2 CHAPTER XI. THE GREAT TEACHER. T is about six or eight hours from Capernaum to Cana.* At the former city resided an officer of the court of Antipas, whose son lay dangerously ill with one of the fevers common to that locality. He heard rumors of this new prophet of the Lord, who was bringing back the days when God walked evidently among men. Not unreasonable is the surmise that the fishermendisciples, returning to their boats by the Sea of Galilee, carried thither the story of his unrecorded miracles at Jerusalem. This officer determined to apply to Jesus for aid. He went in person to Cana, and besought Christ to come down and heal his son. This Jesus declined to do. He was not a physician, subject to the summoning of patients. But he promised him that the son should recover, and the father, reluctantly returning-lingering, indeed, until the next day, hoping, perhaps, for some farther and more tangible assurance than a word-then learned that, at the very hour of his interview with Jesus, the fever left his son. It is sometimes said that Jesus's mission was chiefly among the poor. It was so, because the poor chiefly gave him welcome to their circle. But he was no less ready to offer instruction to Nicodemus than to the Samaritan woman; to heal the nobleman's son than the penniless, outcast leper. This event produced a profound impression on the community. It attached this officer and his family at once to Christ. He is even conjectured to be the Chuza, steward of Herod, whose wife accompanied and ministered to Jesus.§ * See supra, ch. viii., p. 104, note. + John iv., 53. † John iv., 46–54. § Luke viii., 3. It obtained for Christ influential friends, and may thus have contributed to his subsequent decision to make Capernaum his home. It certainly opened the way for his ministry there. From one of the better class of Roman tax-gatherers in that city he subsequently called one of his apostles, and the writer of one of his biographies.* And this miracle, known through the nobleman's influence throughout the court, may have been one secret of the faith of that centurion of the same town who subsequently asked of Christ to heal his servant, and avowed his belief that he could do it by a word, without entering his house.† Now it was that the rumor ran through Palestine that the stern old prophet John had met the prophet's fate. The voice that had spoken with such majesty of utterance in the wilderness, and whose echoes had been caught up and repeated through all the Holy Land, was hushed and silent in the castle of Macharus. Unable to brook the denunciations of this modern Elijah, who, like his God, knew no distinction of persons, Herod had played the part of a second Ahab, his wife a very second Jezebel, and had silenced by imprisonment the voice of condemnation he could not gainsay.‡ But, though the voice was silenced, the message was not, *Luke v., 27; Matt. ix., 9. "This miracle, the healing of the nobleman's son, is wrongly regarded by Ewald, De Wette, and Baur as identical with the healing of the centurion's servant (Matt. viii., 5–13; Luke vii., 1-10). The differences between the two miracles are radical. One is wrought at Cana, the other at Capernaum. On the one hand we have an officer of the king, a Jew by birth; on the other, a Roman centurion. In the former case the request is preferred on behalf of a son; in the latter, of a servant. Lastly, while the father entreats Jesus to come into his house, the centurion deprecates his doing so." -Pressense's Life of Christ, p. 338, note. To this Trench well adds that "the heart and inner kernel of the two narratives is different." The nobleman, weak in faith, thinks Christ's presence is necessary, and importunes haste lest the child die; the centurion, strong in faith, rightly thinks a word from Jesus enough. To the same general effect are Augustine, Alford, Lange, and Ebrard. See, for account of John's imprisonment, its cause and its result, chap. xxi. The Prisoner at Macharus. and could not be. The same rumor that bore the news of the Baptist's imprisonment, carried the intelligence that among the hills of Galilee a greater prophet had arisen to take his place; for, emerging at last from that retirement which he was to know no more till he found it in the tomb, Jesus began to go throughout all Galilee, preaching the coming of the kingdom of God.* *The chronology of this period of Christ's life is involved in great obscurity. John alone gives any account of Christ's early Judean ministry, including the expulsion of the traders from the Temple, the conversation with Nicodemus and with the Samaritan woman, and the second visit to Jerusalem, when the paralytic was healed at the Pool of Bethesda. The synoptists alone give any account of his early Galilean ministry (if we except the miracle at the marriage in Cana). Their explanation as to the commencement of his public ministry also differs. "When Jesus heard that John was cast into prison he departed into Galilee," is the statement of the synoptists (Matt. iv., 12; Mark i., 14). "When, therefore, the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, he left Judea and departed again into Galilee," is John's statement (John iv., 1, 3). Some of the harmonists have supposed that both reasons co-operated, and that Jesus remained in Judea until John's imprisonment. So Townsend, Ellicott, Robinson, and Ebrard. This, however, does not accord with John iv., 1, 3, which certainly leaves the impression that the Baptist was still baptizing disciples when Jesus left. Others have supposed that