1. FORASMUCH as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those 2 things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which 3 from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; it seemed good to me 4 also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee 5 in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things 6 wherein thou hast been instructed. 7 THERE was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, 8 of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisa- 9 beth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and 10 ordinances of the Lord blameless. And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was 11 barren, and they both were now well stricken in years. 12 8 And it came to pass, that, while he executed the priest's office before God in the order 13 9 of his course, according to the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense 14 when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of the people were 15 praying without, at the time of incense. 16 11 And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar 17 of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. 18 But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife 19 Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have 20 joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the sight of 21 the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the 22 Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he 23 turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, 24 to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of 25 the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. 26 18 And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and 27 my wife well stricken in years. And the angel answering, said unto him, I am Gabriel, 28 that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to show thee 29 these glad tidings. And behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day 30 that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be 31 fulfilled in their season. 21. And the people waited for Zacharias, and marvelled that he tarried so long in the 22 temple. And when he came out he could not speak unto them: and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple: for he beckoned unto them, and remained speechless. 23. And it came to pass, that as soon as the days of his ministration were accomplished, 24 he departed to his own house. And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid 25 herself five months, saying, Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men. THE LIFE OF OUR LORD is the centre of the whole of the dispensations of God, the point to which all previous revelations converge, and whence light streams down to our own times. The Gospel may be called a biography; but it is a biography that illustrates and harmonizes ALL HISTORY, forms the basis of all evangelic truth, and sums up all previous disclosures of the divine will. It is a life, illimitable in duration, connection, and dependencies. The plans which it embodies were formed before the foundation of the earth; and the victories it achieved are, in their influence, everlasting. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending. He is the subject of the first and of the latest promise. He begins and closes both dispensations; and his work and honor will form the theme of an eternal song. J. A. The Gospel was no sudden or solitary message. Christianity is, in one sense, as ancient as the Crea- tion, resting on a foundation wide as the world and old as time. Step by step the groundwork of the Church was laid in the silent depths, and at last, when all was now ready, it rose above the earth, that all men might consciously combine to rear the spiritual temple of the living God. B. F. W. The history of Jesus, his words and miracles, his crucifixion and resurrection, witnessed by the rulers and the people, friend and foe, related by his disciples with unmistakable simplicity and honesty, pro- claimed from Jerusalem to Rome, believed by contemporaries of every grade of culture, sealed by the blood of martyrs, producing the mightiest results, felt and demonstrated in its power from day to day wherever his name is known, is the best-authenticated history in the world. Without Jesus of Nazareth history is an inextricable enigma, a chaos of facts without meaning, con- nection, and aim. With him it is a beautiful, harmonious revelation, the slow but sure unfolding of a plan of infinite wisdom and love; all ancient history converging to his coming, all modern history re- ceiving from him his higher life and impulse. He is the glory of the past, the life of the present, the hope of the future. We cannot even understand ourselves without him. According to an old Jewish proverb: "The secret of man is the secret of the Messiah." He is the great central light of history as a whole, and at the same time the light of every soul; he alone can solve the mystery of our being, and fulfil our desires after truth, our aspirations after holiness, and the longing of our hearts after peace and happiness. P. S. THE state of the world at the epoch when our Lord appeared was exactly that which, according to our mere human conceptions, might seem most fitted for the reception of Christianity. Judaism, on the one hand, had lost all those external glories and prerogatives which, at an earlier period, would have prevented any recognition of the Messiah, save as a national ruler and king. There would have been no Israel of God with chastened hearts and more spir- itualized expectancies waiting, as we know they now were, for a truer redemption of Israel. Heathenism, on the other hand, had now gained by its contact with Judaism truer conceptions of the unity of God; and many a proselyte of the gate was there who, like the centurion of Capernaum, loved well the na- tion that had taught him to kneel to the one God, and could bear to receive from that despised people a knowledge of his own and the world's salvation. When we add to this the recent consolidation of the power of Rome, and recognize a political centraliza- tion, which could not but aid, however unwillingly and unwittingly, the pervasive influences of the new faith, we may well feel that the very appearance of Christianity, at the time when it did appear, is in itself an indirect evidence of its divine nature and truth. E. Times of triumph and sorrow, the government of judges, kings, and priests, the open manifesta- tion of divine power and the brilliant display of human courage, the teaching of prophets and the teaching of experience, the concentration of East- ern meditation and the activity of Western thought, the skepticism of learning and the enthusiasm of hope, each form of discipline and each phase of speculation, had contributed to bring out into clear forms upon one narrow stage the spiritual capacities and aspirations of men. Everything was ready, and a brief space was sufficient for the prophetic work of Messiah. Disciples were waiting to recognize him; enemies had already rejected him. His words found everywhere a direct and characteristic application. His presence was an instantaneous test of all that was partial or transitory. The simple announcement of his advent was the gospel; the record of his works and words in various scenes and before various classes, the fulness of its special adaptations, not for one time only, but for all times. For the manifoldness of the elements which were combined in the Jewish people at Christ's coming provided not only for the rapidity of its comprehension, but also for the typical completeness of its history. B. F. W. 1. It appears from the Acts of the Apostles and the Apostolic Epistles, that the earliest preaching of the gospel consisted of a brief summary of the facts of our Lord's earthly history, with a few words of pointed application to the parties addressed. Of these astonishing facts, notes would voluntarily be taken and digests put into circulation. To such Luke here refers as narratives of what was believed surely among Christians, and drawn up from the testimony of eye-witnesses; and he puts in a virtual claim for his own gospel to supersede these "many" narrations. B.—All the evidence which can be gathered from the circumstances of the early Church, and the traditions of the origin of the gospels, has tended to establish the existence of an original oral gospel, definite in general outline and even in language, which was committed to writing in the lapse of time in various special shapes. The more exactly any one compares parallel passages of the gospels the more certainly he will feel that their likenesses are to be referred to the use of a common source, and not to the immediate influence of one gospel upon another. The general form is evidently derived from some one original type; the special elaboration of it is due to personal knowledge and apprehension of the events. The evidence of the evangelists is thus one and yet independent. They do not reproduce one uniform history; but give distinct histories according to the outlines of a comprehensive and common plan. In proportion as it can be shown that there is a distinctness of purpose, though most free from the marks of conscious design, in the several gospels, in proportion that there can be shown to exist in them significant differences consistent with absolute truth, there is a sure pledge of their plenary inspiration in the truest and noblest sense of the words. Nothing less than the constant presence of the Holy Spirit, if we can in any way apprehend the method of his working, could preserve perfect truthfulness with remarkable variations; a perfect plan with childly simplicity; an unbroken spiritual concord in independent histories. B. F. W. 5. The forerunner of Jesus was, by both his parents, of sacerdotal, just as Jesus himself was of royal, extraction, though at the same time also the great High Priest. Priestly descent was necessary for the forerunner, in order to secure for him when he appeared the respect of the people. C. B.—The descendants of Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron, were exclusively called to the service of the sanctuary, and divided into four-and-twenty classes or orders, each of which ministered in the temple during a week. The descendants of Eleazar, the elder son, formed sixteen of these classes or courses; those of Ithamar, the younger, only eight—that of Abijah being (1 Chron. 24 : 10) the eighth. From the days of Solomon, these four-and-twenty courses relieved each other weekly in the temple service. Lange. 8,9. Every morning, before the break of day, the captain or chief officer of the temple guard opened the door of the court, where the priests "in residence" for the week had slept, and the procession of ten passed round the court in white robes and bare feet to kill the morning sacrifice. As the first rays of the rising sun struck upon the golden lamp above the porch, the trumpets sounded; and those of the priests who had drawn the lot entered the temple for the offering of incense. That was the moment for any preternatural visitation to the priests. Then they came out, and, having slain the lamb on the altar, they pronounced the benediction. A. P. S. 10. The people praying without at the time of the incense. As the daily sacrifice represented the sacrifice of Christ, and the incense the prayers of the saints, the incense was ordered to be burnt while the sacrifice was being offered, thus indicating that through the sacrifice of Christ they had access to God. Accordingly the sacrifices and incense, both morning and evening, were fitly accompanied with the prayers of the people, not in the temple only, but everywhere; and these hours were called the hours of prayer (Acts 3 : 1).—13. John. In the Hebrew language this name signifies the grace of God: hence it was fitly given to the Messiah's forerunner. M.—17. Because during these four hundred years the Jewish people did not improve the direction furnished by the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and all the previous dealings of God—because the good spirit which had been evoked by the Babylonish captivity and the events of the Maccabean reign had again gone down in Pharisaism and Sadduceeism—it was necessary that a special forerunner, representing once more the truth and rigor of the Old Testament, should go before Christ. This, John, the son of Zacharias, was to be. 19. Gabriel.** The same angel appeared to Daniel (9 : 21), and foretold the time of Messiah. In the book of Daniel, Michael also is mentioned by name, as one of the highest angels. Elsewhere seven angels of the highest rank, who stand before God, are spoken of (Rev. 8 : 2). C. B. Within the half century that embraced the life of Christ, we have more instances of angelic interposition than in all the foregoing centuries of the world's history. At its opening and at its close angels appear as taking a special interest in events which had little of outward mark to distinguish them. H. 21,22. His appearance, at last, explained all. They could receive no blessing that day, and Zacharias could no longer minister in his course, for he was speechless; all he could do was to tell them by signs what had happened. Had they known it, his silence for the time was but the prelude to the lasting silence of the Law, of which he was a minister, now that Christ was about to come. G. ## Section 2.—Annunciation to Mary. 26. And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, 27 named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house 28 of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among 29 women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. 30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. 31 And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his 32 name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the 33 Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. 34, 35 Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall 36 be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God. And behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her who was 37 called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. 38 And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. THE angel said to the virgin-mother, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus;" and that to-day has become the greatest of all names. Learning has labored for ages with loving delight to explain the far-reaching and gracious words which flowed from his lips. Poetry, inspired by the history of his life and death, the perfection of his character, and the genius of his gospel, has exerted all her powers to praise his holy name. The early Christians portrayed him in the Catacombs of Rome as "the good Shepherd" coming down from the hills of Judah, the shepherd's staff in his hand, his hair wet with dew, and on his arm a helpless lamb. And from their time Art has exerted her highest powers to set forth the beauty and majesty of his form and character. Eloquence has woven her choicest garlands to crown his sacred head. Music has breathed her sweetest, loftiest notes in singing the glories of "the Messiah." Children are taught to lisp his praise, and dying saints depart saying, "Lord Jesus, receive our spirits." Countless multitudes, who believe in him, meet week after week on every side of the globe, in temples built to his name; and the burden of their worship is, "Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.” “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood; and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever.” Great Name! Divine Name! Dear Name! Jesus Christ our Saviour! It is the Life of the Church, the Light of the world, and the Hope of humanity. As it was in the past, and is now, it shall be in the future. “His name shall endure for ever; his name shall be continued as long as the sun; and men shall be blessed in him; all nations shall call him blessed.” An. 26. The angel Gabriel.** It is remarkable that this annunciation is made by the same archangel Gabriel who had formerly appeared to the prophet Daniel (8 : 16 ; 9 : 21) and probably to the prophet Zechariah (2 : 1-4), and described to both so circumstantially the coming of Christ, his rejection by the Jews, and the final establishment of his kingdom. Hales. 34. The question, not of outwardly expressed doubt, like that of Zacharias, or of an inwardly felt sense of impossibility, like that of Abraham and Sarah, but of a childlike innocence that sought to realize to itself, in the very face of seeming impossibilities, the full assurance of its own blessedness. There was no lack of real faith in that question. E.—35. Shall be called the Son of God. That Christ is the Son of God in his divine and eternal nature is clear from all the New Testament; yet here we see that Sonship efflorescing into human manifestation by his being born, through “the power of the Highest,” an infant of days. We must neither think of a double Sonship nor deny what is here plainly expressed, the connection between his human birth and his proper personal Sonship. B. 38. As if one so unworthy of the least of God’s mercies had no right or title to question his doings, however great a gift it pleased him to confer, she sinks all thought of self in thought of him, and says, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” A finer instance of humble, childlike, unbroken trust, we shall scarcely find in any record human or divine. H. In no part is the singular simplicity of the gospel narrative more striking than in the relation of this incident. So early does this remarkable characteristic of the evangelic narrative develop itself: the manner in which they relate, in the same calm and equable tone, the most extraordinary and most trivial events; the apparent absence either of wonder in the writer, or the desire of producing a strong effect on the mind of the reader. H. M. 39. And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city 40, 41 of Juda, and entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth. And it came to pass, that when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb: 42 and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost. And she spake out with a loud voice 43 and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And 44 whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. 45 And blessed is she that believeth: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord. 46, 47 And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God 48 my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for behold, from 49 henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me 50 great things; and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him, from 51 generation to generation. He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered 52 the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their 53 seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and 54 the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance 55, 56 of his mercy; as he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed, for ever. And Mary abode with her about three months, and returned to her own house. A MAGNIFICENT canticle, in which the strain of Hannah's ancient song, in like circumstances, is caught up, and slightly modified and sublimed. Is it unnatural to suppose that the spirit of the blessed Virgin had been drawn beforehand into mysterious sympathy with the ideas and the tone of this hymn, so that when the life and fire of inspiration penetrated her whole soul it spontaneously swept the chords of this song, enriching the Hymnal of the Church with that spirit-stirring canticle which has resounded ever since from its temple walls? In both songs, those holy women, filled with wonder to behold "the proud, the mighty, the rich," passed by, and, in their persons, the lowliest chosen to usher in the greatest events, sing of this as no capricious movement, but a great law of the kingdom of God, by which he delights to "put down the mighty from their seats and exalt them of low degree." In both songs the strain dies away on Christ; in Hannah's, under the name of "Jehovah's King"—to whom, through all his line, from David onward to himself, he will "give strength;" his "Anointed," whose horn he will exalt; in the Virgin's song, it is as the "Help" promised to Israel by all the prophets. B. 39. What were the thoughts of Mary in her solitary journey—for solitary she must have been, with such a secret in her heart, even if she travelled with a company? The intimation made to her was one which she could hardly grasp in its full significance. Her Son was to sit upon the throne of his father David, and reign over the house of Jacob, founding a kingdom which should endure forever. Long years after this she only partially realized the import of such words. In her Son's youth she was perplexed to know what was meant by his answer, when he staid behind in the temple, and years after that she failed, once again, to realize her true relations to him. Nor does she seem to have risen to the full sublimity of her position, and of his, while he lived, though the deathless love of a mother for her child brought her to the foot of the cross. But in such slowness to believe, and such abidingly imperfect conceptions, she was only on a footing with those who enjoyed habitual intercourse with him, hearing his words and seeing his miracles, day by day; for even the disciples remained to the end Jewish peasants in their ideas respecting him, thinking that he was only a political deliverer of the nation. G. 43. That the mother of my Lord should come to me. If in Mary we have one of the rarest exhibitions of humility toward God, of entire acquiescence in his will, in Elisabeth we have as rare and beautiful an instance of humility toward others, the entire absence of all selfish and envious feelings. Elisabeth leaves out of sight all the outer distinctions between herself and her humble relative, forgets the difference of age and rank, recognizes at once, and ungrudgingly, the far higher distinction which had been conferred by God upon Mary. H.—My Lord. We shall never be able to see the propriety of calling an unborn child "Lord" but by supposing Elisabeth, like the prophets of old, enlightened to perceive the Messiah's divine nature. O.—47, 48. My Saviour. Mary never dreamed, we see, of her own "immaculate conception" any more than of her own immaculate life. B.—Shall call. Or shall count me happy. In James 5 : 11 the word is the same. There is no allusion to a title to be given to her. A. 46-55. The high intellectual emotion and eloquence of the Magnificat reveal a nature of no common mould, as its intense religious fervor shows spiritual characteristics of the noblest type. But the strain throughout is strictly limited to what we might have expected in a Jewish maiden. It is intensely national when it is not personal. The whole hymn is a mosaic of Old Testament imagery and language, and shows a mind so colored by the sacred writings of her people that her whole utterance becomes, spontaneously, as by a second nature, an echo of that of prophets and saints. G.—Of the Virgin Mary very little is recorded, and that little is very different from what might have been expected. None of the inspired writers, except the evangelists, mention her name, and of these, but two record the conception of Christ. One of these, John, her adopted son, though, in all likelihood, he outlived her many years, does not record her death; nor does he give any particulars of her life; and yet he wrote to supply the omissions of the other evangelists. It is only incidentally mentioned that Jesus committed her to his care. Why this infrequent mention of her, but to guard against that superstitious veneration, to which, as experience has shown, there is naturally so strong a tendency in the minds of Christians? J. A.—The cultus or worship of the Virgin Mary is unquestionably of pagan origin. It is first mentioned by Epiphanius in the fifth century, who talks of a certain body of women who had transferred the rites of the pagan goddess Ceres to the Virgin. In different parts of the Roman Empire, where a like compromise was effected between paganism and Christianity, the worship formerly given to Cybele, the mother of the gods, according to the heathen mythology, was given to the Virgin Mary, and the festival of Hilaria, celebrated on the 25th of March in honor of Cybele, actually became “Lady-day” in honor of our Lord’s mother! Nor were the Greeks and Romans solitary in the worship of a divine mother of Divinity. The Egyptians worshipped the divine mother Isis, nursing her divine babe Horus; so the Scythians worshipped the divine mother Freya, and the Hindoos Maja, another divine mother; while the Phoenicians kissed the hand of adoration to the mooned Ashtaroth, “Queen of Heaven,” and “Mother of their God.” An. # Section 4—Birth of John the Baptist. 57. Now Elisabeth’s full time came that she should be delivered; and she brought forth 58 a son. And her neighbours and her cousins heard how the Lord had showed great mercy upon her; and they rejoiced with her. 59 And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and 60 they called him Zacharias, after the name of his father. And his mother answered and 61 said, Not so; but he shall be called John. And they said unto her, There is none of thy 62 kindred that is called by this name. And they made signs to his father, how he would 63 have him called. And he asked for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His name is 64 John. And they marvelled all. And his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and praised God. 65 And fear came on all that dwelt round about them: and all these sayings were 66 noised abroad throughout all the hill country of Judea. And all they that heard them, laid them up in their hearts, saying, What manner of child shall this be! And the hand of the Lord was with him. 67 And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying, 68, 69 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and 70 hath raised up an horn of salvation for us, in the house of his servant David: as he 71 spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: that 72 we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; to per- 73 form the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; the oath 74 which he sware to our father Abraham, that he would grant unto us, that we, being 75 delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life. 76 And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before 77 the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his 78 people, by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; whereby 79 the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. 80 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel. WHEN we take up that long line of predictions, extending over more than three thousand years, from the first dim intimation that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent, down to the last prophecy of Malachi, that the Lord, whom the Jews sought, should come suddenly to his temple as the Messenger of the Covenant, whom they delighted in; when we mark the growing brightness and fulness that characterize each succeeding prediction, as feature after feature in the life and character of the great Messiah is added to the picture; when we compare the actual events with the passages in those ancient writings, in which they were repeatedly foretold, what a strong confirmation is given thereby to our faith, that he, of whom all those things had been spoken so long beforehand, was indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God! H. Although, in one sense, nothing can serve as a preparation to the incarnation of the eternal Word, the instruction contained in the books of the ancient covenant is nevertheless a progressive instruction, which, from epoch to epoch, leads us gradually forward toward the gospel. As prophet follows prophet, who sees not how the horizon is streaked with light, how the east is kindling up, and the first rays of the star of day darting from behind the hills? The sole object of grace is still absent, but he is already designated and characterized by prophecy. This new prophet is not yet called by his name. An articulate description is not yet given, either of all the circumstances of his advent or all the clauses of his covenant, but at length he is revealed as the prophet of grace, of love, and of free-will: as the deliverer, the founder of worship in Spirit and in truth; as, moreover, the messenger, the Son of God. He is heir at once of the miseries of man and of the love of God. The religion of love furnishes a foretaste; the air of liberty is already breathed; the depths of mercy are stirred, and the human heart begins to cherish unknown hopes. A. V. No one can close the Old Testament and open the New without seeing that, during the interval, immense progress had been made in the unfolding of religious truth. The expectation of a Redeemer and a redemption had become clear and concentrated, and the belief in an eternal life, and in the resurrection, was held by many. Ker. 59. The naming of children at baptism has its origin in the Jewish custom at circumcision. The names of Abram and Sarai were changed at its first performance. B.—63. Is John. He meant that this name was already given him by the angel (ver. 13). A.—67. All discoursing on the mighty acts of God is in Scripture called prophesying. C. B.—68. In the O. T. God is said to “visit” chiefly for judgment; in the N. T., for mercy. 69. House of David. This shows that Mary must have been known to be of the royal line, independent of Joseph. B. 68–79. Zacharias’s song of praise consists of two parts. Of these we have the first in ver. 68–75; the second in ver. 76–79. In the first, Zacharias makes no mention of his son, overlooks at the outset all that is personal to him, and directs his view exclusively to the great salvation of the people, whose dawn the birth of his son prognosticated. In this part of his song he describes more the external aspect of the salvation which his people were now to experience, by being delivered from their enemies, and translated into a condition of perfect security and freedom from hostile assault. In the second part, he describes the conditions which must first be fulfilled before that period of outward prosperity can arrive. These are: knowledge of the ground of all salvation—viz., forgiveness of sins, and, consequently, the penitential seeking of it (which was to be the object of John’s ministry), and guiding the feet into the way of peace. Part first, accordingly, describes the temporal, and part second the spiritual, restitution of the people; and it is thus declared that the former cannot come without the latter—that it is for the sake of the latter that Christ appears—and that to coöperate toward it was also the vocation of John, as Christ’s forerunner. C. B. 70,71. Since the world began.** All the prophets, from Adam downward, spake of the salvation and deliverance from the power of Satan, to be accomplished by Christ, as foretold at Gen. 3: 15. J. L.—Of the civil liberty of the Jews, there was in the days in which Christ was born scarcely the shadow remaining. Degraded to a conquered province of the Romans, harassed by the arbitrary conduct of Herod, torn by internal dissension, the land of Judea was a scene of political wretchedness. The lofty courage of the Maccabean heroic age had long since departed. On the one hand was creeping baseness that bowed profoundly to Rome; on the other impotent rage that set itself constantly against Rome. Both exhibited their fatal operation, but inward and deep lived in the heart of the better disposed the desire for a prince of David’s house, who should redeem Israel “out of the hand of all his enemies.” Van O. 72. In the accomplishment of the prophecies, Zacharias recognizes the divine faithfulness and mercy as shown to the fathers, to whom these promises were made. These fathers he figures to himself (and with truth, for to God they all live) as still in existence, and taking an interest in the destinies of their nation. C. B.—76. The Highest: the Lord. John is here said to be the prophet of “the Highest,” and to go before the face of “the Lord.” But it was Christ, before whose face he was sent as a messenger, and whose prophet he was. Therefore Christ is “the Highest,” and “the Lord.” W. J. 77. The doctrine of salvation by the remission of sins, through faith in a Redeemer, was, from the beginning, the sum and substance of true religion, which subsisted in promise, prophecy, and figure, till John preached their accomplishment in the person of Jesus. Horne.—He preached repentance and baptized with the baptism of repentance, in order that men might understand what he meant when he pointed to the Lamb who taketh away the sins of the world. 78,79. Jesus, as the Sun of grace and the Sun of righteousness, is here compared to the rising sun illuminating our path and guiding our bewildered footsteps into the way of peace. C. B.—The blessed effects of the dayspring which then dawned from on high were: the dispersion of ignorance, which is the darkness of the intellectual world; the awakening of men from sin, which is the sleep of the soul; and the direction of their hearts into “the way of peace;” that is, of peace with God by the blood of Christ, peace with themselves by the answer of a conscience cleansed from sin, and peace with one another by mutual love. Horne. 80. And the child. A concluding paragraph, indicating, in strokes full of grandeur, the bodily and mental development of the Baptist; and bringing his life up to the period of his public appearance. O.—In the deserts—probably “the wilderness of Judea” whither he had retired early in life, in the Nazarite spirit, and where, free from rabbinical influences and alone with God, his spirit would be educated, like Moses in the desert, for his future high vocation, his showing unto Israel—the presentation of himself before his nation, as Messiah’s forerunner. B. It was a time of transition, universal doubt, uncertainty, and expectation. The drama of ancient society had been played out; a vast empire had risen on the ruins of the nationalities that had, hitherto, kept men apart, and its triumphs had discredited the local gods, to whom men had everywhere looked for protection. A calm had followed ages of universal war between city and city, and state and state, and had revolutionized life. Corruption and oppression had followed in the wake of dominion, and had filled the world with vague longings for a higher morality, and the hopes of a nobler religion than the decayed systems around them. The very triumph of one power over all others had, indeed, before all things besides, opened the way for the new faith of Christ. The isolation of hostile races had been broken down, and the dim but magnificent conception of a brotherhood of men, though, as yet, only as subjects of a universal despotism, had risen in the mind of all peoples. The highways of Rome invited communication with all lands; her government and laws guaranteed order and safety, wherever they obtained; but, above all, she had prepared the world for a religion which should address all humanity, by levelling the innumerable barriers of rival nationality—with their jealousies and impenetrable prejudices, and linking all races into a single grand federation, with common sympathies, and as fellow-citizens of the same great dominion. It was amid such a state of things, when the fabric of society seemed dissolving, and the new world had not yet risen from the chaos of the old, that John, the destined herald of a new moral order, was born, apparently, in Hebron. The wilderness to which John withdrew stretches, far and near, over the whole eastern part of Judea, beginning almost at Jerusalem, and reaching away, under different names, to the Dead Sea and the southern desert, as its distant limits. It is a dreary waste of rocky valleys; in some parts stern and terrible—the rocks cleft and shattered by earthquakes and convulsions into rifts and gorges sometimes a thousand feet in depth, though only thirty or forty in width; in others, stretching out in bare chalk-hills full of caves, or in white, flint-bound ridges, and winding, muddy wadys, with an occasional reservoir, hewn in the hard limestone, to supply water in a country destitute of springs. The whole district is, in fact, the slope of the midland chalk and limestone hills, from their highest point of nearly three thousand feet, near Hebron, to one thousand or fifteen hundred feet, at the valley of the Dead Sea. The Hebrews fitly call it Jeshimon—“the appalling desolation”—for it is not possible to conceive a more desolate region. On the northern side, valleys of great depth, sinking toward the Dead Sea, almost preclude travelling except in their troughs, and farther south the country is absolutely impassable. Huge perpendicular gorges, of from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet in depth, and in some places nearly a mile in width, have been hollowed out by the great torrents, rushing in winter over the precipices, toward the Dead Sea. At what age he retired from Hebron to this hermit life we have no means of knowing; but his whole later bearing, his mode of life, his sad, passionate earnestness, and even his lofty resolve to come forth as a prophet, imply a long abode in the solemn freedom of the desert, far from the distracting and enfeebling tumult of life. John sought the wilderness to ponder over the mysteries of the long-delayed kingdom of God, and to aid in bringing about its accomplishment. Disdaining self-indulgent ease, his soul kindled under the influences of home, of the times, and of religion, into a fervent enthusiasm, which formed its loftiest conception of life in asceticism and joyful self-sacrifice. Feeling the pulses of the spiritual excitement which throbbed through the people around him: pondering their sufferings, their sins, and their hopes, John gave himself up, though born a priest, to the higher mission of a prophet, and devoted his life to the reform of the evils he so deeply deplored, and to the revival of the religion of his fathers. The struggles of soul, in all natures like his, were unspeakably real, and we cannot doubt that his days and nights saw him pleading, by long earnest prayer, with many tears and sore fasting, that God in his mercy would, at last, send the Messiah to his people. G. ## Section 5.