oh, how often, thou mother of many children, would I have gathered them all round me safely, from the dangers before them; as the careful hen calls together her brood when the shadow of evil falls near, and spreads her wings over them, and guards them from every harm! But thou wouldst not let me do thee this service. For what shall come on thee thou must, thyself, bear the blame! The divine protection I would have given thee thou hast refused and hast lost, nor will I appear in thy desolation as thy helper. Thou wilt not see me till I come to set up in thee my Kingdom, and receive thy homage, no longer to be denied,- -as the Messiah, the Blessed, who comes in the name of the Lord!"

CHAPTER LIV.

IN PEREA (Continued).

THE lofty demands of Jesus from His followers had filled the Twelve with doubts and misgivings of their power to fulfil them. A continuous self-denial, which thought only of their Master, and a patient love which returned meekness and good for evil and injury, were graces slowly attained; how much more so when they could only strike root in the heart after the dislodgement of hereditary prej. udices and modes of thought?

A sense of weakness had already led them to ask that their faith in Jesus as the Messiah; able to aid them in all their straits and trials; might be strengthened. The utterance of that faith in prayer was no less necessary, at once to obtain the grace needed to bear them through difficulties, and to raise them to a steadfast confidence in the triumphant manifestation of their Master's Kingdom, of which He had more than once spoken. Lest they should grow slack in this great duty, He reminded them that their whole frame of mind should be one of habitual devotion, that they might not become faint-hearted, and give way before the trials they might have to suffer, or at the seeming delay in His coming. His words, as usual, took the form of a parable.

"There was in a city," said He, 'a judge, who neither feared God nor reverenced man. And there was also a widow in that city who had an enemy from whom she could hope to get free only by the interposition of the judge. So she came often to him, asking him to do justice to her, and maintain her right against her adversary. But he paid no attention, for a long time, to her suit. At last, however, he could bear her constant coming no longer, and said within himself— "Though I should do it as my duty, that does not trouble me, for I do not pretend to fear God, and care nothing for man. Yet this widow torments me. I shall therefore do what is right in her case for my own sake, for otherwise she will perfectly weary me by her constant appeals.

"So, the widow, by her importunity, obtained her end, at last. “Hear what the unjust judge says! But if men thus get what is right, even from the worst, if they urge their suit long enough, with sufficient earnestness; how can any one doubt that God, the Righteous One, will give heed to the cry of His Saints for all they have to suffer? Will He not much rather, though He let the enemy rage for what seems a long time, surely, at the great day, avenge the wrongs of His elect, who are so dear to Him, and thus cry in prayer night and day?

"I tell you, He will be patient towards them, though they thus cry to Him continually, for He is not wearied with their complaints, as the unjust judge was with those of the widow; and He will deliver them from their enemies, without and within, and give them a portion in the Kingdom of the Messiah, and that speedily. For when the Messiah comes it will seem as if the waiting for Him had only been brief. But when He thus comes, will He find any who still look for Him, and believe that the promise of His return will be fulfilled? Will my disciples endure to the end; or can it be that they will fall away before all their trials?"

To one of these last days in Perea we are indebted for the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. Jesus had spoken much of prayer, but the religion of the day was so largely mechanical, that they were in danger of mistaking the outward form for the substance. Only repeated lessons could guard them from the lifeless formality of the Rabbis, with whom the most sacred duties had sunk to cold outward rites. Self-righteous pride, moreover, was the characteristic of much of the current religiousness, and was, in fact, a natural result of the externalism prevailing. To show the true nature of devotion pleasing to God, He related the following parable:

