2. Those to whom Jesus spoke that day in Galilee were con- spicuously the labouring and the heavy laden. They were a labouring and a heavy-laden people, because they were in the worst sense a conquered people. The lake district was rich in national products, the fields brought forth largely, and the lake with its fishings was a very mine of wealth. But the land was overrun by the invader. The conqueror's tax-gatherer was every- where to be seen, and the wealth of Galilee went to feed the luxury of Eome. Hence the husbandmen and fishermen in the worst sense laboured and were heavy laden. Their rich crops fell to their sickle, their nets were often full to the point of breaking, necessitating hard toil to bring them to the shore, but the tax-gatherer stood over the threshing-floor and in the market, and swept the profits into the emperor's hands. Nor did their revolts bring them anything but harder labours and a heavier load. Their wrestling and struggling only procured them the sharp pricking of the goad and the firmer binding on their shoulders of the yoke.
TJ How large the taxes were in Palestine about the time of Christ will probably never be known. Shortly after Herod's death a committee of Jews stated to the emperor that Herod had filled the nation full of poverty and that they had borne more calamities from Herod in a few years than their fathers had during all the interval of time that had passed since they had returned from Babylon in the reign of Xerxes. It is said that he exacted about three million dollars from the people. His children did not receive quite that amount, but to raise what they received and what the Roman government demanded, nearly everything had been taxed. There was a tax on the produce of land, one- tenth for grain and one-fifth for wine and fruit. There was a tax 1 Leslie Stephen, Life of Sir James Filzjames Stephen, 458.
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of one denarius on every person, exempting only aged people over sixty-five years, and girls and boys under the age of twelve and fourteen respectively. Then there was an income-tax. There were also taxes levied on trades, such as that of hosier, weaver, furrier, and goldsmith, and on movable property, such as horses, oxen, asses, ships, and slaves. The duties paid on imported goods varied from two and one-half to twelve per cent. Then the homes were taxed, at least the city homes, and there was bridge money and road money to be paid. There was also a tax on what was publicly bought and sold, for the removal of which tax the people pleaded with Archelaus, apparently in vain. Besides this, every city had its local administration, and raised money to pay its officials, maintain and build synagogues, elementary schools, public baths, and roads, the city walls, gates, and other general requirements. Tacitus relates how the discontent occasioned by the burdensome taxation in the year 17 A.D. assumed a most threatening character not only in Judea, but also throughout Syria. Taxes were farmed out to the highest bidders, who in turn would farm them out again. They who got the contract were not paid by the government from the taxes they collected, so that their support, or income, must be added to the taxes. How large that was we cannot know, but it was very large, as the collectors would, taking advantage of their position, often be very extortionate. Amid these unfortunate economic conditions — anarchy, war, extravagance, and taxation — the people grew poorer and poorer. Business became more and more interrupted, and want, in growing frequency, showed its emaciated features.1
3. But the national feeling which held them together as a people, had it not its side of faith ? It had not. Faith, as it found expression in the Eabbi's words, only added a thousand times to the labour and the yoke. What of money the tax-gatherer left the priest devoured, and what the priest left the scribe laid hands upon ; and as the masses sank deeper and deeper in poverty, only the more were there heaped upon them the curses of the law. Bobbery, impiety, cursing, were all the multitude saw in faith. Can we not picture that weary crowd of waiting men and women, with, as Carlyle says, " hard hands, crooked, coarse ; their rugged faces all weather-tanned, besoiled ; their backs all bent, their straight limbs and fingers so deformed ; themselves, as it were, encrusted with the thick adhesions and defacements of their
1 G. D. Heuver, The Teachings of Jesus Concerning Wealth, 31. ST. MATT. — 17
258 THE GREAT INVITATION
hopeless labour ; and seeing no cause to believe in, and no hope for rest " ? But Jesus spoke of rest, and not idly, or to delude them with a dream. He, like themselves, was a toiler, and offered no hope that with His own hand He would drive out the Eoman, or even put the priest and scribe to flight. He did not speak of rest in the sense of relief from labour. His exhortation, " Take my yoke upon you," makes that conclusive. His relief and rescue were along a totally different line. Eest can be under- stood only when labour is properly undertaken. When work is regarded as a task, then the only possible rest is relief from it. If, however, labour is undertaken as cordial service, it is quite different. Eest may then mean additional labour; it does then mean harmony and peace of mind and soul.