came throngs of worshippers streaming to the synagogue. In one of the descriptions of this synagogue it is said to have been peculiar in having the carving of the pot of manna over the entrance. While many of the other synagogues in Galilee (the remains of which have been discovered) appear to have possessed carvings of the seven-branched candlestick and paschal lamb, this is the only one on which there are traces of the third sign or emblem of the pot of manna or heavenly food with which the Israelites were fed in the wilderness; and it is definitely stated (Edersheim) that the lintel itself has been discovered, and that it bears not only the device of the pot of manna, but that this is ornamented with a flowing pattern of vine leaves and clusters of grapes.

So the season of the year (the Passover and the special eating of the paschal lamb), the miraculous feeding of the day before, and the carved device over the entrance of the synagogue, all would combine to suggest and enforce the subject of the morning's teaching. What this was we learn from the sixth chapter of the Gospel of St. John. It was Christ the Bread of Life. As in our imagination we follow the crowd within the entrance and stand against one of the pillars of the sanctuary we hear Him saying: "Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead. But the Bread of God is He that cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world. I am the Bread of Life; he that cometh to Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst."

An angry murmur runs round the seats of the elders. "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it then that He saith, I came down from heaven ?"

Again He speaks: the voice which had stilled the tempest on the Lake of Galilee, the voice that had raised the dead to life, the voice that had commanded and

given food to the five thousand in the wilderness rises once more in conscious power and sovereignty!-"Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed." "These things said He in the synagogue as He taught in Capernaum."

Let us take one last look at Jesus on this memorable Sabbath morning. He is standing on the synagogue steps, for the service is over. "From that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him." Many of those who had been accustomed to stand beside Him and to offer Him outward deference and homage, many of those who have been half inclined to follow Him-these have hurried away from the synagogue to their homes, and on His face one seems to see for the first time the bitter, pitying grief of the "Man of Sorrows" who came to His own, and found that His own received Him not. Turning Himself about He sees His apostles round Him, but even among them he recognises that one of the last who has joined, Judas Iscariot, a native of Judæa, and not as all the rest from Galilee, is a traitor in his heart; and with that human affection which almost pleads for understanding and for sympathy, we hear Him say: "And will ye also go away?" Then Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God."

Many years afterwards another of those who were present-looking back on a long life and thinking of this

and of all that followed-wrote quietly and confidently: "But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God . . . which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John i. 12, 13).

THE MAKING OF THE SAINTS

JERUSALEM

"The pathways of Thy land are little changed
Since Thou wast there :

The busy world through other ways has ranged
And left these bare.

The rocky path still climbs the glowing steep
Of Olivet:

Though rains of two millenniums wear it deep
Men tread it yet.

Still to the gardens o'er the brook it leads
Quiet and low :

Before his sheep, the shepherd on it treads,
His voice they know.

The wild fig throws broad shadows o'er it still
As once o'er Thee:

Peasants go home at evening up the hill

To Bethany."

Author of the "Three Wakings," from "Lyra Anglicana"

`HE general ground-plan of Jerusalem is probably

THE

fairly well known to all readers of Biblical history. Facing southwards, the city terminates on the crest of an extended hill, bounded on the west and south and east by valleys, and therefore having a prominent position from almost every point of view, but especially from the south.

This crest is cut irregularly into two by a central valley (the Tyropean). On the eastern side of this is Mount Moriah, where the Temple stood. On the western side Mount Zion, the site of the palace of David.

This mountain crest or ridge is of no mean height, and before the repeated destruction of the city (which has considerably altered its environment) the picture it presented was prominent and striking. It and the Mount of Olives, which is somewhat higher, are two of the very highest points in Palestine, and attain an elevation of some 2,528 feet above the level of the sea. Ages before the coming of our Lord, long before anything had been built here, we are told that Abraham coming towards it "lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off" (Gen. xxii. 2, 4).

On the summit of this mountain crest the Holy City was afterwards built, and crowning the special heights of Zion and of Moriah in the time of our Lord would be the palace of King Herod and the Temple.

Sheer down from the Temple heights the rock fell like a solid wall to the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and in the time of our Lord, when this was untouched, any one journeying from the south or south-east towards Jerusalem would see before him the wide moat of the valley, then the bold and rugged face of the mountain wall, and then, high above this, on the left, the mass of towers and columns marking the regal and public buildings on the Hill of Zion; and on the right the massive wall of the Temple platform crowning the summit of Mount Moriah; while yet again above this he would see the upper part of the Temple itself "covered with beaten gold."

Jerusalem was a fortified city, and its walls were literally studded with towers of solid masonry. Ninety of these were in the first wall, fourteen in the second, and sixty in the third one hundred and sixty-four in all. Four of