have commanded the Roman troops at this frontier town. Willing to please the people, and holding, like every one trained in the Greek philosophy, that it was wise to propitiate the local gods, he had built a synagogue on the hill-top, and had given it as a splendid present to the Jews. This good man having a servant whom he loved and whom he saw sickening to the point of death, the elders of the town came to JESUS in his name, and besought him that He would heal the sick man for the centurion's sake; saying, that this Roman officer was worthy of all good, being a man who loved the Jews and who had built them a synagogue. At the desire of these Jewish elders, but contrary to the Separatist policy, JESUS went with them towards the stranger's house; in the streets of Capernaum they met the friends of the centurion coming out to meet them, with a request from that officer (who was aware how much a Jew objected to enter a Roman house) that the Lord should not come into the sick-room, but should speak the word and his servant would be healed. Turning to his disciples, JESUS said:

come

"I have not found so great faith: no, not in Israel. And I say unto that you shall many from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven."

The centurion's servant was healed the self-same hour: this being the first miracle which the Lord performed on any man not of the sacred race.

One day when surrounded by a multitude of people, JESUS was startled by the appearance of

Mary and his brothers, who, on hearing that his cousin John had been put to death, had come down the valleys to Capernaum in search of him. They feared the wrath of the adulteress; and they wished to get him away from that dangerous vicinity of the Golden house. JESUS, knowing that the hour was now nigh, when, in words no less than in deeds, he must announce himself and complete his work, said to those who stood near him, and who told him that his mother and his brethren were among the crowd, striving to push through it:

"Who is my mother? Who are my brethren?" And then stretching out his hand over those who clung about him, the Lord added:

แ "Behold my mother and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother."

Yet he went up with his mother into the hill country of Galilee, and again dwelt with her in the old house at Nazareth; that he might now, in a more formal, a more solemn manner, commence those trials which were to bring him a martyr's crown, by an express announcement to the Jews of his Messiahship, made in the very synagogue in which he had prayed when a little child.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Synagogue.

WHEN he was gone into his own country, says St. Matthew, JESUS taught them in their synagogues. He loved to teach and pray in the synagogue; a popular institution; which the great priests disliked, and in which they had no official part.

house of meeting

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The synagogue was not a very old thing in Jewry, though older than the Maccabees; being a popular growth, as the Sanhedrin was a patrician growth. When every child could read Hebrew, when every man and woman could repeat the shema, and when every harper and singer could rehearse at evensong the psalms of David, there had been little call for any other than household worship. Every tent was a chapel, every father a priest. Moses had thought it enough for the sacred books to be publicly read once in seven years. Every man was supposed to know the Law by heart, and the object of reading the law in public was not so much to teach it, as to guard against corruptions of the text. But when the scroll was lost, and the tongue in which it was composed more than half forgotten, fears might arise lest the sacred records. should disappear. Then, the instincts of shepherds and villagers saved them by humble and unexpected means. Ezra had founded a weekly meeting of

neighbours, to sing psalms, play the pipe and tabret, and listen to good words. These little meetings became popular: and in due time, a house, big enough to hold ten persons, in some cases more than ten, was built in every town. This house was called a synagogue, a meeting-house, in Latin ecclesia, in English church; a Greek name which fixes within certain limits the date at which it was introduced.

No synagogue of the time of Christ is now standing in Nazareth, or even in Galilee, to picture the place in which Jesus taught. Sun and rain, theft and malice, have been hard upon these frail tabernacles; the soft stone of which they were built, and the need and greed of the Arab peasants, having either ground them back into dust or stolen them away for the erection of hut or fence. Yet a man like Gilbert Scott, from such ruins as abound within twenty miles of Nazareth, would rebuild a synagogue of Galilee, true to its original in every stone. Capernaum, at Kedesh, at Beth Arbel, at Meiron, at Kefr Birim, at other spots, all lying between Nazareth and the lake, you find ruins of synagogues, in some of which it is certain that JESUS must have prayed and taught.

At

These fragments, more or less perfect, more or less near to his time in date, would afford to an architect who reads the Bible every sort of hint from which to draw his plans. The remains at Meiron and Beth Arbel are of the period of the Herods; giving proof of their past splendour in broken column and colonnade; many of the fallen shafts being adorned with Corinthian capitals. Those at

Kedesh and Kefr Birim are perhaps of the third century; having the lintels and doorways highly wrought, and the wall over the main entrance decorated with fruits and flowers. The synagogue built at Capernaum by the Romam centurion was of noble style, if it may be judged by the pillars and friezes which lie partly buried in the mould, now covered with brambles and prickly pears. These buildings for village worship were brightened in detail by the prevalence of Grecian taste; but the plan was everywhere the same; the outline being that of the Tabernacle in the desert, of the Temple on the Sacred Mount; the ornaments only, the friezes, flutings, capitals, colonnades, being added to the simple block by those who built synagogues on the more costly models of Antioch and Rome. Take the foundations which still peep out from the soil at either Kefr Birim or Capernaum. Cast away the Greek additions; work out the hints afforded in the Bible and Talmud; add some knowledge of the ritual now used in Safed and Zion; and it would be no hard labour to rebuild the meeting-house at Nazareth and to restore the worship in which JESUS took a part.

A synagogue, whether small or large, had the form of the temple and the tent; but the idea of a synagogue, like that of a church, is not a pile of stone, having this or that shape and height, but a gathering of the people to read the Law. The House of Meeting was built on the highest ground of Nazareth; with its door on the north side, away from Jerusalem, like the principal gates of an English

The Holy Land. II.

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