ointed me
to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the
brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach
the acceptable year of the Lord.' And he closed the book, and he gave it
again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were
in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them,
'This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.'--_Luke_ iv. 14-21.

The Lord's sermon upon the mount seems such an enlargement of these
words of the prophet as might, but for the refusal of the men of
Nazareth to listen to him, have followed his reading of them here
recorded. That, as given by the evangelist, they correspond to neither
of the differing originals of the English and Greek versions, ought to
be enough in itself to do away with the spiritually vulgar notion of the
verbal inspiration of the Scriptures.

The point at which the Lord stops in his reading, is suggestive: he
closes the book, leaving the words 'and the day of vengeance of our
God,' or, as in the Septuagint, 'the day of recompense,' unread: God's
vengeance is as holy a thing as his love, yea, is love, for God is love
and God is not vengeance; but, apparently, the Lord would not give the
word a place in his announcement of his mission: his hearers would not
recognize it as a form of the Father's love, but as vengeance on their
enemies, not vengeance on the selfishness of those who would not be
their brother's keeper.

He had not begun with Nazareth, neither with Galilee. 'A prophet has no
honour in his own country,' he said, and began to teach where it was
more likely he would be heard. It is true that he wrought his first
miracle in Cana, but that was at his mother's request, not of his own
intent, and he did not begin his teaching there. He went first to
Jerusalem, there cast out the buyers and sellers from the temple, and
did other notable things alluded to by St John; then went back to
Galilee, where, having seen the things he did in Jerusalem, his former
neighbours were now prepared to listen to him. Of these the Nazarenes,
to whom the sight of him was more familiar, retained the most prejudice
against him: he belonged to their very city! they had known him from a
child!--and low indeed are they in whom familiarity with the high and
true breeds contempt! they are judged already. Yet such was the fame of
the new p