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their use of their office for personal ambition and greed.

And now they would draw Him into a snare of words. "By what authority dost Thou these things?" Instantly He referred them to His great forerunner and divinely chosen authentic, John the Baptist. He was a prophet by appointment of God, by miraculous birth, by a stupendous miracle of persuasiveness unto repentance, acknowledged as a prophet by all. John's word was true if there was truth in Israel. He was witness for Jesus of Nazareth. Other authority Jesus had in abundance: the healing of the sick, the cleansing of lepers, the release of demoniacs; and Lazarus was there, the third dead man that He had recalled to life. What an honest Jewish scribe wanted and had a right to have was the law's authentic, a prophet's witness. Would these scribes admit the testimony of John? If yes, the case was closed in Jesus' favor. If no, they were false to their vocation in Israel; they would not accept a prophet. "I also will ask you," said Jesus, "one word, which if you shall tell Me, I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, whence was it? from Heaven or from men? But they thought within themselves saying: If we shall say from Heaven, He will say to us: Why then did you not believe him? But if we shall say from men, we are afraid of the multitude, for all held John as a prophet. And answering Jesus, they said: We know not. He also said to them: Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PARABLE OF THE TWO SONS.

Matt. xx. 28-32.

WHENEVER Jesus began to speak of John the Baptist He seemed to linger lovingly upon the theme. On this occasion He drew yet another lesson from His Precursor's mission. He insisted upon his call to penance as the voice of God.

Smooth clerical politicians had gone to John to test him and to use him, and in that spirit had been baptized by him, professing a repen

But what think you? A certain man had two sons, and coming to the first he said: Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. And he answering said: I will not. But afterwards, being moved wi h repentance, he went. And coming to the other, he said in like manner. And he answer

tance they did not feel." Ye brooding said: I go, sir, and he went not.

say

Which of the two did the father's will?
They say to him: The first. Jesus saith
to them: Amen I say to you, that the pub-
licans and the harlots shall go into the
Kingdom of God before you. For John
came to you in the way of justice, and
you did not believe him; but the publicans
and the harlots believed him.
But you
seeing it, did not even afterwards repent,
that you might believe him.

Using the name.

of vipers," was what he called them.
They have their successors in all
orders of Christians, men and wo-
men, in high places and in low,
who "I will" to the call of
God, and yet go their ways, devious
ways, after personal or party gain.
and the office and the honors they bear for ends
selfish and often deeply corrupt, such men, from the
Baptist's time till now, are an offence in the sight
of God and man, far more loathsome than open sinners
who, at any rate, would not hide their vice with a
cloak of religion. The brutal sinner is less offensive
than the clever one. The repentance of a shameless.
reprobate is a glory to God and a joy to the an-
gels; and our Saviour holds it up as a pattern to
those who hope to be saved while dexterously
balancing an inward vileness with external pro-
priety.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE PARABLES OF THE WICKED HUSBANDmen, and
OF THE KING'S SUPPER.

Matt. xxi. 33-46, xxii 1-14; Mark xii. 1-12;
Luke xx. 9-19.

JESUS now drove His lessons home by two parables. The meaning of the parable of the husbandmen was unmistakable: the perfidy of the leaders of the Jewish race in all its history, their slaughter of the prophets and their thirst for the blood of the Messias. Our Saviour's hearers felt the home-thrust: "Which they hearing said to Him: God forbid. But He looking on them, said: Have you never read in the Scriptures: The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner. By the Lord this has been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes. Therefore I say to you, the Kingdom of God shall be taken from you and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof. whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it shall grind him to powder."