—The Genealogies: from Abraham, by Matthew; and from Adam, by Luke. 8. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch 9 over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the 10 glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which 11 shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, 12 which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising 14 God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men. 15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shep- herds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing 16 which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came 17 with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concern- 18 ing this child. And all they that heard it, wondered at those things which were told 19 them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her 20 heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. THE foundations of the first creation were laid with shouts of joy, and the sons of God sang together. The foundations of the new heaven and the new earth are here laid, and all is gladness again. The angels celebrate his praise: devout shepherds, hardly catching the meaning of the strain, repeat the song. This joy may soon be hushed in tears, but its final issue will certainly be glorious; and, therefore, though the angels come to announce the advent of an infinitely holy Being to a world that was ruined and fallen, they come “singing ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.’” J. A. We bend over this infant in that manger at Bethlehem, and strange scenes in his after-life rise upon our memory. Those little, tender feet are yet to tread upon the roughened waters of a stormy lake, as men tread the solid earth. At the touch of that little, feeble hand, the blind eye is to open, and the tied tongue to be unloosed, and diseases of all kinds to flee away. That voice, whose gentle breathings in his infant slumbers can scarce be heard, is to speak to the winds and the waves, and they shall obey it; is to summon the dead from the sepulchre, and they shall come forth. Who, then, and what was he, whose birth the angels celebrated in such high strains? None other than he of whom Isaiah, anticipating the angels, had declared: “Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” It was He, the Word, who was from the beginning with God and who was God, who was thus made flesh and came to dwell among us. This is, in truth, the central fact or doctrine of our religion, the mystery of mysteries, the one great miracle of divine, everlasting love. H. 8. In all the early history of Christianity, nothing is more beautiful, nor in more perfect unison with the future character of the religion, than the first revelation of its benign principles by voices from heaven to the lowly shepherds. H. M.—That the visitation might be answerable to the homeliness of the place, attendants, provision, who shall come to congratulate his birth but poor shepherds? The kings of the earth rest at home, and have no summons to attend him by whom they reign. Unto obscure men doth God manifest the light of his Son by glorious angels. Bp. H. The glory of the Lord. The celestial splendor round about God—the Shechinah of the Rabbis. The expression is used of the heavenly splendor revealed to Stephen, of the overpowering light that will surround Christ at his second coming (2 Thess. 1: 9), of the radiant splendor of the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21: 11, 23). This latter verse may be fitly quoted in connection with the vision seen by the shepherds—“And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” G.—9, 10. The same evangelist that tells us that the mid-day sun was darkened during the last hours of the Redeemer’s earthly life, tells us also that in his first hours the night was turned into more than day; and that heavenly glories shone forth, not unwitnessed, while angels announce to shepherd-watchers on the grassy slopes of Bethlehem the tidings of great joy. E. 11. Mary had been told that her child was to be called Jesus, that he was to be great, to be son of the Highest, the heir to his father David’s throne, the head of an everlasting monarchy. Joseph had been told that he was to call the child born of Mary, Jesus, for he was to save his people from their sins—a simpler and less Jewish description of his office. The angel speaks of him to these shepherds in still broader and sublimer terms. Unto them and unto all people this child was to be born, and unto them and unto all he was to be a Saviour, Christ the Lord, the only instance in which the double epithet, Christ the Lord, is given in this form to him. A universal, a divine Messiahship was to be his. H.—Christ the Lord. This is the only place where these words come together; and I see no way of understanding this “Lord” but as corresponding to the Hebrew Jehovah. A.—12. The sign was to consist solely in the overpowering contrast between the things just said of him and the lowly condition in which they would find him—“Him whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting, ‘ye shall find a Babe,’ whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, ‘wrap in swaddling bands,’ the ‘Saviour, Christ the Lord,’ lying in a manger!” Thus early were these amazing contrasts held forth. 14. Brief but transporting hymn—not only in articulate human speech, for our behoof, but in tunable measure, in the form of a Hebrew parallelism of two complete clauses, and a third one only amplifying the second, and so without a connecting “and.” The “glory to God,” which the new-born “Saviour” was to bring, is the first note of this sublime hymn: to this answers, in the second clause, “the peace on earth,” of which he was to be “the Prince” (Is. 9 : 6); while quick follows the glad echo of this note, “Good-will to men.” B.—God is praised in heaven, by the angels, on account of the birth of the Messiah; and peace, with all its joys, has begun its reign on earth, among men who enjoy the favor of God. Meyer. As that babe was born in Bethlehem, this world lay around him in silence, in darkness, in ignorant unconcern. But all heaven was moved; for, large as that company of angels was which the shepherds saw, what were they to the thousands that encircle the throne of the Eternal! And the song of praise the shepherds heard, what was it to the voice, as of many waters, which rose triumphant around that throne! If there be indeed a world of spirits, and in that world Christ fills the place our faith attributes to him; if in that world there be an innumerable company of angels; if the great design of our Lord’s visit to this earth was to redeem our sinful race to God, and unite us with the unfallen members of his great family, then it was not unnatural that those who had worshipped around his throne should bend in wonder over his cradle, stand by his side in his deep agony, roll away the stone rejoicing from his sepulchre, and attend him as the everlasting doors were lifted up, when, triumphant over death and hell, he resumed his place in the eternal throne. H. —Thus introducing the friend and Saviour of mankind with declarations of universal peace and goodwill, the angels only speak the constant language of Scripture in describing the Messiah. They speak of him in a manner in which he loves to speak of himself, in which the prophets spake of him before and the apostles after him. P.—The life of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the earth was the working out and development of the song of the angels. It was “Glory to God” illustrated in his obedience, in his personal sacrifice, in his prayers and teachings, in his consecration and death. It was “peace” in all the utterance of his lips; peace beaming from his gentle eye; peace spoken by daily acts; peace in his bearing humbly and patiently the buffetings and strokes and insults and injuries that were put upon him. It was “good-will to man;” for every thought, word, and act of that blessed life was the translation of God’s infinite love into forms visible to the mortal eyes that saw him. McClintock. 15. With this ever-memorable anthem—the first and last melody of heaven ever heard by mortal ears—the light faded from the hills, as the angels went away into heaven, and left earth once more in the shadow of night. Wondering at such a vision, and ful’  Eastern Inn.—From an Original Sketch. of simple trust, the shepherds had only one thought—to see the babe and its mother for themselves. 16. No details are given: no heightening of the picture of this first act of reverence to the new-born Saviour. Nor are they needed. The lowliness of the visitors, the pure image of the Virgin Mother and her Child, are better left in their own simplicity. Infancy is forever dignified by the manger of Bethlehem: womanhood is ennobled to its purest ideal in Mary: man, as such, receives abiding honor in the earliest accepted homage to her Son being that of the simple poor. G. 19. But was this pondering the words in her heart already the true faith that carries the blessing—the fruitful seed of a personal relation to the Saviour? The gospels leave us too clearly to think the opposite. There was a time, long after this, when Christ was already a teacher, when she wavered between him and his brethren who did not believe in him; when she went out with them to draw him away from his course, and bring him back to her narrower circle of home-life, as one who was hardly in his right mind. Firm, unwavering trust, that knows no passing cloud, is a work of time with all who have an inner personal nearness to the Saviour; and it was so with Mary. She reached it only, like us all, through manifold doubts and struggles of heart, by that grace from above which roused her ever anew, and led her on from step to step. Schleiermacher. WITH this beautiful simplicity was ushered in the grandest event in the history of the world—the incarnation of the Son of God for our redemption. In the stillness of the night, to a few shepherds watching their flock in the lovely fields that slope away from the hill of Bethlehem, came the wondrous song of the angels announcing the birth of the Redeemer; and these honest, simple-minded men went and saw the babe, and then told all that they had heard and seen. Thus Christ challenges our faith in his divinity by the lowly and gentle way in which he entered into our humanity. The voices of nature, of humanity, and of divinity, blended sweetly in his advent. The very air seems holy since it has borne such a message from heaven; the very earth is consecrated by the coming of the Son of God. May our hearts receive the Lord of heaven and earth, who still comes as a little child to every soul that seeks his peace! J. P. T. ## Section 8.—The Circumcision, Naming, and Presentation in the Temple. 21. And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb.22 And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord; (as it is written in 23 the law of the Lord, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the 24 Lord;) and to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.25 And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was 26 upon him. And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see 27 death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom 28, 29 of the law, then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now 30 lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have 31, 32 seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.33 And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him. 34 And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; 35 (yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also;) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.36 And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity: 37 and she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the 38 temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in that instant, gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.39 And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth. Thus child, so passive on its mother's breast, and unconscious of what is being done with him by the officiating priest, is, as his birth had proclaimed him to be, one of the seed of Abraham, and yet he afterward said of himself, "Before Abraham was, I am." He is, as the angel had proclaimed him to be, David's son and David's heir; but as he said afterward of himself, the root as well as the branch of David: David's Lord as well as David's son. He is the infant of a few weeks old, but also the Ancient of Days, whose goings forth were from of old, from everlasting. Here then at last is the Lord, the Jehovah, whom so many of the Jews were seeking, brought suddenly, almost unconsciously, into his own temple. Here is the Lamb of God, of old provided, now publicly designated and set apart—of which the paschal lamb was but the imperfect type. Here is the one and only true High Priest over the house of God, consecrated to his office, of whose all-prevailing, everlasting, and unchangeable priesthood, the Aaronic priesthood, the priesthood of the first-born, was but the dim shadow. Here is the Son presented to the Father, within the holy place on earth, as he enters upon that life of service, suffering, sacrifice, the glorious issue of which was to be his entering, not by the blood of bulls and goats, but by his own blood, into that holy place not made with hands, having obtained eternal redemption for us, there forever to present himself before the Father, as the living head of the great community of the redeemed, the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in heaven. H. 21. The circumcising.** It was a proof that he was of the promised seed, the seed of Abraham. It was a mark of his regular initiation into the Jewish church. Without this, Jesus would have been driven from the thresholds of their temple, their synagogues, and their dwellings, as unclean and profane. Circumcision was one of the matters which the law regarded as of essential importance; had it been neglected, he could not have been made in all things “obedient unto the law.” Besides, being born in the likeness of sinful man, he, by his submission to this rite, gave public testimony that he would fulfil the whole law for us. K. He publicly received the name of JESUS, which the command of the angel Gabriel had already announced. “Hoshea” meant salvation; Joshua, “whose salvation is Jehovah;” Jesus is but the English modification of the Greek form of the name. The Hebrew “Messiah” and the Greek “Christ” were names which represented his office as the Anointed Prophet, Priest, and King; but “Jesus” was the personal name which he bore as a sinless man among sinful men. F. 22. To present him to the Lord.** The blessed Virgin had received a greater favor than ever was received by the daughters of Adam; and knowing from whence, and for whose glory she had received it, she returns the holy Jesus as a gift to God again; for she had nothing, the world had nothing, so precious as himself, of which to make an oblation. Never was there before an act of adoration proportionable to the honor and majesty of the great God. But now there was; and it was made at the presentation of the child Jesus in the temple. J. T.—He who was thus offered in the temple, afterward offered, and still continues to present himself, to appear in the presence of God for us. Horne. 22-24. From the intermediate offering of “a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons,” we gather that Joseph and the Virgin were in poor circumstances, though not in poverty. Being a first-born male, they “bring him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.” All such had been claimed as “holy to the Lord,” or set apart to sacred uses, in memory of the deliverance of the first-born of Israel from destruction in Egypt, through the sprinkling of blood. In lieu of these, however, one whole tribe, that of Levi, was accepted, and set apart to occupations exclusively sacred; and whereas there were 273 fewer Levites than first-born of all Israel on the first reckoning, each of these first-born was to be redeemed by the payment of five shekels, yet not without being “presented (or brought) unto the Lord,” in token of his rightful claim to them and their service. It was in obedience to this “law of Moses,” that the Virgin presented her babe. B. How little did that Jewish priest, who took the infant Saviour and held him up before the altar, imagine that a greater than Moses, one greater than the temple, was in his arms! How little did he imagine, as he inscribed the new name of Jesus in the roll of the first-born of Israel, that he was signing the death-warrant of the Mosaic economy, now waxing old and ready to vanish away; that he was ushering in that better, brighter day, when neither of the temple upon Mount Zion, nor of that upon Gerizim, it should be said that there only was the true worship of Jehovah celebrated; but when, taught by this very Jesus to know God as our Father in heaven, unfettered and redeemed humanity in every land should worship him who is a Spirit in spirit and in truth! H. 25. How beautiful is the old age of piety—the faith and devotion that through a long life have waited upon God, merging into the peace of Christ’s coming and the joy of the heavenly rest!—no fears, no anxieties, no cares, no doubts, but a trust in God so calm and full, that even death is waited for in holy expectation, as the consolation promised to Israel, as the longed-for vision of Christ. This rich peace in prospect of death comes of a life of faith, “just and devout, according to the word of God.” A holy life is the prelude of a happy death. J. P. T. 25-27. All the ancient proofs of God’s peculiar superintendence of the race of Abraham were accumulated at this period. The vision of angels was granted to Zacharias in the temple, as the age of miraculous interference returned, and all the priests in the temple, the dwellers at Jerusalem, and consequently the whole nation, who were accustomed to visit Jerusalem every year, must have been acquainted with these events. When his miraculous dumbness ceased, the spirit of prophecy came upon him, and he predicted the glory of his own son, as the forerunner of the Messiah; together with the approaching blessings of the Messiah's kingdom. The superhuman dream, another mode by which God imparted his will to mankind, was revived in the vision of Joseph. The descent of the spirit of prophecy upon women was renewed in the salutation of Elisabeth and the prediction of Anna. The same spirit of prophecy returned also in the speech of the aged Simeon. G. T. 28-32. SIMEON, forewarned by the Holy Spirit that he should not die till he had seen the "Anointed of Jehovah," was now guided by the same Spirit into the temple; and, taking the child in his arms, he proclaimed him, for the first time, as the CHRIST or God, and declared that his eyes had seen the Salvation of God, the Light of the Gentiles, and the Glory of Israel. Thus does his sacred song embody the full doctrine of the personal glory of Christ, the spiritual purpose of his mission, and its universal extent; truths which, when fully learned, prepare the Christian to repeat from the heart his "Nunc Dimittis." S.—His hope and joy were not for himself alone. He longed and prayed for a salvation which, coming with a peculiar glory to his own beloved nation, should also shine upon the face of all people. He who would keep his own heart fresh, his own piety glowing, should carry in his heart, and remember in his prayers, the welfare of the whole world. Thus loving and praying, he can never grow old, never be weary, never really die; for he is identified with that kingdom which is undying and sure. J. P. T. 34,35. Christ was set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; he is set for the fall and rising again of many still. His gospel never leaves us as it finds us. It softens or it hardens, it kills or it makes alive. No such revealer of the thoughts of men's hearts has the world ever seen as Jesus Christ. His presence, his character, his ministry brought to light the hidden things of many a human spirit. He walked abroad applying upon all sides the infallible test which tried the temper of the soul: "If I had not come," he said, "they had not had sin, but now they have no cloak for their sin." In its uncloaked nakedness he made the sin be seen. "I know you," said he to the Jews, "that ye have not the love of God in you;" and the reason that he gave for this was, that they had rejected him. Coming into contact with them all in turn, he revealed the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, the worldliness of the young ruler, the faith of the Syro-Phœnician woman, the malice of the Sanhedrim, the weakness of Pilate, the treachery of Judas, the rashness of Peter, the tender care and sympathy of Mary. Throughout the whole of his earthly life, the description given here by Simeon was continually being verified. H. By their treatment of Christ himself, men still show what they are. The veil will be stripped off from them—such is the figure—by their own language and their own conduct toward Christ. By their estimate of his character, his mighty works, and divine doctrine—by their acceptance or rejection of him whose appeal was ever to the conscience of man, as in the sight of a heart-searching God—men will disclose their true disposition, will show whether they love the world, whether they echo its lying voice, whether they desire darkness lest their deeds should be reproved—or whether, on the other hand, they are brave to see and bold to confess the truth, whether they have an ear to hear the voice of God, and a will to follow him whithersoever he goeth. V. ## Section 9.—Wise Men, from the Far East, pay Homage to Christ. 40. And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him. 41,42. Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. 43. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind 44 in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's journey; and they sought him among their 45 kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. 46. And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the 47 midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard 48 him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? 49 behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is 50 it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. 51. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: 52 but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man. THE silence of the Scripture is oftentimes more instructive than the speech of other books; so that it has been likened to "a dial in which the shadow as well as the light informs us." How full of meaning that we have nothing told us of the life of our blessed Lord between the twelfth and thirtieth years—how significant the absolute silence which the gospels maintain concerning all that period; that those years have no history to record! How much is implied herein! the calm rippling of his human powers—the contentedness of his wait—the long preparation in secret, before he began his open ministry. What a testimony is here against all our striving and snatching at hasty results, our impatience, our desire to glitter before the world; against all which tempts so many to pluck the unripe fruits of their minds, and to turn that into the season of a stunted, premature harvest, which should have been the season of patient sowing, of earnest culture, and a silent ripening of their powers! T. It was the great lesson of his life at Nazareth, as interpreted by his sayings in the temple, that we should be doing our Father's business in the counting-house, in the workshop, at the desk, as much as in any of the higher or more public walks of Christian or philanthropic effort; that a life confined and devoted to the faithful execution of the simple offices of daily domestic duty, if it be a life of faith and love, may be one as truly divine and holy, as Christ-like and as honoring to Christ, as a life devoted to the most important public services that can be rendered to the Church on earth. In the quiet and deep-lying valleys of life, all hidden from human eye, who may tell us how many there are who, built up in a humble trust in Jesus, and animated by their hope in him, are performing cheerfully their daily tasks because a Father's wisdom has allotted them, and bearing patiently their daily burdens because they have been imposed by a Father's love? Content to live and labor, and endure and die, unnoticed and unknown, earthly fame hanging no wreath upon their tomb, earthly eloquence dumb over their dust, these are they, the last among men, who shall be among the first in the kingdom of the just. H. A FEW months before I had stood upon the loftiest pyramid, with the desert, the Nile, and Cairo at my feet. I had since stood upon Sinai, the majestic mountain of the Lord. From the minaret at the summit of the Mount of Olives, I had viewed at once the Holy City, with Bethlehem's heights and the mountains of Samaria, the wonderful sea of Sodom, and the mountains of Moab. Yet to-day I felt as a child who had yet seen nothing but his own home, and knew nothing of the world. I was thus overwhelmed by the view from Neby Ismael, which crowns the heights of Nazareth. I looked toward Tabor in the east; the lesser Hermon and Gilboa peered upward in its vicinity, and guided me to the mountains of Samaria in the south. Thence I looked toward the west, and beheld the forelands of Carmel; and, in the blue distance, Carmel itself. Amid all these mountain heights, the broad plains of Esdraelon reposed before me, as if encircled by eternal walls. But beyond Carmel, to its left, as well as to its right, lay, like a festal day in glittering beauty, the mirror of the Mediterranean. In the north a second extensive plain spread forth, with Cana, the little town of the marriage, and the "Horns of Hattin." In the northeast, lastly, shown down, like a divine eye, behind desert groups of mountains, the summit of the great Hermon, enveloped in its eternal snows; and, withdrawing my gaze from those distant scenes, I looked down upon Nazareth, which clung, like a child, to the hill above which I stood. What may this watch-tower have been to our Saviour? A symbol of his kingdom upon earth, of the gospel of redemption, as it embraced heaven, earth, and seas, with the arms of affection; as it compressed together both the past and future, in the one great hour upon Golgotha. Tisch. The scene which lay there outspread before the eyes of the youthful Jesus was indeed a central spot in the world which he came to save. It was in the heart of the land of Israel, and yet—separated from it only by a narrow boundary of hills and streams—Phoenicia, Syria, Arabia, Babylonia, and Egypt lay close at hand. The isles of the Gentiles, and all the glorious regions of Europe, were almost visible over the shining waters of that western sea. The standards of Rome were planted on the plain before him; the language of Greece was spoken in the towns below. And however peaceful it then might look, it had been for centuries a battle-field of nations. Pharaohs and Ptolemies, Emirs and Arsacids, Judges and Consuls, had all contended for the mastery of that smiling tract. It had glittered with the lances of the Amalekites; it had trembled under the chariot-wheels of Sesostris; it had echoed the twanging bowstrings of Sennacherib; it had been trodden by the phalanxes of Macedonia; it had clashed with the broadswords of Rome; it was destined hereafter to ring with the battle-ery of the Crusaders, and thunder with the artillery of England and of France. In that plain of Jezreel (or Esdraelon), Europe and Asia, Judaism and heathenism, barbarism and civilization, the Old and the New Covenant, the history of the past and the hopes of the present, seemed all to meet. No scene of deeper significance for the destinies of humanity could possibly have arrested the youthful Saviour's gaze. F. 40. The silence of Scripture intimates that the Bible is not man's book. The very facts and details which man would consider necessary first to relate are never found there. Such events alone are detailed as tend to illustrate divine truth, or to demonstrate direct divine agency. J. L. P.—Some of the apocryphal gospels are still extant, two of them entitled the Gospel of the Infancy. In these we have the proof that men better taught, many of them, than the apostles, men who wished to honor Christ in all they said about him, men who had that portraiture of his character before them which the four gospels supply, could not attempt a fancy sketch of his childhood without not only violating our sense of propriety, by attributing to him the most puerile and unmeaning displays of divine power, but shocking our moral sense, and falsifying the very picture they had before their eyes, by attributing to him acts of vengeance. H.—We may see in the silence of the Evangelists a signal and striking confirmation of their faithfulness. We may learn from it that they desired to tell the simple truth, and not to construct an astonishing or plausible narrative. That Christ should have passed thirty years of his brief life in the deep obscurity of a provincial village; that during all those thirty years the ineffable brightness of his divine nature should have tabernacled among us, unnoticed and unknown; that during those long years there should have been no outburst of amazing miracle, to announce, and reveal, and glorify the coming king—this is not what we should have expected—not what any one would have been likely to imagine or to invent. 42. Nazareth lies from Jerusalem at a distance of about eighty miles, and, in spite of the intense and jealous hostility of the Samaritans, it is probable that the vast caravan of Galilean pilgrims on their way to the feast would go by the most direct and the least dangerous route, which lay through the old tribal territories of Manasseh and Ephraim. Leaving the garland of hills which encircle the little town, they would descend the narrow flower-bordered limestone path into the great plain of Jezreel. Over the streams of that ancient river, the river Kishon—past Shunem, recalling memories of Elisha as it lay nestling on the southern slopes of Little Hermon—past the picturesque outline of bare and dewless Gilboa—past sandy Taanach, with its memories of Sisera and Barak—the road would lie to En-Gannim, where, beside the fountains, and amid the shady and lovely gardens which still mark the spot, they would probably have halted for their first night's rest. Next day they would ascend the mountains of Manasseh, and, winding through the rich fig-yards and olive-groves that fill the valleys round El-Jib, they would leave upon the right the hills which, in their glorious beauty, formed the "crown of pride" of which Samaria boasted, but which, as the prophet foretold, should be as a "fading flower." Their second encampment would probably be near Jacob's well, in the beautiful and fertile valley between Ebal and Gerizim, and not far from the ancient Shechem. A third day's journey would take them past Shiloh and Gibeah of Saul and Bethel to Beeroth; and from the pleasant springs by which they would there encamp, a short and easy stage would bring them in sight of the towers of Jerusalem. The profane plumage of the eagle-wings of Rome was already overshadowing the holy city; but, towering above its walls, still glittered the great temple, with its gilded roofs and marble colonnades, and it was still the Jerusalem of which royal David sang, and for which the exiles by the waters of Babylon had yearned with such deep emotion. F. It must have been a very beautiful sight to witness the tribes of Israel going up to "the sanctuary" to worship the Lord of Hosts on the feast of the Passover. As this first and greatest of the three festivals of the law fell to be held in spring, nature and religion united to cheer the heart of the people, and to tune it, like a sacred harp, for the celebration of the praise of Jehovah. To go up to Jerusalem with the families of the house of Jacob; to walk with beloved friends across the hills and valleys of Judah, now blooming with the fresh life of spring; to see the holy city clad in its most beautiful attire, and peopled at this time with thousands and hundreds of thousands of the tribes of Israel; to witness the worship of the Lord in its highest splendor; to hear the songs and rapturous responses of the priests and the Levites, and the hallets of the innumerable multitude; to enjoy the merry din and bustle of so many cheerful guests, young and old, from afar and near—all this was too grand and too impressive not to be looked forward to throughout the year as one of the greatest blessings and privileges which a son of Abraham could enjoy, while he was in the land of the living. De Liefde.—April 8, 1857, I set out from Nazareth with a pilgrim caravan, on its way to Jerusalem to the feast. I saw just such a scene as Jesus witnessed. The aspect of the pilgrims, their costume, their mode of travel, the road, the scenery, were all the same. A few cavaliers led the way; then followed the long train of pack-horses, mules, and donkeys, bearing old men, matrons, and maidens, tents and baggage, cooking-vessels, and boxes and bags of provender. By their side marched troops of peasants, while numbers of active boys ran hither and thither from group to group, making the rocks ring with their shouts and laughter. We encamped the first night on the green plain, at the entrance of a ravine, beside the ancient En-Gannim. When the caravan halted it was amusing to observe the utter confusion. And when the tents were pitched and the evening meal prepared, it was interesting to listen to the eager inquiries of parents after missing children. It was then only the members of each family were expected to assemble. If one was wanting, search was immediately made. I shall ever look back on that four days' journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem as among the brightest epochs of my life. I was following in the very footsteps of the Saviour; under similar external circumstances; at the same season of the year. The bright wild-flowers spangled the fields as they did when his eyes looked on them; the vines and fig-trees in the pleasant vales of Ephraim, and terraced hills of Judah, were putting forth their fragrant buds. I passed in succession Shunem and Jezreel, Samaria and Schechem, Shiloh and Bethel. J. L. P. 44. It had been a crowded company which, on returning, Joseph and Mary had joined. Galilee was then, as Josephus informs us, very thickly populated, studded with no less than two hundred and forty towns, containing each fifteen thousand inhabitants or more, sending forth in the war with the Romans an army of no less than one hundred thousand men. The separate companies which this crowded population sent up at the Passover time to Jerusalem would each be large. H.—The usual rate of travelling in the East is three miles an hour; and as the number of hours devoted to travelling rarely exceeds six or eight, the distance of an ordinary day's journey may be considered as twenty or twenty-five miles. The first day, however, on starting upon an expedition, forms an exception to this rule. H. B. H.