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 prophet, that even they were willing to hear in the synagogue what he had to say to them—­thence to determine for themselves what claim he had to an honourable reception.  But the eye of their judgment was not single, therefore was their body full of darkness.  Should Nazareth indeed prove, to their self-glorifying satisfaction, the city of the great Prophet, they were more than ready to grasp at the renown of having produced him:  he was indeed the great Prophet, and within a few minutes they would have slain him for the honour of Israel.  In the ignoble even the love of their country partakes largely of the ignoble.

There was a shadow of the hateless vengeance of God in the expulsion of the dishonest dealers from the temple with which the Lord initiated his mission:  that was his first parable to Jerusalem; to Nazareth he comes with the sweetest words of the prophet of hope in his mouth—­good tidings of great joy—­of healing and sight and liberty; followed by the godlike announcement, that what the prophet had promised he was come to fulfil.  His heart, his eyes, his lips, his hands—­his whole body is full of gifts for men, and that day was that scripture fulfilled in their ears.  The prophecy had gone before that he should save his people from their sins; he brings an announcement they will better understand:  he is come, he says, to deliver men from sorrow and pain, ignorance and oppression, everything that makes life hard and unfriendly.  What a gracious