CHAP. LVL in heart to the prophet-murderers! Fill up, therefore, the measure of iniquity your fathers before you filled in their day, -by slaying me and those I shall send to you! Serpents! brood of vipers, for vipers your fathers were, and vipers are ye, how can ye escape the judgment of hell! That ye may not do so, behold, I send to you prophet-like Apostles, and Rabbis, and Scribes. Some of them ye shall kill and crucify; some ye shall scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city--that on you, the leaders of the people, may come the punishment of all the innocent, righteous blood shed on the earth; from the blood of righteous Abel to that of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, who was stoned by 24 Ant. ix.8.3. command of King Joash 24 in the court of the Temple, between the shrine and the altar. Believe me, all these things will come in this generation." Zechariah, of old, had denounced the sin of Israel, as Jesus had that of the priests and Rabbis. "Why transgress ye," he had asked, "the commandments of the Lord? Ye cannot prosper! Because ye have forsaken Jehovah, He hath forsaken you. 25 2 Chron. 24. 20. "125 "O Jerusalem! Jerusalem," He continued, "that killest the prophets, and stonest those sent in love to thee; how often have I desired to gather thy children, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wing, and ye refused to come under my loving protection, by accepting me as the Messiah. Behold, your house is left to you! I go from it. The time of the divine help and guard, over you and your city, which I was sent to offer, is past. "I tell you ye shall not see me henceforth, after my death, which is near at hand, till I appear again in my glory. Then, you shall be only too eagerly willing to hail me as the Messiah, though now ye refuse even to let others thus hail me. Then, when too late, you will cry, as the crowds did as I entered your city, 'Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.'" Thus, the breach between the Future and the Past was finally made complete. The whole hierarchy, from the high priest its primate, to the Levite its curate, and the Rabbi its university professor or tutor, had been denounced before the people, in language which they must resent if they CHAP. LVL were to retain any authority at all. Either Jesus, or the Church as it was, with all its innumerable personal interests, must perish. It had come to this, indeed, before this last tremendous indictment of the system, and the certainty that nothing could avert His being sacrificed to the fanaticism and vested interests arrayed against Him, had alone caused such a protest. He had no reasons for further reserve. It was fixed that He must die at their hands, and the irreconcilable opposition between the system for the sake of which He was to be martyred, and His own character and work, must, once more, for the last time, be brought out in full contrast, that every one might choose for himself for which he would decide. The infinite moral grandeur and purity of Jesus, His absolute truth, His all-embracing love, His lowly humility, His sublime consecration to the will of His Father, His intense moral earnestness, His spirit of joyful self-sacrifice for the moral and spiritual good of mankind, shine out nowhere more transcendently, than when contrasted, in this parting lament, with the wretched sophistries and reverence for the infinitely little, which marked the Rabbinism He opposed. The spirit of the market or the booth, in religion, found no sanction at His hands; He would have no huckstering for heaven by a life of petty formalities; He abhorred all cant and insincerity, and all trading with religion; all striving after mere outward success, for ulterior and unworthy ends. He would have no divorce of religion from morality; it was with Him a living principle in the heart, not a rubric of external acts; its outward expression was a holy life, but the holiness without was only the blossoming of a similar holiness within. In Rabbinism, on the opposite, there was formal piety, with no moral earnestness: an absorbing zeal for artificial duties, with which the conscience had nothing to do; and an elaborate multiplication of rules and rites, for the express aim of obtaining the absolute spiritual dependence of all, on the teaching caste. The whole system had been originated and developed to its fulness, to be a "hedge" round the Law, and thus secure fidelity to the CHAP. LVI. politico-religious constitution of the nation, and its minutest details were strenuously enforced to secure this end. Unquestioning acceptance of tradition, and the deepening and extending of the ghostly influence of the authorities, were the two great points kept in view. There were true Israelites, like Nathanael, or Zechariah, or Simeon, or Joseph, in spite of a system thus lifeless and corrupting; but it was vain to hope for anything but evil, in the community at large, under its reign. Insincerity and immorality in the teachers of a religion can only multiply and perpetuate themselves in their disciples. The theology and hierarchy of Judaism had become, in fact, what Jesus openly declared them-whitewashed sepulchres-pure to the eye, but with only death and corruption within. They had proved that they were so, by rejecting Him, because He demanded moral and religious reform. Wedded to the false and immoral, they rather killed Him than let Him lead them back to God. Over such a state of things He could only raise His sad lamentation! Judaism had chosen its own way, and left Him to His. A CHAPTER LVII. THE INTERVAL. FTER His terrible parting denunciation of the religious CHAP. LVII leaders of the nation, Jesus passed into the great forecourt of the women, fifteen steps below that of the men. It was a wide space of a hundred and thirty-five cubits in length and breadth, and was open to the people at large. Popular assemblies, indeed, were at times held in it, and it was the scene of the torch-dance at the Feast of Tabernacles. It was especially frequented, however, by both sexes, because the building was there in which the pious presented their offerings. Jesus had sat down to rest, after the multiplied excitements of the past hours, over against the treasury, where the continuous stream of persons casting in their money necessarily attracted His notice. As each came, He could judge by his appearance how much he threw in. The poor could only give paltry copper coins, but the rich cast in gold and silver; some, doubtless, from an honest zeal for the glory of God; others, because alms, in the sordid theology of the day, had their commercial value in the future world. Luke 21. 1-4 Among others, came a poor widow, with her two lepta— one-twelfth of our penny each-the smallest of copper coins. Mark 12.41-44. She could not have cast in less, for one lepton was not received as an offering. The sight touched the heart of Jesus. "Believe me," said He, to those around, "this poor woman has cast in more than any one, for they have only given of their superfluity, but she, in her need-for she has less than enough—has thrown in all she had for her day's living." Among the multitude of pilgrims to the feast, then in CHAP. LVIL Jerusalem, were many foreign proselytes. That they should have come up, though heathens by birth, showed an earnest sincerity, for it exposed them to ridicule and even worse, from their own countrymen. Many of them, doubtless, men like the centurion at Capernaum, or like the Ethiopian eunuch, were men won over to faith in Jehovah, and to a loyal respect for the great doctrines of the Old Testament: proselytes of the gate, in distinction from the proselytes of righteousness, who, by circumcision, had become, in all religious and social respects, Jews. The spread of a Jewish population in all countries, and the immunities they enjoyed, had resulted in the conversion of great numbers of Gentiles, who were willing to pledge themselves to what were called the seven commands of Noah-the avoidance of murder, bloodshed, or robbery: obedience to the Jewish courts in matters of religion: the rejection of idolatry, and the worship of Jehovah: and to eat no freshly-killed and still bleeding flesh. They were received as "the strangers within the gate" of Israel, and could attend the synagogues, but could not pass beyond the Court of the Heathen, in the 1 Proselyten, in Temple.1 Herzog, Of this class, some Greeks, then at Jerusalem for the feast, which they were in the habit of attending, had heard much of Jesus: perhaps had seen Him and listened to His discourses, and were anxious to know Him personally, that they might have His personal counsels. Too modest to come direct, they applied to Philip, the only Apostle bearing a Greek name, though Andrew is of Greek origin. To him Philip forthwith mentioned the circumstance, and the two communicated it to Jesus. It filled His heart with much-needed joy, to welcome men who must have seemed to Him an earnest of His future triumphs, among the great heathen nations. As Bengel says, "it was the prelude of the transition of the kingdom of God from the Jew to the Gentile." He went out to them, therefore, to the Court of the Heathen, and they, doubtless, heard from His lips the counsels desired. The incident brought to His mind, with fresh vividness and force, the nearness of His death, through |