—A caravan setting out upon a march of several days would commonly start after noon, and go only a few miles before encamping for the first night. This short stage enables the company to review its stores, and make sure that nothing is wanting or left behind. J. P. T. 46. Hearing and asking questions. The method of question and answer was the customary form of rabbinical teaching; teacher and learner becoming by turns questioner and answerer, as may be seen from their extant works. Not that he assumed the office of teaching—“his hour” for that “was not yet come.” The beauty of Christ's example lies very much in his never at one stage of his life anticipating the duties of another. B.—In a quiet and becoming manner, putting questions tending to direct their attention to the inner spirit of the law and the prophets; and in the same manner answering the questions put to himself. We cannot doubt that all had special reference to the Messiah, and to the real nature of his kingdom and his work; and that much of the amazement of the doctors was excited by views so much at variance with those commonly entertained. K. 48-50. All the mother speaks out in her half-reproachful address; all the consciously incarnate Son in the mysterious simplicity of the answer, that reminds the earthly mother that it was in the courts of his heavenly Father's house that the Son must needs be found; that his true home was in the temple of him whose glories still lingered round the heights of Moriah. E.—The salient point of this narrative appears to lie in thy father contrasted with my Father. When Jesus began to be “a son of the law,” he first calls HIM his Father, who gave him the work to do on earth, of perfectly keeping that law. Thy father. Then up to this time Joseph had been so called by the Holy Child himself—but from this time, never. I must. This is that word so often used by our Lord of his appointed and undertaken course. A. 51. “Where should I be,” he answers, “but in my Father's temple, and about the business for which I was sent by him into the world?” S. C.—But lest it should be thought that now he threw off the filial yoke, and became his own master henceforth, and theirs too, it is purposely added, “And he went down with them, and was subject unto them.” The marvel of this condescension lies in its coming after such a scene, and such an assertion of his higher Sonship; and the words are evidently meant to convey this. B.—From this time we have no more mention of Joseph. The next we hear is of his “mother and brethren;” whence it is inferred that between this time and the commencement of our Lord's public life Joseph died. A. Thus conscious of a higher source of his being, and a higher authority for his actions, he again "fulfilled all the righteousness" of filial duty, and proved that he had learned at this early age the hardest of all lessons, to wait God's time when we seem to be not only wasting our own, but losing opportunities of serving him. That he shared all the outward circumstances of Joseph's lowly lot, is clear from the taunt of his fellow-citizens of Nazareth and the neighborhood—"Is not this the carpenter's son?" That he worked at his father's bench, may be inferred not only from the circumstances of the case, but also from the laudable custom of the Jews to bring up their sons in some trade and handicraft. As Neander has observed, "His education for a teacher was not due to any of the theological schools then existing in Judea;" and thus was he the better prepared to stand forth, in perfect independence, as the antagonist and rebuker alike of the dead ritualism and hypocritical casuistry of the Pharisees and Scribes, and the negative coldness of the Sadducees. And while the rigid purity which he taught might suggest something of an outward resemblance to the Essenes, he had no real connection with that ascetic body to deaden his sympathies with humanity at large. S. 52. Our Lord's humanity was a development; his divinity is perpetual, "from everlasting to everlasting." As man, and as men speak, he "grew in wisdom and favor;" but as God he is "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever," and is therefore worthy to be worshipped. F. D. H.—Two short verses (40 and 52), closely similar in expression, alike show that the outward and earthly development of our Redeemer was in strict accordance with those laws by which those he came to save pass from childhood into youth, and from youth into mature age. In regard of his childhood, one short clause is graciously added to warn us from unlicensed musings upon the influences of outward things upon the Holy Child—one clause only, but enough—"and the grace of God was upon him." In regard of our Lord's youth and early manhood, one event at its commencement, which shows us how that grace unfolded itself in heavenly wisdom, is made fully known to us—one event, but one only, to which one short verse (52) is added, to teach us how that wisdom waxed momentarily more full, more deep, more broad, until, like some mighty river seeking the sea, it merged insensibly into the omniscience of his limitless Godhead. E. It was during this time that much of the great work of the second Adam was done. The growing up through infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, from grace to grace, holiness to holiness, in subjection, self-denial, and love, without one polluting touch of sin, this it was which, consummated by the three years of active ministry, by the passion and by the cross, constituted "the obedience of one man," by which many were made righteous. A.—If he came to empty himself of that glory which he had with the Father before the world was, to take upon him the form of a servant, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, then assuredly it was not only during the three years of his public ministry, but during all the three-and-thirty years of his life on earth, that the ends of his mission were accomplished. H. As Irenæus says, "He sanctified childhood by passing through it." Neither his words nor acts, his childish pleasures nor his tears, were different from those of his age. Evil alone had no growth in him: his soul gave back to the heavens all their sacred brightness. The ideal of humanity from his birth, he never lost the innocence of childhood, but he was none the less completely like other children in all things else. "He kept on increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man;" and this can only mean that, with a sweet attractiveness of childish nature, he spoke, and understood, and thought, as simply as his playmates, in the fields, or on the hill-sides, of Nazareth. G.—But the home of Jesus was no ordinary home. With Joseph to guide and support, with Mary to hallow and sweeten it, with the youthful Jesus to illuminate it with the very light of heaven, we may well believe that it was a home of trustful piety, of angelic purity, of almost perfect peace. The legends of early Christianity tell us that night and day, where Jesus moved and Jesus slept, the cloud of light shone round about him. And so it was; but that light was no visible Shechinah; it was the beauty of holiness; it was the peace of God. F.—Year after year passed, and still found him at his daily toil, because his hour was not yet come. In gentle patience, in transparent blamelessness of life, in natural and ever-active goodness, in tender love and ready favor to all around, loved, honored, but half veiled in the mysterious light of perfect manhood and kindling divinity, thirty years passed quietly away. These unknown, secluded years teach us that the noblest lives may yet be the most obscure; that life, in the highest sense, is not mere action, but the calm reign of love and duty toward God and man, in our allotted sphere—that the truest and holiest joy is not necessarily that of public activity, far less that of excitement and noise, but, rather, where the calm around lets God and heaven be mirrored in an untroubled spirit. G. ## Section 12.—Ministry of John the Baptist. M. 1 THE book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 2 Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his breth- 3 ren; and Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom 4 begat Aram; and Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson 5 begat Salmon; and Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and 6 Obed begat Jesse; and Jesse begat David the king; 7 And David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias; and Solo- 8 mon begat Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa; and Asa begat 9 Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias; and Ozias begat Joa- 10 tham; and Joatham begat Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias; and Ezekias begat Ma- 11 nasses; and Manasses begat Amon; and Amon begat Josias; and Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon. 12 And after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel 13 begat Zorobabel; and Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim 14 begat Azor; and Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim begat Eliud; 15, 16 and Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. 17 So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations. L. 23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the 24 son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son 25 of Joseph, which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Amos, which was the 26 son of Naum, which was the son of Esli, which was the son of Nagge, which was the son of Maath, which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Semei, which was the 27 son of Joseph, which was the son of Juda, which was the son of Joanna, which was the son of Rhesa, which was the son of Zerobabel, which was the son of Salathiel, which was 28 the son of Neri, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Addi, which was the 29 son of Cosam, which was the son of Elmodam, which was the son of Er, which was the son of Jose, which was the son of Eliezer, which was the son of Jorim, which was the son 30 of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Simeon, which was the son of Juda, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Jonan, which was the son of 31 Eliakim, which was the son of Melea, which was the son of Menan, which was the son of 32. Mattatha, which was the son of Nathan, which was the son of David, which was the son of Jesse, which was the son of Obed, which was the son of Booz, which was the son of 33 Salmon, which was the son of Naasson, which was the son of Aminadab, which was the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of Pharez, which was the 34 son of Juda, which was the son of Jacob, which was the son of Isaac, which was the son 35 of Abraham, which was the son of Thara, which was the son of Nachor, which was the son of Saruch, which was the son of Ragau, which was the son of Phalec, which was the 36 son of Heber, which was the son of Sala, which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad, which was the son of Sem, which was the son of Noe, which was the son 37 of Lamech, which was the son of Mathusala, which was the son of Enoch, which was the 38 son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel, which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God. Ur to the giving of the Law no personal trait of the promised Redeemer is found. Hope was centred in a narrower circle at each great crisis in the spiritual history of mankind—in a race, in a nation, in a tribe. For the first time, the work of Moses furnished occasion to a special portraiture of Messiah's office. He was to be the mediator of a new Law. To establish an abiding covenant between God and man was declared to be the substance of his work. The Law alone was unable to train the Jews to their appointed work. A kingdom was established, and with it a new conception of Messiah was added. The king, who gave unity and security to the nation, was but a type of the Son of David, whose kingdom should extend in eternal blessings over all the world. The earthly sovereignty of the line of David fell. The chosen people passed into captivity, and under the pressure of national disaster learnt from the teaching of prophets to see in their promised Messiah "the Son of Man," who should sympathize with the sufferings of those whom he came to save as well as to govern. Thus the central belief, in virtue of which Judaism lived, was providentially shaped in the progress of the history of the chosen people. Nothing was lost as the conception of the Redeemer was gradually completed. Each period added something which belongs essentially to the fulness of the conception. And so at last the Lawgiver, the King, the Prophet, the Priest, the Man, are all included in the Christ whom the gospels present to us. B. F. W. THE object of both genealogies of Jesus in the gospels is to show that, according to the flesh, the holy child was lineally descended from King David. This fact was often asserted in our Lord's lifetime, and never denied by the Jews, as they would have been glad to have done had it been in their power. The fact that the descent of Jesus from David could be established by registers, and the presence of two such minute pedigrees as those of Matthew and Luke, evince that the Jews were, up to this time, still careful in the registration of family descents. The division of the whole Hebrew nation into tribes, and the allotment to each tribe, and to every family in each tribe, of its distinct portion of territory, as an inalienable possession, rendered it indispensable that genealogical tables should be preserved. That such registers existed to even a later date is shown by Josephus, who declared that he traced his own descent in the tribe of Levi by public registers; and he expressly informs that, however dispersed and dispossessed his nation were, they never failed to have exact genealogical tables prepared from the authentic documents which were kept at Jerusalem; and that, in all their sufferings, they were particularly careful to preserve these tables, which were renewed from time to time. Since, however, the period of their destruction as a nation by the Romans, all their tables of descent seem to be lost, and now they are utterly unable to trace the pedigree of any one Israelite who might lay claim to be their promised and still expected Messiah. K. The genealogies coincide until David, when Matthew takes the reigning line, whereas Luke takes the younger and inferior line by David's son Nathan. They concur, indeed, in Salathiel and Zorobabel, at the time of the captivity, but then diverge again, and even at the close the difference is maintained; for Matthew makes Joseph the son of Jacob, whereas Luke represents him as the son of Heli, or Eli. He could not have been naturally the son of both these persons; and the essential difference in the two lines of descent allows no satisfactory solution in the idea that Jacob and Heli are different names for the same person. They are obviously two different genealogies from the common ancestor, David. This being the case, there can be little doubt that the genealogy of Matthew is that of Joseph, and the one of Luke that of Mary—the former being the legal and the latter the real genealogy of Jesus. L.—Matthew was writing for the Jews, and tracing his legal descent from David, which legal descent was always reckoned in the male line, and was, therefore, properly traced through the husband of his mother. Luke, composing his gospel for the use of the Gentiles, and intending to prove that Christ was the seed of the woman, necessarily reckons by the line of his mother, Mary, the daughter of Heli. But it was never usual with the Jews to mention the names of females in their genealogies; on this account, Mary is not mentioned here by Luke, but is only intimated or included, when the line is commenced from her father, Heli. J. L.—Indeed, Luke seems to have indicated his meaning as clearly as could be, consistently with the absence of a woman's name in a pedigree, by distinguishing the real from the legal genealogy in a parenthetical remark, "Jesus being (as was reputed) the son of Joseph (but in reality) the son of Heli," or his grandson by the mother's side; for so the ellipsis should be supplied. Furthermore, Mary is always called by the Jews "the daughter of Heli." The conclusion, then, is, that Jesus was, in the most perfect sense, a descendant of David, not only by law in the royal line of kings through his reputed father, but by direct personal descent through his mother. L. L. 38. Which was the son of Adam. Matthew had contented himself with showing Jesus to be the son of Abraham, from whom the Scriptures had taught the Jews to expect that the Messiah would spring. Luke, on the contrary, traces this lineage up to Adam; and thus signifies, among other important truths, that he is the seed of the woman promised to our first parents as the common Saviour of them and of all their posterity, without distinction of Greek or Jew, bond or free. Townson. Chronological Outline from B. C. 4 to A. D. 30, including the Leading Events of our Saviour's Life. | B. C. | Judea. | Galilee. | N. E. Palestine. | Rome. | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 4 A. D. | Nativity. Death of HEROD. ARCHELAUS, Ethnarch of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea. | HEROD ANTIPAS, Tetrarch of Perea and Galilee. | HEROD PHILIP, Tetrarch of Batavia, Iturea, Trachonitis, etc. | AUGUSTUS CÆSAR. | | 6 8 April 9 | Archelaus banished, and Judea annexed to the province of Syria. First Roman Procurator. Jesus at the Passover (12 years). | | | | | 14 26 | PONTIUS PILATE, sixth Procurator. | | | Augustus dies. TIBERIUS, emperor. | | 27 April 9 | Baptism, Temptation. First Passover. | | | | | 28 March 29 | Second Passover at Jerusalem. | First circuit in Galilee. Apostles chosen. Second circuit. | | | | 29 April 16 Oct. 11 Dec. 12 | Third Passover—not at Jerusalem. Feast of Tabernacles. Feast of Dedication. | Third circuit. Circuit in Perea. | Transfiguration. | | | 30 April 5 April 6 April 8 May 17 May 27 | Passover. Crucifixion. Resurrection. Ascension. Pentecost. | | | | # Section 6—The Birth at Bethlehem. M. 18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. 24 Then Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: and knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS. L. 1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, (because he was of the house and lineage of David,) to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. 6 And so it was, that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. THE birth of Christ most aptly introduces the whole subsequent history of his life, and both his birth and life as aptly represent the spiritual fortunes of his gospel as a great salvation for the world. And the reason why Jesus cannot find room for his gospel is closely analogous to that which he encountered in his birth, viz., that men's hearts are preoccupied; they are filled to the full with their own objects already. It is now as then and then as now; the selfishness and self-accommodation, the want of right sensibility, the crowding, eager state of men, in a world too small for their ambition—all these preoccupy the inn of their affections, leaving only the stable or some by-place in their hearts, as little worthy of his occupancy and the glorious errand on which he comes. And a main part of the difficulty is, that Christ is a grace too great for men's thoughts, and of course too great for their faith—the Eternal Word of God robed in flesh, the humanly manifested love and feeling of God, a free justification for the greatest of sinners and for all sin, a power of victory in the soul that raises it above temptation, supports it in peace, and makes obedience itself its liberty. Such a Christ of salvation fully received, embraced in the plenitude of his gifts—what fires would he kindle, what tongues of eloquence loosen, what heroic witnessings inspire! Is it not true that Christ our Master should begin to be fitly represented by his people—received in his true grandeur and fulness as the Lord of Life, and Saviour of mankind; able to save to the uttermost; a grace all victorious; light, peace, liberty, and power; wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption? Be it ours then so to make room for him, even according to the greatness of his power. H. B. 18. Before they came together.** Though betrothal was virtually marriage, and could only be broken off by a formal “bill of divorcement,” the betrothed did not at once go to her husband’s house. To give her time for preparation, and to soften the pain of parting from her friends, an interval elapsed before the final ceremony; it might be so many weeks, or months, or even a whole year. G.— 19. Her husband. Between the betrothal, or formal agreement to marry, and the actual marriage, the parties became, in the eye of the law, man and wife, and were so spoken of. K.—20. Son of David.** These words would recall Joseph’s mind to the promised seed, the expectation of the families of the lineage of David, and at once stamp the message as the announcement of the birth of the Messiah. 21. From their sins.** It is remarkable that in this early part of the evangelic history, in the midst of prodigies, and the disturbance of thrones by the supposed temporal King of the Jews, we have so clear an indication of the spiritual nature of the office of Christ. One circumstance of this kind outweighs a thousand cavils against the historic reality of the narrative. It bears the internal impress of a message from God, treasured up and related in its original formal terms. A.—The three names of our Saviour—Christ, “the anointed high priest;” Immanuel, “God with us;” and Jesus, “he that saves”—embody the great doctrines of the gospel, that he makes atonement for the past, is our companion in the present, and so delivers us from the power of sin now, and its penalty hereafter. L. A.—This is the name which we engrave in our hearts, and write upon our foreheads, and pronounce with our most harmonious accents, and rest our faith upon, and place our hopes in, and love with the overflowings of charity, joy, and adoration. J. T. 24. If his own dream was to be believed (of which he was able to judge), still more was Mary’s vision credible. The one confirmed and authenticated the other. The usual time for taking her home had already come; and he delayed not to afford her the protection which the formal completion of his marriage with her would supply. Hence, Jesus came to be formally recognized as the son of Joseph; and his early years rested under the shield of a poor man’s honor, until the time came for him to assert the claims of his heavenly parentage. K. L. 1. Taxed. This taxing was an enrolment, or account of the inhabitants and their estates, and was ordered by Providence to verify the truth of ancient prophecies. D.—The taxing is mentioned by Luke, not only to mark the time of Christ’s birth, but to prove that he was born in Bethlehem, and that his parents were at that time known to be branches of the royal family of David. M.—Perhaps the best explanation is, that the design of Augustus was first fully executed when Cyrenius was governor, though the decree went forth and the enrolment commenced ten years earlier. There is abundant reason to believe that an enrolment was actually set on foot shortly before the death of Herod. G. R. 2. Though the home of Joseph and Mary was at Nazareth, the sure word of prophecy had declared that the Christ should be born at Bethlehem, the native place of his royal father David; and this was accomplished by the agency of the Roman emperor. S.—Augustus had ordered a general census of the Roman Empire, partly to obtain correct statistics of its resources, and partly for purposes of taxation. As Judea was then a dependency of the empire, and Augustus probably intended to reduce it entirely to the state of a Roman province, he wished to secure similar statistics of that country, and ordered King Herod to take the census. In performing this duty, Herod followed the Jewish usage, viz., a division by tribes. Joseph and Mary belonged to the tribe of David, and therefore had to repair to Bethlehem, the seat of that tribe. N. 4. The town of Bethlehem is six miles to the south of Jerusalem, a little to the east of the main road to Hebron. A thousand years before it gave the world the thorn-crowned King—the King of the realm of truth, it bestowed upon the house of Israel its royal psalmist and divine hero. Both David and Christ sprung from Bethlehem. Tisch.—It was the scene of the events so touchingly related in the book of Ruth. It was here that the good Boaz abode; and here the foreign damsel—destined to become the foremother of David and of Jesus—gleaned his field. Still earlier, it was here that the beloved wife for whom Jacob had served fourteen years was taken away from him. Rachel, Naomi, Ruth, Mary: a cluster of lovely names connected with Bethlehem, in incidents on which the heart loves to dwell. K.—The little town has an imposing aspect and a commanding site. It stands on the summit of a narrow ridge, which projects eastward from the central mountain-chain of Judah, and breaks down abruptly into deep valleys on the north, east, and south. The steep slopes beneath the village are carefully terraced; and the terraces—clothed with olives, vines, and fig-trees—sweep in graceful curves round the ridge, regular as stairs. Below these slopes, in the bottom of the valleys, are fields whose fertility gave the place its name, “House of Bread.” J. L. P.—Bethlehem stands nearly three hundred feet higher than Jerusalem. It is only a short distance from the edge of the great wilderness of Judah (or Judea), which lies (ten miles in breadth) along the west flank of the Dead Sea. In  Bethlehem this direction fertile valleys are seen for only a few miles, after which is a billowy waste of rocky ridges, their general level declining rapidly toward the deep, steaming chasm of the Dead Sea. Beyond the sea the blue masses of Moab appear. . . . It is worthy of mention that, attractive as Bethlehem is to us—mainly as the Saviour's birthplace—it appears never to have had any special attraction for the Saviour himself. We never find him visiting it from Jerusalem. N. C. B. It is remarkable that the scenes of the most wondrous events in gospel history were never even incidentally alluded to by the sacred writers after the events themselves had transpired. The reason is obvious, and its lesson most instructive. It was not until the first deep and holy impressions of heavenly doctrines began to be obliterated, until sense began to usurp its former ascendancy over spirit, that holy places were diligently sought out, and fitted up as shrines for a mistaken devotion. J. L. P.—Alike in sacred topography and in sacred history, there is a wide, free atmosphere of truth above, a firm ground of reality beneath, which no doubts or controversies concerning this or that particular spot, this or that particular opinion or sect, can affect or disturb. We have still [Bethlehem and Nazareth, Jerusalem,] the Mount of Olives, and the Sea of Galilee; the sky, the flowers, the trees, the fields, which suggested the Parables—the holy hills, which cannot be moved, but stand fast forever. A. P. S.—Great natural objects in Palestine—the knowledge of which helps to confirm our faith, and to illustrate the Scriptures—are capable of being identified; but minute objects which would be almost certain, if known, to be abused to purposes of superstition, are left undiscoverable. God would cut us off from temptations to superstition. Moreover, he would prevent us from localizing a religion which was designed to be universal, from attaching that kind and measure of interest to places which can only properly belong to the facts of which those places were the scene. A. Thomson. 7. In the rude limestone grotto attached to the inn as a stable, among the hay and straw spread for the food and rest of the cattle, weary with their day's journey, far from home, in the midst of strangers—in circumstances so devoid of all earthly comfort or splendor that it is impossible to imagine a humbler nativity—Christ was born. And the gospels, always truthful and bearing on every page that simplicity which is the stamp of honest narrative, indicate this fact without comment. There is in them nothing of the exuberance of marvel, and mystery, and miracle, which appears alike in the Jewish imaginations about their coming Messiah, and in the apocryphal narratives about the infant Christ. There is no more decisive criterion of their absolute credibility as simple histories, than the marked and violent contrast which they offer to all the spurious gospels of the early centuries, and all the imaginative legends which have clustered about them. F.—By the manner of his entrance into this world, Christ hath dignified the estate of infancy, and hallowed the bond which binds the mother to her new-born child. The grave, we say, has been hallowed—has not the cradle also—by Christ's having lain in it? H. Our common era begins in any case more than four years too late; that is, from four to five years, at the least, after the actual birth of Christ. This era was first used in historical works by the Venerable Bede, early in the eighth century, and was not long after introduced in public transactions by the Frank kings Pepin and Charlemagne. R. The throne of the Cæsars, the throne of mere human authority and power, has perished. That name, at which nations trembled, carries no power over the spirits of men. But the empire of Jesus, the empire of pure, undying, self-sacrificing love, will never perish; its sway over the conscience and hearts of men, as the world grows older, becomes ever wider and stronger. He has exalted the spiritual above the material; the empire of love above the empire of power. H.—That Child of Bethlehem, becoming the carpenter of Nazareth, and the companion of fishermen, having in his poverty "not where to lay his head," and publishing his gospel of self-denial to illiterate men, and feeble women and children, proves himself mightier than all empires and all philosophers, and, by a society whose character and weapons are not carnal but spiritual, overturns the defences of human depravity, pulls down the strongholds of Satan, and marches irresistibly to universal and blessed conquest. N. C. B. The Progress of the World—the secular, scientific, and governmental development which mankind has realized since his era—bears witness to the celestial origin, the divine character, power, and mission, of the Lord whom the Gospels present to us. The courses of human history have been changed; the level of moral and spiritual life throughout Christendom has been lifted; society has had more of courtesy, chivalry, liberty in it, in the last eighteen centuries, than had ever been seen or dreamed of before. It goes forward now, with measurable and irresistible motion, instead of whirling round and round, as before Christ it did, in a grand but dreary Sahara dance. It is hopeful, as it was not. Its expectation surpasses now its recollection. Its golden age is not chronicled in the Past, but prophesied, in the Future. Philanthropies are now organized, and enlist wide enthusiasm, of which Athens, with all her intellectual vivacity and her æsthetic training, never thought. Popular education, the sacredness of the family, the social and civil obligations of men, the elevation of woman, the enfranchisement of the poor, all useful and elevating knowledges, inventions, and moral ideas—in all, the race has made such progress in the course of these centuries as never was imagined or foreshadowed until Christ. Justly does Christendom reckon from his birth its years and centuries; for from him, and him alone, has proceeded that new and superior influence which Christendom exhibits. R. S. S. ## Section 7.—The Watching Shepherds. 14. And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a 15 fame of him through all the region round about. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all. 16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And, as his custom was, 17 he went into the synagogue on the sabbath-day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, 18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the 19 captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to 20 preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21, 22 And he began to say unto them, This day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears. And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his 23 mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph's son? And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard 24 done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. And he said, Verily I say unto you, 25 No prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six 26 months, when great famine was throughout all the land; but unto none of them was 27 Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian. 28 And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, 29 and rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill, 30 (whereon their city was built,) that they might cast him down headlong. But he, pass- ing through the midst of them, went his way. CHRIST knew and confessed himself to be the promised Messiah of whom Moses wrote and the prophets; he claimed all the prerogatives and exercised all the functions of the Messiah; he read himself on every page of the book of God. And the wonderful harmony between the Christ of prophecy and the Christ of history has at all times justly been regarded as one of the strongest proofs of his divine character and mission. It is impossible to resolve this harmony into accident or to trace it to human divination. It is the exclusive privilege of the divine mind to foreknow the future and to reach the end from the beginning. P. S. The text and introductory sentence of the first synagogue sermon of our Saviour alone remain; but how much do they reveal to us of the nature, the needfulness, the preciousness of those spiritual offices which our divine Redeemer came on earth to execute, and which he still stands waiting to discharge toward our sinful humanity! It was to a company of a few hundreds at the most that the words of Jesus were spoken in the synagogue at Nazareth; but that audience has multiplied to take in the whole family of mankind. To the men of every land in every age Jesus has been thus proclaiming what the great ends are of his mission to this earth. To open blinded eyes; to heal bruised and bleeding and broken hearts; to unlock the doors, and unloose the fetters of the imprisoned and the bound; to announce to the poor, the meek, the humble, that theirs is the kingdom of heaven; and to proclaim to all that this is the year of our Lord, the long year that takes in all the centuries down to his second coming, the year in every day and hour and moment of which our heavenly Father waits to forgive, receive, accept all contrite ones who come to him. Such, our Saviour tells us, is that great work of grace and power for whose accomplishment he has been anointed of the Father and replenished by the Spirit. H. It is impossible to fix with certainty the chronological place of so interesting an incident as the preaching of Jesus, and his rejection, at Nazareth. G. P. F. 15,16. The synagogues, introduced into Israel after the Babylonian captivity as places of prayer, were seminaries of religious knowledge, and in the time of Jesus were not only found in Jerusalem, to the number of more than four hundred, but also in small cities. Van O.—The synagogue was simply a rectangular hall, with a pillared portico of Grecian architecture, of which the further extremity (where the “sanctuary” was placed) usually pointed toward Jerusalem. On entering there were seats on one side for the men; on the other, behind a lattice, were seated the women, shrouded in their long veils. At one end was the ark of painted wood, which contained the sacred scriptures; and at one side was the elevated seat for the reader or preacher. In the chief seats were the ten or more “men of leisure,” or leading elders; and preëminent among these the chief of the synagogue. After the prayers two lessons were always read, one from the law, and one from the prophets. F. The Jewish doctors, to show their reverence for the Scriptures, always stood when they read them, but when they taught the people they sat down. Thus we find our Lord sitting down in the synagogue to preach, after he had read the passage in the prophet which he made the subject of his discourse. The custom of preaching from a text of Scripture seems to have derived its origin from the authority of this example. M.