merriment rise around! Was this the Kingdom he had come to announce as near at hand; for which he had longed, prayed, toiled, suffered, utterly denied himself and all that made life pleasant, and the rosy morning of which he had hailed with hymns of praise? Where was the Christ? Was He the Christ? What was He doing? Was he eating and drinking all this while with publicans and sinners, when he, the Baptist, was suffering for Him? Was He in His Person and Work so quite different from himself? and why was He so? And did the hot haze and mist gather also over this silver thread in the deep cleft of Israel's barren burnt-up desolateness?
4. In these circumstances we scarcely wonder at the feelings of John's disciples, as months of this weary captivity passed. Uncertain what to expect, they seem to have oscillated between Machaerus and Capernaum. Any hope in their Master's vindication and deliverance lay in the possibilities involved in the announcement he had made of Jesus as the Christ. And it was to Him that their Master's finger had pointed them. Indeed, some of Jesus' earliest and most intimate disciples had come from their ranks; and, as themselves had remarked, the multitude had turned to Jesus even before the Baptist's imprisonment, [a St. John iii. 26.] And yet, could He be the Christ? How many things about Him that were strange and seemed inexplicable! In their view, there must have been a terrible contrast between him who lay in the dungeon of Machaerus, and Him Who sat down to eat and drink at a feast of the publicans.
His reception of publicans and sinners they could understand; their own Master had not rejected them. But why eat and drink with them? Why feasting, and this in a time when fasting and prayer would have seemed specially appropriate? And, indeed, was not fasting always appropriate? And yet this new Messiah had not taught his disciples either to fast or what to pray! The Pharisees, in their anxiety to separate between Jesus and His Forerunner, must have told them all this again and again, and pointed to the contrast.
At any rate, it was at the instigation of the Pharisees, and in company with them, [1 Thus viewed there is no contradiction, not even real variation, between St. Matt. ix. 14, St. Mark ii. 18, and St. Luke v. 33.] that the disciples of John propounded to Jesus this question about fasting and prayer, immediately after the feast in the house of the converted Levi-Matthew, [a St. Matt. ix. 14-17 and parallels.] We must bear in mind that fasting and prayer, or else fasting and alms, or all the three, were always combined. Fasting represented the negative, prayer and alms the positive element, in the forgiveness of sins. Fasting, as self-punishment and mortification, would avert the anger of God and calamities. Most extraordinary instances of the purposes in view in fasting, and of the results obtained are told in Jewish legend, which (as will be remembered) went so far as to relate how a Jewish saint was thereby rendered proof against the fire of Gehenna, of which a realistic demonstration was given when his body was rendered proof against ordinary fire, [b B. Mez. 85 a, 2 towards the end.]
Even apart from such extravagances, Rabbinism gave an altogether external aspect to fasting. In this it only developed to its utmost consequences a theology against which the Prophets of old had already protested. Perhaps, however, the Jews are not solitary in their misconception and perversion of fasting. In their view, it was the readiest means of turning aside any threatening calamity, such as drought, pestilence, or national danger. This, ex opere operato: because fasting
was self-punishment and mortification, not because a fast meant mourning (for sin, not for its punishment), and hence indicated humiliation, acknowledgment of sin, and reprentance. The second and fifth days of the week (Monday and Thursday) [3 Thus a three day's fast would be on the second, fifth, and again on the second day of the week.] were those appointed for public fasts, because Moses was supposed to have gone up the Mount for the second Tables of the Law on a Thursday, and to have returned on a Monday. The self-introspection of Pharisaism led many to fast on these two days all the year round, [c Taan. 12a; St. Luke xviii. 12.] just as in Temple-times not a few would offer daily trespass-offering for sins of which they were ignorant. Then there were such painful minutiae of extemalism, as those which ruled how, on a less strict fast, a person might wash and anoint; while on the strictest fast, it was prohibited even to salute one another, [a Taan i. 4-7.] [1 Comp. 'The Temple, its Ministry and Services,' pp. 296-298.]
It may well have been, that it was on one of thoses weekly fasts that the feast of Levi-Matthew had taken place, and that this explains the expression: 'And John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, [b St. Mark ii. 18.] [2 This is the real import of the original.] This would give point to their complaint,' 'Thy disciples fast not.' Looking back upon the standpoint from which they viewed fasting, it is easy to perceive why Jesus could not have sanctioned, not even tolerated, the practice among His disciples, as little as St. Paul could tolerate among Judaising Christians the, in itself indifferent, practice of circumcision. But it was not so easy to explain this at the time of the disciples of John. For, to understand it, implied already entire transformation from the old to the new spirit. Still more difficult must it have been to do it in in such manner, as at the same time to lay down principles that would rule all similiar questions to all ages. But our Lord did both, and even thus proved His Divine Mission.
