man who kills you for your ii i ;it- to
buy you off, and the de\il V, li . i tThe
NTin Modern Speck) ui-r, ,. , ,- ,| ,hat
iiofWoCLk 125) usually deiiL.t-^ ,] , ,. r en-
joyed on sufferance'; and refers to Llv .: I .1 lis,
and Rev 13' for illustrations of the a- ~ itan.
On the other side Plummer ('St. Luk> ' .,m.1
says: 'There is little doubt that t the devil. The change of constr no longer ?8(349>it£ i-ri thWhv but t, trying to shun," which is the usual Moreover, we are not in Scripti him courageously.'
It may also be urged that the extreme punishment of the wicked is nowhere described as an exercise of .Satan's authority. Gehenna is 'the eternal fire prepared for the deiil and his angels ' into which in Mt 2510- Ji those on the left hand are sent by the King. The ultimate 'destruction' of wicked men, whatever that may actually mean, must be conceived as an act of God and as the exercise of His authority ; cf . Mt tV>^- ■" ' The Lord of the vineyard . . . will miserably destroy those wicked
S. Looking at the teaching of Jesus as a whole, we notice that, Avhile He constantly urges men to faith rather than to fear, and to a trust in God's fatherly goodness, such as makes filial love the rulmg motive of religious life. He does not alto- gether discard the a|i|M..d to f.M, ,1, ,-, motive for right conduct. Theri' i- ,i ,r^.■liI^ ,,f God which cannot be ignored. Sue li |i ii;i1,1m- .,, the Rich Man and Lazarus, the Unincniuil Sijivaiit, the Wheat and the Tares, and other.s, whatever interpretation we may put upon tlieir details, at least suggest a Divine and holy sternness in regard to which men should keep a wholesome fear. Nor is it only in parables that we find this element of our L(inl'- teaching. We have in the Sermon on the Mcunt such pa.ss.ages as Mt 5='-'" 7"- """''='■" : and wiih these we may compare Mt ll™-=< 123M6=- =«21^*'_'iv' and many others. The normal relation of the children of God to the Heavenly Father should be one of glad confidence and loving obedience. It bliould be ever approaching that perfect love which
told to fear ^
>. It is
' fear without f fearing God. n, but to resist
FEASTS
casts out fear ; but men who are trilling with great moral issues have no right, according to the teach- ing of Jesus, to this happy emancipation. For them fear is wholesome and necessary ; for God is the Holy Father, and jjersistent defiance of His will must be visited with stem and righteous doom.
Literature. — Cremer and Grimm-Thayer, s.vv. ^^t, ^e^iot ; Hastings' DB, art. 'Fear' ; Maclaren, Serm. pr. in Manchester, i. 194 ; Blmyan, Pilgrim's Progress, Christian's talk with Hope- ful after Ignorance was left behind.
E. H. TiTCHMAKSH. FEASTS.— The religious Feasts of the Jews in our Lord's time were not so many as the religious Feasts of the Christian Church of to-day as enu- merated in the English Book of Common Prayer, but they meant very much more in the way of outwarcl observance. In the first rank — like Christmas, Easter, Ascensiontide, and Whitsun- tide— there stood out the three great Feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Not unlike the Holy Days of the Church's Calendar, com- memorating as they do various victories of the past, there were the annual Feasts of Dedication and of Purim, to which must be added the Feast of Trumpets together with its smaller counterpart in the monthly Feast of the New Moon. Correspond- ing to the Christian Sunday there was the weekly Feast of the Sabbath. Of these, Passover, Taber- nacles, and Dedication are all specially mentioned in the Gospels, as well as the Sabbath, to which there are very many references, some merely inci- dental and some meant to show that it was our Lord's purpose to free the observance of that day from the artificial rules that had grown up about it in tradition. The Feasts are most prominent in the Fourth Gospel, where they are so mentioned a.s to form a framework into which the events of our Lord's Ministry fall. Three Passovers are tliere our Lord cleansed the of His Mini.strj' ;
recorded : Temple al (2) 6^ jusi (cf. Mt 2t Crucifixioi
have been -
mnmg „. „„ ...^ ,
mg of the 5000 ; (3) 13'
-'2'), at the time of tlie
on.
T liat the reference to Passover
inc at the beginning and the 1 contended that there may irc not mentioned, and that
Dl:.
Ded: cularized by
)ree Passovers, mention is made liernacles in Jn 7', of the Feast of 0~, and of some Feast not parti- e in Jn 5'. To these St. Luke adds mention of an earlier Passover, when our Lord was 12 years old and was for the first time(?) allowed to accompany Joseph and Mary as they went up to Jerusalem year after year for the Feast (Lk 2^1^).
The Feasts of Pa-ssover, Pentecost, and Taber- nacles were all of them Pilgrimage Feasts, that is to say. Feasts at which all male Jews above the age of 12 years were required to appear before the Lord in Jerusalem. It is noticed in Lk 2"'- that Joseph and Mary were both in the habit of going up to Jerusalem for the Passover everj- year. There was no requirement that women should thus attend at the Fea'^ts, but Hillel seems to have encouraged the practicr, .-ind it was a.lopteil by other reli^ous «ni,i,.ii lie^i.les Mary (Kdcrslieiiii", Life and Times, vol. i. p, 2:^n). St. Luke in tlie same passage speaks of our Lord as going up at the age of twelve ; that, too, was in excess of what was required by law, but was apparently in accordance with custom (so Edersheim, op. cit. p. 235 : but cf. Schiirer, ffJP II. ii. p. 51, who represents that, strictly speaking,