on the resurrection had attracted the notice of the Sadducees, rarely his hearers, and they sought to confute him by citing the case of a woman who had had seven husbands, asking him whose wife she would be in the resurrection. Jesus replied that their denial of this doctrine rested on a misreading of the scriptures and an underrating of almighty power. "For when they shall rise from the dead they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as angels in heaven." And as proving that the dead are raised, "Did ye not read in the book of Moses in the bush passage, how God spake unto him, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?' He is not the God of dead, but of living. Ye do greatly err." That is, if God called himself the God of the patriarchs hundreds of years after they were dead, it must be inferred that they are not dead for ever, but will return from the land of shades and walk the earth in their bodies,1 and moreover includes the larger fact of His close and abiding relation with 1 Matt. xxii. 23-32.

living men. This reasoning seems to have silenced the Sadducees, who were, however, in the right, for the facts of science confirm their belief that dead bodies decay, and, mingling with the common dust of the globe of whose particles they consist, become one with it to nourish succeeding forms of life born of the all-quickening earth, the "stuff" of which, as we may call it, being neither added to nor lessened, is thus used over and over again.

The record turns from these stories of his triumph in debate with Pharisee and Sadducee to exhibit him as exalting the commandment of love to God and one's neighbour, than which "there is none greater," conveying a reproof they do well to take to heart who maintain the needfulness of believing doctrines which no words of his sanction, and which, were he among us now, he would condemn and oppose, as making "the word of God of none effect."

"And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that he answered them well, asked him, Which is the

first commandment of all?

Jesus answered,

The first is, Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God from all thy heart, and from all thy soul, and from all thy mind, and from all thy strength. The second is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. And the scribe said unto him, Well, master, thou saidst of a truth that there is one, and there is none other but he: and to love him from all the heart, and from all the understanding, and from all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all the whole burnt-offerings and the sacrifices. And when Jesus saw him that he answered intelligently, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no one durst question him any more."1

1 Mark xii. 28-34.

X.

His Arrest, Trial, and Crucifixion.

So the days passed in teaching the multitude, in warning them against lip service in religion, and in sharp debate with those against whose example Jesus cautioned his listeners,1 and who, as they one after another advanced with their questions, retired foiled and silenced. But they retired to plot how best they might silence him, and, to accomplish this, Pharisee and Sadducee laid aside their common quarrel.

As the records tell us, when the day was over, Jesus passed to some retreat from the "strife of tongues" and the reach of the factions which, under cover of the darkness, might have harmed him, spending the night either among the fig and olive groves of Olivet or at Bethany, where, in the society of the two sisters, Martha and Mary, and their brother Lazarus, he forgot his troubles. He was no bravado, courting a death 1 Matt. xxiii. 3.

which none in the flush and flower of life may think of without a shudder. Life was his, not to throw wildly away, yet not to cling to when its work was done.

་་

And it was nearly done. The quick and large increase of faithful disciples, which could alone foil and disarm the priests and scribes, had not come, the zeal aroused by his entry had died away, the story of his mission in Galilee repeated itself in Judæa, and the bitter sorrow of disappointment breaks out in such words as these : O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets and stonest them who have been sent unto her, how often did I desire to gather thy children as a hen gathers her chickens under the wings, and ye desired not!" And in these too, when the thought of the impending doom of the city, where religion was a traffic, drew tears from him as he looked upon it from the slopes of Olivet: "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes." 1

1 Luke xix. 42.