ning, their avarice, ambition, passion, or selfishness. It is, indeed, the noblest characteristic in this constant keen-sightedness, that amidst all the imperfections and faults prevailing, He never failed to evoke the hidden good which He often saw even in the most hopeless. Publicans and sinners were not rejected. Even in them He discovered a better self. In Zaccheus He sees a son of Abraham; in Mary Magdalene He gains a weeping penitent, and in the dying robber He welcomes back a returning prodigal. Nor was it mere intellectual penetration that thus laid bare the secrets of every heart. His search of the bosom is pervaded throughout with the breath of the warmest love. As the brother and friend of all, who has come to seek and to save that which was lost, He looks at men with eyes of infinite pity, whatever their race.

The life of Nazareth, in its quiet and obscurity, is passed over in a few lines by the Evangelists; but in the counsels of God it had its full and all-wise purpose, from first to last, as a preparation for the great work of the closing years of our Lord's life. We cannot conceive of Him otherwise than as furnished from His first appearance in the world with all that was needful in its Saviour: as the incarnation of the divine Word, though for a time silent; the Light which should shine in darkness, though still, for a time, concealed. He must have been marked out from all around Him by His higher spiritual nature, and separated by it from all fellowship with evil. Yet, in His human nature, there must have been the same gradual development, as in other men; such a development as, by its even and steadfast advance, made His life apparently in nothing different from that of His fellow townsmen, else they would not have felt the wonder at Him which they afterwards evinced. The laws and processes of ordinary human life must have been left to mould and form His manhood-the same habits of inquiry; the same need of the collision of mind with mind; of patience during long expectation; of reconciliation to home duties and daily self-denials; of calm strength that leans only upon God. He must have looked out on the world of men from the calm retreat of those years as He, doubtless, often did on the matchless landscape from the hill above the village. The strength and weakness of the systems of the day; the lights and shadows of the human world, would be watched and noted with never-tiring survey, as were the hills and valleys, the clouds and sunshine of the scene around. Year after year passed, and still found Him at His daily toil, because His hour was not yet come. In gentle patience, in transparent blamelessness of life; in natural and ever-active goodness; in tender love and ready favour to all around; loved, honoured, but half veiled in the mysterious light of perfect manhood and kindling divinity, thirty years passed quietly away.

CHAPTER XVII.

LIFE UNDER THE LAW.

BESIDES the humbler schools of the towns and villages, there were others in Jerusalem, and in some of the larger centres of population, in the days of Christ, in which a higher education was given by the Rabbis the learned class of the nation. There was nothing, however, to attract Jesus to such schools, though He had been so eager in His attendance during His first brief visit to Jerusalem. It may be that even so short a trial was enough to show Him how little could be gained from them.

The wonderful revival of Judaism under Ezra and his associates had had the most lasting effect on the nation. An order known, indifferently, as "Scribes," "Teachers of the Law," or "Rabbis.' gradually rose, who devoted themselves to the study of the Law exclusively, and became the recognized authorities in all matters connected with it. It had been a command of the Great Synagogue that those who were learned in the Law should zealously teach it to younger men, and, thus, schools rose, erelong, in which famous Rabbis gathered large numbers of students. The supreme distinction accorded to the Rabbi in society at large, in which he was by far the foremost personage: the exaggerated reverence claimed for his office by his order itself, and sanctioned by the superstitious homage of the people; the constant necessity for reference to its members, under a religion which prescribed rules for every detail of social or private life, and, not least, the fact that the dignity of a Rabbi was open to the humblest who acquired the necessary learning, made the schools very popular. As the son of a peasant, in the middle ages, if he entered the Church, might rise above the haughtiest noble, the son of a Jewish villager might rise above even the high priest, by becoming a Rabbi. It was, doubtless, remembered, in Christ's day, that some sixty years before, when the high priest had been returning from the Temple after the service of the Day of Atonement, attended, according to custom, by a crowd, to congratulate him on his having come safely from the terrors of the Awful Presence, and to escort him to his dwelling-two Rabbis having chanced to pass by, the people left the high priest, greatly to his indignation, and paid reverence, instead, to the Teachers of the Law. The most abject prostration of intellect and soul before any priesthood never surpassed that of the Jew before the Rabbi. From their scholars the Rabbis demanded the most profound rever"The honour," says the Talmud, "due to a Teacher borders on that due to God." If a choice were necessary between one's father and a Rabbi, the Rabbi must have the preference. A father has only brought him into the world, but the Rabbi, who teaches him wisdom,

ence.

