agogue, who made the Mondays and Thursdays, on which service was held, their days of fasting; who paraded a show of long prayers or of liberal alms; and eagerly pressed forward to the front seats, where they would be most in honour, and would be most likely to be called up to speak. As He grew older He would meet, in turn, in the synagogue, every shade of the religion of the day,-the strictness of the school of Shammai, and the mildness of that of Hillel; Jewish bigotry, and Galilæan freedom and tolerance; the latitudinarianism of the Sadducee, or the puritanical strictness of the Essene. The great doctrines of ceremonial purity, of the righteousness of works, of the kingdom of God, and of the coming redemption of Israel, would sound in His ears Sabbath by Sabbath, giving Him much to retain and still more to reject. In the synagogue He came in contact with the religious life of His race, in its manifold aspects. We see, in His public life, how the crowds that gathered round Him, as the new Rabbi of Israel, entered into conversation with Him on the subjects of His discourse, or commented on them afterwards, and He had, no doubt, done much the same with the teachers He heard in His earlier years. The Rabbis whom He met in the synagogues, in the markets, or at meals, were accustomed to exchange question and answer with all, and must often have had to reply to His searching questions, and deep insight into Scripture. Nor would the longing of the people at large, for the vengeance of God on the oppressors of the nation escape His notice. As a man in all things like other men, except in His sinlessness-the synagogue with its services, and the free expression of thought, both in public and private, which it favoured, must have been one of the chief agencies in developing His

human nature.

CHAPER XIV.

SOCIAL INFLUENCES.

AMONG the influences amidst which the child Jesus grew up at Nazareth, the Synagogue, with its constantly recurring services, was, no doubt, one of the most important. It was a characteristic of Jewish life, however, that its religion was interwoven with the whole tissue of daily events, from the cradle to the grave.

The Jewish ecclesiastical calendar, with its cycle of feasts, halffeasts and fasts, must have had a great effect in colouring the general mind, and perpetuating the system and sentiments which they illustrated. There were four different reckonings of the Hebrew yearthat which commenced with the first day of Nisan, and was known as "the year of kings and feasts;" a second, which dated from the first of Elul-that is, from the full moon of August-from which the year was calculated for the tithing of cattle; a third, from the first day of Tisri-that is, from the new moon of September-from which

the years from the creation of the world were reckoned; and a fourth, from the first day of the eleventh month, Schebet-from which the age of trees was counted, for the payment of tithes, and for noting the time when it became lawful to eat the fruit.

The stir made to catch the first glimpse of the new moon would be a great event each month, even in a retired place like Nazareth. Jesus would hear, how, on the last day of each month, men were posted on all the heights round Jerusalem to watch for it; how they hastened, at the utmost speed, to the Temple, with the news, even if it were Sabbath, and how the sacred trumpet sounded to announce it, and special sacrifices were offered. The appearance of the new moon had in all ages been a great day in Israel, as it also was among the Greeks and Romans. The Rabbis affirmed that God Himself had spoken of it to Moses, and told him how to observe it. All over the land it was celebrated, monthly, by special religious solemnities, and by universal rejoicing; in some months more than in others; every one in Jerusalem, who could, repairing to the Temple, and all, elsewhere, making it a point to attend the synagogue on that day. In the fondly remembered times of the past, the day of the new moon had been that on which, especially, the people flocked to the prophets to receive instruction, and on which their ancestors, at some periods, had been wont to worship, from their roofs, the returning light, as that of the Queen of Heaven.

Many things would impress this event on the Nazareth children. They doubtless noticed how all the men of the village watched from their doors, each month, for the new light, and they had often heard their fathers, with covered head, repeat the prayer still used by every pious Jew at first seeing it-"Blessed be Thou, Lord, our God! who, through Thy Word, didst create the heavens, and their whole host, by the breath of Thy mouth. He appointed them a law and time that they should not go back from their places. Joyfully and gladly they fulfil the will of their Creator, whose working and whose works are truth. He spoke to the moon, and commanded her that she should renew herself in glory and splendour, for those whom He has carried from their mother's breast, for they, too, will be one day renewed like her, and glorify their Creator after the honour of His kingdom. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, who renewest the moons. Nor would the simple household feast that followed be unnoticed, with its invited guests, nor the Sabbath rest of all from their daily work, for it must have been a welcome monthly holiday to the school children of Nazareth.

