best possible means for their preservation. They sank into hearts too deeply moved ever to forget them. New emotions, new ideas, and a new life were dated from them. They were associated with a thrill of wonder and of joy that vibrated to the last hour of life. It is the crowd that forgets, the individual who remembers; and there is a far securer safeguard of remembrance in the emotion of the individual than in the general impressions of a multitude.

Only less astonishing is the graciousness of Christ in these interviews. To a man who treats Him almost as a conspirator, in seeking Him by stealth, to a woman who is notoriously corrupt, Christ gives ungrudgingly the very best of Himself. How easy to have put them off with formal aphorisms and brief answers! How excusable if Jesus, worn out by a day of supreme excitement in Jerusalem, or wearied by the long journey to Sychar, had abstained from anything like detailed explanation and adequate discussion! Or, if not altogether excusable, how natural had it been, if Jesus had reserved Himself, and kept back the great truth with which His mind was full for some public and important occasion! But Jesus is content if, by the most lavish expenditure of Himself, He can bring a single soul to the knowledge of the truth. And later on, when His Church begins its resistless propaganda, His disciples have to content themselves with many such obscure victories. The value of the meanest unit of society became one of the cardinal axioms of their thought. The redemption of society through its units became one of the cardinal principles of their action. Fraternity, that feature never found in any purely civil society, however enlightened, received a new definition at their hands. Onesimus the slave was equally

a brother beloved" with his Christian master. Christianity thus meant a real triumph of democracy, although it never

used the term. But if we seek for the source from which this democracy was evolved, do we not find it in the exquisite grace, entirely free from all condescension, with which Christ treated the humblest units of the community?

The wisdom of Christ was justified in His treatment of Nicodemus by his ultimate conversion; if we hear no more of the woman of Sychar, we find that Christ's conversation with her led to results that were of importance in the development of this ministry. The incident made a great impression upon the neighboring population. The Samaritans believed in Him, not, indeed, for a very lofty reason to begin with, but for a better reason as they knew Him better; at first because of the woman's description of how Christ had read her thought, later on "because of His own word." Christ gave them the opportunity of knowing Him by remaining in their city two days. It was an act, no doubt, horrifying to His disciples, but it left only pleasant memories on His own mind. He appears to have formed a high opinion of these pariahs of Jewish civilization. "City of Fools," as Samaria was, yet its folly was more agreeable to Him than the frigid wisdom of Jerusalem. He found the people of Samaria genial, kindly, and simple, and perhaps through their very alienation from traditional Judaism the more readily disposed to hear new truths with tolerance. When He would choose a type of simple human kindliness it is a Samaritan He chooses, boldly placing the fine conduct of the Samaritan in contrast with the callousness of priests and Levites to human suffering. The good Samaritan has become a synonym of social sympathies. In an incident recorded by St. Luke the Samaritan is also represented as a type of pious gratitude. Ten lepers are cleansed, but one only returns to give thanks, and he is a Samaritan.

The

drift of Christ's mind is clearly discerned in these incidents. He found with pain that He came unto His own, and His own received Him not; but from pagans and pariahs He never failed to receive a tolerant hearing and often an affectionate welcome. So marked was His sympathy with the Samaritans that in one of the passionate disputes into which He was drawn with the Jews, His antagonists did not hesitate to accuse Him of being a Samaritan. "Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil" is their bitter taunt. His reply is a reaffirmation of the truth He first taught at the well of Sychar, that true religion is in essence spiritual, and that to do the will of God is more than theological systems or the boasts of ancestry.

These two instances of Christ's relations with individuals are typical of many others. It is obvious that many who heard Him speak, heard Him but once. At some given point His path intersected theirs; He talked with them for a few moments, tarried with them it may be for a night, sat with them at a meal, and then went upon His way, and they saw Him no more. But so powerful was the spell of His personality that in these rapid interchanges of thought human lives were irrevocably altered. The seed of truth thus scattered with a lavish hand rarely failed to spring up. If such incidents do nothing else, they give us an overwhelming sense of His power and personality. They teach us how little able we are to judge aright many features of His ministry which appear incredible, by teaching us the impossibility of all comparison. For the first time there begins to dawn upon the mind that sublime suspicion once formulated by Napoleon, when he said, "I tell you that I understand men, and Jesus was more than a man." It is in the contemplation of the alleged miracles of Christ that we usually fall back on this conviction; but assuredly the miracles

themselves do not appear more miraculous than the instantaneous and enduring effects of a few words uttered by Jesus in altering human lives. All that the wisest can say in such a case is that no wisdom is competent to measure rightly the personality of Jesus. It is unique in history, and its effects are also unique.

CHAPTER IX

THE MIRACLE-WORKER

THE arrival of Jesus at Cana was signalized by one of His best authenticated acts of mercy. At Cana He was met by

a certain ruler, or Roman official of some rank, whose son lay sick in Capernaum of a fever. The distressed father believed his child to be at the point of death, and as a last resource sought help of One who had already achieved the reputation of a thaumaturgus. Jesus expresses in the clearest language consistent with sympathy and courtesy His disinclination to interfere. It is only when the ruler exclaims in an agony of love and vehemence, "Sir, come down ere my child die," that Jesus melted toward him. He does not return with the ruler to Capernaum; He contents Himself with the definite assurance that the sick child will not die. This assurance the father receives in perfect faith. He returns to Capernaum; meets upon the way his own servants, who have ridden out with the glad tidings that his son is convalescent; inquires at what hour the amendment had begun, and finds that it synchronizes with the hour when Jesus said unto him, "Thy son liveth." A coincidence so remarkable was naturally interpreted as a miracle. Its immediate effect was greatly to enhance the reputation of Jesus in Galilee, and to add to the growing circle of His disciples one household of considerable social eminence in Capernaum.

So far as this particular story goes it offers no difficulties. We are told that the illness from which the child suffered was a fever, the symptoms of which were no doubt described