perhaps the dauntless innocence of His gaze overawed them. Apart from anything supernatural, there seems to have been in the presence of Jesus a spell of mystery and of majesty which even His most ruthless and hardened enemies acknowledged, and before which they involuntarily bowed. It was to this that He owed His escape when the maddened Jews in the Temple took up stones to stone Him; it was this that made the bold and bigoted officers of the Sanhedrin unable to arrest Him as He taught in public during the Feast of Tabernacles at Jerusalem; it was this that made the armed band of His enemies, at His mere look, fall before Him to the ground in the Garden of Gethsemane. Suddenly, quietly He asserted His freedom, waived aside His captors, and overawing them by His simple glance, passed through their midst unharmed. Similar events have occurred in history, and continue still to occur. There is something in defenceless and yet dauntless dignity that calms even the fury of a mob. "They stood-stopped - inquired were ashamed fled separated." i

And so He left them, never apparently to return again; never, if we are right in the view here taken, to preach again in their little synagogue. Did any feelings of merely human regret weigh down His soul while He was wending His weary steps down the steep hill-slope

1

2

Pfenninger, quoted by Stier, iii. 451. Cf. John vii. 30, 46; viii. 59; x. 39; xviii. 6.-Some of my readers may be aware of an instance in which a clergyman, still living, walked untouched through the very midst of a brutal and furious London mob, who had assembled for the express purpose of insulting and assaulting him. It was observed by more than one spectator, that if he had wavered for a single instant, or shown the slightest sign of fear and irresolution, he would in all probability have been struck down, and possibly have not escaped with his life.

2 Luke iv. 30, ἐπορεύετο.

FAREWELL TO NAZARETH.

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towards Cana of Galilee? Did any tear start in His eyes unbidden as He stood, perhaps for the last time, to gaze from thence on the rich plain of Esdraelon, and the purple heights of Carmel, and the white sands that fringe the blue waters of the Mediterranean? Were there any from whom He grieved to be severed, in the green secluded valley where His manhood had laboured, and His childhood played? Did He cast one longing, lingering glance at the humble home in which for so many years He had toiled as the village carpenter? Did no companion of His innocent boyhood, no friend of His sinless youth, accompany Him with awe, and pity, and regret ? Such questions are not, surely, unnatural; not, surely, irreverent; but they are not answered. Of all merely human emotions of His heart, except so far as they directly affect His mission upon earth, the Gospels are silent.1 We know only that henceforth other friends awaited him away from boorish Nazareth, among the gentle and noble-hearted fishermen of Bethsaida; and that thenceforth His home, so far as He had a home, was in the little city of Capernaum, beside the sunlit waters of the Galilæan Lake.

Whole volumes must lie concealed in that memorable allusion of Heb. ii. 18 (πέπονθεν αὐτὸς πειρασθείς) and iv. 15 (πεπειραμένον κατὰ πάντα καθ ̓ ὁμοιότητα, κ. τ. λ.).

CHAPTER XVII.

THE BEGINNING OF THE GALILEAN MINISTRY.

πτωχοὶ εὐαγγελίζονται.-ΜΑΤΤ. xi. 5.

REJECTED at Nazareth, our Lord naturally turned to the neighbouring Cana, where His first miracle had been wrought to gladden friends. He had not long arrived when an officer from the neighbouring court of Herod Antipas, hearing of His arrival, came and urgently entreated that He would descend to Capernaum and heal his dying son. Although our Lord never set foot in Tiberias, yet the voice of John had more than once been listened to with alarm and reverence in the court of the voluptuous king. We know that Manaen, the foster-brother of Herod, was in after days a Christian, and we know that among the women who ministered to Christ of their substance was Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward. As this courtier (Baotikos) believed in Christ with his whole house, in

1 In the general obscurity of the chronology, it seems clear (as we have said before) that by this time John had been cast into prison (Matt. iv. 12, 13; Mark i. 14; Luke iii. 20). Comparing these passages of the Synoptists with John iii. 24; iv. 45, and following the order of events given in the text, we may perhaps assume (though this is not absolutely necessary, v. supr., p. 219, n.) that Galilee here means Northern Galilee, or Galilee proper.

2 Acts xiii. 1; cf. Luke viii. 3.

HEROD'S COURTIER.

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consequence of the miracle now wrought, it has been conjectured with some probability that it was none other than Chuza himself.

The imperious urgency of his request, a request which appears at first to have had but little root in spiritual conviction, needed a momentary check. It was necessary for Jesus to show that He was no mere hakeem, no mère benevolent physician, ready at any time to work local cures, and to place His supernatural powers at the beck and call of any sufferer who might come to Him as a desperate resource. He at once rebuked the spirit which demanded mere signs and prodigies as the sole possible ground of faith. But yielding to the father's passionate earnestness, He dismissed him with the assurance that his son lived. The interview had taken place at the seventh hour-i.e., at one o'clock in the day.2 Even in the short November day it would have been still possible for the father to get to Capernaum; for if Cana be, as we believe, Kefr Kenna, it is not more than five hours' distance from Capernaum. But the father's soul had been calmed by faith in Christ's promise, and he slept that night at some intermediate spot upon the road. The next day his slaves met him, and told him that, at the very hour when Jesus had spoken, the fever had left his son. This was the second time that Christ had signalised His arrival in Galilee by the performance of a conspicuous miracle. The position of the courtier

1 Tépara. This is a half-disparaging term for miracles, rarely used in the Gospels, and derived only from the sense of astonishment which they caused.

2 I here again (v. supr., pp. 146, n., 206, n.) assume that the hours, as mentioned by St. John, are calculated from sunrise, according to the universal custom of that day.

3 Perhaps at Lubîyeh, or Hattin.

caused it to be widely known, and it contributed, no doubt, to that joyous and enthusiastic welcome which our Lord received during that bright early period of His ministry, which has been beautifully called the "Galilean spring."

At this point we are again met by difficulties in the chronology, which are not only serious, but to the certain solution of which there appears to be no clue. If we follow exclusively the order given by one Evangelist, we appear to run counter to the scattered indications which may be found in another. That it should be so will cause no difficulty to the candid mind. The Evangelists do not profess to be scrupulously guided by chronological sequence. The pictures which they give of the main events in the life of Christ are simple and harmonious, and that they should be presented in an informal, and what, with reference to mere literary considerations, would be called inartistic manner, is not only in accordance with the position of the writers, but is an additional confirmation of our conviction that we are reading the records of a life which, in its majesty and beauty, infinitely transcended the capacities of invention or imagination in the simple and faithful annalists by whom it was recorded.

It was not, as we have already observed, the object of St. John to narrate the Galilæan ministry, the existence of which he distinctly implies (vii. 3, 4), but which had already been fully recorded. Circumstances had given to the Evangelist a minute and profound knowledge of the

1 Ewald says that " no one can doubt" as to the identity of this incident with that narrated of the centurion's servant. It is, however, seriously doubted-nay, entirely disputed-by many of the ablest commentators, from Chrysostom down to Ebrard and Tischendorf.