the dishonest dealers from the temple with which the Lord initiated his
mission: that was his first parable to Jerusalem; to Nazareth he comes
with the sweetest words of the prophet of hope in his mouth--good
tidings of great joy--of healing and sight and liberty; followed by the
godlike announcement, that what the prophet had promised he was come to
fulfil. His heart, his eyes, his lips, his hands--his whole body is full
of gifts for men, and that day was that scripture fulfilled in their
ears. The prophecy had gone before that he should save his people from
their sins; he brings an announcement they will better understand: he is
come, he says, to deliver men from sorrow and pain, ignorance and
oppression, everything that makes life hard and unfriendly. What a
gracious speech, what a daring pledge to a world whelmed in tyranny and
wrong! To the women of it, I imagine, it sounded the sweetest, in them
woke the highest hopes. They had scarce had a hearing when the Lord
came; and thereupon things began to mend with them, and are mending
still, for the Lord is at work, and will be. He is the refuge of the
oppressed. By its very woes, as by bitterest medicine, he is setting the
world free from sin and woe. This very hour he is curing its disease,
the symptoms of which are so varied and so painful; working none the
less faithfully that the sick, taking the symptoms for the disease, cry
out against the incompetence of their physician. 'What power can heal
the broken-hearted?' they cry. And indeed it takes a God to do it, but
the God is here! In yet better words than those of the prophet, spoken
straight from his own heart, he cries: 'Come unto me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' He calls to him every
heart knowing its own bitterness, speaks to the troubled consciousness
of every child of the Father. He is come to free us from everything that
makes life less than bliss essential. No other could be a gospel worthy
of the God of men.