I am not come of Myself, but He that sent Me is true, whom you know not. I know Him because I am from Him, and He hath sent Me." Just as surely as God has made man to know the truth, so surely does He make it easy for man to recognize a truthteacher. Jesus was pre-eminently such, and as He continually referred to His Father as the source of His authority, His enemies must do violence to their own instincts as men and as Israelites in order to resist Him. Do violence, indeed; and hence they raged the more against Him: "They sought therefore to apprehend Him, and no man laid hands on Him, because His hour was not yet come."

The mystery of the rejection of Christ's teaching is therefore only the ancient mystery of human pride. But He was not rejected by the whole people, nor by anything but a minority; this included, however, the bulk of the official leaders of the people. And we must know that if the Jewish race by its representatives did reject Him, the entire human race, to which He was sent, has received Him. The leaders of the Jews were appointed by God to stand for all mankind; their most grievous error was the delusion that they were exclusively concerned with their own people. The apostasy of the Jewish priesthood has been repudiated by the nations of the world. And it was repudiated by multitudes of the Hebrew people themselves: "But of the people many believed in Him, and said: When the Christ cometh, shall He do more miracles than these which this Man doth?" In truth the Apostles and disciples of Christ, all Jews, became a new priesthood and a higher one, and formed a new Israel, and carried the Jewish name to an imperial dominion as wide as the universe, and all the more glorious because its monarch, Jesus the Jew,

conquers by love instead of by fear, by peace instead of by war.

That the Gentiles should come into the divine household was never far from the thoughts of the Master's followers. So that when He rebuked and hindered by His mere words and His glance the spies who had been sent to apprehend Him, what He said was readily turned by His hearers that way: "The Pharisees heard the people murmuring these things concerning Him, and the rulers and Pharisees sent ministers to apprehend Him. Jesus therefore said to them: Yet a little while I am with you, and then I go to Him that sent Me. You shall seek Me and shall not find Me, and where I am, thither you cannot come. The Jews therefore said amongst themselves: Whither will He go that we shall not find Him? Will He go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles? What is this saying that He hath said: You shall seek Me and shall not find

Me, and where I am you cannot come?"

CHAPTER LIV..

JESUS OFFERS THE WATERS OF LIFE. THE ATTEMPT TO APPREHEND HIM IN THE TEMPLE.

John vii. 37-53.

THE last day of the Feast of Tabernacles was the most solemn and was called its great day. The Temple was the centre of a countless throng, palpitating with Oriental religious fervor Jesus took ad

vantage of this. Making His way to a conspicuous point on the wide stairways, and so commanding a vast multitude, He proclaimed Himself the fountain of all divine truth. Surely none but God could truthfully utter His words, referring as they did to the prophecy of Isaias (lv. 1): "Ho all ye that thirst, come to the fountains.' Jesus" stood and cried, saying: If any thirst, let him come to Me and drink. He that believeth in Me, as the Scripture saith, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." This was clearly a claim of identity with truth, but it had a deeper meaning, one as yet hidden. The Evangelist adds: "Now this He said of the Spirit which they should receive who believed in Him, for as yet the Spirit was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified." Long after this St. Paul said of the rock from which the people drank in the wilderness, that it was Christ. Moses smote the rock and abundant waters flowed forth to save people dying of thirst. The dispensation which Moses represented had again struck the rock. The lips of Christ, touched by the prophetic fulness of time, are opened, and out springs the water of life, the Word of God, upon whose cleansing and refreshing streams the Holy Spirit broods, impregnating it with divine force. And how well has this promise of life been fulfilled. Every believer in Christ has been an irrigating channel in the field of the world. Souls as dry as the desert's sand have bloomed with fertility as they learned of Christ from parents, priests, or friends. Souls that once had Christ and gave Him up and were dead to Him, have come to life again by the word of Christ calling them to penance. If we can know what human life is and what adds a new life to it, we know that the teaching of Christ is a new

birth by absolution for sin and personal union with the Deity.

The effect of this proclamation of the Saviour (which is given by St. John only in abridgment) was, as usual, the immediate division of the multitude: "Of that multitude, therefore, when they had heard these words of His, some said: This is the Prophet indeed. Others said: This is the Christ. But some said: Doth the Christ come out of Galilee? Doth not the Scripture say that Christ cometh of the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the town where David was? So there arose a dissension among the people because of Him. And some of them would have apprehended Him, but no man laid hands upon Him."

And why did not the emissaries of the Pharisees seize Him? The Evangelist gives us the reason. He transfers the scene from the teeming masses of worshippers to a secret meeting of the conspirators: the spies of the enemy had themselves felt the spell of Jesus: "The ministers there

fore came to the chief priests
and the Pharisees. And they
said to them: Why have you
not brought Him? The min-
isters answered: Never did
man speak like this man.
The Pharisees therefore an-
swered them: Are you also
seduced? Hath any one of
the rulers believed in Him,
or of the Pharisees?
this multitude that knoweth
not the law are accursed."

But

Now it happened that

MOUNT OLIVET.

among "the rulers present at this conference was Nicodemus, he that came to Him by night"; and perhaps there were a few others like-minded, timid souls, but not disloyal to Jesus; not open-day fol lowers of Christ, but yet adherents under cover of darkness. Nicodemus said: "Doth our law judge any man unless it first hear him and know what he doth? The answer was a shameless evasion of the question. Nicodemus insisted that Christ should not be condemned without a trial, a right given both by the law of Moses and the universal law of fair dealing. The answer was, "Art thou also a Galilean? Search the Scriptures, and see that out of Galilee a prophet riseth not?" Search you your motives, Nicodemus might have answered, and see that you are athirst for this Man's blood because He will not bow down to your ambition, nor conform Himself to your man-made observances. had done all he was able to do. For a timid man it was heroism to rise up among these arrogant and foaming Pharisees and make a plea even for fair play. He might have accepted the challenge of Scripture dispute about Galilee, for Isaias (ix. 1) was on his side, and Jonas, Nahum, Osee, and perhaps even Elias, might be claimed for Galilee.

Nicodemus, however,

"And every man returned to his own house; and Jesus went unto Mount Olivet." As the crowds dispersed Jesus went to Mount Olivet, there to pass the night in the leafy shelter of the booth of some one of his friends. Olivet from this time forward became a place of prayer and of private conference for the Saviour, close to the city as it was, and covered with the wide-spreading branches of an olive grove.