The last recorded testimony of the Baptist had pointed to Christ as the 'Bridegroom.' [c St. John iii. 29.] As explained in a previous chapter, John applied this in a manner which appealed to popular custom. As he had pointed out, the Presence of Jesus marked the marriage-week. By universal consent and according to Rabbinic law, this was to be a time of unmixed festivity, [d Ber. 6 b.] Even in the Day of Atonement a bride was allowed to relax one of the ordinances of that strictest fast, [e Yoma viii. 1.] During the marriage-week all mourning was to be suspended even the obligation of the prescribed daily prayers ceased. It was regarded as a religious duty to gladden the bride and bridegroom. Was it not, then, inconsitent on the part of John's disciples to expect 'the sons of the bride-chamber' to fast, so long as the Bridegroom was with them?
This appeal of Christ is still further illustrated by the Talmudic ordinance [f Jer. Sukk. 53 a, near the middle.] which absolved 'the friends of the bridegroom,' and all 'the sons of the bride-chamber,' even from the duty of dwelling in booths (at the Feast of Tabernacles). The expression, 'sons of the bride-chamber' (), which means all invited guests, has the more significance, when we remember that the Covenant-union between God and Israel was not only compared to a marriage, but the Tabernacle and Temple designated as 'the bridal chambers.' [a Jer. Megill. 72 d 1.] [1 'And all bride-chambers were only within the portions of Benjamin' (the Tabernacle and the Temple). Hence Benjamin was called 'the host of the Lord.'] And, as the institution of'friends of the bridegroom' prevailed in Judaea, but not in Galilee, this marked distinction of the 'friends of the bridegroom,' [2 Strangely, the two designations are treated as identical in most Commentaries.] in the mouth of the Judaean John and'sons of the bride-chamber'
in that of the galilean Jesus, is itself evidential of historic accuracy, as well as of the Judaean authorship of the Fourth Gospel.
But let it not be thought that it was to be a time of unbroken joy to the disciples of Jesus. Nay, the ideas of the disciples of John concerning the Messianic Kingdom, as one of resistless outward victory and assertion of power, were altogether wrong. The Bridegroom would be violently taken from them, and then would be the time for mourning and fasting. Not that this necessarily implies literal fasting, any more than it excludes it, provided the great principles, more fully indicated immediately afterwards, are contrary to the spirit of the joyous liberty of the children of God. It is only a sense of sin, and the felt absence of the Christ, which should lead to mourning and fasting, though not in order thereby to avert either the anger of God or outward calamity. Besides the evidential force of this highly spiritual, and thoroughly un-Jewish view of fasting, we notice some other points in confirmation of his, and of the Gospel-history generally. On the hypothesis of a Jewish invention of the Gospel-history, or of its Jewish embellishment, the introduction of this narrative would be incomprehensible. Again, on the theory of a fundamental difference in the Apostalic teaching, St. Matthew and St. Mark representing the original Judaic, St. Luke the freer Pauline development, the existence of this narrative in the first two Gospels would seem unaccountable. Or, to take another view, on the hypothesis of the much later and non-Judaean (Ephesian) authorship of the Fourth Gospel, the minute archaeological touches, and the general fitting of the words of the Baptist [b St. John iii. 29.] into the present narrative would be inexplicable. Lastly, as against all deniers and detractors of the Divine Mission of Jesus, this early anticipation of His violent removal by death, and of the consequent mourning of the Church,proves that it came not to him from without, as by the accident of events, but that from the beginning He anticipated the end, and pursued it of set, steadfast purpose.
Yet another point in evidence comes to us from the eternal and un-Jewish principles implied in the two illustrations, of which Christ here made use. [a St. Matt. ix. 16, 17.] In truth, the Lord's teaching is now carried down to its ultimate principles. The slight variations which here occur in the Gospel of St. Luke, as, indeed, such exist in so many of the narratives of the same events by different Evangelists, should noat be 'explained away' For, the sound critic should never devise an explanation for the sake of a supposed difficulty, but truthfully study the text, as an interpreter, not an apologist. Such variations of detail present no difficulty. As against a merely mechanical unspiritual accord, they afford evidence of truthful, independent witness, and irrefragable proof that,
