tasted wine. There was something perplexing and painful to him in these reports; and he had nothing else to do in his prison than brood over them. Was it possible that he could have made any mistake-could have fallen under any delusion in proclaiming his cousin Jesus as the promised Messiah? Had he truly heard a voice from heaven? Could this be indeed the Son of God, who mingled with common people at their feasts, and visited Samaritans? He, who all his life long had lived in the open air, free from even social restraints, was becoming morbid in his captivity. It grew necessary to him at last to send his disciples to Jesus for some comforting and reassuring message.

When John's disciples came to Jesus, they seem to have found him feasting with the publicans-a circumstance utterly foreign to their master's custom. They felt themselves more akin to the Pharisees, and asked him, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?" Jesus answered them that he was the bridegroom of whom John himself had spoken, and that as long as the bridegroom was with them they could not mourn. But the days would come when he should be taken away, and then they would fast. He would have no pretence at mourning or fasting to be seen of men. He would have no acting. These were days of joy, and it was meet to make merry and be glad when a brother who had been lost was found. Matthew was their brother, and he was restored to them; how could they mourn?

But Jesus kept John's disciples with him for a short time, that they might see how miracles were his everyday work, not merely a wonder performed in the synagogues on a Sabbath day, before sending them back to the poor prisoner in Herod's fortress. The next day was a Sabbath. The Pharisees kept closely beside Jesus, following him even when he and his disciples were walking through the fields of standing corn, possibly after the synagogue service, but before the Sabbath was ended. It was the second week of April, and the grain was growing heavy in the ear; perhaps a few cars of it were ripe, for in the lowlands about Capernaum it ripened earlier than in the uplands of Galilee. The disciples plucked the ears of corn, rubbing them in their hands with the careless ease of men who thought it no harm, and who had forgotten the captious Pharisees beside them. The latter accused them sharply of breaking the law, and aroused Jesus to defend them by giving them instances from their own Scriptures and observances of the law of Moses being broken without blame. Then, pausing to give more weight to his last words, he added, "The Son of man is Lord also

of the Sabbath." He did not acknowledge their authority to make laws for the Sabbath. Nay, more, he claimed to be Lord of it himself.

Without doubt this answer deepened the enmity and opposition of the Pharisees; nor can we wonder at it. There was now no middle course they could take. If they acknowledged Jesus to be a prophet sent from God, they must own him as Christ, the Messiah, with a Divine authority over their laws and traditions. He was setting these at defiance, asserting himself to be Lord of the temple and Lord of the Sabbath. John had made no such claims, though it was well known that his birth had been foretold by the angel Gabriel to Zacharias, his father, when he was ministering in the Holy Place. But John's career was at an end; and if Jesus was not taken out of the way he would turn the world upside down, and the Romans would bring them into utter subjection. Both religion and patriotism demanded that they should seek his death.

A day or two after this weekly Sabbath came a legal Sabbath, one of the holy days among the Jews. Jesus was in the synagogue; and there also, probably in a conspicuous place as if to catch his eye, sat a man with a withered hand. It seems almost as though he had been found and posted there in order to test Jesus. The Pharisees were growing eager to multiply accusations against him before they returned to Jerusalem for the approaching feast of the passover. Even they might feel that the sin of plucking ears of corn was not a very grave one. Here was a man for Jesus to heal. The case was not an urgent one; to-morrow would do as well as to-day for restoring the withered hand. But Jesus will show to them that any act of love and mercy is lawful on the Sabbath day, is, in fact, the most lawful thing to do. God causes his sun to shine, and his rain to fall, on that day as on any other. He looked round upon them all with their hard faces set against him; and he was grieved in his heart. Then, with the authority of a prophet, he bade the man stand up and stand forward in the midst of them. If they had been secretly plotting against him in bringing the man there, he was not afraid to face them openly. "Is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good or to do evil? to save life or to destroy it?" he asked. But the Pharisees from Jerusalem could not answer the question; and when he healed the man in the sight of all the people, they were filled with madness.

Possibly they had reckoned upon the miracle failing, for by this time it was understood that only those who believed in the power of Jesus could be healed, and they had not expected this man to have faith in him. It

seems that they left the synagogue at once, and though it was a Sabbath day they held a council against him how they might destroy him. They even entered into an alliance with the Herodians, their own opponents. For the Herodians favored the adoption of Roman laws and customs, against which the Pharisees had formed themselves into a distinct sect. But they

were now ready to join any party, or follow any plan, so that they might destroy this common eneiny.

It became impossible for Jesus to remain in Capernaum, and he left it immediately, probably the same evening, withdrawing to some mountain near the lake, where he continued all night in prayer to God. To a nature like his this bitter and pitiless enmity, aroused by acts of goodness only, must have been a terrible burden. They were his own people, not the heathen, who were hunting him to death-men who all their lives long had heard and read of God, his heavenly Father, who offered sacrifices to him, and gave tithes to his temple of all that they possessed. They knew, or ought to have known, what they were doing. There was no excuse of ignorance for them. All night he prayed, with the bright stars glittering above him in the blue sky, and the fresh breeze from the lake and the mountain, laden with the scent of flowers, breathing softly on his face. No sounds near him save the quiet sounds of night on the mountain side, and the wail of the curlew over the lake. This was better than sleep to him; and as the day dawned he was ready once more to meet his disciples, and to face the numerous duties coming with the sunrise.

