No doubt they were a poor, wild, ignorant, set
of people; but they were tractable; they were willing to come and
learn; they felt their own ignorance, and wanted to be taught. They
were not proud and self-sufficient, not fierce or bloodthirsty. The
text does not say that they were like wild beasts having no keeper:
but like sheep having no shepherd. And therefore Christ pitied
them, because they were teachable, willing to be taught, and worth
teaching; and yet had no one to teach them.
The Scribes and Pharisees, it seems, taught them nothing. They may
have taught the people in Jerusalem, and in the great towns,
something: but they seem, from all the gospels, to have cared
little or nothing for the poor folk out in the wild mountain
country. They liked to live in pride and comfort in the towns, with
their comfortable congregations round them, admiring them; but they
had no fancy to go out into the deserts, to seek and to save those
who were lost. They were bad shepherds, greedy shepherds, who were
glad enough to shear God's flock, and keep the wool themselves: but
they did not care to feed the flock of God. It was too much
trouble; and they could get no honour and no money by it. And most
likely they did not understand these poor people; could not speak,
hardly understand, their country language; for these Galileans spoke
a rough dialect, different from that of the upper classes.
Pages:
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47