contact with people whose position made it impossible to be CHAP. LII, as scrupulous in the observance of the endless legal injunctions demanded, as themselves.

The meal at which Jesus was now present was very possibly one to which, in old times, such very different guests would have been asked. Or, it may be, the luxury displayed drew the attention of one so simple in His habits. Not a few neighbours, in very different circumstances from the guests, had likely entered, to look on and listen, but caste looked at them askance, as if they were an inferior race. Noticing this, our Lord addressed Himself to the host in a friendly way :—

"Have you ever thought what hospitality would yield you most pleasure? When you wish on special occasions to give a dinner or supper, let me tell you what you would always look back upon with the purest joy. Do not invite your rich friends to it, or your family or kinsmen, or well-to-do neighbours. They will invite you in return, and this will destroy the worth of your act, for which you expect a recompense from God at the resurrection. Instead of such guests, invite the poor, the hungry, the lame, the maimed, and the blind. If you entertain such, they will reward you richly by their gratitude, and if you have invited them from an honest heart, as a duty, God Himself will remember it at the resurrection of the righteous."

One of the guests had listened attentively. The mention of the resurrection of the righteous, naturally, under the circumstances, raised the thought of the heavenly banquet which the Rabbis expected to follow that event. "Blessed are those," said he, "who shall eat bread at the great feast in the Kingdom of God, after the resurrection. It would, indeed, be well to give such entertainments as Thou hast named, which would be thus so richly repaid in the world to come."

This remark gave Jesus an opportunity of delivering a parable which must have run terribly counter to the prejudices of the company. The spirit of caste that prevailed in the hierarchical party, and their utter want of sympathy for the down-trodden masses, were abhorrent to His whole

CHAP. LII. nature. It was daily clearer that the religious and moral impulse by which He was to revolutionize the world, would never come from Israel as a nation. The opportunity had been offered and even pressed, but it had been rejected, and hence He was free to proclaim the great truth, which, for a time, He had held back, that the Heathen, as well as the Jew, was invited, on equal terms, to the privileges of the New Kingdom of God. It was specially necessary in these last months of His life to make this prominent, that the minds of the disciples, above all, might be prepared for a revolution of thought so momentous and signal. He, therefore, now, took every opportunity of showing that the invitations of the New Kingdom, in fulfilment of the eternal purpose of God, were to be addressed as freely to heathen as to Israel, and that the religion He was founding was one of spirit, and truth, and liberty, for the WHOLE WORLD. This revelation, so transcendent in the history of the race, He once more disclosed, had they been able to understand Him, at the Pharisee's table.

20 Luke 14. 15, 24.

"A certain man," said He, as if in answer to the last speaker, "made a great supper, and invited many guests; doing so early, that they might have ample time to prepare, and keep themselves free from other engagements. When the hour fixed for the banquet came, he sent his servantas is usual—once more to those invited, to say that all was ready, and to pray them to come. But though they had had ample time to make all arrangements, they were still alike busy and unconcerned about the invitation, and, as if by common agreement, each in turn excused himself from accepting it. 'I have just bought a field,' said one, and must go and see it-I beg your master will hold me excused' -and went off to his land. 'It is impossible for me to come,' said another, for I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and am on the point of starting to try them.' A third begged to be excused because he had only just married, and therefore could not come, as he had a feast of his own.

6

"The servant had, therefore, to return to his master with this sorry list of excuses, each of which was a marked affront. 'I shall see that my feast has not been prepared for nothing,'

said he to the servant-go out, at once, to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in all the poor, the maimed, the blind, and the lame you can find, that my table may be filled.'

"There was still room, however, after this had been done. 'Go outside the city to the country roads and hedgeways,' said the householder, and gather any waifs and beggars you find, and compel them to come in, for my house must be filled, and none of the men I invited to my supper will taste it.'