There was a man a householder, who planted a vineyard and made a hedge round about it, and dug in it a press, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a strange country. And when the time of the fruits drew nigh, he sent to the husbandmen a servant, to receive of the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard. Who having laid hands on him, beat him and set him away empty. And again he sent to them another servant, and him they wounded in the head and used him reproachfully. And again he sent another, and him they killed, and many others, of whom some they beat, and others they killed. Then the lord of the vineyard said: What shall I do? Having therefore yet one son most dear to him, he also sent him unto them last of all, saying: I will send my beloved son; it may be, when they see him, they will reverence him. Whom when the husbandmen saw, they thought within themselves, [and] said one to another: This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and we shall have his inheritance. And taking him, they cast him forth out of the vineyard and

And

The parable and its application form one of the most pointed of our Saviour's many arraignments of official Judaism. History offers no

killed him. When therefore the Lord of parallel to the strange infatuation

the vineyard shall come, what shall he do to these husbandmen? He will come and will destroy those husbandmen, and will give the vineyard to others.

of the race, from the time when in their wheat fields and pastures the sons of Israel sold their brother

Joseph to the Madianite caravan, down to the time when they will force upon Pilate the murder of their King, bought by them from the traitor Judas for thirty pieces of silver. They were now a doomed race. Their nation, after giving its truest members to the Redeemer's Church, should be scattered abroad to the ends of the earth. They will bear, indeed, the law of Moses with them, but emptied of its promises. The Jewish race will bear about with it the law of Moses as a stigma of shame; it is as if a murderer were condemned, in lieu of the death penalty, to wear for ever the blood-stained clothes of his victim and even to be called by his name. And the religion of the Jews, perfected beyond all the dreams of their prophets, becomes the heritage of the hated Gentiles.

All this was taught by Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem, His glances sweeping outwards away beyond the crowd stunned by His words, and taking in the many millions of the contemporary and the future races of mankind. He had fixed His hearers' minds upon their own race, for in the Hebrew prophets Israel was called the vineyard of the Lord; and as He went on and told of their oft-repeated rejection of Jehovah's messengers, and by pain

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A VINEYARD IN THE EAST.

ful repetition had shown through the thin veil of His parable the cruel and brutal murder of the prophets, and even when not murdered, their rejection by the

And Jesus answering, spoke again in parables to them, saying: The Kingdom of Heaven is likened to a king, who made a marriage for his son. And he sent his servants to call them that were invited to the marriage, and they would not come. Again he sent other servants, saying: Tell them that were invited, behold I have prepared my dinner; my beeves and fatlings are killed, and all things are ready; come ye to the marriage. But they neglected and went their ways, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise. And the rest laid hands on his servants, and having treated them contumeliously, put them to death. But when the king heard of it, he was angry, and sending his armies he destroyed those murderers and burnt their city. Then saith he to his servants: The marriage indeed is ready, but they that were invited were not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as you shall find, call them to the marriage. And his servants going forth into the ways, gathered together all that they found, both bad and good, and the marriage was filled with guests. And the king went in to see the guests, and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. And he saith to him: Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having on a wedding garment? But he was silent. Then the king said to the waiters: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few chosen.

people and priesthood; when at last He came to the direful climax, the coming of God's Son to them, the Only-Begotten of the Father, and the result of it-their murmurs, their proud suspicions, their insisting on their own terms, their secret plotting, their awful resolve to kill Him; when He had reached this fulness of their guilt, the betterminded caught their breath and cried out: "God forbid!" in a torment of shame and foreboding. But Jesus stood to the facts. He read the truth in the hearts of many present before Him; already He felt the iron of their deadly words to Pilate, "Crucify Him!" sinking into His soul. "The Kingdom of God," He insisted, "shall be taken from you."

The chief priests had their emissaries present, and they knew that He spoke all these things of themselves. Their fingers itched for His throat, but they were too cunning, too cautious to brave the multitude by seizing Him; other men were no less edified than they themselves were appalled by the daring Rabbi of Nazareth, as He closed the long line of the prophets of Israel by His word-pictures of Israel's guilt and ruin. So the conspirators bided their time. And then Jesus gave His audience another parable, one that His nearest followers had heard before.

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"Sent his servants to call them that were invited."

It exhibited the Hebrew race as the invited

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