—I attended the Jewish worship at Jerusalem, and was struck with the accordance of the ceremonies with those mentioned in the New Testament. The sacred roll was brought from the chest or closet where it was kept; it was handed by an attendant to the reader; a portion of it was rehearsed; the congregation rose and stood while it was read, whereas the speaker, and all others present, sat during the delivery of the address which formed a part of the service. H. B. H. 18-20. He selects a passage announcing the sublime object of his whole mission, its divine character, and his special endowments for it; expressed in the first person, and so singularly adapted to the first opening of the mouth in his prophetic capacity, that it seems as if made expressly for this occasion. It is from the well-known section of Isaiah’s prophecies whose burden is that mysterious “servant of the Lord,” despised of man, abhorred of the nation, but before whom kings on seeing him are to arise, and princes to worship; in visage more marred than any man and his form than the sons of men, yet sprinkling many nations; laboring seemingly in vain, and spending his strength for naught and in vain, yet Jehovah’s servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and be his salvation to the ends of the earth. B.—It stands in the middle of the third great division of the book of Isaiah, that which comprises the prophecies of the person, office, sufferings, triumph, and church of the Messiah (chaps. 49 to 66), and thus by implication announces the fulfilment of all that went before, in him who then addressed them. A.—It was a Scripture universally understood to be descriptive of the coming Messiah, his office, and his work. Jesus gives no reason for appropriating and applying it to himself; he offers nothing in the shape of argument or evidence in favor of his being indeed the Christ, the Anointed of the Holy Ghost. He contents himself with the simple authoritative assertion of the fact. We have indeed but the first sentence given that he spoke on this occasion. What followed, however, we may well believe to have been an exposition of the passage read, as containing an account of the true character, ends, and objects of his mission as the Christ of God. H. Our Lord most completely verified the words of the prophet, both in their literal and spiritual meaning. He preached the gospel to the poor in fortune, the poor in spirit, and the poor in religious knowledge. He healed the broken-hearted; he raised and comforted those that were oppressed with calamity, disease, and sin. He gave sight to the blind; to those that sat in darkness he disclosed at once the cheerful light of day, and the more glorious light of divine truth. To the captives, to them that were bruised, he preached deliverance: he preached a doctrine which not only released from spiritual bondage those that had been led captive by their sins, but diffused throughout the earth such a spirit of mercy and humanity, that the heavy chains of personal slavery were gradually broken in most parts of the Christian world; and they, that had been for so many ages bruised by the cruel hand of pagan masters, were at length set free. P.—The earliest chapters of the gospels show with what majestic fulness and dignity the Saviour rose to the height of this great commission. Jesus from the beginning stood a king over the souls of men, dispensing promises, scattering heavenly gifts, calming fears, satisfying the cravings of the heart, raising an invisible and deathless kingdom in the human spirit, and bearing himself as, at once, God and man. G. 22. Joseph’s son? This was no learned rabbi from the schools of Gamaliel or Shammai, and yet he spoke with an authority which not even the great scribes assumed! Even a Hillel, when his doctrines failed to persuade, could only secure conviction by appealing to the previous authority of a Shemaia or an Abtalion. But this teacher appealed to no one—this teacher who had but been their village carpenter! F. 23. Do also here. The fundamental principles on which Christ acted forbade him to accept a challenge of this sort. He could do nothing for those who insisted on seeing in order to believe. Slaves to the outward seeming, and destitute of a spiritual sense, they would have been satisfied with nothing he might do; and he refused them with a rebuke that pointed to the ground of their offence and unbelief. N.—24. No prophet is accepted.** His meaning is, Though I should work miracles among you, yet would you not believe me: for, so long as ye will judge of things by outward considerations, no conviction can be strong enough to conquer your unreasonable prejudices. S. C.— 25-27. Many widows . . . many lepers . . . were in Israel.** These instances are quoted by our Lord, in order to prove that they who are nearest to the means of grace are often least inclined to profit by them; on which account they are justly granted to others of a more humble and teachable disposition. The application to the people of Nazareth was so undeniable, that they were prepared to destroy him whom, just before, they had regarded with admiration. Mann. 28. What then?** Were they in his estimation (and he but “the carpenter!”) no better than Gentiles and lepers? This was the climax of all that was intolerable to them, as coming from a fellow-townsman. F.—This avowed preference of other places before the dwelling of his youth; this refusal to grant to Nazareth any share in the fame of his extraordinary works; and the reproof so obviously concealed in his words and conduct, mingled with other fanatical motives, wrought the whole assembly to a pitch of frenzy. H. M. 29. The hill whereon their city was built.** The village of Nazareth is situated in a little upland vale among the hills of Galilee, two miles from Esdraelon, and six west of Tabor. The vale is about a mile long, by a quarter broad, with irregular branches shooting out from it into wild glens. A girdle of rounded hill-tops encircles the vale. The hill on the north side overtops all the others. It has a steep declivity, and its lower slopes are seamed with three or four ravines, divided by precipitous ridges of naked rock. In these ravines, and on the shelving banks which run down from them into the vale, stand the houses of Nazareth. This is the “hill on which the city was built;” and there is more than one cliff along its side which would have suited the purposes of the fanatical population, in attempting to take the Saviour’s life. J. L. P. (See Section 12.)—Nazareth and Bethlehem have a similar population to-day. Each has about 3,000 inhabitants, each is largely Christian, and without Jews. J. G. B. 30. It is not meant that they were struck with blindness, that he became invisible, or that there was an external miracle. This is the very thing which the evangelist means to deny by passing through the midst. T.—Apart from anything supernatural, there seems to have been in the presence of Jesus a spell of majesty which even his most ruthless and hardened enemies acknowledged, and before which they involuntarily bowed. It was to this that he owed his escape when the maddened Jews in the temple took up stones to stone him; it was this that made the bold and bigoted officers of the Sanhedrim unable to arrest him as he taught in public during the feast of Tabernacles at Jerusalem; it was this that made the armed band of his enemies, at his mere look, fall before him to the ground in the garden of Gethsemane. Suddenly, quietly he asserted his freedom, waived aside his captors, and overawing them by his simple glance, passed through their midst unharmed. F. 16-30. It was the custom of the Jews to invite any eminent teacher who might come into their synagogues, to speak to the people. Here, having received the book from the reader, he applied to himself a prophecy which predicted the appearance of Christ. He stopped before he came to that clause which denounced threatening and vengeance to the Jews; and confined himself to the beautiful description of the benevolent character of the Messiah. Having applied the prophecy to himself he sat down. He refused to work a miracle among the people of Nazareth; he appeared to desire to show the world that his usefulness must be founded on holiness, as well as on his preaching and miracles. They had known him thirty years. Of his manner of life, of his character and conversation during that period, the evangelists are silent. The appeal of our Lord to the people of Nazareth, after living among them thirty years as a man, may account for their silence. No imperfection, no taint of sin, of weakness, or of folly, could be found through that whole period, to enable those among whom he would be in the least esteem, to invalidate his lofty claim to the rank of the Divine Being, whom their prophets had announced. G. T. # Section 26.—Dwells in Capernaum. Calls Four Fishermen. Draught of Fishes. L. 1 AND Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, and immediately was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And he was there in the wilderness with the wild beasts, being forty days tempted of Satan. And in those M. 2 days he did eat nothing. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterwards an hungered. 3. And when the tempter, the devil, came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, 4 command that these stones be made bread. But Jesus answered him and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 5. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, to keep thee; and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. 7 And Jesus answering, said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. 8. Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All these things, all this power will I give thee, and the glory of them; for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If thou therefore wilt fall down and worship me, all shall be thine. Then answered Jesus and said unto him, Get thee hence, behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. 11. Then when the devil had ended the temptation, he leaveth him, and departed from him for a season. And behold, angels came and ministered unto him. A SPECTACLE as illusive as that presented to Jesus on the mountain-top, the arch-deceiver spreads out before our eyes, whispering to our hearts, "All this will I give you;" all this money, all that ease, all that pleasure, all that power. He asks from us no act of outward worship; all he asks is, that we believe his false promises, and turn away from God and Christ to give ourselves up to worldliness of heart and habit and pursuit. Take unto you the whole armor of God, for all is needed; but remember, of all the pieces of that panoply, the one that Christ himself used, and the only one that serves for defence and assault, is the sword of the Spirit, the word of God. By it all other parts of the armor are guarded. The helmet might be shattered on the brow, the shield wrenched from the arm, did it not protect; for hope and faith, that helmet and that shield, on what do they rest, but upon the word of the living God? H.—Christ's triumph is only the earnest and pledge of the believer's. The believer is in presence of the same versatile enemy, tempting him, now through his appetite, now through his intellect, now through his pride, making error attractive by decking it in the garb of truth, distributing false and pernicious dogmas wrapped up in isolated texts and misquoted paragraphs of God's word. But the believer has the same infinite wisdom to expose Satan's sophistries, and the same infinite power to resist his persuasions; he has the same weapon, too, "the sword of the Spirit." Let him believe, and watch, and pray, and strive, and his final triumph is secure. J. L. P. HAVING been baptized with water and the Holy Ghost, he shall now be baptized with the fire of temptation; even as there is another baptism, the baptism of blood, in store for him. It is not too much to say, as Augustine said often, that the entire history, moral and spiritual, of the world, revolves around two persons, Adam and Christ. To Adam was given a position to maintain; he did not maintain it, and the lot of the world for ages was decided. And now with the second Adam the second trial of our race has arrived. The second Adam, taking up the conflict exactly where the first had left it, and inheriting all the consequences of his defeat, in the desert does battle with the foe; and conquering him there, wins back the garden for that whole race, whose champion and representative in this conflict he had been. T. Christ could not well have lived in this world to the age of thirty without having excitements of wrong desire present before his mind, and without making his choice between obedience and disobedience. But now, when he had received a solemn inauguration by baptism from the forerunner, and a most remarkable testimony from God by a voice from heaven—now, when publicly and formally he took the place of representative for mankind in the system of grace, and when interests mightier than man had sustained before hung on his conduct—now there was a momentous crisis; and the parties most aware of what he might accomplish as the Son of God might well be most active in putting his character to the test. Accordingly, the sacred historian tells us that God and Satan were alike concerned in his temptation. . . . That Christ's innocence was secure by even more than divine help, by the possession of a divine nature, is a mere inference of the reason, and involves disbelief in the simple record of the gospel. Why was he tempted by a sagacious tempter if he could not by any possibility be led into evil? And if he himself knew that he could not sin, what could the transaction have been to him but a mere formality? Or how is he an example to us if his temptation is an unreality? No! They dishonor Christ's work who think thus. When he took on him the form of a servant he became by his own will subject to everything which can affect human nature. . . . The temptations were intended, not for Jesus in his nature as a man, but for Jesus in his official station as the Messiah. God was putting it to the test whether Jesus was qualified for his office—whether that man whom he had severed from the rest of mankind by a wondrous birth and a union with the divine nature, and who yet stood forth in perfect freedom as a man—whether he would remain true to the spiritual idea of the Messiah, or would fall below it under temptation. Nor was the tempter in this case anxious simply to lead a good man into sin, but he was striking at the root of salvation; his aim was to undermine the principles of the kingdom of heaven, to lead the Christ, if possible, by some subtle way of conduct inconsistent with the office to which he had been chosen, and which he had freely accepted. This thought is the key to the story of the temptation. T. D. W. The whole temptation presents a contrast between the founding of God's kingdom as pure, spiritual, and tried by many forms of self-denial in its slow development, and the sudden establishment of that kingdom as visible and earthly. This contrast forms the central point of the whole. And the free and conscious decision manifested in these three temptations, fully contrasting the true and false Messiahship, was made before his public ministry, which itself was but a continuation of the strife and the triumph. N. What happened in the desert and what happened in the garden are only parts of one great whole. What Christ shrank from at last was just what Satan tried to dissuade him from at first. And the three temptations all issued and centred in this one: To be the Messiah without suffering and death; such a Messiah as carnal Judaism then longed for. As the Messiah, Christ is challenged to satisfy his hunger and to fling himself down from the battlement of the temple. And the universal dominion offered was not secular but Messianic. The same world-inclusive possession that God had promised (Psalm 2: 8), to be won by self-denial, suffering, and death, Satan now offered to be won by worldly Satanic methods. The whole appeal of Satan was: Put forth your power in self-seeking and self-assertion, carry the Jewish nation by storm, and so begin at once the conquest of the world. And the answer of Christ was: No, I shall bear this fasting till I am told to end it; I shall not dazzle and stun the Jewish people into discipleship; I shall let them put me to death; and by this lowly pathway shall I take at last the crown. R. D. H.—The rejection of a false Messiahship, in accordance with the hopes and based upon obedience to the worldly spirit of Judaism, in favor of an inward kingdom to be developed gradually out of apparent failure by the power of the Divine Spirit, admits us to the secret of the entire after-plan—from the refusal to satisfy the craving for signs, to the cross itself, which was the final answer to the tempter. Eng. Review. 1. Immediately he was led by the Spirit. No sooner is the Holy Spirit descended upon his head in the form of a dove, than he is led by the Spirit to be tempted. No sooner doth God say, "This is my Son," than Satan says, "If thou be the Son of God." Bp. H.—In the words of Jeremy Taylor, "He was led by the good Spirit to be tempted of the evil."—Into the wilderness. No man who stands on the banks of the Jordan at Jericho could doubt for a moment where that wilderness is. He has only to lift up his eyes and look westward, and it is before him. A bare white plain, with two or three narrow strips of verdure, extends about six miles from the west bank of the  Rocky Hills of the Wilderness, near Jericho. river. On its farther side rises up a ridge of white limestone cliffs, extending north and south far as the eye can see, and supporting a chain of jagged, rocky hills behind, equally white and bare. A more dreary, desolate, and forbidding landscape the world could not furnish. The wilderness of Judea, including the whole of that wild region lying between Jericho and Jerusalem, was unquestionably the scene of the temptation. J. L. P. To be tempted of the devil. Such a personal tempter innumerable moral and spiritual phenomena of this fallen world at once demand and attest; and such a tempter or devil existing, it lay in the necessity of things that he should come into direct and immediate collision with him who had one mission in the world, and that, to destroy the works of the devil. T.—The Christian doctrine of the devil, as revealed in the Word of God, is, that he is a created being of a higher order than man, who has fallen away from God (Jude 6); that he is related to sin as its primeval and seductive originator (John 3:8; John 8:44); that he is an adversary, accuser, and a tempter of God's people (Gen. 3; compare Rev. 12:9; Matt. 4:1; Matt. 13:39; John 14:30); that he stands in relation to the Redeemer as a conquered enemy (John 12:31; Rev. 12:9), and in relation to the redeemed as an enemy absolutely vincible (1 Peter 5:8, 9; James 4:7); that he nevertheless continues to rage and persecute on earth (Rev. 2:10; Rev. 3:9), and is finally related to universal heathenism and the world, as well as to apostate Judaism as a patron, prince, and father (John 8:44; John 14:30; Ephes. 2:2; Ephes. 6:11, 12); and that, together with everything anti-Christian, he shall be delivered up to eternal punishment. An.—That evil was first introduced into the world by a being who goes under the name of Satan or the Adversary, we are told; that this being endeavored first to seduce and afterward to menace our Saviour into evil; and that he is constantly engaged in tempting us, as he tempted Christ, we are also told. How Satan exists, or where at the present time, or how his power avails, as we are told it does, to contrive and suggest temptations to the mind of man; and to what extent he is aware of what is passing in men's minds, so as to adopt his suggestions to their weakness, we are not told, and do not therefore know. But our not being told the manner in which his power is exercised and brought to bear is no proof of the unreality of that fearful being, who is everywhere in the New Testament exhibited as the adversary of God and goodness, whether in the individual or in the development of the human race. C. P. R. Fasted forty days. Of the same length were the fasts of Moses and Elijah; he the head of the new covenant in nothing coming short of those who stood as the chiefs and representatives of the old, of the law, and of the prophets. T. THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 3. If thou be the Son of God. "If"—since faith and trust are the mainstay of all human holiness, the tempter is ever strongest in the suggestion of such doubts; strong, too, in his appeal to the free-will and the self-will of man. "You may, you can—why not do it?" F.—Command that these stones be made bread. He who made the water wine could have made the stones bread; but to that he was solicited by the need of others, to this only by his own. And this abstinence of self-help was the law of his whole life, a life as wonderful in the miracles which it left undone as in those which it wrought. T. 4. Every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God.** This is a Hebrew phrase to express "everything that God appoints" or "arranges." It is the full recognition of God's Fatherhood. It assumes that every appointment of God is wise and loving. It asserts accordingly that a man's life—that which is his genuine abiding life and happiness—cannot consist in opposing such appointments of his Father, or in trying to get free from them as from chains and fetters; but must consist in a meek acquiescence in them, in sympathizing with a Father's will as revealed in them, and thus, by the inner chemistry of love, converting them into food wherewith to nourish the life of the spirit. N. M.—He takes the words of Moses to the children of Israel, which mean, not that men must dispense with bread, and feed only on the study of the divine word, but that our meat and drink, our food and raiment, are all the work of the creating hand of God; and that a sense of dependence on God is the duty of man. S. The temptation was to distrust God's providence under pressure of want, on the plea that relief in other ways could easily be had. Jesus replies: "The power of the Son of God is not the present question, but the duty of man under want: Israel was sustained in the wilderness for forty years, hanging on the bare word of God (Deut. 8 : 4); to show that in God's word of promise lies man's security for life: As man, therefore, so resting, I will calmly await divine supply." Mark here, how apt the quotation! how invincible in the hand of faith! B.—This is the most common, the most universal form of attack with which the enemy has assailed the soul of man, this of making him lose confidence in the Fatherhood of God, because of the wilderness, the hunger, or the physical sufferings into which God has brought him in his providence; and to make him rebel against the restrictions he lays upon many things we might naturally desire. N. M.—He who thinks that we live by bread alone will make the securing of bread the chief object of his life, and, because he seeks no diviner food, will inevitably starve with hunger in the midst of it. But he who knows that man doth not live by bread alone will, when he has done his duty, trust God to preserve with all things needful the body. He will seek with more earnest endeavor the bread from heaven, and that living water whereof he who drinketh shall thirst no more. F. THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 5. On a pinnacle of the temple. Our Lord went into a desert, and literally fasted and hungered there. But his temptations, like our own, may all have been subjective, without the help of either voice or visible appearance. Indeed, they must have been subjective, in order to be as much as possible like ours. As to the being taken up into the holy city, and into an exceeding high mountain, it may have been in thought, without doing any violence to the terms employed. R. D. H.—If Satan did appear in bodily shape, his suggestions could become temptations only as they might act upon the mind of Jesus. Hence the better view of the temptation is that which regards it as a mental scene. These three suggestions, artfully woven into the words of Scripture, were presented to the mind of Jesus in such a way that he knew them to proceed from the devil. Whatever view we take as to the form of the temptation, the lessons from the fact are the same. It teaches us that Christ had a human nature in all things like our own, yet without sin. It teaches us that sin does not consist in a nature susceptible to temptation, but in yielding to temptation by an act of will. It shows us how to resist temptation, by the word and the grace of God. And, above all, it teaches us that Christ can sympathize with us in our temptations, and is qualified to help us with grace in every time of need. With such a helper we have no excuse for being overcome with evil. J. P. T. 6. Cast thyself down.** Nothing could be more natural than at once to vindicate his rank and authority, and open the way for his ministrations, by some startling miracle. No place was so well fitted for such a demonstration as Jerusalem, the holy city, and no spot in it so suited as the temple, the centre of the national religion, and the chosen dwelling-place of God. G.—The ultimate object of this second temptation, as of all the others, was to destroy Christ's spirit of perfect Sonship, of perfect filial love, faith, and obedience toward his Father. Its immediate object was to destroy his faith in the reality of his Father's presence and love by inducing him to "tempt the Lord his God," and therefore to demand a sign as the ground of faith. N. M.—In the first temptation Satan urged the Lord to a distrust of his Father's love; now he urges him to put that love to the proof in a way of his own choosing, and not of God's appointing. Satan, too, has learnt that the Scripture is the law of Christ's life; the sphere in which he lives and moves. Here, then, is a word of that same Scripture, which should induce him to consent to that which is now put before him. The words following, "to keep thee in all thy ways," he omits altogether. But that to which he now challenged the Lord was not a "way" appointed by his heavenly Father for his treading. T.—One cannot help being impressed with the daring effrontery of Satan in quoting this psalm at such a time (Ps. 91). If there is one passage in the Word of God which we might suppose Satan would avoid more than another at such a crisis, it is this, for the whole psalm is full of promises to him who has a childlike trust in God. 7. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.** In this reply Christ showed that what Satan proposed as the evidence of faith would have evidenced unbelief. To cast himself down without any command from God, or any call of duty, was virtually to "try" or to "tempt" the truthfulness and love of God himself, by demanding supernatural protection as a "sign." True love does not thus test love, but rests and relies upon it with unhesitating faith. To demand proof of love is to doubt it, and to doubt love is to disbelieve it. And so our Lord, with the clear spiritual light of love, pierced the darkness of the evil one as he replied, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." N. M.—In this refusal of Christ's are implicitly condemned all who run before they are sent, who thrust themselves into perils to which they are not called, with all those who presumptuously draw drafts on the faithfulness of God, which they have no Scriptural warrant in believing that he will honor. There lies in that "It is written again" of Christ the secret of our safety and defence against all distorted use of isolated passages in Holy Scripture. Only as we enter into the unity of Scripture, as it balances, completes, and explains itself, are we armed against error and delusion, excess or defect on this side or the other. Thus the retort, "It is written again," must be of continual application; for, indeed, what very often are heresies but one-sided exaggerated truths, truths rent away indeed from the body and complex of the truth, without the balance of the counter-truth, which should have kept them in their due place, coördinated with other truths or subordinated to them; and so, because all such checks are wanting, not truth any more but error? T. THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 8. Sheweth all the kingdoms. By an angelical power he draws into one centre ideas from all the kingdoms and glories of the world, and makes an admirable map of beauties, and represents it to the eye of Jesus. J. T.—All these will I give thee. Herein was the temptation, that the Messiah should not develop his kingdom gradually, and in its pure spirituality from within, but should establish it at once, as an outward dominion; and that, although this could not be accomplished without the use of an evil agency, the end would sanctify the means. We find here the principle, that to try to establish Messiah's kingdom as an outward, worldly dominion, is to wish to turn the kingdom of God into the kingdom of the devil. And in rejecting the temptation, Christ condemned every mode of secularizing his kingdom, as well as all the devil-worship which must result from attempting that kingdom in a worldly form. We find here the principle, that God's work is to be accomplished purely as his work and by his power, without foreign aid; so that it shall all be only a share of the worship rendered to him alone. N. 9. For that is delivered unto me.** As regards this power of Satan, a striking contrast exists between the material world and the spiritual world, the world of things and that of personalities. In the one he is utterly powerless. Against the will of God, as expressed in the movement of every star or beam of light, in the outburst of the hurricane, the growth of a flower, or the formation of a drop of dew, he can do no more than any intelligent creature. But in the far higher and nobler world of personality it is different; for this implies will, and the awful power of its possessor to choose that which may be against the will of God. It is thus that Satan, without having any power to change that world "without," may so change the world "within" the spirit of man as to make the former minister to the latter, and make it the means of gratifying the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. N. M. 10. Get thee hence, Satan. The divine patience gives room now to the divine indignation, such as the character of this suggestion required. T.—Worship the Lord thy God. He thus spoke as a true Son, who glorified his Father by faith and love. He spoke as a true Priest, whose whole life was a self-sacrifice, a worship of the only living and true God. He spoke as a true King, whose kingdom was not of this world, but in the hearts of redeemed men. The words “Get thee behind me, Satan,” were an epitome of the future history of the world; a prophecy of all the glory that should be; a light ushering in the brighter day, seen beyond the shadow of the cross. As he uttered them, Satan was henceforth doomed to depart from the weary and oppressed earth, and the Son of man to step forth before him, ever advancing to take possession of human spirits, and make all men kings and priests, by enabling them through faith in himself to worship the Lord their God, and to serve him only. N. M. 11. Angels came. Straightway those blessed spirits, whose ministry but a few moments before the devil had tempted Him to command, now tender to their Lord’s weakened humanity their loving and unbidden services. E. 3-10. To convert the hard, stony life of duty into the comfort and enjoyment of this life; to barter, like Esau, life for pottage; to use divine powers in him only to procure bread of earth;—To distrust God, and try impatiently some wild, sudden plan, instead of his meek and slow-appointed ways; to cast himself from the temple, as we dash ourselves against our destiny;—To do homage to the majesty of wrong; to worship evil for the sake of success; making the world his own by force or by crooked policy, instead of suffering: These were the temptations of his life, as they are of ours. If you search through his history, you find that all trial was reducible to one or other of these three forms. In the wilderness his soul foresaw them all; they were all in spirit met then, fought and conquered before they came in their reality. F. W. R. The great declaration is made: Christ is come, not to be obeyed, but to obey. He has given himself unreservedly to God and to man. He has come out conqueror from the great moral ordeal, but the victory is itself a sacrifice, an immolation; it leads not to earthly glory, but to death; not to the throne, but to the cross. For, on entering upon this path of obedience and love, he will come into collision with all the prejudices of the Jewish nation; he will belie all its hopes, and kindle all its hatred. A Messiah who will not reign in the sense in which Jerusalem understands his kingdom must perish. King or victim he must be; there is no alternative. De P. In striking antithesis the opening chapters of Matthew set before us the new-born King of Peace and the savage Herod; the mysterious adoration of the Magi, and the hasty flight for life into a strange land; the baptism, with the opened heavens and descending Spirit; and the temptation, with all its circumstances of satanic trial. Thus, heightened by contrast as well as heralded by prophecy, the Lord appears to us as the son of David and the son of Abraham, the spiritual King of spiritual Judaism, the Messiah of the Israel of God. The theocratic King and the suffering Messiah pass and repass before our eyes, in ever-new and ever-striking interchange, and a strange deep tone of prophetic sadness blends with all we read, and prepares us for Gethsemane and Calvary. E. ## Section 16.—Testimony of the Baptist. Bethabara. Jordan Valley. J. 43 Now after two days Jesus departed thence. And when he had heard that John was cast into prison, he came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. 44, 45 For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country. Then when he was come into Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all the things 46 that he did at Jerusalem at the feast: for they also went unto the feast. So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. 47 And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judea into Galilee, he went unto him, and besought him that he would come down and heal his son: for he was at the point of death. 48, 49 Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe. The 50 nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down ere my child die. Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth. And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way. 51 And as he was now going down, his servants met him, and told him, saying, Thy son 52 liveth. Then inquired he of them the hour when he began to amend. And they said 53 unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. So the father knew that it was at the same hour, in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth; and himself believed, and his whole house. 54. This is again the second miracle that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judea into Galilee. THE answers of Jesus apply much less to the questions asked and petitions addressed to him, than to the frame of mind, the disposition of heart, in the querist or suppliant. Hence on occasions which bear much resemblance in externals, the answers are often different. There were miracle-seekers who wished to make this heavenly power subservient to low desires or mere idle curiosity. Against such Jesus was always stern, often repelling their solicitations unheard. There were also those who were drawn to the Redeemer by craving inward wants which he alone could satisfy. These he loved best, and met with divine tenderness and affection. There was yet another class, who at first were drawn to him by their instant external needs; and who afterward, when they had obtained relief, joined him with feelings of love. The nobleman belonged to this class. He is not disinclined to believe; but it is necessity alone, and not an inward impulse, which brings him to Christ. K. The Lord spoke out of the fulness of his knowledge to awake in them some infant sense of what constituted all his life—the presence of God; just as the fingers of the light go searching in the dark mould for the sleeping seeds, to touch and awake them. The order of creation, the goings on of life, were ceaselessly flowing from the very heart of the Father: why should they seek signs and wonders dif- fering from common things only in being uncommon? Uncommonness is not excellence, even as common- ness is not inferiority. The sign, the wonder is, in fact, the lower thing, granted only because of men's hardness of heart and slowness to believe—in itself of inferior nature to God's chosen way. Yet, if signs and wonders could help them, have them they should, for neither were they at variance with the holy laws of life and faithfulness: they were but less usual utterances of the same. McD. 43. Came into Galilee. He was for a time unattended by the small band of disciples who had accompanied him to the Passover. They had re- mained with him, in Judea, and had returned with him, through Sychar, to Galilee; but, after so long an absence from home, he had let them go back to the Lake of Galilee, to their occupations, till he should once more call them finally to his service. He retired to the north before the rising signs of opposition from the Pharisees, who had at last found means to get John imprisoned, by their intrigues with Antipas, and might at any moment have ef- fected his own arrest. An interval of some months now elapsed, perhaps in stillness and privacy, the time not having yet come, for some reasons unknown to us, for his final and permanent entrance on his public work. G. The gospel of the kingdom of God. The good news of Messiah's advent and the erection of his kingdom, for the very purpose of saving his people from their sins. This form of statement showed that the salvation now proclaimed was not a new and independent method of escape from sin and punishment, but one which had been long pre- dicted under the old economy. J. A. A.