brings him to the life hereafter. If one's father and a Rabbi be carrying burdens, the burden of the Rabbi must be carried for him, and not that of the father. If one's father and a Rabbi be both in prison, the Rabbi must first be redeemed, and only then, the father. The common discourse of a Rabbi was to be reverenced as much as the Law. To dispute with one, or murmur against him, was a crime as great as to do the same towards the Almighty. Their words must be received as words of the living God. As in the blind passive obedi ence required from the Jesuits, a scholar of the Rabbis was required to accept what his master taught, if he said that the left hand was the right. A scholar who did not rise up before his Rabbi could not hope to live long, because "he feareth not before God." It was a principle universally accepted that " the sayings of the Scribes were weightier than those of the Law."

The transmission of the as yet unwritten opinions of former Rabbis -forming an ever-growing mass of tradition--was the special aim of the Rabbis of each age. In the course of centuries many of the Mosaic laws had become inapplicable to the altered state of things, and as their literal observance had become impossible, new prescriptions began to be invented, after the Return, to perpetuate their spirit. Many were virtually obsolete: others required careful exposition by the Rabbis. The comments thus delivered formed, as time rolled on, a great body of unwritten law, which claimed equal authority with the law of Moses, and was necessarily known in any full degree only by the professional Rabbis, who devoted their lives to its study. It might be increased, but could never be altered or superseded in any particular. Once uttered, a Rabbi's words remained law for ever, though they might be explained away and virtually ignored, while affected to be followed.

Uniformity of belief and ritual practice was the one grand design of the founders of Judaism; the moulding the whole religious life of the nation to such a machine-like discipline as would make any variation from the customs of the past well-nigh impossible. A universal, death-like conservatism, permitting no change in successive ages, was established, as the grand security for a separate national existence, by its isolating the Jew from all other races, and keeping him for ever apart. For this end, not only was that part of the Law which concerned the common life of the people-their Sabbaths, feast days, jubilees, offerings, sacrifices, tithes, the Temple and Synagogue worship, civil and criminal law, marriage, and the like--explained, commented on, and minutely ordered by the Rabbis, but also that portion of it which related only to the private duties of individuals in their daily religious life. Their food, their clothes, their journeys, their occupations: indeed, every act of their lives, and almost their every thought, were brought under Rabbinical rules. To perpetuate the Law, a "hedge" of outlying commands was set round it, which, in Christ's day, had become so 'heavy and grievous a burden," that even the

Talmud denounces it as a vexatious oppression. So vast had the accumulation of precepts become, by an endless series of refined deductions from the Scriptures-often connected with them only by a very thin thread at best-that the Rabbis themselves have compared their laws on the proper keeping of the Sabbath to a mountain which hangs on a hair.

In the later Grecian age, when heathen culture was patronized by the Sadducean high priests, and foreign customs were in increasing favour with the people, the Rabbis, who were the zealots or puritans of Judaism, sought to stem the flood of corruption, by enforcing increased strictness in the observance of the multitudinous precepts they had already established. From that time unconditional obedience was required to every Rabbinical law.

A system which admitted no change: in which the least originality of thought was heresy: which required the mechanical labour of a lifetime to master its details, and which occupied its teachers with the most trifling casuistry, could have only one result-to degenerate, to a great extent, into puerilities and outward forms.

It would be wearisome and uninteresting to quote, at any great length, illustrations of the working of such a scheme of ecclesiastical tyranny, in daily life, but an example or two will show the system to which Jesus opposed the freedom of a spiritual religion. It is difficult to realize the condition of a people who had submitted to such mental and bodily bondage.

