SECTION VIII.

THE BEGINNING OF THE PUBLIC CAREER OF JESUS. HIS DEPARTURE FROM HIS NATIVE TOWN, NAZARETH.

(Luke iv. 14-30.)

The public life of Jesus was a pilgrimage in the highest and noblest sense. One may regard as the starting point of this pilgrim-life His native place, Nazareth, from which He was early expelled. Its termination was Jerusalem, where He died on the cross.

In the power of the Spirit, Jesus returned into Galilee. His fame spread itself through all the region around. He made Himself known chiefly as a teacher in the synagogues; and in this first period of His ministry He was praised of all.

Not so, however, in His own town of Nazareth, the place in which He had been brought up. Here He went, as was His custom, into the synagogue on the Sabbath-day. He accepted the post of reader. He stood up. There was delivered to Him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He unfolded the manuscript, and found the following passage: —

'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Therefore hath He anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted,¹ to proclaim deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are cast down, — thus — to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord — the year of jubilee' (Isa. lxi. 1).

When He had closed the book, and delivered it to the officer, He sat down. The eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fastened on Him. He began to speak, and the groundwork of His address w\as, * This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.' He presented Himself as that messenger of peace to the poor of every class whom the prophet had described. The people became impressed with the feeling that it, was indeed He; they testified in His favour, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth.

This devout admiration was, however, destined soon to turn into vulgar surprise. They took offence at His humble origin, saying, 'Is not this Joseph's son?'² 'Ye will surely,' rejoined our Lord, 'say unto Me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself. The things which, as we have heard, thou didst in Capernaum, do also here in thine own country.'³ To this He replied, 'Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout the land. But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian.' And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up, and thrust Him out of the city, and led Him to the brow of the hill, whereon their city was built, that they might cast Him down headlong.

But He, passing through the midst of them, went His way.

It was in accordance with the character of the Son of man, that He should immediately, at the commencement of His ministry, bring the Gospel to His native place. It was an arrangement which displayed it in the most beautiful manner, that He should announce to the despised city of Nazareth the Old Testament Gospel of the Lord's Anointed, who preaches good tidings to the poor, and proclaims the jubilee year of deliverance to all the wretched. In expounding this scripture. He expounded His own heart; the Scripture testimony of the Anointed One was a testimony concerning Himself; and the sermon regarding the proclamation of the year of jubilee, became a proclamation of the jubilee itself. He carried thus the offer of this deliverance now to His own despised countrymen, and they felt the power which resided in the gentle flow of His gracious words.

But the thought of His humble birth was able to destroy all these happy impressions.

This thought had already proved an obstacle to the display of great miraculous power amongst them. And now they were disposed to make it a ground of reproach, that He had preferred the vain, worldly, heretical, and proud maritime city of Capernaum to their own little mountain town, — in their eyes perhaps distinguished for its piety, and, at all events. His native place. This reproach He met by a few examples from the Old Testament, which struck at the very root of the claims to the ministry of prophets, raised either by a narrow-minded home pride, or by pharisaic Judaism. Had not the prophet Elias — the ideal of a true and zealous Jewish prophet — during the time of the famine, dwelt in a foreign land, in the house of a heathen widow, and dispensed miraculous sustenance to her, rather than to the widows of Israel? Had not the prophet Elisha healed the Syrian captain Naaman of leprosy, although there were then many lepers also in Israel? Both those prophets had disregarded the double offence given to their own people: they had afforded miraculous help to foreigners — to heathens, whilst they had allowed many persons in Israel similarly afflicted, to go empty away.

Thus the Lord exposed to the view of His countrymen only a few things from Old Testament history — from the life, one may say, of the most orthodox prophets. But that little was so universal in its tendency, that it sounded in their ears as the grossest heresy. With uproarious unanimity the synagogue in Nazareth rejected Him, they excommunicated Him, cast Him out of the synagogue and the city, and had almost thrown Him headlong from a precipice in order to destroy Him.

But now there manifested itself more powerfully a mysterious something in His demeanour which paralyzed the hands and hearts of His enemies. The people of Nazareth saw that their countryman — that the son of Joseph — in the lofty expression of His spiritual nature, was indeed a stranger. They had not thought the appearance of a Roman emperor so exalted. A gesture, a look of Jesus; and with involuntary reverence they open for Him a path. He passed through the midst of them, and was soon away.

This was His departure from His native place. Banished and homeless, the Son of man departs in order to bless mankind.

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