But the moment he spoke of favors and blessings given to the Gentiles the fierce national spirit flamed up; the speech was cut short by a tumultuous uprising of the whole synagogue. They laid violent hands on Jesus and hurried him to the brow of the precipice on which their city was built, to cast him down headlong. But before the murder was consummated the calm majesty of Jesus had awed his persecutors. Their slackened hands dropped; they looked one on another irresolute: and he, passing silently through the midst of them, went his way. He had offered himself to them as their Saviour from sin and from sorrow in the very fullness of his heart. Heavenly tenderness and sweetness had stretched out its arms to embrace them, and been repulsed by sneering coldness and hard, worldly unbelief. Nazareth did not want Him; and he left it. It was the first of those many rejections which He at last summed up when he said, "How often would I have gathered thy children, and ye would not." But, though he thus came to his own and his own received him not, yet the lovely and gracious proclamation which he made then and there still stands unfading and beautiful as a rainbow of hope over this dark earth. The one Being sent into the world to represent the Invisible Father, and to show us the hidden heart and purposes of God in this mysterious life of ours, there declared that his mission was one of pity, of help, of consolation; that the poor, the bruised, the desolate, the prisoner, might forever find a Friend in him. There are times when the miseries and sorrows of the suffering race of man, the groaning and travailing of this mysterious life of ours, oppress us, and our faith in God's love grows faint. Then let us turn our thoughts to this divine Personality, Jesus, the anointed Son of God, and hear him saying now, as he said at Nazareth:-- "The spirit of the Lord is upon ME. He hath sent me to preach good tidings to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, To preach deliverance to the captives, The recovering of sight to the blind, To set at liberty them that are bruised!" It is said of him in the prophets: "He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth. The isles shall wait for his law. Our Redeemer is mighty; the Lord of Hosts is his name--our Saviour, the Holy One of Israel!" XII THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS In turning our thoughts toward various scenes of our Lord's life, we are peculiarly affected with the human warmth and tenderness of his personal friendships. The little association of his own peculiar friends makes a picture that we need to study to understand him.