unharmed, and calmly passed to another village. It appears to me probable that he here left the direct road to the metropolis through Samaria, and turned aside to the district about Scythopolis and the valley of the Jordan, and most likely crossed into Peræa.* From hence, if not before, he sent out his messengers with greater regularity +, and it might seem, to keep up some resemblance with the established institutions of the nation, he chose the number of Seventy, a number already sanctified in the notions of the people, as that of the great Sanhedrin of the nation, who deduced their own origin and authority from the Council of Seventy, established by Moses in the wilderness. The Seventy after a short absence returned and made a favourable report of the influence which they had obtained over the people. The language of Jesus, both in his charge to his disciples and in his observations on the report of their success, appears to indicate the still approaching crisis; it should seem that even the towns in which he had wrought his mightiest works, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, at least the general mass of the * After the visit to Jerusalem at the Feast of the Dedication, he went again (John, x. 40.) into the country beyond Jordan; he must therefore have been there before + Luke, x. 1—16. VI. people, and the influential rulers, now had declared CHAP. against him. They are condemned in terms of unusual severity for their blindness; yet among the meek and humble he had a still increasing holdand the days were now at hand, which the disciples were permitted to behold, and for which the wise and good for many ages had been looking forward with still baffled hopes.* Dedication. Jerusalem. It was during the absence of the Seventy, or Feast of immediately after their return, that Jesus, who Jesus perhaps had visited in the interval many towns and again in villages both of Galilee and Peræa, which his central position near the Jordan commanded, descended to the winter Festival of the Dedication.† Once it is clear that he drew near to Jerusalem, at least as near as the village of Bethany; and though not insensible to the difficulties of this view, we cannot but think that this village, about two miles' distance from Jerusalem, and the house of the relations of Lazarus, was the place where he was concealed during both his two later unexpected and secret visits to the metropolis, and where he in general passed the nights during the week of the last Passover. His His appearance at * Luke, x. 24. The parable of the good Samaritan may gain in impressiveness if considered in connection with the recent transactions in Samaria, and as perhaps delivered during the journey to Jerusalem, near the place where the scene is laid the wild and dangerous country between Jericho and Jerusalem. This feast was instituted by Judas Maccabeus, 1 Macc. 4-5. It was kept on the 25th of the month Cisleu, answering to our In connecting Luke, x. 38-42. with John, x. 22-39., there is the obvious difficulty of the former evangelist mentioning the comparatively unimportant circumstance which he relates, and being entirely silent about the latter. But this VI. CHAP. this festival seems to have been, like the former, sudden and unlooked-for. The multitude probably at this time was not so great, both on account of the season, and because the festival was kept in other places besides Jerusalem *, though of course with the greatest splendour and concourse in the Temple itself. Jesus was seen walking in one of the porticoes or arcades which surrounded the outer court of the Temple, that to the east, which from its greater splendour, being formed of a triple instead of a double row of columns, was called by the name of Solomon's. The leading Jews, whether unprepared for more violent measures, or with some insidious design, now address him, seemingly neither in an hostile nor unfriendly tone. It almost appears, that having before attempted force, they are now inclined to try the milder course of persuasion; their language sounds like the expostulation of impatience. Why, they inquire, does he thus continue to keep up this strange excitement? why thus persist in endangering the public peace? why does he not avow himself at once? why does he not distinctly assert himself to be the Christ, and by some signal, some public, some indisputable, evidence of his being the Messiah, at once set at rest the doubts, and com objection is common to all har- suppose the evangelists to have compiled from a common document, or adhere to any of the older theories, that each wrote either entirely independently or as supplementary to the preceding evangelists. * Lightfoot in loco. |