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Thou art the son of God; but he silenced them. He healed all. But so great was the assembling multitude that he spake to his disciples that a little boat should wait on him, because of the crowds, lest they should throng him.45

It is highly probable at this time he restored Mary Magdalene, who was afflicted with seven demons. The scene was near the coast-town Magdala, from which her surname seems to be derived. This Mary of Magdala became one of the attendants of Jesus, and her pure yet passionate love of him is one of the most beautiful traits of the subsequent story.

In the evening when it was growing dusk, Jesus stepped ashore, and went up into a mountain, or rather a hill, within sight of the lake, to spend the night. The hill, now called the hill of Hattin, from a little village at its foot, rises above the plain about sixty feet to a nearly level and tolerably large plateau, on which stand two peaks called the Horns of Hattin. Probably the disciples and many of the multitude bivouacked on the plateau. But Jesus went up alone into one of the peaks, and there he continued all night in prayer to God."

Early in the morning, the morning of a great day, he called his disciples to him, and chose twelve, the number of the Israelitish tribes. Them he ordained to be ministers and apostles or missionaries, for he would send them out to teach, to preach, and to heal. The work was accumulating so that he needed assistance. The twelve were the brothers Andrew and Simon Peter, the brothers James and John, and the friends Philip and Nathaniel or Bartholomew, who now reappear; to these add Matthew, also already known to us, and Thomas; then James the

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THE HORNS OF HATTIN, THE MOUNT OF THE BEATITUDES

son of Alpheus, and Judas or Thaddeus his brother; then Simon the zealot, and lastly, Judas Iscariot. The latter five are heretofore unknown to us. James and John, the sons of Zebedee and Salome a sister of the virgin Mary, were first cousins to Jesus. James the less and Judas or Jude or Thaddeus, and perhaps Simon the zealot, were sons of Alpheus or Clopas, probably a brother of Joseph, the husband of the virgin, and thus were reputed cousins to Jesus. All were Galileans, except Judas Iscariot who probably was a Judean. All were young men and earnest men, and five of them, we happen to know, were busy men, who might have excused themselves, saying, We have not time. But just that sort of men Jesus preferred.

The selection and ordination finished, Jesus came down from the peak to the multitude on the elevated plateau. Finding a rock suitable for a pulpit, he mounted it, and sat down, the usual attitude of Jewish teachers. His disciples gathered close around about him, and he opened his mouth and taught them."

Then follows the most wonderful discourse ever listened to by man, the Sermon on the Mount. Attention is arrested at the outset by an octave of paradoxes, and at every onward step thought is startled by authoritative statements of truths new and profound, many in sharp conflict with doctrines then current, but all in deep spiritual accord with the Law and the Prophets. The opening beatitudes, the closing foundations, and several intermediate passages, flow in the forms of Hebrew poetry, and the passage, "Consider the lilies," with its enthusiastic praise, revealing a passionate love of flowers, is unsurpassed in rhetorical beauty. No other

oration has influenced so deeply the course of human history, civil, social, religious. Fifteen centuries prior to it, the Law, a ministration of death, was announced by Moses to the twelve Elders and the trembling people, amid the thunders, clouds and darkness of Mount Sinai. Thus opened the old Mosaic dispensation. Here the Gospel, a ministration of life, is announced by Jesus to the twelve Apostles and the joyful people, under the calm blue skies of Galilee, on the sunlit Mount of Beatitudes. Thus opens the new Christian dispensation. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

In the afternoon of the same day Jesus walked with the twelve some six or seven miles northward to Capernaum his home. On entering the city, he was met by the elders of the Synagogue, led probably by Jairus its ruler. They were bearers of a request from the wealthy centurion in command of the Roman garrison of Capernaum, that Jesus would heal a boy about to die, a slave of the centurion and very dear to him. The elders earnestly urged the request on Jesus, appealing to his patriotism and saying:

"He is worthy that thou shouldst do this for him; for he loveth our nation, and himself built us Our Synagogue."

This was doubtless the great central marble Synagogue, where Jesus taught, and whose remains have lately been discovered at Tell-Hûm.

The reply of Jesus is prompt, and businesslike:

"I will come and heal him."

When he was near the house, the centurion sent other friends, with the message:

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