—Under- lying the whole history of Israel, and all the forms of the Jewish state and religion, was the idea of a living present God who dwelt in the hearts of all true worshippers, "as a monarch living among his subjects;" the temple was his visible house, a rep- resentative of his sacred majesty, and its sacrifices showed how he was to be approached for the for- giveness of sin; but his true abode was in hearts delivered from sin, that honored and obeyed him as the Redeemer—God. With this spiritual conception of the kingdom, it is easy to understand how Jesus "preached the gospel of the kingdom of God." Coming at a time when the Jews were deprived of every symbol of their nationality save their temple and its worship, they were yearning for a deliverer; to the nominal people of God thus subjugated by military rule, yet clinging to the ancient promise of a Messiah who should restore the glory of the the- ocracy, he said, "I bring to you the good news of the kingdom of God; in me Jehovah once more comes to you as a deliverer; the time predicted by Daniel is fulfilled; the new covenant promised by Jeremiah is brought to you in my gospel; repent of the sins that have humiliated and wellnigh destroyed you; renounce your vain hopes of deliverance, and trust in me as your Saviour." But the body of the nation looked only for the restoration and perfection of the Davidic theocracy in perpetuity. Because of this popular expectation, which could easily have been kindled into the fever of a revolution, Jesus refrained from announcing himself as the Messiah, until by his teaching and works he had gained a footing for that spiritual commonwealth which in reality he had come to establish. J. P. T.—The very nature of a spiritual kingdom like his, founded on the free convictions of men, not on assertion or authority, demanded this reticence. The heart of man, which was to be the seat of his empire, could be won only by the spiritual attractions of his life and words. G. 45. The Galileans, or Jews of the north.** Their patriotism in national emergencies; their enthusiastic loyalty to their country's interests; their general adherence to the law of Moses in preference to tradition; their interest in the temple and its solemn feasts; their deep-seated and inspiring hope, which looked "for the redemption of Israel"—these things show that the Jews of the north, at least equally with those who dwelt beneath the very shadow of the temple, maintained within themselves some of the noblest traits of the Hebrew nation. But farther, we find the Galileans to have been a moral, intelligent, industrious, and enterprising people—"healthy as their own climate and cheerful as their own sky"—a people familiar with their own law and history, and not wanting in the finest poetical spirit; with the disposition and ability to appreciate in the main the teachings of Christ; a people among whom were found most devoted men; among whom also devotion to the national idea reached its highest development, till at last they rose, a solid wall of patriot hearts, to be crushed by the all-conquering power of Rome. Both country and people, one may say with truth, fitly chosen of God as the training-place of those men who were to move the world; the proper soil in which first to plant that truth which was destined, ere long, to be spoken by eloquent lips in Cesarea, Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome. S. M. 46,47. It had become known in Capernaum that he was once more in Cana, after his nine or ten months' absence from Galilee. His miraculous power over sickness and physical evil, as shown in Jerusalem, had become a subject of universal report. Among others, a high officer of the court of Herod Antipas, whose mansion was in Capernaum, had heard of the wonderful Teacher. . . . It marks the minute exactness of the narration that Jesus is asked to "come down" from Cana to Capernaum, the one place being 1,350 feet lower than the other. G. 48. Only "signs and wonders" would compel to a belief; unlike those Samaritans whom the Lord had just left, who, without a miracle, had in great numbers "believed because of his word." T.—Apparently repelling him for the moment, Jesus was, in fact, opening his eyes to the far greater blessings he might freely obtain. With royal bounty he wished to give the greater while he gave the less. G. 50. Go thy way; thy son liveth.** The man, noble-man certainly in this, obeyed, and found his obedience justify his faith. McD.—With one word doth Christ heal two patients, the son and the father. Bp. H.—A double sign and wonder has been done in Israel. A child has been cured of a fever in Capernaum by one standing miles away at Cana, and a father has been cured of his unbelief—the same kind of power that banished the disease from the body of the one banishing distrust from the heart of the other. Nor is this all; he returns to Capernaum to tell all the wonders of the cure; tells them to the healed child, who also believes—and strange would be the meeting afterward between that child and Jesus—he tells them to the other members of his family, and each in turn believes. He himself believed, and with him all his house—the first whole household brought into the Christian fold. H. 48 50. There is something to be learned by a comparison of the Lord's dealing with this man and with the centurion. Here being entreated to come, he does not, but sends his healing word. There, being asked to speak that word of healing, he rather proposes himself to come; for here a narrow faith is enlarged, there a strong faith is crowned and rewarded. That centurion is an example of a strong faith, this nobleman of a weak faith; that centurion counts that, if Jesus will but speak the word, his servant will be healed, while this nobleman is so earnest that the Lord should come down, because in heart he limits his power, and counts that nothing but his actual presence will avail to heal his sick. T.—Both plead for others, the one for his child, the other for his servant, and the pleading of both is signally successful, the compliance prompt and generous. Such honor doth Jesus put on all kindly intercession with him on behalf of those to whom we are bound by ties of relationship and affection. H. 52. Then inquired he the hour.** If we compare our hours of need and of help with each other, and give heed to all God's ways and dealings at this or that time, we should learn to know the Lord better, and strengthen ourselves in faith. If we only took more note of everything, we should then daily and hourly trace the forethought, the fidelity, and the overruling government of God. Bogatzky. 53. Once more glance over the blessed progress of the nobleman. He heard—he went and prayed—he came with the desire to see, but he believed the word before he saw, and went his way; he knew what he had believed—he became a believer, and now again he believed without seeing—he believed with his whole house. R. B. # Section 25.—Preaches at Nazareth, and is rejected. M. 13 And leaving Nazareth, he came down to and dwelt in Capernaum, a city of Galilee, 14 which is upon the sea-coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim: that it might be 15 fulfilled which was spoken by Esias the prophet, saying, The land of Zabulon, and the 16 land of Nephthalim by the way of the sea beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: the people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up. 17 From that time Jesus began to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God, and to say, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: Repent ye, and believe the L. 31, 32 gospel. And he taught them on the sabbath-days. And they were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with power.Mk. 16 Now as Jesus walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw two brethren, Simon, called Peter, 17 and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And Jesus 18 said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. And 19 straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him. And when he had gone a little farther thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his 20 brother, who also were in the ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. And straightway he called them: and they immediately left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him.L. 1 And it came to pass, that as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, 2 he stood by the lake of Gennesaret, and saw two ships standing by the lake: but the 3 fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets. And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down, and taught the people out of the ship. 4 Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and 5 let down your nets for a draught. And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let 6 down the net. And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: 7 and their net brake. And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, 8 so that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, 9 saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he was astonished, and 10 all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken: and so was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. And 11 Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him. He, whose purpose it was by the weak things of the world to confound the strong, who meant to draw emperors to himself by fishermen, and not fishermen by emperors, lest his church should even seem to stand in the wisdom and power of men, rather than in the wisdom and power of God, saw in these unlearned fishermen of the Galilean lake the fittest instruments for his work. Peter, astonished at the strange success of his cast, the same that he afterward appears, as impetuous, yielding as freely to the impulse of the moment, with the beginnings of the same quick spiritual eye which made him the first to see the highest glory of the Saviour, could no longer, in the deep feeling of his own unholiness, endure the nearness of an altogether Holy One. At moments like these the deep heart of man speaks out, and the deepest things that are in that heart come forth to the light. And this is the deepest thing that is in man's heart under the law; this sense of the gulf of separation that is between him and God. T. Thus it has ever been. The discovery of a divine presence leads to conviction, and conviction to a dread of deserved wrath. In old times it was the common judgment that none could see God and live. Manoah judged that he must die, because he had seen God. Isaiah learnt and confessed the uncleanness of his lips, when he saw "the King, the Lord of Hosts." Ezekiel fell upon his face, and Daniel's beauty was changed, when he came in contact with the divine glory. So long as men but hear of God, they deem themselves safe; but when once their eyes see him, they either abhor themselves and repent as in dust and ashes, or in despair they cry to the rocks to cover them. It is in God's light that men see themselves and feel their guilt. J. A. 13. Leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum. He chose the city that had treated him so differently from his own Nazareth as the place of his most frequent residence, the centre of his manifold labors, the scene of many of his most memorable discourses and miracles. H.—Christ's first miracle of Cana was a sign that he came, not to call his disciples out of the world and its ordinary duties, but to make men happier, nobler, better in the world. He willed that they should be husbands, and fathers, and citizens, not eremites or monks. And, as pointing the same moral, there was something significant in the place which he chose as the scene of his earliest ministry. John had preached in the lonely wastes by the Dead Sea waters; but Christ chose as the earliest centre of his ministry a bright and busy city, whose marble buildings were mirrored in a limpid sea. That city was Capernaum. It rose under the gentle declivities of hills that encircled an earthly paradise. F. Capernaum lies on the northwestern side of Lake Gennesaret, and is sunk a thousand feet below the elevated plain which surrounds it. From the western hills adjacent the traveller sees far below him a blue sheet of water, some thirteen miles long, and, in the broadest part, six or seven miles wide; its deep depression is a volcanic basin, giving it something of that strange, unnatural character which belongs in a still greater degree to the Dead Sea. The eastern highlands slope abruptly to the water's edge, forming a lofty wall, extending the entire length of the lake. Midway on the west the range of hills trends first westward and then to the northeast, growing constantly more rounded and beautiful, till, as a gentle elevation, it again touches the lake. In the recess formed by these encircling hills lies the plain or vale of Gennesaret. It is described by all who have seen it as a natural paradise. Well watered by perennial fountains and rivulets, with a soil of unsurpassed fertility, and a climate that favors the production of tropical fruits as well as those of the temperate zone, it is even now famous for its fruitfulness and beauty. In the time of Christ it was thickly studded with flourishing villages, embowered in palm-groves, vineyards, and olive-orchards. Z. E. Josephus, in a passage of glowing admiration, after describing the sweetness of its waters, and the delicate temperature of its air, its palms, and vines, and oranges, and figs, and almonds, and pomegranates, and warm springs, says that the seasons seemed to compete for the honor of its possession, and Nature to have created it as a kind of emulative challenge, wherein she had gathered all the elements of her strength. F. (Section 189.)—Jesus chose his home, in the midst of this life and beauty, beside the gleaming lake, embosomed deep on this its western shore; the higher hills of Upper Galilee rising beyond, and the majestic Hermon closing the glorious landscape. The view over the waters showed the steep slopes—now yellow limestone, now black basalt—which led up to the Gaulonitis country. The whole neighborhood, indeed, is sacred to the memory of Jesus. The Lake of Galilee had been chosen by God for himself, and honored above all seas of the earth, in a sense which the rabbis little dreamed. The men, the fields, the valleys round it, are immortalized by their association with the Saviour. G. Not, however, for its beauty only, but because of its centrality, and its populous activity, it was admirably adapted for that ministry which fulfilled the old prophecy of Isaiah, that "the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles," should "see a great light." Through this district passed the great caravans on their way from Egypt to Damascus; and the heathens who congregated at Bethsaida Julias and Cesarea Philippi must have been constantly seen in the streets of Capernaum. In the time of Christ it was for population and activity "the manufacturing district" of Palestine, and the waters of its lake were ploughed by 4,000 vessels of every description, from the war-vessel of the Romans to the rough fisher-boats of Bethsaida, and the gilded pinnaces from Herod's palace. Iturea, Samaria, Syria, Phoenicia were accessible by crossing the lake, the river, or the hills. F.—Nowhere, except in the capital it-  The Plain of Gennesaret—beyond Magdala self, could he have found such a sphere for his works and words of mercy; from no other centre could “his fame” have so gone throughout all Syria; nowhere else could he have so drawn around him the vast multitudes who hung on his lips. A. P. S. Our Saviour’s chief resort was now the margin of that beautiful lake which is variously called the Sea of Galilee, of Tiberias, and of Gennesaret. This region of beauty was to him the scene of constant labor for the souls that sat there in darkness. Days begun in preaching were filled up with the relief of hundreds who were sick, maimed, or tormented with devils; and the ensuing nights were spent in lonely agonies of prayer, or in crossing over the stormy lake. Here Christ is first presented to our view as preaching the Word of God to such multitudes, that he was fain to seek a station whence to address them on the lake itself. S.—Gliding over the sea, we now touch the placid shore of Gennesaret, where our Saviour dwelt so long. The beach is very low and sloping gently, with a thick fringe of oleanders skirting the deep-brown sand. With such a simple boundary curving inward to the land, the plain is bent into a crescent form, just three miles long by one in breadth, and rising gradually inland to the west. About this amphitheatre the mountains close. Streams and rills from these, and two fine fountains in the plain, bless this favored region with lasting fertility. J. M.—Never did so small a sheet of water see so many keels cutting its surface, or so many human habitations circling round and shadowing its waves, as did the Sea of Galilee in the days of Jesus Christ. Now all is silent there; lonely and most desolate. On its shores, Tiberias in ruins and Magdala composed of a few wretched hovels are all that remain. Capernaum, Bethsaida, Chorazin are gone. Here and there you stumble over ruins, but none can tell you exactly what they were. They knew not, those cities of the lake, the day of their visitation; their names and their memory have perished. H. (Section 189.) 17. Jesus began to preach. Christ declared that the fulness of time was come, and the prophecies were fulfilled in himself. The preparation required by John was repentance and reformation. Christ goes deeper, and besides repentance he demands faith—readiness to believe from the heart the truths he came to teach. This was his claim in the outset of his ministry, reserving for its course the full revelation of those truths and the spiritual exposition of that faith; the laws of the kingdom of heaven. Thus much, however, was clear from the first, that, in proclaiming the new order of things as a kingdom, Christ pointed to the fulfilment of the covenant with David, and claimed all the authority of his promised seed. S.—The kingdom of God. The expressions, “kingdom of heaven,” and “kingdom of God,” refer to the prophecies of Daniel (2:44; 7:13, 14), and denote that kingdom of the God of heaven, which he would set up and give to the Son of man; or, in other words, the spiritual and eternal kingdom of Christ, both God and man, which was to subsist first in imperfect circumstances on earth, and afterward to appear complete in the world of glory. Parkhurst.—The phrase “kingdom of heaven,” or of the heavens, as the original has it, Matthew uses no less than thirty times. The phrase clearly expresses the idea that it is a kingdom distinct from all those kingdoms of this world after which the Jew had fashioned his idea of Messiah's dominion. It taught that the kingdom of Messiah was to be a spiritual and heavenly kingdom, unlike the old theocracy with its temple and throne in Jerusalem; unlike the magnificent empire patterned after Rome, of which the worldly Jew was dreaming. It is to be a universal kingdom established by the preaching of the gospel throughout the world. D. S. G. Mk. 17. Fishers of men. The fish was a very frequent symbol of early Christian art. The Greek word ichthās, a fish, was very early used as a Christian anagram, its different letters forming the initials of a confession of Christianity: "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour." It was hence used as a symbol among Christians of Jesus Christ himself. 20. From that moment the four were his devoted followers. Called to decide there and then, as a proof of their fitness for discipleship, they forsook all and followed him at once. Peter and Andrew were apparently poor; James and John, in a better position. For the convenience of trade, both families had left the neighboring town of Bethsaida, and had settled in Capernaum, one of the centres of the local fisheries and of the occupations connected with them. Peter alone seems to have been married, and in his house James henceforth found a home. G.—L. 6, 7. This draught of fishes was not only a miracle, but it was a prophetic parable in action. It foreshadowed the success that would attend the labors of the apostolical fishers of men, in drawing the net of the gospel through the sea of the world; inclosing heathen nations within it, so that they might be caught—not for death—but for life eternal. W. 8. Peter had already seen Jesus do wonderful things, but somehow this wonder came home to him as none of them had done—wrought in his own vessel, with his own net, in the way of his own calling, after his own fruitless toil. Never had the impression of a divine power at work in his immediate presence taken such a hold of him. Never had the sense of his being in close contact with One in whom such power resided come so upon his spirit. He falls at Jesus' knees, as he sat there in the boat, quietly watching all the stir and bustle of the fishermen; and he gives vent to the feeling that for a moment is uppermost, as he exclaims, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" H.—It was the cry of self-loathing which had already realized something nobler. It was the first impulse of fear and amazement, before they had had time to grow into adoration and love. Peter did not mean the "Depart from me;" he only meant—and this was known to the searcher of hearts —"I am utterly unworthy to be near thee, yet let me stay." F.—Christ hath left many a soul for froward and unkind usage; never any for the disparagement of itself, and entreaties of humility. Simon could not devise how to hold Christ faster, than by thus suing to him to be gone, than by thus pleading his unworthiness. Bp. H. 10. There is in these words a double magnifying of Peter's future function as compared with his past; that it is men and not poor fishes henceforth which he shall take, and that he shall take them for life, and not as he had taken his meaner prey, only for death. For no less than this is involved in the original word by which the catching is expressed. T.—Jesus Christ having chosen the son of Jonas, thenceforth engaged in his education. How much had to be done to discipline that wild energy, to regulate that impassioned vivacity, to purify that too carnal zeal, to humble that presumptuous ardor! To no other does he give such particular care, and one would say that Peter being formed beforehand for the apostleship, all others will be formed of course. Thus the character of Peter carries him always like a valiant soldier in the van, and the will of his Master keeps him there. It keeps him there so evidently, that uniformly in the gospel his name begins the list of the disciples, and when the leading ones only are mentioned, he stands there first also. The education of John was given, if we may so express it, on the bosom of Jesus. John was nourished in silence by the words of his Master, was penetrated with his spirit, appropriated his divine secrets. For a period still distant he treasured up remembrances and inspirations of infinite value. A pure and peaceful star, he was not to rise on the horizon of the Church; he was not to shed the full light of his instructions upon it until all the other apostles had acted and spoken; and his word was to be the magnificent, new, unexpected complement of the lessons of a Peter, a James, a Paul. A. V.—L. 1-10. The remark of Spanheim is here just: "The facts narrated by Luke are not contradicted by Matthew, but only passed over. Nothing is more common than that circumstances omitted by one should be supplied by another; lest the sacred writers should seem to have written by compact, or lest the readers should cleave to one and neglect the others." R. THE "call" of Abraham had given the world the grand truth of a living personal God; that of Moses had created a nation, in which the active government of human affairs by one God was to be illustrated, and his will made known directly to mankind; but that of the poor Galilean fishermen was the foundation of a society, for which all that had preceded it was only the preparation; a society in which all that was merely outward and temporary in the relations of God to man should be laid aside, and all that was imperfect and material replaced by the perfect, spiritual, and abiding. Henceforth it only remained to extend the kingdom thus founded by winning the consciences of men to the same devotion, by the announcement of the Fatherhood of God; the need of seeking his favor by repentance; and faith in his divine Son, leading to a holy life, of which that of Jesus was the realized ideal. G. ## Section 27.—Heals a Demoniac, Peter's Wife's Mother, and Others. Mk. 35 And in the morning rising up a great while before day, he went out and departed 36 into a solitary desert place, and there prayed. And Simon, and they that were with 37 him, followed after him. And when they had found him, they said unto him, All men 38 seek for thee. And he said unto them, Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also. And the people sought him, and came unto him and stayed him that he should not depart from them. And he said unto them, I must preach the kingdom of 39 God to other cities also: for therefore came I forth. And he preached in the synagogues of Galilee, and cast out devils. M. 23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease 24 among the people. And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the 25 palsy; and he healed them. And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan. L. 12 And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold, a man full of leprosy; who seeing Jesus, came to him, beseeching him; and kneeling down fell on his face and Mk. 41 worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou 42 clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and 43, 44 he was cleansed. And he straitly charged him, and forthwith sent him away; and saith unto him, See thou say nothing to any man: but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto 45 them. But he went out, and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert L. 15 places. And so much the more went there a fame abroad of him; and great multitudes came together from every quarter, to hear and to be healed by him of their infirmities. 16 And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed. CHRIST began his work by acts of kindness toward the poorest, the lowest, the most helpless; and toward the greatest sinners. The objects which surrounded him day after day, as subjects of his grace, were mainly such as now fill our almshouses, infirmaries, and our chambers of protracted sickness and disease, together with the subjects of demoniacal possession. But he had an object in the bestowment of his healing power upon these sufferers, beyond their relief from pain. By his acts of kindness to the lost and wretched, he established in the minds of the common people this truth, that there is love in the heart of God for every miserable sinner; that his vileness and his abandonment by the world only commend him to God as an object of his compassion; that the Son of God came down from the skies to save the worst of men; and that it is impossible for a sinner to be sunk too low for his hand to find him, or his grace to lift him up. N. A. Mk. 38. Preaching being the characteristic feature of the life of Christ, no true understanding of his mission can be had without a knowledge of what he preached as the truth of God. The gospels which give us the record of his life contain also a gospel which he preached; and this gospel comprises not only the rules of practical morality, the lessons and precepts of humanity and religion, but the doctrines of a positive theology. So far as the very words of Christ have been preserved, these form the essence of Christianity. In his words we find a proper theology—not formulated, indeed, nor systematized, yet expressed in doctrines set forth with a certain gradation of time and thought, or in a certain order of development—and these doctrines interwoven with the whole texture of the precepts and promises of the gospel. J. P. T. M. 23. Galilee, the most northern of the three divisions of Palestine, is between 50 and 60 miles in length, and from 30 to 40 in breadth. Josephus, who knew it well, speaks of 204 towns and villages, the smallest of them containing above 15,000 inhabitants. Making an allowance for exaggeration, the population of the province must have been about three millions. (Section 189.) We read of nine departures from and returns to Capernaum in the course of the eighteen months of our Lord's Galilean ministry; of three extensive tours through all the towns and villages of the district like the one now described; and of five or six more limited ones. Could we have traced the footsteps of our Saviour from place to place, from month to month, on these missionary rounds through Galilee, we should have had a year and a half before us of varied and almost unceasing toil, the crowded activities of which would have filled us with wonder. H.—How singular the contrast between the peaceful progress of the Son of man—on the one hand healing maladies, relieving afflictions, restoring their senses to the dumb and blind; on the other, gently distilling into the minds of the people those pure and humane principles of moral goodness to which the wisdom of ages has been able to add nothing—and every other event to which it can be compared in the history of human kind. H. M. Teaching in their synagogues. It has been questioned by what right Christ and his apostles, who had no public character among the Jews, taught in their synagogues. Dr. Lightfoot observes, that though this liberty was not allowed to any illiterate person or mechanic, they granted it to prophets and workers of miracles; and such as set up for heads and leaders of new sects; in order that they might inform themselves, and not condemn them unheard and unknown. Under these characters Christ and his apostles were admitted to this privilege. Burder.—The only schools, in Christ's time, were those connected with the synagogues. A synagogue presupposed a school, as in our country a church presupposes a Sunday-school. Synagogues were found in every city, and also in every village, unless the place was insignificant in size; and in such cases they had their place or places of prayer. In the schools, questions were asked and answered, opinions stated and discussed, and illustrations proposed in the form of allegories, or aphorisms, or parables. S. M. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ L. 1 And it came to pass on the second sabbath after the first, that he went through the corn-fields: and his disciples were an hungered, and began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn, and did eat, rubbing them in their hands. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do on the sabbath-day. And certain of the Pharisees said unto them, Why do ye that which is not lawful? And Jesus answering them, said, Have ye never read so much as this, what David did, when he had need and was an hungered, he and they that were with him; how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high-priest, and did take and eat the shewbread, and gave also to them that were with him; which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests? Or have ye not read in the law how that on the sabbath-days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless? But I say unto you, that in this place is one greater than the temple. But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath. L. 6 And it came to pass also on another sabbath, when he was departed thence, that he entered into the synagogue and taught: and behold, there was a man there whose right hand was withered. And the scribes and Pharisees watched him, whether he would heal on the sabbath-day: and they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath-days? that they might find an accusation against him. But he knew their thoughts, and said to the man which had the withered hand, Rise up, and stand forth in the midst. And he arose and stood forth. Then said Jesus unto them, I will ask you one thing: Is it lawful on the sabbath-days to do good, or to do evil? to save life, or to destroy it? But they held their peace. And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath-day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath-days. Mk. 5 And when he had looked round about upon them all with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and his hand was restored whole, like as the other. 6 Then the Pharisees were filled with madness, and went out, and communed one with another what they might do to Jesus. And straightway they took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him. But Jesus, when he knew it, withdrew himself from thence with his disciples to the sea. VIRTUE goes out of Christ. The shrunken hand instantly acquires a healthful color, and swells into its right proportions. In his joy the man shuts and opens it; moves the pliant fingers; and holds the miracle aloft to the gaze of a crowd, dumb with astonishment. Give him a harp, and with that hand he would sweep its sounding strings to the praise of Jesus. Pattern to men who have souls to be saved, and hearts to cure, he did what he could—using all means within his power to obtain the blessing. And, did people, with equal eagerness, repair to the church on Sabbath, as he to the synagogue, to meet Jesus Christ, and with the same earnestness and the same faith, lay out their sins and soul's sorrows before him, our Sabbaths would witness greater works than this—he who healed that withered hand healing withered hearts, and, whether they required to be saved or sanctified, giving power to them that have no might. Guthrie. 1. More properly translated “the second-first Sabbath,” and was probably a sort of proper name for the first Sabbath after the second day of the Passover or of unleavened bread; that is, the first of the seven Sabbaths reckoned between that day and Pentecost. R.—Went through the corn-fields. The Scriptures are almost entire strangers to the word fence, as they are to the word road. We read of ways and highways, instead of roads; and fences were for towns rather than for fields. In the absence of fences, there was of course the greater need of such laws concerning trespass as Moses instituted. This account seems a picture from life in modern Palestine. N. C. B.—Pluck the corn and eat. The law and practice of Palestine continue to be this day what they were so many thousand years ago (Deut. 23 : 25). We travelled in that country once in spring, before the ears of corn were full. Nothing surprised us more than the liberties which our guides took in riding through the fields and letting their horses eat as much of the standing corn as they pleased. We felt at first as if we were trespassers and thieves, but were relieved by finding that it was done under the eye and with the full consent of the owners of the crops. H.—So I have often seen my muleteers, as we passed along the wheat-fields, pluck off ears, rub them in their hands, and eat the grains, unroasted, just as the apostles are said to have done. This also is allowable. The Pharisees did not object to the thing itself, only to the time when it was done. W. M. T.