increased from day to day, but he did not, on that account, linger long in Galilee: nor was his sojourn in Capernaum, to which he next proceeded, more protracted. The season of the Passover drew near, and the Lord, attended by the twelve, to whom the title of Apostles was in after times given, went up to Jerusalem to be present at the feast. Here his power as well as his zeal in God's honour was exhibited in a very wonderful manner. It will be borne in mind that from the most distant of their settlements, all religious Jews came up at the three great festivals, that they might offer their gifts of sacrifice and gratitude in the temple at Jerusalem. Great inconvenience could not but attend the driving of bullocks or sheep, or carrying of other articles of oblation by dwellers at a distance; and the custom was permitted to them of making purchase, within the city itself, of such things as the law required. And there arose, in consequence, a class of persons who, making a livelihood out of this traffic, bribed the priests for permission to set up their stalls within the court of the temple itself. Nothing could be more at variance with both the letter and the spirit of the Mosaic dispensation; and our Lord's indignation was greatly stirred as he gazed upon the scene. He armed himself with a scourge of small cords, and overturning the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, he drove the profane crowd beyond the temple precincts, without, as it would appear, the smallest resistance on their parts. "It is written,”, said he, "that my house is a house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves."

While the hypocritical and the proud chafed at this exercise of authority, so bold a deed drew to Jesus not a few of the better disposed; among

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whom was Nicodemus, a man learned in the law, who came to the Lord by night, and held with him some deeply interesting conversation. To him the Lord spake of that second birth, or regeneration, which marks in every man born according to the flesh his entrance into the kingdom or church of God upon earth. It was on this occasion, likewise, that, on a general appeal to the people, he likened his own body to God's temple, and showed that, if it were destroyed then, or at any future period, he would himself build it up again in three days. And many eyes began to be turned towards him, not without a hope that the day of Israel's deliverance was at hand.

From Jerusalem the Lord proceeded through many of the towns and villages of Judæa, preaching the gospel, and gaining a constant accession to the number of his disciples. It was, however, exclusively from the humbler walks of life that men came to him. People laden with the memory of sins past, heard him likewise with gladness; for he spake to the former of a state beyond the grave, in which all that is unequal here shall be made even; and he told the latter that God was able and willing to pardon where man knows not how to forgive. The Scribes and Pharisees, on the contrary, reviled and traduced him in all their assemblies, and threatened him with violence. Indeed, so formidable were their proceedings, that at the end of about eight months, he was forced to shift the scene and retire into Galilee. He had not taken the latter step, however, before two events occurred, both of which demand particular notice.

John the Baptist had accomplished his appointed task. He had prepared the Lord's way for him, and continuing to denounce sin wherever it showed

itself, he reproved Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Idumæa, because he lived in adultery with his brother's wife. The Baptist was seized, and cast into prison; and hearing, in his dungeon, of the progress which Jesus made, he sent two of his disciples to ask whether in him the Messias was indeed found. It is not distinctly told whether John himself, cut off from all intercourse with the living world, entertained any serious doubts on this head, or whether he desired only that his disciples should become personally acquainted with Jesus, and learn his doctrine. But the result was that the men employed on this mission embraced the faith of Christ, and were added to the number of those whom our Lord took into his familiar confidence.

The second incident to which I have referred, took place at Sychar, a city of Samaria, through which province the traveller passing from Jerusalem into Galilee, must needs pass. Here the Lord encountered a woman, to whom he made known the great truth, that the time was at hand when throughout God's universe, no one spot of earth or of sea should be more sacred than another. "The time cometh and now is, when neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem, shall men (exclusively) worship the Father. God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

From Sychar the Lord proceeded into Galilee, and in Cana wrought another miracle of mercy, by raising from a sick bed the son of a Roman centurion, who lay at the point of death. He did this deed, too, without so much as seeing the patient; and the grateful father, as he believed the Lord's assurance, so on finding that his child was given back to him, he became, with all his household, a follower of Christ. Other proofs of the Lord's absolute

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dominion over nature, and the ills and accidents that appertain to it, were abundantly given. He cured the mother of Peter's wife of a fever; he caused his disciples who had toiled all night and caught nothing, to enclose in their nets such a multitude of fishes, that they found some difficulty in securing the prize. He cast out the devil or source of his malady, from a maniac, after the wretched man, amid his ravings, had acknowledged him to be God's Christ. To give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, strength to the feeble, health to the sick, was his daily work. Once when the crowd could not otherwise reach him, they took off the tiling, which, as in other eastern houses, covered the courtyard, round which its apartments were built, and let down a paralytic on his bed, before Jesus. The Lord healed him, after he had said, "Thy sins be forgiven thee," to the unspeakable indignation of the Pharisees, who could not, in that presence, venture to affirm, that he to whom God had given such power to act, was not by the same God authorised to speak. Yet with all this the Lord threw no damp or gloom over the kindly intercourses of society. He partook of the hospitalities of such as offered them in a friendly spirit. He dined with Matthew the publican, in defiance of the prejudice which rendered all Jews who exercised the publican's calling, objects of abhorrence to their countrymen. And he rebuked, without mercy, the hypocritical proceedings of the Pharisees, "who devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers." In a word, the first year of his public ministry was devoted to the great purpose of leading men to consider the object of God's laws, rather than their letter; and to teach them that religion is nothing, or worse than nothing,

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unless it elevate men's hopes, purify their hearts, and regulate all their proceedings — public as well as private according to the dictates of justice, mercy, and truth.

A. D. 31. THE second year of our Lord's ministry upon earth bears, as might be expected, a close resemblance, in the details of his most gracious words and deeds, to the first. He is still the dispenser of mercy wherever he goes. We find him again in Jerusalem at the season of the Passover, drawing towards himself the attention of thousands.

A poor

cripple who, year after year, had come up in the hope of deriving benefit from the waters of the pool of Siloam, receives his cure under circumstances of which he had never dreamed. Others took no note of him, and hence before he could reach the margin of the pool, the sanatory power had departed from the water. "For an angel," says St. John, went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had." But the Lord saw and had compassion on the cripple, and commanded him to "rise, take up his bed, and walk." And when the Pharisees endeavoured to found a charge upon this act, because it had been done on the Sabbath day,