The great festival of the Hebrew year-the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread-began on the 15th day of Nisan, the first month, and lasted till the 22nd. It was one of the three yearly feasts which every Israelite, if he could, attended in Jerusalem Like circumcision, which, indeed, was hardly thought so sacred, its due observance was esteemed a vital necessity, on no account to be neg

lected in any year. It was the annual sacrament of the whole Jewish race. The Passover lamb was the one offering which all presented spontaneously. It not only commemorated a national deliverance the " passing over" of Israel by the destroying angel, but was believed to secure the same mercy for themselves hereafter. Every one regarded it as a debt he owed, and must by all means pay, if he would be counted worthy of a part in the congregation of Israel. It was, in fact, a household sacrifice, which each family offered on its own behalf, that its transgressions through the year might be "passed over. Even till the later ages of Jewish history the father of each household himself killed the male lamb or goat required, and sprinkled the blood on the lintel and doorposts, as an expiation for the family as a whole, and for any who might have joined them in keeping the feast.

Pious Israelites were careful to accustom their children, from the earliest years, to the requirements of their religion, and hence often brought them with them to Jerusalem at the great feasts. Indeed, even the liberal school of Hillel made it binding to do so as soon as a child was able, with the help of its father's hand, to climb the flight of steps into the Temple courts.

The Passover itself was eaten only by males, but the week of the feast was a time of universal rejoicing, so that husbands were wont to take their wives, as well as their sons, with them.

Joseph and Mary went to Jerusalem, every year, to the Passover, and took Jesus with them, for the first time, when He was twelve years old. Like His cousin John, He had grown in mind and body, and showed a sweet religious spirit. The journey must have been the revelation of a new world to Him-a world, beyond the hills of Samaria, which had hitherto seemed the limit of the earth, as He looked away to them from the hill-top behind Nazareth.

Only a Jew could realize the feelings such a visit must have raised even in a child. Jerusalem, to the Israelite, was more, if possible, than Mecca is to the Mahommedan. The whole "land of Israel," was "holy," since it, only, couid offer to God the first-fruits, or the firstborn, or the "perpetual" shewbread. Its walled towns were still "holier." No leper was allowed in them, and a corpse carried out to burial could not be brought into a town again. But Jerusalem, the sacred city, the seat of the Temple, had a sanctity all its own. By Rabbinical laws, which, however, were, doubtless, often neglected, even holy offerings, of the lower kinds, and second tithes, might be eaten in it. The dead must be carried out before sunset of the day of death. No houses could be let for lodgings, and no sepulchres, except those of the house of David, and of Huldah, the prophetess, had been tolerated. No impurity was suffered, lest creeping things should defile the holy city; nor could scaffolds be set up against the walls, for a similar fear of defilement. Smoke from household fires was forbidden; poultry were unlawful, because they scratched

up the soil, and might defile passing offerings; no leper could enter the gates; gardens were prohibited, because the decaying leaves and the manure would make an offensive smell. Superstition had invented the most amazing fancies, as proofs of the passing holiness of the city in its whole extent, and these were, doubtless, universally and implicitly believed. It was maintained that no serpent or scorpion ever harmed any one in Jerusalem; that no fly was ever seen in the place for slaughtering the sacrifices; that no rain ever put out the fire of the altar, and that no wind ever blew aside the pillar of smoke over the altar. But the hospitality of the holy city was less open to question; for it was a common boast that no one had ever failed to find friendly entertainment, or a hearth on which to roast his passover. However churlish to all besides, the hospitality of the citizens to their own nation was unbounded.