"Two men," said He, "went up at the same time, the hour of prayer, to the Temple, to pray. The one was a Pharisee, the other a Publican. The Pharisce, who had seen the Publican enter the Temple with him, stood apart; his eyes towards the Holy of Holies, and began to pray thus-'O God, I thank Thee that I do not belong to the common multitude of mankind, whom Thou hast rejected-to the covetous, the unjust, the adulterous. I thank Thee that I am not what so many men are, what this Publican, here before Thee, is. He knows nothing of fasting or of tithes, but I fast every Monday and every Thursday, and I give the Priests and Levites the tenth, not only of all I have, but of all I may gain, which is more than the Law requires.` "The Publican, meanwhile, feeling that he was a sinner, stopped far behind the Pharisee, coming no further into the sacred court, than its very edge; for he shrank from a near approach to God. Nor could he dare, in his lowly penitence, to lift up so much as his eyes to heaven, far less his head and his hands, but, with bent head, smote on his breast in his sorrow, and said-'God be merciful to me the sinner.' "The Pharisee had offered only a proud, cold thanksgiving for his own merits; the Publican an humble cry for mercy.

"Believe me, this Publican, whom the Pharisee gave a place among the extortionate, the unjust and the impure, received favour from God, and returned to his home forgiven and accepted; but the Pharisee went away unjustified. For, as I have often said, every one who thinks highly of himself in religious things will be humbled before God, and he who humbles himself will be honoured before Him."

Among the questions of the day fiercely debated between the great rival schools of Hillel and Schammai, no one was more so than that of divorce. The school of Hillel contended that a man had a right to divorce his wife for any cause he might assign, if it were no more than his having ceased to love her, or his having seen one he liked better, or her having cooked a dinner badly. The school of Schammai, on the contrary, held that divorce could be issued only for the crime of adultery, and offences against chastity. If it were possible to get Jesus to pronounce in favour of either school, the hostility of the other would be roused, and, hence, it seemed a favourable chance for compromising Him, to broach this subject for His opinion.

Some of the Pharisees, therefore, took an opportunity of raising the question. "Is it lawful," they asked, "to put away one's wife, when a man thinks fit, for any cause he is pleased to assign? Or, do you think there are exceptions to this rule?"

There could be no doubt that the lofty morality of Jesus would condemn a mere human custom which was corrupting the whole civil and domestic life of the nation, and undermining all honour, chastity, and love. He had already answered the question fully, in the Sermon on the Mount, in which He had taught that arbitrary divorce was not permitted; but that was long since, and He was now in a different part of the country. It was quite in accordance with the habit of the day to appeal to any Rabbi on a disputed religious question, or scruple, on lighter or weightier points; it gratified the universal love for controversy, and gave an opportunity for showing dialectical wit and sharpness. But the questioners gained little by trying their skill on Jesus. "Have you never read," answered He, "that the Creator of men made man and woman at the same time, in the very beginning of our race, and gave them to each other as husband and wife? And do you not know that so intimate was the relation thus instituted, that, close though the connection be between parents and children, God has said that that between man and wife is so much closer, that a son, who, before, was under his parents, and was bound more closely to them than to any other persons in the world, is to separate himself from his father and mother when he marries, and to form a still nearer relationship with his wife—such a relationship that the two shall become, as it were, one. As soon as a man and woman are married, therefore, the two make, together, only one being. But since it is God who has joined them thus, divorce is the putting asunder by man of what God has made into one. Marriage is a sacred union, and man is not to regard it as something which he can undo at his pleasure.'

Nothing could be said against this from natural grounds, but the objection lay ready that the Law of Moses was not so strict, and a prospect offered of forcing Jesus either to contradict Himself, or to pronounce openly against the great founder of the nation. "If this be so," said they, how comes it that Moses permitted a man to divorce his wife? for you know that he says that writings of divorcement might be given where a divorce was wished, and these dissolved the marriage.'

66

Moses," replied our Lord, "did, indeed, suffer you to put away your wives, to prevent a greater evil. He did so as a statesman and a law-giver, from the necessities of the age, which made any better law impracticable. Our fathers were too rude and headstrong to permit his doing more. But, though he did not prohibit divorce, because the feelings of the times did not allow him to do so, it does not follow from this that his action in this matter was the original law of the Creator, or that conscience and religion sanction such separations. I say, therefore, that whoever puts away his wife, except for fornication, which destroys the very essence of marriage by dissolving the oneness it had formed, and shall marry another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is put away for any other cause commits adultery, because the woman is still, in God's sight, wife of him who has divorced her."