Had the hearers but known it, this parable was a deadly thrust at their most cherished prejudices. The priests and Rabbis, leaders of the nation, had been invited again and again by Jesus and His disciples, to the spiritual banquet of the New Kingdom, but they had despised the invitation, on any excuse, or on none. The poor and outcast people, the sinners and publicans, and the hated multitude, who neglected the Rabbinical rules, had then been summoned, and had gladly come, and, now, the invitation was to go forth to those outside Israel-the abhorred heathen-and they, too, were to come freely, and sit down at the great table of the kingdom of the Messiah, with no conditions or disabilities; while they who, in their pride, had refused to come, were finally rejected.

It was the proclamation, once more, of the mighty truth which might well be too hard for those who first heard it, to understand, since it is imperfectly realized after nineteen centuries-that external rites and formal acts are of no value with God, in themselves: that He looks at the conscience alone that neither circumcision nor sacrifices, nor legal purifications, nor rigid observance of Sabbath laws, nor fasts, but the state of the heart, determines the relation of man to God.

Before leaving the world, our Lord would put it beyond question that His religion knew no caste, or national privilege that it was independent of the cumbrous machinery of rite and ceremony which had crushed the life out of the religion of the Old Testament; and that it could reign, in its divine perfection, in any human heart that opened itself to the Spirit of God.

CHAP. LIL

CHAP. LIII. Luke 14. 25-35.

THE

CHAPTER LIII.

IN PEREA.

HE incident of the Sabbath meal, in the house of the Pharisee, had occurred as Jesus was journeying by slow stages towards Jerusalem. He had long ago felt that to go thither would be to die; but His death, in whatever part of the country He might be apprehended, was already determined by His enemies, and it was necessary for the future of His Kingdom that He should not perish obscurely, like John, in some lonely fortress, but with such publicity, and so directly by the hands of the upholders of the Old Theocracy, as to leave their deliberate rejection of His teaching in no doubt, and to bring home to them the guilt of His death.

Yet He was in no hurry. It was still some time till the Passover, and He advanced leisurely on His sad journey, through the different villages and towns, teaching in the synagogues on the Sabbaths, and anywhere, day by day, through the week. Meanwhile, the miracles which He wrought before continually increasing multitudes excited in Herod, the local ruler, the same fear of a political rising as had led him to imprison the Baptist.

In spite of our Lord's earnest effort to discourage excitement, by damping every worldly hope or ambition in the crowds that followed Him, and leaving no question of His utter refusal to carry out the national programme of a political Messiah, Herod was so alarmed that he made efforts. to apprehend Him. Had the throngs increased with His advance from place to place, as they well might, so shortly before the Passover, He would have entered Jerusalem with

a whole
army of partisans, and compromised Himself at once
with the Roman authorities.

He, therefore, spared no efforts to discourage and turn back to their homes those whom He saw attracted to Him from other than spiritual motives. He wished none to follow Him who had not counted the cost of doing so, and had not realized His unprecedented demands from His disciples. Instead of courting popular support, now that His life was in such danger, He raised these demands, and refused to receive followers on any terms short of absolute selfsurrender and self-sacrifice to His cause, though He had nothing whatever to offer in return beyond the inward satisfaction of conscience, and a reward in the future world, if the surrender had been the absolutely sincere and disinterested expression of personal devotion to Himself.

"Consider well," said He, "before you follow me farther. I desire no one to do so who does not without reserve devote himself to me and my cause. He must tear himself from all his former connections and associations, and offer up, as a willing sacrifice, the claims of father, mother, wife, children, brother, or sister-and even his own life, if necessary, that he may be in no way hindered from entire devotion to me and my commands. Short of this, no one can be my disciple. Nor can he who is not willing to bear shame and suffering for my sake. You cannot be my disciples unless you are ready to be virtually condemned to die for being so; unless, as it were, you already put on your shoulders the weight of the cross on which you are to be nailed for confessing my name.

"It is, indeed, no light matter, but needs the gravest consideration. You know how men weigh everything beforehand in affairs of cost or danger: much more is it needful to do so in this case. No man would be so foolish as to begin building a house without first finding out the cost, and seeing if he can meet it. He will not lay the foundation, and run the risk of not being able to do more, for he knows that to do so would make him the scoff of his neighbours. Nor would any king or prince, at war with another, march out against him, without thinking whether he could likely,

CHAP. LIIL