But if the city were holy, it was mainly so because of the far greater holiness of the sanctuary within its bounds. The Temple mountain held the fourth place in local holiness. The ceremonially unclean could not enter it. The space between the court of the heathen and the inner courts-the Zwinger, or Chel-ranked next; none but Israelites could enter it, and not even they, if defiled by a dead body. The women's court came next. No unclean person, even after bathing, could enter it till sunset. The Forecourt of the Israelites was still holier. No one could go into it who needed expiation to be made for him. Even the clean must bathe before entering, and any unclean person intruding, through oversight, must atone for his error by a trespass-offering. The Forecourt of the Priests was yet more sacred. None but the priests or Levites could cross its threshold, except on special occasions, specified by the Law. The space between the altar and the Temple had a still greater sanctity, for, into it, no priest with any bodily defect, or with his hair in disorder, or with a torn robe, or who had tasted wine, could enter. The Temple itself stood apart, in the tenth and highest degree of sanctity. Before entering it, every priest had to wash both hands and feet. In this revered centre, however, there was one spot more awful than all the rest-the Holy of Holies, which the high priest alone could enter, and he only once a year, on the great Day of Atonement, in the performance of the rites of the day, which required his entering it four times.

Such a country and city could not fail to be the objects of abiding and passionate sentiment. Affection for their native land led to the unique historical phenomenon of the return of the exiles from Babylon. Many psalms of the period still record how the captives wept by the rivers of Babylon when they remembered Zion, and hung their harps on the willows of their banks; and the same intense longing for Palestine is illustrated even yet, by the fond fancy of the Targum that the bodies of the righteous Jews who die in foreign lands, make their way, under ground, to the Mount of Olives, to share in the resurrection of the just, of which it is to be the scene. The wailing of

the Jews of Jerusalem over their ruined Temple, as they lean against the few stones of it which yet remain, shows the same feeling, and it is shared by all the race so strongly, that some earth from the land of their fathers is sprinkled on the grave of every Jew that dies away from it, to make him rest in peace.

Love of their mother-land, however, was not especially that which linked the Jews of all countries in Christ's day into a great brotherhood, and attracted them continually to Jerusalem, for they were voluntarily settled, far and wide, in foreign lands. Nor was it their longing for freedom and independence, for they were contented subjects of all forms of government. Their eyes were everywhere turned to the Temple, and they found in it the centre of their national unity. Their heavenly and earthly fatherland seemed to meet in its sacred enclosure. From all the earth, wherever a Jew lived, rose the same cry as that of the exiles at the sources of the Jordan. "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God? I pour out my soul in me when I remember these things— how I went with the pilgrim bands, and marched up with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise; with the festive crowd!" To the Jews of every land it was the crown and glory of their religious system. In their scattered synagogues and houses of prayer they looked towards it at every service. Their gifts and offerings flowed to it in a golden stream, partly to satisfy the requirements of the Law, but even more to gratify their religious devotion. Every Jew over twenty throughout the world gave his didrachma yearly—in payment of the first-fruits required by the Law-to maintain the Temple and its sacrifices. Constant voluntary gifts, besides, often of great value, streamed into the holy treasury. Tithes, also, were claimed by the Rabbis from all Jews abroad as well as at home, and were doubtless given by the devout. "In almost every town," says Philo, "there is a chest for the sacred money, and into this the dues are put. At fixed times it is entrusted to the foremost men to carry it to Jerusalem. The noblest are chosen from every town to take up the Hope of all Jews, untouched, for on this payment of legal dues rests the hope of the devout." Egypt, though it had a Temple of its own at Leontopolis, sent this yearly tribute regularly; it came constantly from Rome and all the West; from Lesser Asia and all Syria. But it flowed in the richest stream from Babylonia and the countries beyond the Euphrates, from which it was brought up under the protection of thousands, who volunteered to escort it to Jerusalem, and protect it from plunder by the Parthians on the way.

Thus Jerusalem and the Temple were the grand religious centre of all Israel, to the remotest limits of its wanderings. The Sanctuary lived in every heart. To maintain it inviolate was the one common anxiety. Foreign rulers might hold sway over Palestine, and even over Jerusalem, and so long as the Temple was left untouched, sub