—The rabbis had decided that to pluck corn was to be construed as reaping, and to rub it as threshing. F. ONE principal end of the sabbatic institute was to preserve a knowledge of, and a faith in, the one living and true God as the creator of all things. There was no rite, nor institution, not even circumcision, by which the Jews were more conspicuously distinguished from surrounding nations, and marked off as the worshippers of Jehovah. Their Sabbath-keeping was a perpetual and visible token of the connection in which they stood to God, and of the great mission which they were set apart to discharge. But, as the faith of the people grew weak, and their allegiance faltered, they began to profane the day by breaking in upon that rest from all ordinary occupations, which should have been observed. Thus, among other distinctive marks of their peculiarity as the only worshippers of the great Creator, this one became obscured and wellnigh obliterated. A singular change came over the Jewish people after the restoration from the Babylonian captivity. Previously they were ever and anon showing a tendency to idolatry; subsequently no such tendency appears. Previously they had been neglectful of many of the distinctive rites and ceremonies of their faith; subsequently they became strict and punctilious in their observance of them. Great national calamities—the persecution under the successors of Alexander the Great, the wars of the Maccabees, the aggression of the Romans, the ascent into power of the Idumean family of the Herods, the establishment of the schools of the rabbis—all conspired to intensify the national pride and religious bigotry of the Jews; who, as they had nothing but the old laws and traditions to cling to, clung to them with all the more tenacious grasp. The sect of the Pharisees arose, and carried the popular sympathy along with it. Everything regarded as purely and peculiarly Judaic was exaggerated. Punctilious observance of the old ritual was the one great merit compensating for all defects; while around the simpler statute-law of Moses there arose an oral or traditional law, growing continually in bulk and overshadowing the primitive Mosaic institute. Upon each statute additions and explanations were heaped of such a character as to turn more and more the keeping into a mere external routine and outward performance. So fared it with the old, broad, and benignant law as to the Sabbath. Its primary injunction, “Thou shalt do no manner of work,” was falsely held as aimed at all kinds of work whatever; no less than thirty-nine kinds or classes of work being specified as involved in the prohibition. It was ruled thus that grass should not be trodden on the Sabbath, for the bruising of it was a species of harvest work; that shoes with nails should not be worn, as that was the carrying a burden. In all this there was not only a wrong rendering of the Mosaic precept, but much worse than that, there was the erection of a false standard of duty, a false test of piety—the elevation of the outward, the positive, the ceremonial, over the inward, the moral, the spiritual; the putting of the letter that killeth above the spirit which maketh alive. H. M. 5, 6. He begins with his opponents upon their own ground. “You yourselves admit that the priests who serve the temple on the Sabbath must break the literal sabbatical law in view of the higher duties of the temple-service.” Then he continues, “But I say unto you, there is something here greater than the temple.” In these, as in many of Christ’s words, there is more than meets the ear. When we remember the sanctity of the temple in Jewish eyes, as the seat of the Shechinah, as the only place where God could ever be worshipped, we can conceive the weight of Christ’s declaration that his manifestation was something greater than the temple, and was to introduce a revelation of the glory of God, and a mode of divine worship to which the temple-service was entirely subordinate. We may infer Christ’s conclusion to have been, “If the priests have been freed from the literal observance of the Sabbath law because of their relation to the temple, heretofore the highest seat of worship, how much more must my disciples be freed from the letter of that law by their relation to that which is greater than the temple! (Their intercourse with him was something greater than temple-worship.) They have plucked the corn on the Sabbath, it is true, but they have done it that they might not be disturbed in their communion with the Son of man, and in reliance upon his authority. They are free from guilt, then, for the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” He thus laid the foundation for that true, spiritual worship to which the temple-service was to give way. N.—The temple—the seat of the Shechinah, the visible majesty of the divine presence—released the priesthood from the strict observance of the sabbatical law. They might offer their sacrifices. How much higher the claim to liberty on the part of the disciples through their connection with him! How natural to conclude that he who was greater than the temple is to take its place! G. P. F. Or have ye not read? His deep knowledge of the Scriptures shows itself throughout the gospels. He has a quotation ready to meet every hostile question. It was so profound that it forced even his enemies to recognize him as a rabbi. His frequent retort on the rabbis themselves—“Have ye not read?” and the deep insight into the spirit of Scripture, which opposes to rubrics and forms the quickening power of a higher life, prove how intensely he must have studied the sacred books. G. 7. The quotation (Hos. 6 : 7) bears this translation, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice,” the words themselves containing one of those prophetic glimpses of the gospel, one of those slights cast upon the law intimating that God had something better and higher in store for his people. The prophet of the old covenant is here anticipating the great apostle of the new, in his saying, 1 Cor. 13 : 1–3. He is declaring, That which God longs for on the part of men is not the outward observance, the sacrifice in the letter, but the inward outpouring of love—that which the “sacrifice” symbolized, the giving up of self in the self-devotion of love. This must underlie every outward sacrifice and service to give it value; and when the question arises between the form and the spirit, then the form must yield to the life, as the meaner to the more precious. T. Mk. 27. That is: Man was not created for the purpose of honoring the Sabbath; but as soon as created, the Sabbath was made to promote the best welfare of man, and, therefore, to his best welfare it must ever be held subordinate. It was made for man; not for any particular nation, but for the race; for the spiritual benefit of mankind. The very act of authoritatively regulating the duties of the Sabbath, while it doubtless implies an authority to abolish the institution, was really an authoritative recognition of it. As the authority was not used in abolishing, its effect was to confirm the ordinance. Stone. (Read Section 184.)—The end for which the Sabbath was ordained was to bless man; the end for which man was created was not to observe the Sabbath. A principle is here laid down, which must extend to the whole circle of outward ordinances. It does in fact say this, The law was made for man; not man for the law. Man is the end, and the ordinances of the law the means; not these the end, and man the means. Man was not made to the end that he might observe these; but these were given, that they might bless man, that they might train and discipline him till he should be ready to serve God from the free impulses of his spirit. T. 28. Lord even of the Sabbath.** As naked a claim to all the authority of Him who gave the law at Sinai as could possibly be made. B.—These words are inseparable from the meaning of our Lord’s answer. In pleading the example of David, the king and prophet, and of the priests in the temple, the Lord tacitly implies the greatness of his own position. He is indeed Prophet, Priest, and King; and had he been none of these, the argument would have been not merely incomplete, but misleading. It is undeniable that the law of the Sabbath was very strict. Our Lord quotes cases where the law is superseded or set aside, because he is One who has power to do the same. S. L. 9. They had put the alternatives of doing or not doing; here there might be a question. But he shows that the alternatives are, doing good or failing to do good—which last he puts as identical with doing evil, the neglecting to save as equivalent with destroying. Here there could be no question. T.—By this novel way of putting his case, our Lord teaches the great ethical principle, that to neglect any opportunity of doing good is to incur the guilt of doing evil; and by this law he bound his own spirit. B. Mk. 5. It was the sight of men, who, laying hold of one of his Father’s most merciful institutes, had exalted it into a place of false importance, attaching a specific virtue to the bare outward keeping of the letter, magnifying the minutest acts of bodily service, finding therein the materials which self-righteousness employed for defrauding the poor, the needy, and the diseased of that help which charity was ready to render—such was the source of that anger with which Jesus looked round about on the scribes and Pharisees. H.—Being grieved. One of the most striking and graphic descriptions in the gospels. It was thus that he bare even while on earth our infirmities and our sins. Their hearts were hardened—but he grieved for it. A. He stretched it forth. He believes that Christ can give the strength to execute the command. It is in that faith he acts, and, paradoxical as it may seem, let us say that, if in that faith he had not made the effort, he never would have got the strength; and yet if he had not got the strength, he never could have made the effort. Stretch forth thy withered heart to love—thy withered hand to serve—such is still his command. Fixing an eye of faith on him, who has already fixed his eye of love on us, let us make the effort, and in the very making of the effort we shall get the strength. H. 6. Filled with madness.** Thus in every way were his enemies foiled—foiled in argument, shamed into silence, thwarted even in their attempt to find some ground for a criminal accusation. For even in healing the man, Christ had done absolutely nothing which their worst hostility could misconstrue into a breach of the Sabbath law. He had not touched the man; he had not questioned him; he had not bid him exercise his recovered power; he had but spoken a word, and not even a Pharisee could say that to speak a word was an infraction of the Sabbath, even if the word were followed by miraculous blessing! Took counsel with the Herodians. Hitherto they had been enemies of the Herodians. They regarded them as half-apostate Jews, who accepted the Roman domination, imitated heathen practices, adopted Sadducean opinions, and had gone so far in their flattery to the reigning house that they had blasphemously tried to represent Herod the Great as the promised Messiah. But now their old enmities were reconciled in their mad rage against a common foe. F.—The Herodians were such Jews as favored Herod Antipas, and thus, outwardly at least, were friends of Rome, whose vassal Antipas was. Antipas had seen Judea and Samaria made a Roman procuratorship, and longed to get them back for himself, as a son of Herod, of whose kingdom they had been part. Intrigues to gain this end led to standing enmity between him and the rest of the family on the one side, and the procurators on the other. Disappointment at the results of annexation to Rome had made some look with kindlier feeling on the Idumean dynasty, which in its turn felt itself endangered by the claims of Jesus to set up a new kingdom. The Herodians in the end got their wish, when Agrippa I. (A. D. 37) was appointed king, and a Herod kingdom was thus again set up for a time. Even the Pharisaic or national party, indeed, came in the end to favor this scheme, in their deadly hatred of Rome. The alliance with the Herodians against Jesus was the first step in this new political path. G. ## Section 34.—Healing at the Seaside. The Apostles chosen. Mk.19 And they went into an house. And the multitude cometh together again, so that 20, 21 they could not so much as eat bread. And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself. M. 22 Then was brought unto him one possessed of a devil, blind and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that it came to pass when the devil was gone out the blind and dumb 23 both spake and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, Is not this the son of David? 24. But the Pharisees, when they heard it, and the scribes which came down from Jerusalem, said, This fellow hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out 25 devils. But Jesus knew their thoughts, and called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. 26 And if Satan rise up against and cast out Satan, he is divided against himself: how 27 shall then his kingdom stand? He cannot stand, but hath an end. And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? therefore they shall be 28 your judges. But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God 29 is come unto you. No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house. When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace; but when a stronger than he shall come upon him and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils. He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. 31. Wherefore, verily, I say unto you, All manner of sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme; but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. 32. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come: he hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation. Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit. 33. Either make the tree good, and his fruit good: or else make the tree corrupt, and his 34 fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit. O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speak- 35 eth. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: 36 and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the 37 day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. GOODNESS, in the spiritual representation of Christ, is a certain interior disposition, a frame of the soul, where the first fixed choice is for righteousness, and the first fixed love is for God. Goodness, then, lies not so much in specific deeds as in the faithful heart; not so much even in special attainments as in that principle of a consecrated will which presides over all our doings and gettings; not so much in this or that act, or even series of acts, as in that pervading and supreme purpose or motive which, having been appropriated from Christ himself, rules the general tenor and course of life into harmony with his spirit; not so much in outward manifestations as in an internal aspiration, strong and constant, for newness of life, and fellowship with God by his Son. In other words, a Christian righteousness consists in being first and doing afterward; in a right spirit before there can be a right life; in a changed and reconciled heart, in order to a noble and beautiful conduct. We must do Christian works from a love of them, or else we never do them—Christian works—at all. Make the tree a good tree, or the fruit will not be good fruit. F. D. H. 21. A mode of life like this—out all night upon the mountain-top, teaching, walking all day long without food or rest—so affected the minds of his immediate relatives when they heard of it, that they went out to lay hold of him, for they said, He is beside himself. 22. Blindness and dumbness, whether springing from original defect or induced by disease, he had often before cured. But here, underlying both, was the deeper spiritual malady of possession. Jesus cast the devil out, and the immediate effect of the dispossession was the recovery of speech and vision. H.—23. The dissolution of so hideous a spell as that which had bound this man—the power to pour light on the filmed eyeball, and to restore speech to the cramped tongue, and intelligence to the bewildered soul—was something that the people had never witnessed. The miracle produced a thrill of astonishment, a burst of unconcealed admiration. For the first time they openly debated whether He who had such power could be any other than their expected Deliverer. “Can this man,” they asked, “can he be the Son of David?” F.—Here were three cures simultaneously effected; and when the people beheld the lunatic sensible and collected, when they heard the dumb speak, and perceived that the blind saw, they exclaimed in amazed reverence, “Is not this the Son of David?”—that is, the Messiah? K.—The descent of the Messiah from David was universally acknowledged. “The Son of David” was, therefore, a very common title for the Messiah. To this day, all Jews speak of the Messiah they expect as “The Son” or “The Branch” of David. G.—It was in connection with this class of cases only that the double result appeared, of an extraordinary commotion among the people and an extraordinary allegation put forward by the Pharisees. 24. Christ had not yet broken with the Pharisees as a party, nor denounced them either privately to his disciples or publicly to the multitude. But now, at the close of his second circuit through Galilee, the collision came, and the whole manner of his speech and action toward them was changed. A winebibber, a gluttonous man, a friend of publicans and sinners, a Sabbath-breaker, a blasphemer, they had called him, but here is the vilest thing that calumny can say of him—that he is in league with Satan, and that it is to his connection with the devil that he owes all his wisdom and power. H.—Beelzebub. How the name of this Philistine idol came to be given to Satan, is not known; but as idolatry is in reality devil-worship, it was not unnatural. Christ's bitterest enemies did not deny the reality of his miracles; and being stung by the unsophisticated testimony of "all the people," they had no way of holding out against his claims but by the desperate shift of ascribing his miracles to Satan. B. 25-29. That he spoke thus against them was but a further carrying out of his mission, a further inroad upon the kingdom of that Beelzebub. And yet they were the accredited authorities in the church of that day. It was for the sake of the people that he called the Pharisees hypocrites, and not for their own sakes, for how should he argue with men who taught religion for their own aggrandizement? They who were cured, and they in whom self-worship was not blinding the judgment, had no doubt that he was fighting Satan on his usurped ground. Torture was what might be expected of Satan; healing what might be expected of God. The reality of the healing, the loss of the man, morally as well as physically, to the kingdom of evil, was witnessed in all the signs that followed. Our Lord rests his argument on the fact that Satan had lost these men. McD.—Christ silences the Pharisees by referring to their own practice and belief. The Jews believed in exorcisms. Their exorcists, called here the children (i. e., disciples) of the Pharisees, pretended to eject demons, and persuaded the common people that they really did so. Our Saviour does not acknowledge the reality of these exorcisms, but shows that on their own principles they ought not to charge him with casting out devils by Beelzebub. That their cures were pretended and incomplete is evident from Matt. 9: 33, where in view of the perfect cure of one possessed with a devil, the people said, "It was never so seen in Israel." J. J. O.—Christ points out the contradiction involved in their assertion, and showed that such works could be wrought only by the power of God, which alone could free the human soul from the dominion of the evil spirit. He designates this individual case as a sign that the kingdom of God, before which the powers of darkness must flee away, had manifested itself. N.—A rigid monotheistic religion like the Jewish left but one way of escape from the authority of miracles, which were acknowledged to be indeed such, and not mere collusions and sleights of hand. There remained nothing to say but that these were works of hell. We have our Lord's answer to the deep malignity of this assertion; his appeal, namely, to the whole tenor of his doctrine and his miracles—whether they were not altogether for the overturning of the kingdom of evil—whether such a lending of power to him on the part of Satan would not be wholly inconceivable, since it were altogether suicidal. T. 29. The soul is here represented as the usurped possession and dwelling-place of Satan, "a strong man." The only "stronger than he" is Christ, who comes upon and overcomes him in the soul by using the sword of the Spirit, even the word of God—the same weapon which won him the personal victory in the wilderness. Falsehood is the weapon by which Satan takes and holds the soul captive. By its reception of the pure truth as taught by the Holy Spirit, Satan's power is broken. The palace, or the soul, passes into possession of Christ. J. G. B.— 30. He that is not with me is against me. Not with me (works not with me in the power of the Holy Ghost) is against me (opposes in his works the kingdom of God); and he that gathereth not with me (does not, in communion with me, gather souls for the kingdom) scattereth abroad (leads them astray, and thus really works for the kingdom of Satan, against which he apparently contends). N.—The first clause of the verse asserts that he who is not Christ's follower is his foe, and it classes the multitude, who were listening but not obeying, with the Pharisees, and both with Satan and the devils; the second asserts that every act and influence in life, of the disciple as well as of him who is not, if it gather nothing for Christ and with him, scatters and wastes that which has been or is being gathered. Every act as well as every individual is with and for Christ or against him. L. A.—The mightiest spiritual forces are struggling for the possession of the soul of man: on the one hand, Satan, the tempter of our first parents, the "father of lies," with his subtle devices of temptation; and, on the other, the Holy Spirit of light and truth and love, with his influences of grace. No one can be passive in this conflict of spiritual powers; and as one chooses his alliance here will be his state and portion in the hereafter. J. P. T. 31,32. The sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost consists evidently in words malignantly spoken against the power of the Holy Ghost working in Jesus Christ. The Pharisees are virtually charged with having committed this crime. They had deliberately attributed to the devil one of the highest acts of omnipotence. No conceivable sin could be greater than this. J. J. O.—Nothing could be here intended, short of the entire and final alienation of the heart and will and life from everything divine, the contradiction of the whole man to all of God's which testifies of grace and mercy and truth and holiness; a sin which therefore, in its very nature, excludes its own forgiveness, inasmuch as it excludes the conditions under which alone forgiveness could be obtained. T.—He speaks of a certain malicious disposition of mind, which by venting itself under such circumstances in blasphemy against the greatest of our Lord's miracles, plainly discovered itself to be incapable of amendment by any means which God would vouchsafe to make use of. That particular blasphemy, in those particular circumstances, was a sign only or an evidence, which our Saviour knew and declared to proceed from an incurable and therefore unpardonable malicious disposition of mind. Nothing therefore can be gathered from this passage, concerning any particular sin against the Holy Ghost (as many have without reason imagined), in its own nature unpardonable. The blasphemy our Saviour here speaks of is not singly sinning against the person of the Holy Ghost, or against his good motions, but presumptuously reviling the greatest works of the Holy Ghost, and so obstinately rejecting the last call to repentance. He that blasphemed against the Holy Ghost, against the highest evidence of our Lord's greatest miracles, was never to be forgiven; not because even this was in itself and in the nature of the thing absolutely unpardonable (for no reason can be given why speaking against the person of the Holy Ghost should be in itself of greater malignity than speaking against Christ, or against God the Father himself), but because it was an obstinate rejecting the last means of conviction, and an evident token of incorrigible malice. S. C. Hath never forgiveness, but, etc. Hath not remission (or forgiveness) to eternity, but is subject (or obnoxious) to eternal judgment. The common version of the second clause (hath never forgiveness), though impressive and substantially correct, obscures the antithesis between the cognate noun and adjective, aiona and aioniou. The former properly denotes duration—sometimes definite, as an age, a lifetime, or a dispensation; but, when limited by nothing in the context, indefinite and even infinite duration. This strongest sense would be implied here, even if these words were not expressed, by the structure of the sentence. If some sins will be forgiven, and some not, the latter must be coextensive with the former; and as those forgiven are forgiven to eternity, those unforgiven must eternally remain so. The same thing is more positively stated in the last clause. As his sin is not to be remitted, he is of course subject to eternal condemnation, i. e., actually subject, or judicially subjected to it, and not merely in danger of it, as the word is inexactly rendered. J. A. A. 33. The greatest of God's inward works is the work of regeneration. It is this which is the root of all subsequent growth. To this our Lord remands the Pharisees instead of all cleansing of the "outside of the cup and the platter," saying, "Make the tree good." No change from better to better can be compared with the change from darkness to light. J. W. A.—The tree is known by its fruit. Ye accuse me of working by Beelzebub. But if the devil be evil, he cannot do good works; so that if my works are good, the devil is not the doer of them. Jerome.—A tree is known by its fruits, not the fruits by the tree. Having no fault to find with the fruit, ye pass sentence against the tree, saying that I have a devil. Chrys. 34-37. And then, speaking to them in language of yet plainer significance, he turned the light of truth into their hypocritical hearts, and showed them how this fruit of falsehood and calumny could only spring from roots of hidden bitterness; how only from evil treasures hid deep in darkness, where the very source of light was quenched, could be produced these dark imaginings of their malignity. Lastly, and with a note of warning which has never since ceased to vibrate, he warned them that the words of man reveal the true nature of the heart within, and that for those, as for all other false and lightly uttered words of idle wickedness, they should give account at the last day. F.—Because words, so lightly thought of by the careless, spring from the inner fountains of good and ill, therefore they will form subjects of the judgment of the great day, when the whole life shall be unfolded and pronounced upon. Words are the outward utterance of the man—a specimen of what is within. A. # Section 48—Rebukes the Scribes and Pharisees. Disciples his Kindred. # Galilee. M. 38 THEN certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees tempting him answered, saying, 39 Master, we would see a sign from heaven, from thee. But when the people were gathered thick together, he answered and said to them, This is an evil and adulterous generation; they seek after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of the prophet Jonas. As Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of 40 man be to this generation. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41 The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is 42 here. The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with the men of this generation, and shall condemn them: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here.L. 33 No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a 34 bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light. The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of 35 light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. Take heed therefore 36 that the light which is in thee be not darkness. If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.M. 43 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seek- 44 ing rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I 45 came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.L. 27 And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps 28 which thou hast sucked. But he said, Yea, rather blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.M. 46 While he yet talked to the people, behold, there came then his mother and his brethren, and standing without, sent unto him, calling him, desiring to speak with him. And 47 the multitude sat about him. Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy 48 brethren stand without, desiring to see thee, to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he 49 looked round about on them which sat about him, and stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! my mother and my breth- 50 ren are these which hear the word of God and do it. For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is heaven, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother. CHRIST and his gospel stand out totally distinct from the times and the life when they appeared. That gospel could not have been produced by the age, for it was an antagonism to it; the age was a degenerate one, a mixture of formal ceremony and licentious unbelief. Paganism was waning; Rome becoming debased; the ancient traditions of the Jews were lost in human inventions and rabbinical fantasies—when rising up in the midst of all this debasement, this corruption, these anomalies, came Christ and his gospel, gentle in the midst of violence, holy amongst flagrant infidelity and wanton vice, the Preacher and the preaching both sent from somewhere, but manifestly not from the world, not from Oriental barbarism, not from Western paganism, not from Jewish corruption. It could then have come from no other place than heaven, and had no other author than God. And when we reflect upon what was compressed in that three years' labor, and compare it with systems which have occupied men's lives to sketch out merely, and taken ages to perfect; when we see that this greatest system, which has spread over the whole civilized world by the force of its own truth, was in three short years laid down and consolidated, every principle defined, every rule established, every law delineated, and an impetus given to it by its great Master, which has always kept it advancing in the world against every opposing force, and in spite of every disadvantageous circumstance, all doubt about its individuality, its superhuman character, and its divine origin, must vanish from the mind. Therefore the best thing for Christians still to do is to lift up Christ before the eyes of men, no matter how, so that he be lifted up boldly and faithfully, be it by the voice, or the pen, or better still, by the more impressive exhibition of Christ in a Christian life. An. M. 38. The crowds that gathered round him wherever he went; the wonder and gratitude with which his miracles were hailed; the impression his discourses had created, and the steps that he had now obviously taken toward organizing a distinct body of disciples, fanned into an open flame the long-smouldering fire of Pharisaic opposition. H.—Though baffled, the Pharisees did not intend to leave Jesus long in peace. He had spoken to them in language of lofty warning, nay, even of stern rebuke—to them, the leaders and religious teachers of his time and country. How did he dare thus to address them? Let him at least show them some sign from heaven, no mere exorcism or act of healing, but some great, indisputable, decisive sign of his authority. It was the old question which had assailed him at his very earliest ministry, "What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?" To such appeals, made only to insult and tempt—made by men who, unconvinced and unsoftened, had just seen a mighty sign, and had attributed it at once without a blush to demoniac agency—made, not from hearts of faith, but out of curiosity, and hatred, and unbelief—Jesus always turned a deaf ear. F. 39. As Jonah, by his deliverance, was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be, by his resurrection from the dead, to this generation. L. A.—40. The usual formula which our Lord employed in speaking of his resurrection was, that "he should rise on the third day." The expression "three days and three nights," our Lord uses here, and here alone, because he is quoting from Jonah 1:17. The Hebrew form of expression for three days and three nights was likewise used generally and indefinitely for three days simply. This is manifestly the case here. R.—Jesus was dead part of the first and part of the third day. The Jews were accustomed to call parts of a day as a whole day. Jesus, of course, speaks with a recognition of the custom of the people. The phrase "the heart of the earth" does not mean "the grave," but Hades—the "death kingdoms." G.—Our Lord treats the history of Jonah as a true history, to be understood in its plain sense; and expounds the meaning of it, hitherto unrevealed, viz., that it was not only a history, but also a prophecy, a typical representation of himself—of his own wonderful death, burial, and resurrection. W. 41. This generation, our Saviour says, compared with the people of Nineveh, shall be more justly condemned. For, when the men of Nineveh were preached to by Jonah, a stranger, who continued among them but three days, and wrought no miracles to confirm his mission, they yet hearkened to him, and repented. But this generation, though they have Christ himself sent to preach to them, though they hear his doctrine, and see his miracles, though they are astonished at the authority with which he teaches, and the power by which he acts, yet they are not by all these things brought to repentance. S. C. L. 34. Christ tells them that they will not see the significance of his teaching and miracles because they shut the eyes of their understanding which should be the light of the soul; this is set before them in a parable concerning the light of the body which is the outward eye. A.—35. Take heed that the light which is in thee. That is, Let every man take care that the moral judgment of his understanding be not corrupted with blind unreasonable prejudices, or with vicious wilfully indulged affections; for, in that case, his very guide becomes his seducer, and his light itself is darkness. S. C.—36. Our Lord is speaking of his teaching as apprehended by the simple, single-seeing soul. If the soul, having no part darkened by prejudice or selfish lusts, approach thus to his teaching, it shall be wholly illuminated by it. The second clause expresses the waxing onward of the shining light, arising from the singleness of the eye, and becomes, in its spiritual significance, a weighty declaration of truth. A. M. 43-45. The direct application of this parable is to the Jewish people, and the parallel runs thus: The old demon of idolatry brought down on the Jews the Babylonish captivity, and was cast out by it. They did not, after their return, fall into it again, but rather endured persecution, as under Antiochus Epiphanes. The emptying, sweeping, and garnishing may be traced in the growth of Pharisaic hypocrisy and the rabbinical schools between the return and the coming of our Lord. The repossession by the one, and accession of seven other spirits more malicious than the first, hardly needs explanation. The desperate infatuation of the Jews after our Lord's ascension, their bitter hostility to his Church, their miserable end, are known to all. A.—The personal application of the parable may be thus stated: A purposed and begun reformation makes the soul an uncongenial resting-place for the "unclean" or evil spirit, and he goes out for a time. After a while he concludes to return and ascertain how the attempt at reformation has ended. He finds the soul empty! No "stronger man than he," no Christ in possession; none to resist his renewed control. Nay, the self-reformer has only prepared the way by successive declensions for Satan's return; sweeping the soul of all good purposes, and so suitably garnishing it for his reentrance and permanent abode. Now, Christ intimates, the state of that soul is hopeless! J. G. B.