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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
of Jesus, which he made in the course of his dis courses with the Pharisees and others, can be fragmentary only. Nevertheless, these observations are of immense help to us, in one sense, for they enable us to test the accuracy of the conclusions to be drawn from the other available material, and, in some places, are full and clear enough to be used by themselves.
Another source of help from which one would naturally expect much light on the teaching of the Master proves, on examination, to be of little value. As has already been hinted at, his disciples were men of a very inferior order of intelligence, and seem to have had a pronounced capacity for misunderstanding their master. We find Jesus often commenting on their want of intelligence and faith. The chosen twelve were happy in the idea of being the elect, and their sole object, at least, during the time that Jesus was with them, seems to have been the enjoyment of their position as such.
So engrossed were they with this sense of power that they actually wanted to settle who was the greatest among them, and quarrelled about it. The matter bad to be referred to Jesus, who seems to have satisfied them with a little philosophical discourse. One of the twelve was the betrayer. Peter had not the moral courage to acknowledge his master in the hour of need, and deliberatoly lied to preserve his own precious skin intact. In short, a perusal of the Bible makes one painfully conscious of the fact that the twelve disciples of Jesus were constantly found wanting in intelligent understanding and faith. Their position, so far as the doctrine of the
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