when the dead should hear the voice of the Son of God. He looked forward to the raising of the son of the widow of Nain, and of the daughter of Jairus; to the summoning of Lazarus from the tomb, and to the mightiest miracle of all, in which, having power to lay down his life, he should, by his resurrection from the dead, prove that he had power to take it up also. And as the people, convinced of his power by its past exercise, looked amazement at the new miracles which he promised, he said: "marvel not that the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, for the hour is coming in which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." And reprehending them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, reminding them that for a season they were willing to rejoice in the light of John the Baptist, until he testified of Christ; and referring them to the greater witness, the works which the Father gave him to finish, he closed by admonishing them that Moses, in whom they trusted, would be their accuser: "For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?"

After the Passover, as Jesus with his disciples returned to Galilee, they passed through the corn, on the Sabbath day; and his disciples, as they went, began to pluck the heads of grain, and did eat, rubbing them in their hands. By the Jewish law, any man passing through a cornfield might innocently satisfy the cravings of his hunger, but he was

expressly forbidden to take a sickle, or to use any reaping instrument upon his neighbour's crops. Thus the law made a difference between gathering with the hands, to satisfy present hunger, and gathering to carry away for future use. The spirit of the law was to teach that no one in the world has so absolute a possession in its products, that a starving man or a wayfarer may perish, or even suffer in the midst. of plenty. Reaping, or gathering the fruit of the earth into barns, was absolutely forbidden on the day of rest. And the Pharisees carried their rigid interpretation of the law so far, that they classed all gathering, even to satisfy hunger, as reaping, if done upon the Sabbath. This strained, and over-much righteous interpretation, defeated the very purpose of the merciful law. It declared, as the opinion of these lawyers and doctors, that though a man might not withhold bread from the hungry on the days of secular employment, he must do it on God's holy day-for they pronounced it unlawful to pluck corn and eat it on the Sabbath. Thus, by their traditions, they rendered the law of God, commanding mercy, of none effect, upon the very day which was specially set apart for God's worship and service. The manifest inconsistency of this-the letter killing the spirit-our Saviour exposed and reproved. The Son of Man, he declared, is Lord also of the Sabbath. The performance of his fundamental commands-regard to justice, mercy and truth, are not to be set aside for the secondary observances, through which, rightly observed, God's commands are kept. The shadow is not to be placed above the substance, nor is the type to supercede