FALSE TEACHERS. 83 straitened is the way of self-denial and struggle that leads to life, and few there are that find it. But wide is the gate and broad is the way of sin that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. Beware of false teachers,1 who would turn you aside from the safe road. They will come to you affecting to be my followers, but they will be only wolves in sheep's clothing. You will know them fully by their fruits-that is, by their lives. Do men gather grapes off thorns, or figs off thistles? 2 So, every good tree brings forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. The good, out of the good treasure of the heart, bring forth that which is good; and the evil man, out of the evil, brings forth that which is evil; for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit; neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Have nothing to do with them, and do not follow them, for every tree that brings not forth good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire. So, then, by their fruits ye will know them fully." "Nor is the danger of being led astray by false teachers, light, for not all who acknowledge me as their Master will enter into the glory of the heavenly Kingdom, but those only who do the will of My Father, who is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not teach in Thy name confessing Thee as Jesus Messias, and by the power of Thy name cast out devils, and, by the same power, did we not do many mighty works, owning Thee, and working through Thee, in all things And then shall I say unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Take warning, for even some of you call me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say." That one in the position of Jesus-an unknown Galilæan; untrained in the schools; in early manhood; with no support from the learned or the powerful-should have used such words, in a discourse so transcendently lofty in its teachings, is to be explained only on the ground that He spoke with a Divine consciousness of being the Messiah, who should hereafter be the Judge of mankind. He calmly founds a kingdom in which the only rewards and punishments are those of the conscience here, and those of eternity, after death. He bears 1 L'Antechrist, p. 417. Herzog. vol. xi. p. 25. -3 Luke vi. 45. Himself, and speaks, as a King; supersedes or perfects the laws of the existing theocracy as He thinks best; invites adherents, but warns off all except the truly godly and sincere, by holding out the most discouraging prospects through life; keeps aloof from the civil or ecclesiastical authorities, and acts independently of both. Finally, as the one law of His invisible kingdom in the souls of men, He requires supreme love and devotion to Himself, and demands that this be shown by humble and continuous efforts after likeness to God, and by the imitation of His own pure and universal love to mankind. To have conceived a spiritual empire so unique in the history of religion, is to have proved His title to His highest claims. His concluding words are in keeping with these. He had announced that He would judge the world at the great day, and now makes hearty acceptance and performance of His commands the condition of future salvation or ruin. "Every one, therefore (now, or hereafter), who hears these sayings of mine and obeys them, is like a man, who, in building a house, digged deep, and laid a foundation upon the rock. And the winter rains fell,1 and the torrents rose, and the storms blew, and beat upon that house, and did not shake it, because it was well built, and had been founded upon the rock. But every one who hears them, and does not obey them, is like a foolish man, who, without a foundation, built his house upon the sandy earth. And the rain descended, and the torrents rushed down, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and straightway it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.' No wonder that, when He had finished such an address, the multitudes were astonished at His teaching. They had been accustomed to the tame and slavish servility of the Rabbiswith their dread of varying a word from precedent and authority; their cobwebbery of endless sophistries and verbal trifling; their laborious dissertations on the infinitely little; their unconscious oversight of all that could affect the heart; their industrious trackings through the jungle of tradition and prescription-and felt that in the preaching of Jesus, they, for the first time, had something that stirred their souls and came home to their consciences. One of the Rabbis had boasted that every verse of the Bible was capable of six hundred thousand different explanations, and 1 Keim, vol. ii. p. 32. Matt. vii. 24-27. Luke vi. 47-49. JEWISH INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 85 there were seventy different modes of interpretation current, but the vast mass of explanations and interpretations were no better than pedantic folly, concerning itself with mere insignificant minutia which had no bearing on religion or morals. Instead of this, Jesus had spoken as a legislator, vested with greater authority than Moses. To transmit, unchanged, the traditions received from the past, was the one idea of all other teachers; but He, while reverent, was not afraid to criticize, to reject, and to supplement. To venture on originality and independence was something hitherto unknown. The life of Jesus, in all its aspects, is the great lesson of humanity: His death is its hope. But there lies a wondrous