therefore become the Christian holyday. The Passover which He had been keeping would in three years time become the Feast of the Resurrection, and it was in anticipation of the coming Easter Sunday and its hopes that He said :—

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation but is passed from death unto life.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.

LESSON XXXIV.

THE LORD OF THE SABBATH.

A.D. 29.—LUKE vi. I—II.

And it came to pass on the second sabbath after the first, that he went through the corn fields; and his disciples plucked the ears of corn, and did eat, rubbing them in their hands.

And certain of the Pharisees said unto them, Why do ye that which is not lawful to do on the sabbath days?

And Jesus answering them said, Have ye not read so much as this, what David did, when himself was an hungred, and they which were with him ; How he went into the house of God, and did take and eat the shewbread, and gave also to them that were with him; which it is not lawful to eat but for the priests alone?

And he said unto them, That the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath. And it came to pass also on another sabbath, that he entered into the synagogue and taught: and there was a man whose right hand was withered.

And the scribes and Pharisees watched him, whether he would heal on the sabbath day; that they might find an accusation against him.

But he knew their thoughts, and said to the man which had the withered hand, Rise up, and stand forth in the midst. And he arose and stood forth.

Then said Jesus unto them, I will ask you one thing: Is it lawful on the sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to save life, or to destroy it?

And looking round about upon them all, he said unto the man, Stretch forth thy hand. And he did so: and his hand was restored whole as the other.

And they were filled with madness; and communed one with another what they might do to Jesus.

COMMENT.-The first Sabbath of the Jewish year was the Paschal Sabbath, so that the "second Sabbath after the first" was

the following one coming immediately after that on which our blessed Lord had healed the cripple at the Pool of Bethesda; after which, on being accused of breaking the Sabbath, He had gone on to speak of His co-equal authority with the Father, and had shadowed out that as the Sabbath had commemorated the close of His Father's work of creation, so His own work was to be the work of Resurrection (John v. 17, onwards). This discourse is omitted by the three earlier Evangelists, but they all give the two actions that followed on it.

The Passover feast began the early wheat harvest of Palestine, and the fields were full of standing corn. A short walk, called a Sabbath day's journey," was permitted by the Scribes, and our Lord and His disciples, as well as some Pharisees of the Galilean district, were on their way home from Jerusalem to Galilee, when the disciples, from hunger, as St. Matthew (himself one of them) says, began to pluck the ears and rub the grains out in their hands. The Law of Moses, ever merciful and liberal, permitted this: "When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbour, then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbour's standing corn" (Deut. xxiii. 25). So that it was not the plucking to which the Pharisees objected, but the rubbing out the grains, as a species of threshing, one of their petty scrupulous maxims interpreting "all manner of work" to mean even such an action as this.

But our Lord, who had already proclaimed His right over the Sabbath, replied by reminding them how David in his extremity had been permitted to use the shewbread which was set apart for the priests (1 Sam. xxi. 6), so that his need overruled the letter of the law, as the great hunger of the disciples might now do. Within this argument lay the further analogy, that as David dealt the shewbread to his companions, so the Son of David would deal the True Bread of the Sanctuary to His people; but this was not yet to be understood by the disciples or the Pharisees, and He proceeded to another argument, only given by St. Matthew (xii. 5-8):

Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the Priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless?

But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple.

But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.

Of course the sacrifices involved much exertion and much cleansing on the part of both priests and Levites, yet no one thought of blaming them, so that the Pharisees must allow that toil in such service was not sinful, and these men were hungering, from their devotion to a service greater than that of the Temple.