—Relapse into evil, when thoroughly yielded to, makes the case ever worse than before. The power of a resisting will is destroyed; in just judgment God lets this awful law of the human soul take effect; and the enemy is permitted to take his own advantage of it. B. L. 28. He does not deny the honor pronounced upon his mother. "Yes indeed, but." This answer cuts at the root of all Mariolatry, and shows us in what the true honor of that holy woman consisted—in faith and obedience. A. M. 49. Christ, surrounded by a host of anxious seekers for salvation, heard the announcement undisturbed. To show, by this striking case, that blood relationship did not imply affinity for his spirit, pointing to the seeking souls around him, and to his nearer spiritual kindred—the disciples—he said, "Behold my mother and my brothers!" N.—How great is the honor of faith and obedience! How blessed the consanguinity! To be born of God, and to bear the Lord Jesus Christ in our hearts; to express his image in every thought and word and action; and to be ourselves confirmed to him, partakers of his holiness, and of his crown. Thus to become his brethren, and the children of God, is no empty honor, no sounding name, but gives a sure title to a share in his glory. Stanhope. 46-50. Mary is included in what is a virtual censure on the part of her Lord. He neither goes out to meet her and her companions, nor admits them into his presence. He exclaims that his nearest of kin are the children of God. It is thus remarkable that in the only two instances, until the crucifixion, where Mary figures in the gospel, she appears in order to be reproved by the Saviour, and to be placed, as far as the mere maternal relation is concerned, below obedient servants of God. These passages must be regarded as protests laid up in store against the heathenish eminence which the Roman Church assigns to Mary, and especially against that newly-established dogma, of her being without sin from her birth, which they so signally contradict. T. D. W. Christ came for all men, the second Adam, taking our entire humanity on him. Though he was born of a woman, he is not on that account more nearly united to her than to all those who are united to him by the spirit; nor bound to regard the call of earthly relations so much as the welfare of those he came to save. . . . Our Lord, though he introduces the additional term sister into his answer, does not introduce father, inasmuch as he never speaks of an earthly father. A.—His vocation lies altogether in the reconciliation of men with God, and thereby with each other. Not that he felt any indifference, much less contempt, toward the earthly relations or vocations of men. He was a loving son, a faithful friend. But the holiest of earth's relations, and the purest of its vocations, are nothing to him, except in so far as each is not only controlled but penetrated by a higher relation and vocation. His true friends are those who do what he commands. His true, his sole vocation is that of Saviour. R. C.—The earthly and the heavenly bonds, the common and the Christian ties, do not always coincide, neither are they always in harmony. If ever they interfere—if mother, or brother, or sister, or dearest friend, should tempt us away from him in nearness to whom standeth our eternal life—then let us remember this scene and ask our Lord to give us of his own spirit, to follow him. H. ## Section 49.—Dining with Pharisees, denounces their Hypocrisy. Galilee. 36. AND one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat. 37 And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat 38 at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster-box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who, and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner. 40 And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. 41 And he saith, Master, say on. There was a certain creditor, which had two debtors: 42 the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him 43 most? Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged. 44 And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house; thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed 45 my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no 46 kiss: but this woman, since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with oint- 47 ment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she 48 loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. And he said unto 49 her, Thy sins are forgiven. And they that sat at meat with him, began to say within 50 themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also? And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace. 1. And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were 2 with him; and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, 3 Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance. NOTHING rightly introduces us to Christ but sin, and nothing rightly reveals him but a sense of sin. His highest character is, that he forgives and cancels it. He is the prophet and the teacher, but he is above all the Redeemer; and those only know him who come to him with this feeling. So she came weeping and anointing his feet, and wiping them with her hair. Her faith opened the door of her heart, and entertained Christ there as he most loved to be entertained; while everything else, the hospitality of the Pharisee and the inquiries of Nicodemus, left him still without. And it is this truth which Christ came to reveal—that men are lost, and that he appeared to seek and to save them. Sin only leads us to him; and he leads us only as sinners to God. The same truths—that a sense of need is the qualification that helps men to see Christ, and that Christ's highest character is that of a Saviour—came out in other parts of the inspired narrative, but nowhere in action more clearly than here. J. A. In the Saviour's own words, we have an explanation of this act. "Her sins, which are many, are for- given; for she loved much." This tells the whole secret of those tears, that kiss, that precious gift, and of the impassioned freedom which carried her into the presence, and to the very table, of the Pharisee. Love and mercy had saved her; forgiveness had broken her hard heart. Hope and peace came with Christ's words of comfort. It could be said of her soul as it is said of heaven, The Lamb is the light thereof. N. A.—What can be wished, of any mortal creature, but remission, safety, faith, peace? All these are here met, to make a contrite soul happy: remission, the ground of her safety; faith, the ground of her peace; safety and salvation, the issue of her remission; peace, the blessed fruit of her faith. Bp. H. 36. It is quite clear that the hospitality was | foreign custom of reclining at meals on cushions, meant to be qualified and condescending. All the | long in use among the Persians, Greeks, and Ro-  Reclining at Table. ordinary attentions which would have been paid to | to their places. The side of the square nearest the an honored guest were coldly omitted. F.—The | door was open, so that the servants could have acmans, had been introduced into Palestine apparently as early as the days of Amos, and had be- come general in those of Christ. Raised divans, or table couches, provided with cushions and ar- ranged on three sides of a square, supplied a rest for guests, and on these they lay on their left arm, with their feet at case behind them. G.—The dinner-bed (of three couches, therefore) called a triclinium, stood in the middle of the room with a space between it and the walls, by which the guests passed cess to the dinner-table, which was inclosed within the area formed by the triclinium. The guests, when placed, had their faces turned toward the table, with their feet outward or behind, toward the wall. It will thus be seen how the woman, “standing at his feet behind,” could readily do all that she is described as doing. K. Coming, as it does in the narrative, immediately after the invitation, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,” how natural the thought that here we have one instance—perhaps the first that followed its delivery—of that invitation being accepted—of one wearied and heavy laden coming to Jesus, and entering into the promised rest! Multitudes had already come to him to get their bodily ailments cured: she came under the pressure of a purely spiritual impulse—grieving, desiring, hoping, loving, to get all and more than all she sought. All the penitence she experienced, all the new desires that were filling her breast, she owed to him. She had looked at him, listened to him, followed him as he invited all to come to him. And what he so fully offered—the peace of forgiveness, the blessedness of meekness, of lowliness of spirit, purity of heart—these are what she now, above all things, desired to have. 38. The faith and hope to which she has been begotten intensify her penitence, and that penitence intensifies her love; so that as we look upon her—first standing silently weeping, then bending down and bathing those feet with her tears, then clasping and kissing them, and pouring the rich ointment over them—she presents herself to our eye as the most striking picture of a loving, humble penitent at the feet of Jesus which the gospels present. H.—It was not possible she could bring to Christ a better present than her own penitent soul; yet, to testify that, she brings another, delicate both for the vessel and the contents. The soul that is truly touched with the sense of its own sin can think nothing too good, too dear, for Christ. Bp. H.—The shame of deepest unworthiness, and the unutterable gratitude of a saved soul, were struggling within. Words are poor at such a moment. A divinely-taught instinct gave her the expression, and the world has been filled with fragrance. 39. Penitence was there too deep for words, the broken and contrite heart which God will not despise, a loathing of sin which this Pharisee cannot understand, and a glowing love that made his frown forgotten in the irresistible attraction to a Saviour’s feet. Ker.—The host and his friends regarded it as the unwarranted intrusion of a disreputable stranger, giving very questionable honors that compromised and tarnished the receiver. As the angels of God beheld it, there was a penitent renouncing sin, and absolved of the God whose pardon can remit the offence as his grace can renew the offender. W. R. W.—But all this the poor Pharisee can understand no more than he can hear the angels who rejoice over it, and he complacently charges with ignorance him who searches the heart, and proudly condemns her who is being acquitted by the judge of all! Ker. 40. The Lord showed him that he was indeed a discerner of the thoughts of hearts, by reading at once what was passing in his heart, and laying his finger without more ado on the tainted spot which was there. T.—And Jesus answering said. The Pharisee had only spoken within himself; but Jesus answers him. Thus it is that, when we speak to our hearts, we speak to God who knoweth our hearts. He, who hears our thoughts, judges of them as if they were clothed with words. Bp. H.—If he could have established his point that it was unworthy of the Saviour to hold intercourse with sinners, what hope would there have been for him? Nay, had the Pharisee seen it, he was farther from the kingdom of God than she with all her sins about her; and it was not so wonderful that Christ should permit this woman to touch his feet, as that he should sit down as a guest at the Pharisee’s table. This, too, was in the way of his work, to bring in a contrite sinner with him, and touch, if it might be, the hard, self-righteous heart. Ker. 40-43. Like Nathan with David, our Lord conceals his home-thrust under the veil of a parable, and makes his host himself pronounce upon the case. The two debtors are the woman and Simon; the criminality of the one was ten times that of the other (in the proportion of “500” to “50”); but both being equally insolvent, both are with equal frankness forgiven; and Simon is made to own that the greatest debtor to forgiving mercy will cling to her divine benefactor with the deepest gratitude. B. 42. Frankly forgave. What depth of meaning is in these words, if we reflect who said them, and by what means this forgiveness was to be wrought! A.—43. He to whom he forgave most.** God is our creditor, our sins are debts; we are all debtors, but some more deeply than others. No man can pay his debt; remission alone can discharge it. God in mercy forgives as well the greatest as the least sins; our love to God is proportional to our sense of his forgiveness. Thus the Pharisee cannot but confess that, the more and greater the sin is, the greater mercy in the forgiveness; and the greater mercy in the forgiver, the greater sense of obligation in him who is forgiven. Bp. H.—The love borne to his person is in proportion to the sense of forgiveness. Little love where there is little sense of sin and pardon; abounding love where this has taken possession of the soul. Ker. 44-46. Host and Saviour appear, each in his true character; the Pharisee murmurs, while Jesus welcomes this blighted but contrite heart; he reserves his severity for the man of credit and distinction, well knowing the dead heart within him. The man to whom little has been forgiven loves little; he repels pardon as an insult, and abides in his impotent pride. Penitent hearts, on the contrary, break and flow forth at the feet of Jesus, like the box of ointment which has just been poured over them. De P.—The law was to Simon very like a human statute-book that takes note of the external conduct, and its transgressors were to be treated like outlaws and criminals. The view of the law as a deep, spiritual, all-embracing element had scarcely dawned upon him—a view which gives an unspeakably more profound idea of the evil of sin, but at the same time a more tender sympathy with those who are infected with it. It is the highest purity which is capable of the tenderest sympathy, and they are both in Christ. He will not despise the sin and misery of those who appeal to him, and he has the power to help them in the conflict. Their course is now to submit the whole, with the unreserved transparency of a contrite heart, and with simple faith, to his eye who sees all to pardon it, and to lead from pardon on to purity and perfect peace. 47. Her sins, which are many, are forgiven.** Christ saw into the woman's heart and life deeper than the Pharisee did. He judged them by a law far higher, and loathed sin as no man ever will do while he dwells in the clay. But he did not gather up his garments from the touch of the sinner, because in his heart there was an infinite fountain of mercy, which made him ready not only to receive the lost, but to pour out his soul unto the death to save them. And now he is only carrying out his own grand plan when he draws this sinner near him, and suffers her to clasp his feet that she may feel she is in contact with God's infinite and saving mercy. Ker.—For she loved much. Are we to conclude from hence that there is any advantage in having multiplied transgressions? the more sin, the more love? The whole matter is clear, if we consider the debt, not as so many outward transgressions, but as so much conscience of sin: and this we know is in no proportion to the amount of evil actually committed. Often they who have least of what the world can call sin, have yet the deepest sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. He who has little forgiven is not necessarily he who has sinned little, but he who is lacking in any strong conviction of the exceeding evil of sin. He loves little, or scarcely at all, because he has little sense of a deliverance wrought for him. T. It is love, according to Jesus, which gives to religion its true import. The faith of the woman proved itself genuine, because it sprang from and begat love; the love from the faith, the faith from the love. Her desire for salvation led her to Jesus; her love aided her in finding a Saviour in him; with warm love she embraced him as such, even before he pronounced the pardon of her sins. Therefore Christ said of her, "Her many sins are forgiven, because she has loved much;" and to her, "Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace;" thus exhibiting the reciprocal relations of the two—the faith proving itself true by the love. The Pharisee, whose feelings were ossified, bound up in the mechanism of the outward law, was especially lacking in the love which could lead to faith; and therefore, in speaking to him, the woman's love, and not her faith, was made prominent by Christ. N. 37-50. This wonderful scene teaches very weighty truths: 1. Though there be degrees of guilt, insolvency or inability to wipe out the dishonor done to God is common to all sinners. 2. As Christ is the great creditor to whom all debt, whether great or small, contracted by sinners is owing, so to him belongs the prerogative of forgiving it. B. 3. The man who is saved from sin by love is softened by the love which saves him; but the man who is kept from sin only by pride is made more hard. As near the sin in his real heart as ever, he maintains a false outward character by being very severe upon sinners. So a mere external reformation brings in vanity, pride, and all uncharitableness. 4. Those who profess religion should be careful how they give a false view of it by uncharitable judgments and by assumptions of superiority. It matters little whether this is done under the guise of zeal for orthodoxy of doctrine or morality of life. If it want the spirit of meekness and sympathy, it has not the spirit of the gospel. The greatest proof of the divine is that it is deeply and tenderly human. God became man to show this. Those who have struggled nearest to the centre of truth and life in Christ are those who will have most sympathy with men striving amid waves of doubt to plant their feet on some spiritual certainty; and they who have risen highest in purity of heart will be most ready to stretch out their hand to help a sinner to retrieval. The reason is plain. It is these men who are acquainted with the misery of the conflict and the blessedness of the calm. Ker. The anointing by Mary at Bethany had a purpose and spirit altogether different from that of this woman. Each showed sacrifice in the precious gift she brought; but with the one it was an offering of penitence, with the other of pure devotion. The "sinner" anointed Christ as the "Prince and Saviour, who gave repentance to Israel and remission of sin:" Mary, whom Jesus had long loved, gave the funeral unction to the body of her dear friend, in prospect of his death. S.—2. There is not the least reason for supposing the woman in the above incident to have been Mary Magdalene. The introduction of her as a new person so soon after, and what is here stated of her, make the notion exceedingly improbable. A.—It is by a singular fate that of the few women mentioned in the gospels, two of the most famous should have become blended into one. The sinner at a passing feast has borrowed a history from the tried disciple of Jesus. And yet nothing would seem easier than to separate them. The one is of no certain city, the other of Magdala: the one is a nameless and sudden apparition, the other is always mentioned by name, and becomes a constant follower of the Lord: the one is healed of a mental disease, the other is cleansed from moral taint: the one is the companion of honorable and pious women, and assumes a public place beside the Saviour, the other shrinks into a privacy that shuns the public gaze. Not only are there these well-marked distinctions, but each has a sufficient history of her own. There was no need to find a preface for the Magdalene's, nor a close for the sinner's: each is rounded off and complete. For the poor woman that wept at Simon's, that story is all we care to know. She had sinned, and was forgiven. Let the happy life pass into friendly obscurity, let her go in peace. W. F. S.—Mary Magdalene seems to have been a woman of high station and opulent fortune, being mentioned here even before Joanna, the wife of so great a man as Herod's steward. And the other Evangelists, when they speak of our Lord's female friends, commonly assign the first place to Mary Magdalene. She was called the Magdalene, from Magdala, the place of her nativity, a town situated beside the lake, on the southern border of the plain of Gennesaret. M. 3. He who was the support of the spiritual life of his people disdained not to be supported by them in the body. He was not ashamed to penetrate so far into the depths of poverty as to live upon the alms of love. He only fed others miraculously: for himself, he lived upon the love of his people. He gave all things to men his brethren, and received all things from them, enjoying thereby the pure blessing of love; which is then only perfect when it is at the same time both giving and receiving. O.—Jesus lived chiefly with his spiritual family, freely using their hospitality, as did the rabbis of the time. His ministrations were divided between the multitudes to whom he preached the gospel, and the familiar circle of his disciples, whom he taught with a solicitude only equalled by his patience. De P. ## Section 47.—Heals a Blind and Dumb Demoniac. Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Galilee. 36. AND one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat. 37 And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat 38 at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster-box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who, and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner. 40 And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. 41 And he saith, Master, say on. There was a certain creditor, which had two debtors: 42 the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him 43 most? Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged. 44 And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house; thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed 45 my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no 46 kiss: but this woman, since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with oint- 47 ment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she 48 loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. And he said unto 49 her, Thy sins are forgiven. And they that sat at meat with him, began to say within 50 themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also? And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace. 1. And it came to pass afterward, that he went throughout every city and village, preaching and shewing the glad tidings of the kingdom of God: and the twelve were 2 with him; and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, 3 Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance. NOTHING rightly introduces us to Christ but sin, and nothing rightly reveals him but a sense of sin. His highest character is, that he forgives and cancels it. He is the prophet and the teacher, but he is above all the Redeemer; and those only know him who come to him with this feeling. So she came weeping and anointing his feet, and wiping them with her hair. Her faith opened the door of her heart, and entertained Christ there as he most loved to be entertained; while everything else, the hospitality of the Pharisee and the inquiries of Nicodemus, left him still without. And it is this truth which Christ came to reveal—that men are lost, and that he appeared to seek and to save them. Sin only leads us to him; and he leads us only as sinners to God. The same truths—that a sense of need is the qualification that helps men to see Christ, and that Christ's highest character is that of a Saviour—came out in other parts of the inspired narrative, but nowhere in action more clearly than here. J. A. In the Saviour's own words, we have an explanation of this act. "Her sins, which are many, are for- given; for she loved much." This tells the whole secret of those tears, that kiss, that precious gift, and of the impassioned freedom which carried her into the presence, and to the very table, of the Pharisee. Love and mercy had saved her; forgiveness had broken her hard heart. Hope and peace came with Christ's words of comfort. It could be said of her soul as it is said of heaven, The Lamb is the light thereof. N. A.—What can be wished, of any mortal creature, but remission, safety, faith, peace? All these are here met, to make a contrite soul happy: remission, the ground of her safety; faith, the ground of her peace; safety and salvation, the issue of her remission; peace, the blessed fruit of her faith. Bp. H. 36. It is quite clear that the hospitality was | foreign custom of reclining at meals on cushions, meant to be qualified and condescending. All the | long in use among the Persians, Greeks, and Ro-  Reclining at Table. ordinary attentions which would have been paid to | to their places. The side of the square nearest the an honored guest were coldly omitted. F.—The | door was open, so that the servants could have acmans, had been introduced into Palestine apparently as early as the days of Amos, and had be- come general in those of Christ. Raised divans, or table couches, provided with cushions and ar- ranged on three sides of a square, supplied a rest for guests, and on these they lay on their left arm, with their feet at case behind them. G.—The dinner-bed (of three couches, therefore) called a triclinium, stood in the middle of the room with a space between it and the walls, by which the guests passed cess to the dinner-table, which was inclosed within the area formed by the triclinium. The guests, when placed, had their faces turned toward the table, with their feet outward or behind, toward the wall. It will thus be seen how the woman, “standing at his feet behind,” could readily do all that she is described as doing. K. Coming, as it does in the narrative, immediately after the invitation, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,” how natural the thought that here we have one instance—perhaps the first that followed its delivery—of that invitation being accepted—of one wearied and heavy laden coming to Jesus, and entering into the promised rest! Multitudes had already come to him to get their bodily ailments cured: she came under the pressure of a purely spiritual impulse—grieving, desiring, hoping, loving, to get all and more than all she sought. All the penitence she experienced, all the new desires that were filling her breast, she owed to him. She had looked at him, listened to him, followed him as he invited all to come to him. And what he so fully offered—the peace of forgiveness, the blessedness of meekness, of lowliness of spirit, purity of heart—these are what she now, above all things, desired to have. 38. The faith and hope to which she has been begotten intensify her penitence, and that penitence intensifies her love; so that as we look upon her—first standing silently weeping, then bending down and bathing those feet with her tears, then clasping and kissing them, and pouring the rich ointment over them—she presents herself to our eye as the most striking picture of a loving, humble penitent at the feet of Jesus which the gospels present. H.—It was not possible she could bring to Christ a better present than her own penitent soul; yet, to testify that, she brings another, delicate both for the vessel and the contents. The soul that is truly touched with the sense of its own sin can think nothing too good, too dear, for Christ. Bp. H.—The shame of deepest unworthiness, and the unutterable gratitude of a saved soul, were struggling within. Words are poor at such a moment. A divinely-taught instinct gave her the expression, and the world has been filled with fragrance. 39. Penitence was there too deep for words, the broken and contrite heart which God will not despise, a loathing of sin which this Pharisee cannot understand, and a glowing love that made his frown forgotten in the irresistible attraction to a Saviour’s feet. Ker.—The host and his friends regarded it as the unwarranted intrusion of a disreputable stranger, giving very questionable honors that compromised and tarnished the receiver. As the angels of God beheld it, there was a penitent renouncing sin, and absolved of the God whose pardon can remit the offence as his grace can renew the offender. W. R. W.—But all this the poor Pharisee can understand no more than he can hear the angels who rejoice over it, and he complacently charges with ignorance him who searches the heart, and proudly condemns her who is being acquitted by the judge of all! Ker. 40. The Lord showed him that he was indeed a discerner of the thoughts of hearts, by reading at once what was passing in his heart, and laying his finger without more ado on the tainted spot which was there. T.—And Jesus answering said. The Pharisee had only spoken within himself; but Jesus answers him. Thus it is that, when we speak to our hearts, we speak to God who knoweth our hearts. He, who hears our thoughts, judges of them as if they were clothed with words. Bp. H.—If he could have established his point that it was unworthy of the Saviour to hold intercourse with sinners, what hope would there have been for him? Nay, had the Pharisee seen it, he was farther from the kingdom of God than she with all her sins about her; and it was not so wonderful that Christ should permit this woman to touch his feet, as that he should sit down as a guest at the Pharisee’s table. This, too, was in the way of his work, to bring in a contrite sinner with him, and touch, if it might be, the hard, self-righteous heart. Ker. 40-43. Like Nathan with David, our Lord conceals his home-thrust under the veil of a parable, and makes his host himself pronounce upon the case. The two debtors are the woman and Simon; the criminality of the one was ten times that of the other (in the proportion of “500” to “50”); but both being equally insolvent, both are with equal frankness forgiven; and Simon is made to own that the greatest debtor to forgiving mercy will cling to her divine benefactor with the deepest gratitude. B. 42. Frankly forgave. What depth of meaning is in these words, if we reflect who said them, and by what means this forgiveness was to be wrought! A.—43. He to whom he forgave most.** God is our creditor, our sins are debts; we are all debtors, but some more deeply than others. No man can pay his debt; remission alone can discharge it. God in mercy forgives as well the greatest as the least sins; our love to God is proportional to our sense of his forgiveness. Thus the Pharisee cannot but confess that, the more and greater the sin is, the greater mercy in the forgiveness; and the greater mercy in the forgiver, the greater sense of obligation in him who is forgiven. Bp. H.—The love borne to his person is in proportion to the sense of forgiveness. Little love where there is little sense of sin and pardon; abounding love where this has taken possession of the soul. Ker. 44-46. Host and Saviour appear, each in his true character; the Pharisee murmurs, while Jesus welcomes this blighted but contrite heart; he reserves his severity for the man of credit and distinction, well knowing the dead heart within him. The man to whom little has been forgiven loves little; he repels pardon as an insult, and abides in his impotent pride. Penitent hearts, on the contrary, break and flow forth at the feet of Jesus, like the box of ointment which has just been poured over them. De P.—The law was to Simon very like a human statute-book that takes note of the external conduct, and its transgressors were to be treated like outlaws and criminals. The view of the law as a deep, spiritual, all-embracing element had scarcely dawned upon him—a view which gives an unspeakably more profound idea of the evil of sin, but at the same time a more tender sympathy with those who are infected with it. It is the highest purity which is capable of the tenderest sympathy, and they are both in Christ. He will not despise the sin and misery of those who appeal to him, and he has the power to help them in the conflict. Their course is now to submit the whole, with the unreserved transparency of a contrite heart, and with simple faith, to his eye who sees all to pardon it, and to lead from pardon on to purity and perfect peace. 47. Her sins, which are many, are forgiven.** Christ saw into the woman's heart and life deeper than the Pharisee did. He judged them by a law far higher, and loathed sin as no man ever will do while he dwells in the clay. But he did not gather up his garments from the touch of the sinner, because in his heart there was an infinite fountain of mercy, which made him ready not only to receive the lost, but to pour out his soul unto the death to save them. And now he is only carrying out his own grand plan when he draws this sinner near him, and suffers her to clasp his feet that she may feel she is in contact with God's infinite and saving mercy. Ker.—For she loved much. Are we to conclude from hence that there is any advantage in having multiplied transgressions? the more sin, the more love? The whole matter is clear, if we consider the debt, not as so many outward transgressions, but as so much conscience of sin: and this we know is in no proportion to the amount of evil actually committed. Often they who have least of what the world can call sin, have yet the deepest sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin. He who has little forgiven is not necessarily he who has sinned little, but he who is lacking in any strong conviction of the exceeding evil of sin. He loves little, or scarcely at all, because he has little sense of a deliverance wrought for him. T. It is love, according to Jesus, which gives to religion its true import. The faith of the woman proved itself genuine, because it sprang from and begat love; the love from the faith, the faith from the love. Her desire for salvation led her to Jesus; her love aided her in finding a Saviour in him; with warm love she embraced him as such, even before he pronounced the pardon of her sins. Therefore Christ said of her, "Her many sins are forgiven, because she has loved much;" and to her, "Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace;" thus exhibiting the reciprocal relations of the two—the faith proving itself true by the love. The Pharisee, whose feelings were ossified, bound up in the mechanism of the outward law, was especially lacking in the love which could lead to faith; and therefore, in speaking to him, the woman's love, and not her faith, was made prominent by Christ. N. 37-50. This wonderful scene teaches very weighty truths: 1. Though there be degrees of guilt, insolvency or inability to wipe out the dishonor done to God is common to all sinners. 2. As Christ is the great creditor to whom all debt, whether great or small, contracted by sinners is owing, so to him belongs the prerogative of forgiving it. B. 3. The man who is saved from sin by love is softened by the love which saves him; but the man who is kept from sin only by pride is made more hard. As near the sin in his real heart as ever, he maintains a false outward character by being very severe upon sinners. So a mere external reformation brings in vanity, pride, and all uncharitableness. 4. Those who profess religion should be careful how they give a false view of it by uncharitable judgments and by assumptions of superiority. It matters little whether this is done under the guise of zeal for orthodoxy of doctrine or morality of life. If it want the spirit of meekness and sympathy, it has not the spirit of the gospel. The greatest proof of the divine is that it is deeply and tenderly human. God became man to show this. Those who have struggled nearest to the centre of truth and life in Christ are those who will have most sympathy with men striving amid waves of doubt to plant their feet on some spiritual certainty; and they who have risen highest in purity of heart will be most ready to stretch out their hand to help a sinner to retrieval. The reason is plain. It is these men who are acquainted with the misery of the conflict and the blessedness of the calm. Ker. The anointing by Mary at Bethany had a purpose and spirit altogether different from that of this woman. Each showed sacrifice in the precious gift she brought; but with the one it was an offering of penitence, with the other of pure devotion. The "sinner" anointed Christ as the "Prince and Saviour, who gave repentance to Israel and remission of sin:" Mary, whom Jesus had long loved, gave the funeral unction to the body of her dear friend, in prospect of his death. S.—2. There is not the least reason for supposing the woman in the above incident to have been Mary Magdalene. The introduction of her as a new person so soon after, and what is here stated of her, make the notion exceedingly improbable. A.