to the Son of David." But what could the value of such a conversion, of such a worship be, when those same multitudes were as noisily shouting for His murder before a week had passed? No, that was not His way of proving that He came from God, or of showing what are the features of God's nature which He wishes us to regard most. He chose rather the words of the poor afflicted prophet of Hezekiah, who had lived and died in the latter days of the old Jewish kingdom just before the Captivity. The faith of the prophet was also the faith of the Son of God, the same Holy Spirit rested on both, both had the same mission to point to the Father in heaven as the true deliverer from evil. Christ as little as Isaiah made Himself the end and object of His preaching. "I am come in my Father's name,” he says to the Jews, in St. John v. 43, "and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." But the words which Isaiah could pronounce only after many a bitter lesson, with fear and trembling, albeit with true faith, knowing that he could, after all, do but feebly and imperfectly the work which God had sent him to do, these words the Son of God could repeat without swerving as belonging entirely to Himself, in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily: in Him, as the Bible has it, they were fulfilled. It seemed in some measure a humble office that He claimed, even though the Spirit of God might go along with it; and yet He was indeed therein claiming to be the promised Messiah or Christ, for the words Messiah and Christ mean 'anointed';

and thus expressly to declare Himself anointed by the Lord in an age which lacked prophets, but was always expecting the coming of the Messiah, was in effect to hint that He was Himself that Messiah.

But this teaching about Himself was still more clearly and forcibly a teaching about the Messiah. To men who were looking for a grand conquering Messiah it was good to be taught, not by some newfangled doctrine, but by the very words of God's old prophets to Israel, that the true anointing of God is to such work as preaching the gospel to the poor.

This then is the office which Christ sets forth as His own before all others. Let us try to get at its meaning a little more closely. By 'preaching the gospel' in the present day is often meant expounding a certain set of doctrines about Christ's death and the benefits which are thereby obtained for us; and to us now Christ's death must always rightly be the deepest part of the gospel. But it was simply impossible for the Jews of Nazareth so to understand our Lord's words. He was but beginning by slow degrees to make Himself known, the chief events of His Life, above all, His Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension were still to come. There is really nothing lying on the surface of the phrase that refers to any particular doctrines. It means simply 'to tell good news,' 'to preach good tidings,' and, if you will refer again to the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah, from which the quotation is taken, you will find that He is there said to be anointed "to preach good tidings." "Good tidings to the meek," he goes on, whereas our Lord spoke of preaching good tidings to the poor.

It is worth notice that there is just such a difference in the beginning of the two Gospel accounts of the Sermon on the Mount. According to St. Matthew Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven": according to St. Luke He said, "Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." The 'poor in spirit' of St. Matthew answer to the 'meek' of Isaiah. Now we must not go away with a notion that one of these meanings is right and the other wrong: rather, by comparing them boldly together, we may find more exactly the full meaning of Scripture. The Hebrew word in Isaiah means both 'poor' and also 'meek,' butmark this it is especially used when it is wished to speak in one word of those who are both poor and meek. By the 'poor' is not here meant simply those who are in want of money or other property, but all who are in any way depressed or beaten down low in any way, whether by what we commonly call poverty, or cruelty, or tyranny, or any other sore burden. Such are the 'poor,' and the 'poor in spirit' are they who yet more than this have been led by their distresses to humble themselves under the mighty hand of God, casting all their care upon Him since He careth for them, and will exalt them in due season, if they are not over-anxious to exalt themselves. This then was Christ's first work, to bring good news to the poor and afflicted, to bring it to them whether they were poor in spirit or not, although it would profit them little if they were not. Good news to the poor was His first message to the men of Nazareth; Blessing to the poor, above all, to

the poor in spirit, the first sentence of the Sermon on the Mount; Good news to the poor the crowning sign of Himself which He gave to John the Baptist's disciples. We cannot desire three occasions more decisive than these. But what were these good news? They are partly unfolded in the words that follow: "Deliverance to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, relief to the bruised,”—these were some of the good things which were promised to men. They all refer to outward distresses and outward benefits. And why should they not? Surely God, who made man to dwell upon the earth, must care for the earthly troubles of men, must delight to relieve men from their earthly troubles: surely to tell men of this graciousness of their Heavenly Father must be a part of any true good news brought from heaven to earth, a part of the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God. At all events, we who receive the four Gospels as the record of His acts on earth are bound to that belief. Consider for a moment what these Gospels would lose if Christ's feedings of the hungry, His healings of diseases, His raisings from the dead were cut out of it as unworthy of a spiritual religion. No, blessed be God, so long as we hold fast the Book of Life, we cannot be cheated by the cruelty and heartlessness of man's gospels since we have God's gospel to fall back upon, and we know from that that nothing is too low for His care and love, without whom not a sparrow falls to the ground. Every attempt to raise men out of a condition of depression and suffering is a carrying out of God's gospel, and part of the work which

He is ever accomplishing. It is true that all the evils of poverty are by His appointment, just as all the evils of disease which fall on all mankind alike are by his appointment; but, just as a great part of Christ's gospel work when on earth was the healing of diseases, so a great part of His work now is the removal of more partial and unequal hardships.

But, though the deliverance promised by Christ at Nazareth included deliverance from outward ills, it could not stop there; all the words that He used point still more strongly to those deeper and more inward ills, which we may overlook, it may be, for days and weeks and months, but which, in sickness or other seasons of quietness, are suddenly seen in our hearts with most unwelcome clearness. Bondage, blindness, bruises, is there any one here who has not at some time felt that his very inmost self was subject to one or other of those evils, that he was unable to do what his conscience commanded him to do, unable to see and know what he needed to see and know, crushed and bruised by the attacks of inward enemies and the weight of his own past misdeeds? Then here too Christ is the messenger of good tidings. From these strange evils, which seem so slippery, so desperately hard to get at, so deep down beyond the reach or help of our fellowmen,— from these God is able and willing to deliver us, if we will only trust Him wholly. But His blessed purpose is hindered in two ways: first, we do but half believe that these inward evils really are there; the outward evils we cannot help seeing and feeling with our bodily senses: but it is otherwise with the