Wherewith He sends them back to the prophet Hosea, " For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings " (vi. 6). The main purpose of all ceremonial observance is the glory of God, but where a deed of mercy comes into competition with an act of observance, it is by Love that He is best served; therefore Love would have hindered the Pharisees from looking out for small irregularities. Now the fourth commandment is not, like the other nine, a moral law of eternal right and wrong. It is a ceremonial law, though ordained from the first, and He who made it relaxes and changes it freely. Like the other ceremonies, Christ fulfilled it, glorified it, and passed it on changed, like the water into wine. So He proclaims Himself "Lord also of the Sabbath." He, who had announced His advent as the Year of Jubilee, was fulfilling the true meaning of all the Sabbaths of the Law, and was verily the Lord of Rest, of the rest for the people of God. St. Mark adds this saying of His, “And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." The Sabbath was made for man's rest, not man to be the Sabbath's slave, after the Pharisaic fashion.

The very next Sabbath gave a grand opportunity for a trial whether the idea of a Sabbath of love had touched the hearts of the Pharisees who had heard Him. In the synagogue at Capernaum, where He had returned, was a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees watched spitefully, hoping He would transgress the law. He turned and asked them whether it were lawful to do good on the Sabbath. St. Matthew adds that He used an argument which He made use of more fully on a subsequent occasion, namely, that anyone of them would, at much exertion, lift up a sheep that had fallen down a pit on the Sabbath, therefore He surely might relieve a human sufferer. They listened in sullen silence, unable to argue,

but hardened against conviction; and after looking round on them in pleading sorrow, "grieved," St. Mark says, " at the hardening of their hearts," He showed Himself again the wonder-working Lord of Love, and healed the man.

And what lesson do we bear away? Is it not the lesson that love is the glory of our new day, the Lord's Day, the Day of Resurrection, one in seven still, but consecrated by mercy and to mercy, and that the outward rite must give way to the deed of Love?

LESSON XXXV

THE CHOICE OF THE APOSTLES.

A.D. 29.-MARK iii. 6—19.

And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.

But Jesus withdrew himself with his disciples to the sea and a great multitude from Galilee followed him, and from Judæa,

And from Jerusalem, and from Idumæa, and from beyond Jordan; and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, when they had heard what great things he did, came unto him.

And he spake to his disciples, that a small ship should wait on him because of the multitude, lest they should throng him.

For he had healed many; insomuch that they pressed upon him for to touch him, as many as had plagues.

And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God.

And he straitly charged them that they should not make him known.

And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would: and they came unto him.

And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach,

And to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils :

And Simon he surnamed Peter;

And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he surnamed them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder:

And Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphæus, and Thaddeus, and Simon the Canaanite, And Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him.

COMMENT.-Our Lord's declaration of Himself as Lord of the Sabbath Day to the Galilean Pharisees, and the healing of the man

with the withered hand before their faces in the synagogue, had much angered the authorities of Capernaum, so that they consulted with the partizans of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee, how to find any reasonable plea for putting Him to death. The Romans had taken the power of inflicting death from the Sanhedrim, but Herod still possessed it, and would have been ready to punish any innovator who provoked his jealousy, and therefore our Lord withdrew from the cities into the hills around the Lake of Gennesareth, whither He was followed by large numbers, not only from Judæa and Galilee, but from the lands beyond Jordan—from Idumæa also and Tyre and Sidon, all the places, in fact, which knew something of the Jewish faith and customs, and thus were prepared to esteem His teaching. The report of His miraculous cures also brought such large numbers, that to avoid the throng He again placed Himself in a little boat on the lake, where all might see Him, but only one or two approach Him at a time.

The evil spirits, whom He cast out, declared who He was; but He silenced them, and even the instructed among His own disciples He likewise charged not to make Him known. St. Matthew writes (chap. xii.):

And charged them that they should not make him known :

That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying,

Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles.

He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall his voice be heard in the streets.

A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax will he not quench.

These heathen strangers were far from ready for the full knowledge of Him and of His Divine royalty. It would have stifled their tiny spark of love and faith to have heard Him fully made known (Isaiah xlii. 1—4) :—

Behold my servant, whom I uphold: mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth :

I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.

He shall not cry, nor lift up,

Nor cause his voice to be heard in the street.

A bruised reed shall he not break,