nations, adopting their ideas and putting on the raiment of their civilization, this invincible hostility remains unaltered. Surely the saddest journey Jesus ever took was this exodus into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. But it was the way His Gospel was to travel: ever westward, leaving the East to its slumber and its ruin; calling on a new world to redress the balance of the old, till at last paganism accepts with joy the gift rejected by the Jew, and after three centuries of conflict and of martyrdom the Roman eagles fall before the new symbol of the Cross of Christ.

CHAPTER XV

THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD'S BENIGNITY

THE district in which Jesus now found Himself presented strong contrasts to the district He had left. It was almost entirely pagan, and the Jewish population was sparse. Tyre was a great maritime city, distinguished by its wealth and luxury, which had repeatedly aroused the ire of the Hebrew prophets. Sidon also was a metropolis of commerce, abounding in the days of Christ with many splendid monuments of Greek and Roman art. It was among the rock-sepulchres of Sidon that there was recently discovered the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great, which is the noblest and most perfect specimen of Greek sepulchral art which the world possesses. Both cities were delightfully situated. Tyre is approached from the east by wild mountain passes of Alpine dignity and grandeur. Sidon reposes under the immediate shelter of the mountain heights of Lebanon. The plain that lies between Lebanon and the sea is of inimitable richness and fertility. Along this plain Christ traveled, looking for the first time on the impressive spectacle of a pagan life, full of frivolity and pleasure, and unrestrained by those gloomy elements of fanaticism which appeared wherever the Jew prevailed. It was a land of pleasure, fanned by the soft Mediterranean breezes and the mountain airs of Lebanon; cheerful, too, with the hum of prosperous toil a land of streams, and groves, and fairy gardens, of palaces and villas, filled with a gay and eager race, whose energy in commerce had drawn the spoils of Europe and of Asia to their shores.

Not yet had that day come, long ago foretold by the Hebrew prophet, when "they shall break down the towers of Tyrus, and make her like the top of a rock; it shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea; they shall lay thy pleasant houses, thy stones and thy timbers in the midst of the water; and the sound of thy harps shall be no more heard." Besieged in turn by every conqueror from Shalmanesser to Alexander, and often laid in ruins, Tyre still retained her dignity, and was, with the exception of Jerusalem, the most imposing city Christ had ever seen.

What were the thoughts of Jesus as He passed through this region, filled with people of a strange tongue, whose whole method of thought and life was so different from any that He had seen in Galilee? We have but one incident to guide us. A certain Syro-Phoenician woman came to Him beseeching Him to exercise His marvelous power in curing her daughter of one of those forms of hysteric disease so common in the East. She was a purely pagan woman and an alien. Matthew gives an almost vindictive sharpness to this fact by calling her "a woman of Canaan." The disciples, including Matthew himself, were offended by the importunity with which she followed Christ, and were far from realizing that need speaks a common language. Here, then, was an excellent opportunity for Christ to put into practice the new conviction which had filled His mind that henceforth His path of conquest lay among the Gentiles. It is true that He had already shown Himself well disposed to Roman officials, but these, by right of conquest, had become in a sense members of the Jewish nation. The case of this woman was wholly different. She belonged to a race which the Jew had been commanded to destroy, and the corruptions of the old idolatry still flowed in her blood. If she possessed any religion at all, it was probably

some base admixture of old idolatrous superstition with the more modern paganism of Greece and Rome.

The words which Jesus uses to the woman are ironical and enigmatic. He knows precisely the kind of thoughts which are in the minds of His disciples, and He apparently adopts them for His own, in order to expose their meanness and absurdity. It is a method of instruction often used by the great ironists, who have sometimes mimicked the language of an antagonist with such fidelity that they have been accused of teaching the very errors which they denounced. But as it is only the illiterate who can take the ironies of a Swift for serious propositions, so it is only the undiscriminating who will fail to see that in this incident Jesus is adopting language not His own, in order to reveal the poverty of thought and sympathy in His disciples. Briefly paraphrased the conversation is as follows: "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” He remarks. "This is what you think of Me and of My mission. So be it; let us see how far this definition can be pressed in the presence of this woman, and her need. I will say to her what you would say, and what you would wish me to say: 'Woman, trouble me not; My charity is not for you; it is not meet to take the children's bread, and cast it unto dogs!' You are not ashamed of such a sentiment; have you no shame or surprise when you hear Me utter it? But let us hear what the woman herself will say to this illiberal doctrine." And with a quick glance of triumph the woman makes her retort, giving back irony for irony, wit for wit. "Truth, Lord," she cries, "yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' tables!" Humility can hardly

sink lower, faith can hardly rise higher.

"O woman, great is thy faith," Christ replies; "be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour."

If Jesus had desired some corroboration of this new idea which had filled His mind of the superior worthiness of the Gentiles to receive His message, He found it in this incident. This entire mission in the coasts of Tyre and Sidon confirmed Him in this belief. He found everywhere a receptiveness of mind to new ideas, strange and welcome, after the hostile intractability of His Jewish critics. When the hour comes for Him to take farewell of Galilee, the happy memories of these days among the pagans still glow in His mind. "If the mighty works that have been done in Capernaum, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they had repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes," He exclaims in sad reproach. Henceforth the hated doctrine of the substitution of the Gentiles for the Jews as the new custodians of spiritual ideas, takes definite and final shape. He speaks of Himself in terrible language as sent that "They that see might not see, and that they that see might be made blind." He describes the Jews as the leaseholders of a vineyard to whom the real owner sends various servants to collect the rent, and last of all his own son; but they are all sain in turn, so that the owner of the vineyard lets out his vineyard to "other husbandmen which shall render him the fruits in their seasons." Nor does He always conceal His meaning under parables. He describes Himself as a stone rejected by the builders, which is taken by other builders with a juster knowledge of its worth, who make it the head of the corner in the new temple of humanity which is growing into shape. And in language yet more positive and menacing He boldly declares to the Jews, "The Kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given unto a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." Dangerous words indeed, full of provocation; but how truly wonderful in their foreknowledge of the future! But a few short years have passed, and to the Jews of a