ments on John which follow are most musically rhythmic and abound in melodious cadences delightful to the ear. In his comment again we find a refrain, What did you go out into the wilderness to look at ? But what did you

go out to see? But what did you go out to see?

It is quite remarkable, again, that the answer and the comments naturally divide themselves into three stanzas of highly wrought parallelism.

11:5. "The poor have the Good News preached to them." In this enumeration which passes from the sick cured to the dead raised up, there is a kind of ascending gradation. Now, human selfishness, social selfishness, was such that Jesus gives as a sign more divine still than the resurrection of the dead, this simple fact: "The poor have the Good News proclaimed to them." Oh! how well has some one spoken when painting the destitution of the "Lord! Lord! the poor have been

people he cried:

abandoned to thee!"

II: II.

"He who is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is

greater than he."

The least of Christ's disciples, rejoicing in his presence, delighting in his communion, taking solace in his revelation of the Father, though less than John Baptist in fame, in work, in the rigor of ascetic holiness, is yet greater than he in the knowledge of divine truth and so in the fulness of blessedness and joy.

11:13.

John."

"All the prophets and the law prophesied till

The English word to prophesy, cannot be applied very well to the law, while in Hebrew, the equivalent term, meaning at once to predict and to prefigure, can be applied to things as well as to persons. The thought of the text

is as follows: "Everything has been prophesied and typified up to the time of John's coming. From John's time on, we have the present history and realization of what has been thus prophesied or typified." We have what Saint Luke explains much more clearly in this way: "Until John, the Law and the Prophets, since John, the Good News of the Kingdom of God *** ." John completed the old epoch and opened the door of the

new era.

II: 16–20. "To what shall I compare this generation?" Worldly wisdom keeps its thoughts fixed only on results. It is for this reason it lacks all true prophetic insight into things. It is for this reason it lacks the very power of all others it would have. By keeping its mind exclusively on results alone it, by this very fact, incapacitates itself to rightly plan for or to predict the results desired. For it is continually misled by present appearances into false and injurious judgments.

True wisdom, on the other hand, is never guided in its judgments solely by results. It looks into the heart of things. It always recognizes in sincere conviction expressed in conduct the forth putting of divine power, and it pays homage to it irrespective of consequences.

It is in such a spirit every truly wise person judges all things. It is in such a spirit he himself always acts. He shows his wisdom, not by calculating consequences, but by being faithful in word and deed to the best impulses within. Such men and women make the heroes of life.

Worldly wise men, on the contrary, always burdened with over anxiety to please, always on the outlook to obviate immediate difficulties, always ready to gain temporary advantages, stifle conviction, chill enthusiasm and so cut themselves off entirely from the possibility of a

heroic career. Nothing they accomplish can become permanently influential.

II: 21.

"If the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon."

Men are judged not only according to what they have done but according to what they would have done under other circumstances and conditions of life. In other words, they are judged according to their opportunities.

The whole teaching of St. Paul in his second chapter to the Romans, all the wider hopes of later times as to the future of mankind, are but the development of the truth partly declared and partly suggested here.

See also note on S. Luke 10:15.

II: 21-24. Here we find a perfect strophe and antistrophe dwelling on the woes to the cities of Galilee.

II:25. prudent."

"Thou hast hid these things from the wise and

It is right that the Truth be in some sort hidden from the first view of those who are wise and prudent, because they have the ability and leisure to seek it. It is good that it be a hidden fruit for them, in order that they may get the discipline gained in making an effort to uncover it. But it is on the other hand just and good that it of itself offers itself to babes and the poor, who have neither ability nor leisure. Such is the teaching of this verse if it is to be taken literally. But the context appears rather to lead one to refer it to those wise in their own conceit, to those who are seeking the praise of men rather than the truth of God.

The "babes," on the other hand, are the disciples, those who have received the kingdom in the spirit of a little child, childlike, and sometimes childish, indeed, and yet, in their thoughts of it earnest and simple hearted. Such

are the ones brought under the training through which they have become true Scribes of the Kingdom of Heaven.

See also note on S. Luke 10: 21.

12: 12. "It is right to do good on the Sabbath."

Not to do good when it lies in our power, is practically to do evil. No formality, tradition, or custom, can we plead as an excuse for not doing good as our hands find it to do.

12:20. "He shall not strive nor cry," etc.

We have here the description of a character of the extremest gentleness.

The "bruised reed" is the weight of sorrow, care, or sin. or trample upon such a one.

type of one broken by the Men in general disregard, But not so with the Christ.

He seeks rather to bind up and strengthen.

The "smoking flax " is the wick of the lamp which has ceased to burn clearly. Its clouded flame appears to call for prompt extinction.

Here is a parable of such souls of men as those in which the light that should shine before men has grown dim. Base desires have clogged it. Such men are no longer fed with the pure oil of sincerity and truth.

For such, the self-righteous Pharisee has no pity. He is content to give thanks that his own lamp is burning. The Christ of God, on the other hand, is all tenderness towards such. He rather seeks to trim their lamps with the oil of gladness and to set a crown of pure gold upon their heads.

12.25-37. Jesus is here again aroused by the Pharisees to put his thoughts into Hebrew Parallelisms and to express them with a rhythm appropriate to impassioned Jewish feeling.

12:32.

"Whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit,

it will not be forgiven him."

66

Jesus condemns their wickedness, their hypocrisy, their thirst for money, their love of honors, their imbecile and puerile formalism, the detestable abuse they make of their authority, so they see in him an enemy. They hate him. And so, rather than recognize the remarkable good accomplished by him whom they detest, they attempt to draw from this very good which ought to be just the thing to declare his goodness, a means of dishonoring and destroying

him.

Vainly with every evidence has the Spirit of God, the Breathing from on High, wrought that holy inspiration in the heart of man which is the root of everything good in the world. Vainly with every proof has God lent his aid to it. Vainly with every proof does the Miracle before their eyes contribute to make them adore and love the all powerful God whose ministers they are. On the contrary, all that but excites them and drives their jealous fury into paroxysms against this radiance which is no reflection of them, this glory which is not theirs. Exasperated by envy, treading all good faith under foot, all respect for God present in another soul, and calumniating the very essence of things, they gratuitously ascribe to an act incontestably salutary and beneficent in itself, a wicked and infamous cause.

Whoever acts in this way, whoever, in the face of a good deed, a noble action, a thing clearly excellent in itself, tries thus to debase the motives which have inspired it, commits this terrible sin.

I.et a pious woman obeying the better sentiments of her heart visit and tend the sick, let her devote herself with all her heart to some great act of mercy ****. Bah!