John was not imprisoned till after Christ's second visit to Jerusalem, recorded in John v., which they suppose to have preceded his Galilean ministry. So Andrews and Pressensé. But Christ's reference to John at the time of that visit (John v., 32–35) indicates that the Baptist was already imprisoned, and the whole tone of the controversy between Jesus and the Pharisees is such as only characterized a later stage of Christ's ministry. While, then, the chronological order is very uncertain, we prefer to suppose that John was apprehended after Jesus left Enon, but before he commenced his public preaching in Nazareth. If, as seems probable, Cana was temporarily his home, he may have remained there quietly meanwhile, his disciples having returned to their former avocations. We adopt, therefore, the following order as best satisfying the conditions of the different narratives: Jesus goes up to Jerusalem to inaugurate his ministry there (John ii., 13–25; iii., 1-21); after the Passover, joins the Baptist in Enon (John iii., 22-36); leaves Judea to avoid threatened controversy, going through Samaria on his way, and arriving at the residence either of his mother or some friends in Cana, where he heals the sick child by a word (John iv.); hears of John's imprisonment, which takes place about this time (Matt. iv., 12; Mark i., 14); commences his Galilean ministry, marked, if not inaugurated by his sermon at Nazareth (Luke iv., 16-31); returns to Capernaum (Matt. iv., 13-16; Luke iv., 31), where he calls four disciples (Luke v., He arrived at the same result as John-the production in the hearts of the people of repentance for their sins. But his method was characteristically different. John the Baptist attempted to drive men from sin by warning them of coming judgment. Christ endeavored to attract them to a higher life by proclaiming emancipation through the Gospel.* John withdrew wholly from the Church whose corruptions he denounced. Christ commenced his ministry in the Temple, and continued it in the synagogues. Their structure and form of service gave him peculiar facilities for reaching the ear of the common people. The history of the origin of the Jewish synagogue is involved in great uncertainty. Doubtless from the earliest times there had been other meetings for religious worship than those which took place in the Temple, but they had been occasional, irregular, and unofficial. During the captivity, however, the Temple service was of necessity given up. The people were accustomed to meet for prayer and instruction at the houses of the prophets. The reading and exposition of the Sacred Writings constituted the characteristic feature of their simple services. Taunted by their brethren at Jerusalem with their apparent abandonment by God, to whose Temple they could no longer resort, their prophet replied that God was their sanctuary whenever and wherever they assembled in his name. Thus, years before Christ, God had prepared the way for that teaching of the universality of the divine presence which is the foundation of the Christian Church. When the people returned to Palestine they brought with them these conventicles, to which they had become greatly attached. They gradually organized them more perfectly. 1-11), and whence he continues his ministry throughout Galilee (Mark i., 38, 39; Matt. iv., 23-25), until he goes up to Jerusalem to attend the unknown feast mentioned in John v. * See Matt. iv., 17; Mark i., 15, as interpreted by Luke iv., 17-21. Buildings were erected. Officers to supervise the services were appointed. Forms of prayer were instituted. A regular selection of scriptures for every Sabbath was made. The hereditary rivalry between priest and prophet repeated itself, and led the Pharisaic party to make much of the synagogue, as the Sacerdotal party still made much of the Temple. There was at least one established in every considerable town. In the larger places there were frequently several. Even in the smaller villages, a consecrated spot, a place of prayer, afforded a substitute therefor. The Jewish Rabbis assert that there were over four hundred and fifty in Jerusalem. Recent investigations have exhumed the ruins of some of these synagogues. Many of them appear to have been ornate and costly buildings, on which considerable expenditure had been lavished. The synagogue fulfilled a threefold function in Judaism. It was the centre of civilization in the little community. It constituted, as we have already said,* the village school, where a Jewish Rabbi gathered the children of the village for instruction, if committing to memory the precepts of the law and the commentaries of the doctors can be dignified by such a name. It was also a court of justice. Its officers were local judges. Trials were had within its walls, and the condemned were even scourged there. But its chief function was public worship and religious instruction. Thrice a week, and three times on the Sabbath, it was opened for this purpose. Its service, in form, was an admixture of our modern church and our modern prayer-meeting. There was a rubric. Lessons for the day were appointed as in the Episcopal Church. A particular officer, called "the ruler of the synagogue," conducted the service. But he himself did not always read the appointed Scriptures, and seldom commented on them. For this he selected some from the audience before him. Any Rabbi might ordinarily avail himself of the synagogue service to offer to the people his comments * Ch. v., p. 79. + Luke xii., 11; xxi., 12. Matt. x., 17; Mark xiii., 9. |