This statement was of far deeper moment than the mere silencing of malignant spies. It was designed to set forth for all ages the law of His New Kingdom in the supreme matter of family life. It swept away for ever from His Society the conception of woman as a mere toy or slave of man, and based true relations of the sexes on the eternal foundation of truth, right, honour, and love. To ennoble the House and the Family by raising woman to her true position was essential to the future stability of His Kingdom, as one of purity and spiritual worth. By making marriage indissoluble He proclaimed the equal rights of woman and man within the limits of the family, and, in this, gave their charter of nobility to the mothers of the world. For her nobler position in the Christian era, compared with that granted her in antiquity, woman is indebted to Jesus Christ.

When an opportunity offered, the disciples asked fuller instruction on a matter so grave. Customs or opinions, supported, apparently, by a national law, and that law divine; customs, the rightness of which has never before been doubted, are hard to uproot, however good the grounds on which they are challenged. Hence, even the Twelve felt the strictness of the new law introduced by their Master respecting marriage, and frankly told Him, that if a man were bound to his wife as He had said, it seemed to them better not to marry. "With respect to marrying or not marrying," replied Christ, 'your saying that it is good for a man not to do so is one which cannot be received by all men, but only by those to whom the moral power to act on it has been given by God. Some do not marry from

natural causes, and there are some who voluntarily keep in the single state, that they may give themselves with an entire devotion to the service of my Kingdom. Let him among you who feels able to act on the lofty principle of denying himself the nobility and holiness of family. life, that he may with more entire devotion consecrate himself to my service, do so.' Self-sacrifice, in this, as in all things, was left by Jesus to the conscience and heart. Even His apostles were left free to marry or remain single, as they chose, nor can any depreciation of the married state be wrung from His words, except by a manifest perversion of their spirit.

It is significant that, in the South as in Galilee, the mothers of households, though not expressly named, turned with peculiar tenderness and reverence to the new Prophet and Rabbi. They were doubtless encouraged to do so by the sight of the women who now, as always, accompanied Him on His journeys; but the goodness that beamed in His looks, and breathed in His every word, drew them still more. Indifferent to the hard and often worthless disputes and questions which engaged the other sex, they sought only a blessing on the loved ones of their hearts and homes, contented if Jesus would lay His hands on their infants, and utter over them a word of blessing.

66

A beautiful custom led parents to bring their children at an early age to the Synagogue, that they might have the prayers and blessings of the elders. After the father of the child," says the Talmud, "had laid his hands on his child's head, he led him to the elders, one by one, and they also blessed him, and prayed that he might grow up famous in the Law, faithful in marriage, and abundant in good works." Children were thus brought, also, to any Rabbi of specialholiness, and hence they had been presented already more than once before Jesus. Now, on this, His last journey, little children were again brought to Him that He might put His hands on them, and pray for a blessing on their future life. To the disciples, however, it seemed only troubling their Master, and they chid the parents for bringing them. But the feeling of Christ to children was very different from theirs. To look into their innocent artless eyes must have been å relief after enduring those of spies and malignant enemies. He Himself had the ideal childlike spirit, and He delighted to see in little ones His own image. Purity, truthfulness, simplicity, sincerity, docility, and loving dependence shone out on Him from them, and made them at all times His favourite types for His followers. The Apostles needed the lessons their characteristics impressed, and though He had enforced them before, He gladly took every opportunity of repeating them.

'Let the little children come to me," said Jesus, "and do not forbid them, for the Kingdom of Heaven is given only to such as have a childlike spirit and nature like theirs." Instead of being too young for the bestowal of His blessing, He saw in their simplicity and inno