knew no bounds, and they leagued with their enemies, the Sadducees and the Herodians, to bring about His destruction.
He knew all their plots, but went calmly on His way, teaching and healing, casting out devils, and training His Apostles, knowing that His enemies could do nothing against Him until His hour should come. On a certain day, when He had been telling the people that in the Kingdom of God the last should be first and the first last—a prospect very unwelcome to the Pharisees—some of these came and said to Him:
"Get Thee hence, for Herod hath a mind to kill Thee."
He answered: "Go and tell that fox: Behold, I cast out devils and do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I am consummated." "No man," He said another day, "taketh My life away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself, and I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again."
One day our Lord crossed the northern border of Palestine and came into the heathen land of Phœnicia. "He would that no man should know it," says St. Mark, "but He could not be hid." His fame had gone beyond the limits of His own little country, and a poor pagan woman came to Him in her distress. Her daughter was possessed by an evil spirit, and the mother, who had heard of the cures in Palestine, hoped that Jesus of Nazareth would have pity on her child. So she came after Him crying out:
"Have mercy on me, O Lord, Thou Son of David, my daughter is grievously troubled by a devil."
But He answered her not a word. "What an unheard of thing is this!" says St. John Chrysostom.