treasure in His words. What but a pure and sinless soul could have conceived such an idea of God as the Father of mankind, drawing us to Himself by the attraction of holy and exhaustless love? "It could only rise," says Hausrath, "in a spirit that stood pure, guiltless and sinless before God -a spirit in which all human unrest and disturbance were unknown, on which there lay no sense of the littleness of life, no distracting feeling of disappointed ambition. Sinful man, with a stained or even uneasy conscience, will always think of God as jealous, wrathful, and about to avenge Himself. The revelation that God is the Father of men could rise only in a mind in which the image of God mirrored itself in calm completeness, because the mirror had no specks to mar it. The revelation of God as the Father is the strongest proof of the absolute perfection of the human nature in Jesus." 2 "He has left us not only a life, but a rich world of thoughts," says Keim,3 "in which all the best inspirations and longings of mankind meet and are reflected. It is the expression of the purest and directest truths which rise in the depths of the soul, and they are made common to all mankind by being uttered in the simplest and most popular form." 1 Eisenmenger's Entdecktes Jud., vol. i. pp. 453, 457. 3 Der Geschichtliche Christus, p. 184. JESU CHAPTER XXXVIII. OPEN CONFLICT. ESUS had now been some months in Galilee, and the season of the great feasts had returned. It was meet that Judea, which had rejected Him when He first preached in it, should be once more visited, and the news of the Kingdom once more sent abroad among the throngs of pilgrims from every part of the world, attracted at such times to Jerusalem. Leaving the north, therefore, for a time, He again journeyed south; perhaps by short stages, preaching as He went; perhaps with one of the bands of pilgrims which gathered from each neighbourhood to go up to "the House of the Lord." No voice would join with so rapt a devotion in the joyful solemnities of such a journey,-in the psalms that enlivened the way,- -or the formal devotions of morning and evening. But what feast it was He thus honoured is not told, nor are there means for deciding. That of Purim, a month before the Passover, the Passover itself, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles, have each found favour on plausible grounds, but where there is such contrariety of opinion, the safest course is to leave the matter unsettled." 1 Of the visit we know only one incident, but it was the turning point in the life of Our Lord. Jerusalem in those days was a contrast, in its water supply, as in much else, to the fallen glory of its present condition. Several natural springs seem to have flowed in the city or near it, in ancient times, but they have long been choked up, with the exception of the single "Fountain of the Virgin," still found in the Kedron valley. Besides this, there is now only a solitary well-that of Joab, at the junction of the Kedron and Hinnom valleys, near Siloam, south-east from the town. It was doubtless used in Christ's day, and it is still one 1 John v. 1-47. THE POOL OF BETHESDA. 87 of the principal sources of summer supply for Jerusalem, though, like everything else under the withering spell of Turkish rule, it is in such disrepair that its water, drawn from a depth of 125 feet, is tainted with sewage. The ancient supply, however, seems to have been mainly obtained by collecting the rainwater in pools and cisterns, and by aqueducts which drained distant hills, and brought abundance into the various public pools and reservoirs of the city and Temple, the space beneath which was honeycombed by immense rock-hewn cisterns. Many houses, also, had cisterns, hewn in the rock, in the shape of an inverted funnel, to collect the rain, but it was from the numerous "pools" that the public supply was mainly derived. Eight still remain, in more or less ruinous condition, and there appear to have been at least three others, in ancient times. One of the most famous of these, in Christ's day, was known as the Pool of Bethesda, which recent explorations appear to have re-discovered at the north-west corner of the Temple enclosure. If the identification be valid, the pool was a great reservoir, 165 feet in length, hewn in the limestone rock to a breadth of 48 feet, and divided in halves by a pier of masonry 5 feet thick, built across it. Water still enters it from the north-west corner, probably from an abundant spring, though now so mixed with sewage as to be unfit for drinking. Eusebius speaks of the Bethesda of his day as "twin pools, one of which is filled by the rains of the year, but the other has water tinged in an extraordinary way with red." This effect was likely produced by the rapid influx of water through underground channels, after heavy rains. It is said by St. John to have been close to the" Sheep Gate"-the entrance, doubtless, of the numerous flocks for the Temple market. Bathing in mineral waters has, in all ages, been regarded as one of the most potent aids to recovery from various diseases, and in the East, where water is everything, this belief has always prevailed. The Pool of Bethesda, from whatever cause, was in especial favour for its curative powers, which were supposed to be most effective when the waters were "troubled," either by the discolouration after heavy rains, or by periodical flowing after intermission, as is still the case with the Fountain of the Virgin, near Siloam.a 1 Onomasticon, quoted in Recov. of Jerusalem, p. 196. |