His first act was to call his disciples to him, and from them he chose twelve to form for the future a group of attached followers and friends, who would go with him wherever he went and learn his message, so as to carry it to other lands when his own voice was silenced. Him his foes might and would destroy; but his message from God must not perish with him. Philip was one of them, he who had been with him from the first; and John, the youngest and most loved, who sat nearest to him at meal times, and who treasured up every word that fell from his lips, so that, when he came to write the history of his Lord, so many memories crowded to his brain of things Jesus had said and done, that he cried in loving despair, "All the world could not contain the books that might be written!"

Two at least, if not three, of our Lord's own family were amongst the chosen twelve: James, his cousin, of whom it is said he was so like Jesus as sometimes to be mistaken for him; and Judas not Iscariot, who, like the other kinsmen of Christ, asked him, even on the last night that he lived,

"Why wilt thou manifest thyself to us, and not unto the world?" Levi, if he was the son of Alpheus, was a third cousin, and each one wrote for us a portion of the New Testament. How much might these three have told us of his early life in Nazareth if no restraint had been laid upon them!

Then there was Peter, always the leader among the apostles, impatient and daring, so eager that he must always meet his Lord, and not wait for him to come to him; walking upon the sea, or casting himself into it to reach more quickly the shore where Jesus stood, exclaiming rapturously at one time, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," and at another, with oaths and curses, repeating, "I know not the man." Of the rest we know little, save one dark name, read amidst the blackest shadows of the past. Why did Jesus call Judas Iscariot? Why did he make him a familiar friend, in whom he trusted? They went up together into the house of God, and took sweet counsel together. He gave and received from Jesus the kiss of friendship. To him was intrusted the wealth of the little band, and every trifling want of his Master's he had to supply, an office that brought him into the closest intimacy with him. Why was he chosen for this service? Was he the eldest amid this company of young men? a wise, shrewd man, cautious and prudent, where others might have been rash or forgetful? We do not know; but whilst Peter, James, and John followed their Lord into the chamber of Jairus' little daughter and up to the Mount of Transfiguration, Judas had the bag, and bore what was put therein.

CHAPTER IX.
At Nain.

IT

T was broad daylight now, no time for secret assassination, and, surrounded by his twelve devoted friends, Jesus returned to Capernaum, where his mother would probably be waiting in a state of anxious restlessDess. As soon as it was known that he was entering the town, some of the rulers of the synagogue came to meet him, beseeching him to work a miracle in favor of a Roman centurion, whose servant was likely to die. The most bigoted amongst them could not deny that Jesus of Nazareth did many mighty works; and they could not decline to offer this petition to him when the centurion, who had built them a synagogue, commissioned them with it. The servant was healed without Jesus going to the house, the

centurion sending to say that he was not worthy that the Lord should enter under his roof. Even Jesus marvelled at the man's faith, and though he had just chosen twelve of his most trustworthy disciples, he cried, "I have not found so great a faith; no, not in Israel."

The next day, Jesus, followed by many disciples, both men and women, went out to visit the towns and villages lying westward of the hills which enclose the plain of Gennesaret. As he passed along his company grew in numbers, for every where had men heard of him, and those who had sick friends brought them out to the roadside that they might be healed. This day his journey was a long one, and he could not tarry by the way, except to work some such loving miracle. He was to rest in the little village of Nain that night; a place he knew quite well, for it was only five miles from Nazareth, and probably he had some friends there. Much people had gathered around him when he trod the steep path up to Nain; but before they reached the gate another multitude appeared coming out as if to meet them, yet there was no shout of welcome; instead there were cries and wailings for one whom they were carrying forth to the tombs outside the village.

Possibly Jesus knew both the young man who was dead and his mother. He hastened to her side, and said, "Weep not." Then he touched the bier, and those who were carrying it stood still. What was the prophet about to do? He could heal any kind of sickness, but this was death, not sickness. It was a corpse bound up, and swathed with grave-clothes; the eyes forever blinded to the light, and the ears too deaf to be unloosed. An awful silence must have fallen upon the crowd; and they heard a calm, quiet voice saying, "Young man, I say unto thee, Arise!" He spoke simply, in a few words only; but the quiet voice pierced through all the sealed deafness of death, and the dead sat up, and began to speak. Then Jesus, perhaps with his own hands freeing him from the grave-clothes, gave him back to his mother. A thrill of fear ran through all the crowd, and as they thronged into Nain some said, "A great prophet is risen up among us," and others, "God has visited his people."

It has been thought that here, at Nain, dwelt Simon the Pharisee, who now invited Jesus to his house to eat meat with him. He was not one of our Lord's enemies from Jerusalem, but merely a member of the sect, which was numerous throughout all Judæa and Galilee. He probably regarded Jesus as a workingman from the neighboring village of Nazareth, though now considered a prophet by the people: and he did not offer to