One of the great questions discussed by the Rabbis was ceremonial purity and defilement, a subject so wide that it gave rise to countless rules. Uncleanness could be contracted in many ways; among others, by the vessels used in eating, and hence it was a vital matter to know what might be used, and what must be avoided. In hollow dishes of clay or pottery, the inside and bottom contracted and caused uncleanness, but not the outside, and they could only be cleansed by breaking. The pieces, however, might still defile, and hence it was keenly discussed how small the fragments must be to ensure safety. If a dish or vessel had contained a lôg of oil, a fragment could still defile that held as much oil as would anoint the great toe; if it had held from a lôg to a seah, the fragment, to be dangerous, must hold the fourth of a lôg; if it had held from two or three seahs to five, a piece of it could defile if it held a lôg. As, however, hollow earthen vessels contracted uncleanness only on the inside, not on the out, some could not become unclean-as, for instance, a flat plate without a rim, an open coal shovel, a perforated roaster for wheat or grain, brick-moulds, and so On the other hand, a plate with a rim, a covered coal shovel, a dish with raised divisions inside, an earthen spice-box, or an inkstand with any divisions, may become unclean. Flat dishes of wood, leather, bone, or glass, do not contract uncleanness, but hollow ones might do so, not only like earthen ones, inside, but also outside. If they are broken they are clean, but the broken part is unclean if large enough

on.

to hold a pomegranate. If a chest, or cupboard, wants a foot, it is clean, whatever its size, and a three-footed table, wanting even two feet, is clean, but it may be made unclean if wanting the whole three feet, and the flat top be used as a dish. A bench which wants one of the side boards, or even the two, is clean, but if a piece remain a handbreadth wide, it may defile. If the hands are clean, and the outside of a gobiet unclean, the hands are not defiled by the outside, if the goblet be held by the proper part. Everything of metal, that has a special name, may defile, except a door, a door bolt, a lock, a hinge, or a door knocker. Straight blowing horns are clean; others may defile. If the mouthpiece is of metal, it may defile. If a wooden key have metal teeth, it may defile, but if the key be of metal and the teeth of wood, it is clean.

The removal of uncleanness was no less complicated. Even the kind of water to be used for the different kinds of cleansing, for sprinkling the hands, for dipping vessels into, and for purifying baths for the person, caused no little dispute. Six kinds of water were distinguished, each of higher worth than the other. First-A pool, or the water in a pit, cistern, or ditch, and hill water that no longer flows, and collected water, of not less quantity than forty seahs, if it has not been defiled, is suitable for preparing the heave-offering of dough, or for the legal washing of the hands. Second-Water that still flows may be used for the heave-offering (Teruma), and for washing the hands. Third-Collected water, to the amount of forty seahs, may be used for a bath for purification, and for dipping vessels into. Fourth-A spring with little water, to which water that has been drawn is added, is fit for a bath, though it do not flow, and is the same as pure spring water, in so far that vessels may be cleansed in it, though there be only a little water. Fifth-Flowing water which is warm, or impregnated with minerals, cleanses by its flowing; and lastly, sixth-Pure spring water may be used as a bath by those who have sores, or for sprinkling a leper, and may be mixed with the ashes of purification.

These general principles formed the basis of an endless detail of casuistry. Thus, the Mischna discourses, at wearisome length, under what circumstances and conditions "collected water"—that is, rain, spring, or flowing water, that is not drawn, but is led into a reservoir directly, by pipes or channels-may be used for bathing, and for the immersion of vessels; and the great point is decided to be that no drawn water shall have mixed with it. A fourth of a log of drawn water in the reservoir, beforehand, makes the water that afterwards falls or runs into it unfit for a bath, but it requires three lôg of drawn water to do this, if there were water already in the reservoir. If any vessels are put under the pipe emptying itself into the bath, it becomes drawn water, and is unfit for a bath. Shammai's school made it the

same whether the vessel were set down on purpose, or only forgotten; but Hillel's school decided that if it had been forgotten, the water