Page:Philochristus, Abbott, 1878.djvu/150

142 CHAPTER XI.

Concerning the New Power of the Forgiveness of Sins.

them that came to Jesus, a few were outcasts from the synagogues, or, as they were called, "sinners;" and it grieved the chief ruler of the synagogue in Capernaum and the elders of that synagogue that Jesus should receive such people. But Jesus received them gladly, and his anger waxed daily hotter against the rulers of the synagogues and against the Scribes, "because," said he, "they kept the key of the Kingdom, and yet they would neither enter in themselves nor suffer others to enter in." He also spake sometimes of a new Key which he must give to his disciples; but this, as yet, he spake not clearly. But as I remember, these words concerning the Scribes were spoken when Jesus first heard of the story of Hannah; which I will set down here, though the matter occurred some days before.

There lived in Capernaum a certain woman whose name was Hannah, sister of the mother of Nathaniel. This woman was afflicted by Satan, so that she could not stand upright, but was bowed down to the earth. Now it came to pass that on a certain day when Nathaniel visited her in her affliction, behold, the Rabbi Eliezer was in her house, questioning her touching her sins. And Eliezer had persuaded the woman that she was guilty of many sins; for inquiring whether she had visited any of her acquaintance on the Sabbath, he found that one of them, a widow, old