—It is by a singular fate that of the few women mentioned in the gospels, two of the most famous should have become blended into one. The sinner at a passing feast has borrowed a history from the tried disciple of Jesus. And yet nothing would seem easier than to separate them. The one is of no certain city, the other of Magdala: the one is a nameless and sudden apparition, the other is always mentioned by name, and becomes a constant follower of the Lord: the one is healed of a mental disease, the other is cleansed from moral taint: the one is the companion of honorable and pious women, and assumes a public place beside the Saviour, the other shrinks into a privacy that shuns the public gaze. Not only are there these well-marked distinctions, but each has a sufficient history of her own. There was no need to find a preface for the Magdalene's, nor a close for the sinner's: each is rounded off and complete. For the poor woman that wept at Simon's, that story is all we care to know. She had sinned, and was forgiven. Let the happy life pass into friendly obscurity, let her go in peace. W. F. S.—Mary Magdalene seems to have been a woman of high station and opulent fortune, being mentioned here even before Joanna, the wife of so great a man as Herod's steward. And the other Evangelists, when they speak of our Lord's female friends, commonly assign the first place to Mary Magdalene. She was called the Magdalene, from Magdala, the place of her nativity, a town situated beside the lake, on the southern border of the plain of Gennesaret. M. 3. He who was the support of the spiritual life of his people disdained not to be supported by them in the body. He was not ashamed to penetrate so far into the depths of poverty as to live upon the alms of love. He only fed others miraculously: for himself, he lived upon the love of his people. He gave all things to men his brethren, and received all things from them, enjoying thereby the pure blessing of love; which is then only perfect when it is at the same time both giving and receiving. O.—Jesus lived chiefly with his spiritual family, freely using their hospitality, as did the rabbis of the time. His ministrations were divided between the multitudes to whom he preached the gospel, and the familiar circle of his disciples, whom he taught with a solicitude only equalled by his patience. De P. ## Section 47.—Heals a Blind and Dumb Demoniac. Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Galilee. J. 2, 3 Now the Jews' feast of tabernacles was at hand. His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that 4 thou doest. For there is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh 5 to be known openly. If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world. For neither 6 did his brethren believe in him. Then Jesus said unto them, My time is not yet come: 7 but your time is alway ready. The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because 8 I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil. Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up 9 yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet full come. When he had said these words 10 unto them, he abode still in Galilee. But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.L. 51 And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stead- 52 fastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face: and they 53 went and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. And they 54 did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we com- 55 mand fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? But he 56 turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.11 And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of 12 Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men 13 that were lepers, which stood afar off: and they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, 14 Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew your- selves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. 15 And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice 16 glorified God, and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a 17 Samaritan. And Jesus answering, said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are 18 the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. 19 And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole. It was seen from the first that his awful powers were uniformly beneficent; that he came, not to destroy men's lives, but to save them; that he used omnipotence to bless, but never to hurt. Men saw him clothed with power over disease, and even over death; able to cast forth spirits, or to still the sea, and yet accessible, full of sympathy, the lofty patriot, the tender friend, the patient counsellor; shedding tears, at times, from a full heart, and ever ready with a wise and gentle word for all; so unaffected and gentle that children drew round him with a natural instinct, and even worldly hardness and vice were softened before him; and this contrast of transcendent power, and perfect humility, made them feel that he was indeed the head of the kingdom of God among men. The secret of his amazing success, as the founder of a new religious constitution for mankind, lay in the recognition of this perfect sacrifice of one so transcendently great, culminating in "the death of the cross." It was the perfect realization, in himself, of the life he urged on others. It implied the ideal fulfilment of all human duties, and no less so of all divine, for the heavenly love which alone could dictate and sustain such a career was, in itself, the most perfect transcript of the nature of God. A life in which every step showed kingly grace and divinely boundless love, condescending to the lowliest self-denial for the good of man, proclaimed him the rightful head of the new kingdom of God. G. Our Lord evades the urgency of his relatives, and afterward goes up to the festival more privately; that is, with less of public notoriety and without being followed as usual by crowds. The journey mentioned in L. 9 : 51 was obviously his last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem; and verse 53 shows that he was passing on rapidly and without delay. In both these circumstances Luke accords with John; and the two accounts are therefore properly arranged together. The healing of the ten lepers evidently connects itself with the same journey through Samaria; and is narrated by Luke out of its proper order. R. 2. In the autumn, half a year after the Passover, the Jews kept their feast of Tabernacles in remembrance of Israel's dwelling in tents during the time of their marching in the wilderness. R. B.—The feasts of the Jews still set before us the benefits of God. The Passover tells of deliverance from the bondage of sin by Jesus Christ; the feast of Pentecost, God's eternal covenant with us through the Spirit; and that of Tabernacles reminds us of his watchfulness and providence over us in the wilderness of this life; and of that state of travel, sojourning, and warfare, wherein we must continue till our entrance into the promised land of heaven, into the eternal rest of God. Q. 3. His brethren. (See Section 62, Matt. 13 : 55.) Not among these did Jesus during his lifetime find his most faithful followers, or his most beloved companions. There seemed to be in them a Judaic obstinacy, a lack of sympathy, a deficiency in the elements of tenderness and reverence. Peter, affectionate even in his worst weakness, generous even in his least-controlled impulse; James, the son of Zebedee, calm and watchful, reticent and true; above all, John, whose impetuosity lay involved in a soul of the most heavenly tenderness—these were more to him and dearer than his brethren or kinsmen according to the flesh. F. 3-5. If he were what he seemed, was he to hide himself among the hills of Galilee, and not go up boldly to the capital, and wrest from the rulers the acknowledgment of his claims? Let him, if he was fit to take the leadership of the people, place himself at once in the centre of influence at Jerusalem, and show himself to the world. Then if he made his pretensions good, it would be some honor to claim connection with him; some benefit to be enrolled as his followers. Christ's own brothers judge of him by themselves. They measure all by outward and visible success. In speaking thus to Jesus, they sever themselves by a wide interval from their great relative. Unselfish, unworldly were all his motives, aims, and ends. They are of the world, and true children of the world they are, in thus addressing him, proving themselves to be. And this they must be told at least, if they will not effectually be taught. H. Jesus was indeed a lonely being in the world. With all the exquisite tenderness of his human sympathies—touched with the feeling of our every sinless infirmity—with a heart that could feel for a peasant's sorrow, and an eye that could beam with tenderness on an infant's face—he was yet one who, wherever he went, and by whomsoever surrounded, was, in the secrecy of his inner being, profoundly alone. He moved among a narrow-minded, grovelling, sensual race, breathing a spirit of ineffable purity and holiness. And while his whole life passed away, while every day, and almost every hour of it, was spent in intercourse with those whose minds never travelled beyond the petty circle of their own national prejudices and passions, his inner being was yet ever filled with thoughts that wandered through eternity, that communed with invisible intelligences, that mused upon the affairs and destinies of the universe. What depths were there in that mighty spirit which none around could fathom! What ineffable joys and mysterious sorrows, unintelligible to the beings with whom he consorted as to the veriest children! The seclusion of the wilderness could not have increased an isolation like his. He was solitary amid crowds. He "trod" the path of life "alone, and of the people there was none with him." C. 6. My time is not yet come.** It is certainly remarkable, that in all the life of Jesus in the flesh—though the weight of the world's redemption was pressing upon him, and his ministry of eternal reconciliation was bounded by three short years, yet there is not a single step or movement of his, from first to last, that gives us an impression of haste. Always straitened till his whole work is accomplished, because the night cometh when no man can work, he is yet always deliberate. Are there not twelve hours in his day? He is almost as free from hurry as he is from sin. You see his disciples urging him hither and thither. They want him to go sooner, or stay later, or to make a more sudden manifestation. "Show thyself to the world." But he still bides his time, and only says his hour is not yet full come. F. D. H. 6-8. His time was coming—the time of his manifestation to Israel—of his showing forth to the world—a very different kind of manifestation from that of which his brethren were dreaming. But it was not yet fully come, and therefore he did not mean to go up to Jerusalem and openly to take part from the beginning in this approaching feast of Tabernacles. H.—His time was a God's time, but the time of his unbelieving brethren was a world's time, and that "is alway ready:" they would go to-day or to-morrow, secretly or openly, according to their worldly good-pleasure—what mattered it? Their time agreed not with his time. With them and in their spirit Jesus would not go up to Jerusalem. Not attended by them and the other pilgrims, and expecting a procession to conduct him thither, in short, not "showing himself to the world," was he going up to the feast of Tabernacles. It was not this feast that was appointed to place openly before the eyes of Israel its King and High-Priest; that was reserved for the next Passover feast; then was his time full come. But to this feast he went up in secret, regardless of the impatient reproaches of his brethren. R. B. It is quite clear that the Evangelist saw nothing in the language of our Lord but the desire to exclude his brethren from any certain knowledge of his plans. It was essential for the carrying out of his purposes, which were closely inwoven with the events of the next few days—that his brethren should not know about his plans. And therefore he let them depart in uncertainty as to whether or not he intended to follow them. Certain as they were to be asked by multitudes whether he was coming to the feast, it was necessary that they should be able to answer, with perfect truthfulness, that he was at any rate not coming with them, and that whether he would come before the feast was over or not they could not tell. 10; L. 51. He left, indeed, some faithful hearts behind him; but how few! Galilee had rejected him, as Judea had rejected him. At Nazareth, the sweet mountain village of his childish days—at Nazareth, with all its memories of his boyhood and his mother's home—they had treated him with such violence and outrage, that he could not visit it again. And even at Chorazin, and Bethsaida, and Capernaum—on those Eden-shores of the silver lake—in the green delicious plain, whose every field he had traversed with his apostles, performing deeds of mercy, and uttering words of love—even there they loved the whited sepulchres of a Pharisaic sanctity, and the shallow traditions of a Levitical ceremonial, better than the light and the life which had been offered them by the Son of God. And on all this land, and most of all on that region of it, the woe has fallen. Exquisite still in its loveliness, it is now desolate and dangerous. The vineyards and fruit-gardens have disappeared; the fleets and fishing-boats cease to traverse the lake; the hum of men is silent; the stream of prosperous commerce has ceased to flow. The very names and sites of the towns and cities are forgotten; and where they once shone bright and populous, there are now gray mounds where even the ruins are too ruinous to be distinguishable. . . . And the very generation which rejected him was doomed to recall in bitter and fruitless agony these peaceful, happy days of the Son of man. Thirty years had barely elapsed when the storm of Roman invasion burst furiously over that smiling land. He who will, may read in the "Jewish War" of Josephus the hideous details of the slaughter which decimated the cities of Galilee, and wrung from the historian the repeated confession that "it was certainly God who brought the Romans to punish the Galileans." F. 52. Of the Samaritans. While the Jews of the north generally, in going southward or returning, crossed the Jordan and advanced through Perea, in order to avoid passing through central Samaria, our Saviour, uninfluenced by the current intense prejudice against the Samaritans, took the direct way through their territory, whenever it suited him. N. C. B.—53. Did not receive him.** This treatment was not only an incivility, but a violation of the rights of hospitality. The Saviour and his friends, according to the recognized laws of Oriental civilization, had a claim to be entertained in that village. It was this view of the outrage, unquestionably, which excited such fierce indignation in the two disciples. H. B. H. 54. James and John—not Peter, as we should have expected, but those “sons of thunder,” who afterward would have all the highest honors of the kingdom to themselves. Yet one was “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” while the other willingly drank of his Lord’s bitter cup. B.—In their sense of righteousness and judgment, in their indignation against sin—all this, indeed, displaying itself in an untimely severity, which would have consumed the sinners and the sin together—we see the “sons of thunder” on their natural side, and as they would have been but for grace. They are fresh from the Mount of Transfiguration, where they had seen how the glory of the great prophet of the old covenant waned before the brighter glory of him whom they served, the Lord of the new; an outrage therefore against him, and a rejecting of him, should therefore be not less terribly avenged. With all of carnal and sinful which mingled with this proposal of theirs, yet what insight into the dignity of their Lord, and the greatness of the outrage which was an outrage against him, does it reveal; what faith in the mighty powers with which he was able to equip his servants! 55. Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. “You are missing,” Christ would say, “your true position; which is, having been born of the spirit of forgiving love, to be ruled by that spirit, and not by the spirit of avenging righteousness. You are losing sight of the distinction between the old covenant and the new, missing the greater glory of the latter, and that it is the higher blessedness to belong to it.” Under the Old Testament God was teaching men, by terrible things in righteousness, his holiness. But the spirit of the new covenant, not contrary but higher, is that of forgiving love; in it he is overcoming man’s evil with his good. There was, indeed, pardoning grace in the old, even as there is avenging justice in the new; in this too “God is a consuming fire;” and that same Lord who spake these words shall be himself revealed in flaming fire to take vengeance on them that know not God. T. 56. When the Son of man is come, the spirit of Elias must be gone; now specially, for Moses and he resigned lately in the mount. Now no law-giver, no prophet, but Christ. Bp. Andrewes.—Elias is no fit pattern for disciples, but their Master: “The Son of man came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” When we look into his sacred acts we find many a life preserved from perishing; some, that had perished, by him recalled; never any destroyed. Only one poor fig-tree, as the real emblem of his severity to the unfruitful, was blasted and withered by his curse. But to man, ever favorable and indulgent! Bp. H.—They had not realized the difference which separated Sinai and Carmel from Calvary and Hermon. He had come to save, not to destroy; and if any heard his words and believed not, he judged them not. And so, without a word of anger, he went to a different village; and doubtless John, who by that time did know of what spirit he was, remembered these words of Christ when he went with Peter into Samaria to confirm the recent converts, and to bestow upon them the gift of the Holy Ghost. F.—Christ’s holy character and noble cause may have insults offered, deep injuries done to them; but it is not by the angry visitation of pains and penalties of any kind, that these insults and injuries are to be avenged; but by forbearance and gentleness, love and pity—by feeling and acting toward all such men as our blessed Lord and Master felt and acted toward the inhabitants of that Samaritan village. 12. Ten lepers. By the Mosaic law, no disease but one was held to render its victim ceremonially unclean. Such uncleanness was stamped upon the leper alone. This strange, creeping, loathsome, fatal disease appears to have been selected as the one form of bodily affliction to stand, in the legal impurity attached to it, and in the penalties visited on that impurity, as a type of the inward, pervading, corrupting, destroying malady of sin. Among the Jews the leper was excommunicated. Cut off from the congregation of the people, he had to live apart, enjoying only such society as those afflicted with the same disease could offer. H.—The disease itself the Jews called “the finger of God,” and emphatically, “the stroke.” To heal it was one of the most decisive evidences of Messiahship. “The lepers,” said our Lord, “are cleansed,” and on such maladies he delighted to exercise his power and love. J. A.—There is nothing in the entire range of human phenomena which illustrates so impressively the divine power of the Redeemer, and the nature and extent of his work of mercy on man’s behalf, as this leprosy. New-born children of leprous parents are often as pretty and as healthy in appearance as any, but by-and-by its presence and workings become visible in some of the signs described in the 13th chapter of Leviticus. The “scab” comes on by degrees in different parts of the body; the hair falls from the head and eyebrows; the nails loosen, decay, and drop off; joint after joint of the fingers and toes shrink up, and slowly fall away. The gums are absorbed, and the teeth disappear. The nose, the eyes, the tongue, and the palate are slowly consumed, and finally the wretched victim sinks into the earth and disappears, while medicine has no powers to stay the ravages of this fell disease, or even to mitigate sensibly its tortures. Who can fail to find in all this a most affecting type of man’s moral leprosy? W. M. T. 13,14. There was something in that living death of leprosy—recalling as it did the most frightful images of suffering and degradation, corrupting as it did the very fountains of the life-blood of man, distorting his countenance, rendering loathsome his touch, slowly incrusting and infecting him with a plague-spot of disease far more horrible than death itself—which always seems to have thrilled the Lord's heart with a keen and instantaneous compassion. And never more so than at this moment. Scarcely had he heard their piteous cry of "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us," when instantly, without sufficient pause even to approach them more nearly, he called aloud to them, "Go, show yourselves unto the priests." F. 15. With a loud voice glorified God.** It was the exultation of faith; he felt there was a God in the world, and that God was good. What greater joy can be imparted to the heart of man than that which this truth, thoroughly embraced, imparts? And as this grateful spirit is the source of joy, so, in a sense, it is the source of religion in the soul. The grateful spirit alone believes, because it alone acknowledges the source of its life and being, the author and fountain-head. The grateful spirit alone finds out God; to it alone he reveals himself. With the grateful one out of the ten, it falls down before him, giving him thanks. J. B. M. 17. Where are the nine? The voice of their misery had awaked the instant echo of his mercy; but the miraculous utterance of his mercy, though it thrilled through their whole physical being, woke no echo of gratitude in their earthy and still leprous hearts. F.—18. Save this stranger.** Probably this man's faith had caused the cry of all the ten; probably he was the salt of the little group of outcasts. They were contented, for the time, with their cure: he forgot the cure itself in his gratitude. A moment more, and with obedient feet he would overtake them on their way to the priest. McD. 19. But, nevertheless, this alien shall not have returned in vain, nor shall the rare virtue—alas, how rare a virtue!—of his gratitude go unrewarded. Not his body alone, but the soul—whose value was so infinitely more precious, just as its diseases are so infinitely more profound—should be healed by his Saviour's word. F.—Him he dismisses with a new and a better blessing; the first had reached but to the healing of his body, and that he had in common with the unthankful nine: but gratitude for a lower mercy obtains for him a higher, a peculiar blessing, which is singularly his, which reaches not merely to the springs of bodily health, but to the very fountains of his spiritual being. T. (For leprosy, compare Section 28.) ## Section 84.—At the Feast of Tabernacles. Officers sent to take Him. The Temple. 1. AFTER these things, the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and 2 two before his face into every city, and place, whither he himself would come. Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest. 3, 4 Go your ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves. Carry neither purse, 5 nor scrip, nor shoes: and salute no man by the way. And into whatsoever house ye 6 enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And if the son of peace be there, your peace 7 shall rest upon it: if not, it shall turn to you again. And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give: for the labourer is worthy of his hire. Go not from house to house. 8 And into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set 9 before you. And heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of 10 God is come nigh unto you. But into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you 11 not, go your ways out into the streets of the same, and say, Even the very dust of your city which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you: notwithstanding, be ye sure of 12 this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. 13 Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a great while ago 14 repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and 15 Sidon at the judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to 16 heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell. He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me. THIS is the great abiding lesson that the employment of the seventy by Jesus carries with it—that it is not to ministers or ordained officers of the Church alone that the duty pertains of spreading abroad among those around them the knowledge of Christ. To the whole Church of the living God, to each individual member thereof, the great commission comes, "Go thou and make the Saviour known." As the Father sent him, Jesus sends all who own and love him on the same errand of mercy. Originally the Church of Christ was one large company of missionaries of the cross, each member feeling that to him a portion of the great task of evangelizing the world was committed: and it will be just in proportion as the community of the faithful, through all its parts, in all its members, comes to recognize this to be its function, and attempts to execute it, that the expansive power that once belonged to it will return again; and not so much by organized societies or the work of paid deputies, as by the living power of individual pity, sympathy, and love, spirit after spirit will be drawn into the fold of our Redeemer, and his kingdom be enlarged upon the earth. H. 1. Other seventy also.** Rather, “others (also in number), 70;” probably with allusion to the seventy elders of Israel on whom the Spirit descended in the wilderness (Num. 11: 24, 25). The mission, unlike that of the twelve, was evidently temporary. All the instructions are in keeping with a brief and hasty pioneering mission, intended to supply what of general preparation for coming events the Lord’s own visit afterward to the same “cities and places” would not, from want of time, suffice to accomplish: whereas the instructions to the twelve, besides embracing all those to the seventy, contemplate world-wide and permanent effects. Accordingly, after their return from this single missionary tour, we never again read of the seventy. B.—The time had come for seeking rather than shunning publicity—for letting all men know, not only that the kingdom had come, but that he, the head of that kingdom, the Christ, the Son of David, the King of Israel, was in the midst of them. Before his departure from among them, the Israelitish nation was to have this proclaimed through all its borders. This was to be the peculiar distinction of his last journeyings toward the Holy City—that all along upon their course his Messianic character should be publicly proclaimed, that so a last opportunity for receiving or rejecting him might be afforded. And how could this have been better effected than by the mission of the seventy? H. The seventy were to go to every city and place, whither our Lord himself would come. Not throughout Galilee; for Jesus apparently never returned to that province; and besides, both himself and the twelve had already preached in all the towns and villages. Not in Samaria; for he merely passes through that district without making any delay. Possibly into some parts of Judea, whither our Lord himself afterward came; but more probably along the great valley of the Jordan and throughout the populous region of Perea, which our Lord traversed and where he taught after the festival of Dedication, and as he for the last time went up to Jerusalem. In accordance with this view, the return of the seventy took place in Jerusalem or Judea, not long before the festival of Dedication; immediately after which festival Jesus withdrew into Perea to follow up their labors. R.—That the chief scene of the labors of the seventy was in Perea, is apparent. This province was under the jurisdiction of Herod, and here was offered the same freedom of action that Jesus had had up to this time in Galilee. It was also a part of the country that he had but little visited, and the road along the Jordan was a much-travelled thoroughfare to Jerusalem. Andrews. 2-12. As the seventy are distinct from the twelve, so is the instruction which is communicated to both distinct. The gift bestowed on the twelve of working miracles is far more extended than that which is here bestowed (in verse 9) on the seventy. Of the persecutions which he foretells the twelve, and of the extraordinary help of the Holy Spirit which he promises them after the day of Pentecost, the seventy, in entering upon their momentary and soon-accomplished work, have communicated to them not a word. On the other hand, the remarkable injunction given to the seventy alone, to salute no man on the way, appears doubly congruous, as the Saviour sees his public life hurrying to an end. Such differences are as far from being unimportant as accidental, but have sprung rather from the different nature of the persons and facts. The twelve had to return upon the traces of Jesus, in order to gather in the harvest of that which he had sown. The seventy must go before his face, in order to prepare a way for him. Van O. (See Sections 63, 64.) 4. Salute no man.** There is such an amount of insincerity, flattery, and falsehood in the terms of salutation prescribed by etiquette, that our Lord, who is truth itself, desired his representatives to dispense with them as far as possible, perhaps tacitly to rebuke them. These “instructions” were also intended to reprove another propensity which an Oriental can scarcely resist, no matter how urgent his business. If he meets an acquaintance, he must stop and make an endless number of inquiries, and answer as many. The command of our Saviour strictly forbade all such loiterings. W. M. T. It appears from the Lord’s sending of the seventy that all personal efforts and public movements for extending truth and increasing righteousness in the world are really parts of his work, and are dependent on his spiritual power. Christendom everywhere is full of beneficent activities. They are philanthropic, educational, sanitary, reformatory, missionary. Sometimes they scarcely recognize, and oftener they fail to praise, with explicit and conscious gratitude, the great fountain from which they spring, and the ever-present leader who inspires and sends them. So much the worse for their vitality and their honor if they do. But none the less are they the merciful emanations of the one great central, mighty, and missionary Heart which has brought the love of heaven into the dwellings of men. No matter where you find them, or what human agents started them, or what particular form of good they aim at, they are none the less, in their first origin, products of the one great healing and loving plan. The benefactions of this late age, half-blind though they may be, or forgetful of their Author, were born at Bethlehem, and grew in stature at Nazareth, and conquered their enemies—selfishness and pride and wrath—at Calvary, and went out among the nations with the apostles. If we had seen one of the seventy walking in some by-way of Jericho or Bethany, we might have seen no badge of Christ upon him, and wondered at his eager gait or absorbed expression. But he was going where the Master sent him, and the Master's mantle was on him, and the Master's secret in his soul. Thither, after him, the Master himself would come—to reaffirm and fulfil His words—to deepen, sanction, complete His work. Large or small, these forerunners run over the earth. One Sender sends them. One Reaper and Ingatherer and Finisher follows them. He is the Alpha, beginning them—the Omega who will end them. They began in his charity. They will end in his righteousness. His grace conceived them—every one. His mediation holds them up. His glory will crown them, in his own good time. F. D. H. 13 15. See Section 45. 17. AND the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject 18 unto us through thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall 19 from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, 20 and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Not- withstanding, in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather re- joice, because your names are written in heaven. 21 In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed 22 them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him. 23 And he turned him unto his disciples, and said privately, Blessed are the eyes which 24 see the things that ye see. For I tell you, that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them. 25 And behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall 26 I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how 27 readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy 28 neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live. 29, 30 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? And Jesus answering, said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, 31 leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way; 32 and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when 33 he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had 34 compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 And on the morrow, when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when 36 I come again, I will repay thee. Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neigh- 37 bour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise. BEAUTIFUL as is this parable when taken simply according to the letter, and full of incentives to active mercy and love, bidding us to be kind and tender-hearted, yet how much lovelier still when we trace in it a deeper meaning still, and see the work of the merciful Son of man himself portrayed to us here! Inasmuch as Christ himself in its largest extent fulfilled it, showed how we ought to love and whom; and inasmuch as it is his example, or rather faith in his love toward us, which is alone really effectual in causing us to "love one another with a pure heart fervently," he might well propose himself and his act in succoring the perishing humanity, as the everlasting pattern of self-denying and self- forgetting love. The traveller then is the personified human nature, or Adam as he is the representative and head of the race. He has left Jerusalem, the heavenly city, the city of the vision of peace, and is travelling toward Jericho; he is going down toward it, the profane city, the city which was under a curse (Josh. 6 : 26 ; 1 Kings 16 : 34). But no sooner has he forsaken the holy city and the presence of his God, than he falls under the power of him who is at once a robber and a murderer, is stripped of the robe of his original righteousness, and left full of wounds and almost mortal strokes. His case is desperate as concerns his own power to restore himself, but not desperate, if taken in hand by an almighty and all-merciful Physician. And who else but such a divine Physician shall give him back what he has lost, shall heal and bind up the bleeding hurts of his soul? Can the law do it? The apostle answers, it could not; “if there had been a law which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.” Patriarch and prophet and priest passed by, helpless both in will and deed, for they themselves also lay wounded in that wounded man. Only that true Samaritan beholding was moved with compassion, as he is all compassion, and poured oil into the wounds, that is, himself into the hearts, purifying all hearts by faith. T. WHILE he was still in Jerusalem and its neighborhood, the seventy, having fulfilled their mission, made their way back to him. Like the twelve, they returned in great joy at their success, and reported that even the devils had been subject to them, through their Master’s name, though they had received no special power over them, such as he had given to the twelve. It was a moment of calm triumph to Jesus, as the sure anticipation of infinitely greater results hereafter. G. 17,18. The word rendered “devils” is always used for those spiritual agents employed in demoniacal possessions; never for the ordinary agency of Satan in rational man. When therefore the seventy say “the demons are subject to us” and Jesus replies “mine eye was beholding Satan falling,” it is plain that he meant to raise their minds not only from the particular to the general, but from a very temporary form of Satanic operation to the entire kingdom of evil. A.—Already he beheld the whole idol-worship of the heathen world, whereof Satan was the soul and informing principle (1 Cor. 10 : 20), giving way, its splendor departing, its temples forsaken. This and much more of the same kind, the putting down of many of the enormous wickednesses of the world, of many strongholds of evil, was implied in the power which his disciples put forth. T.—As Christ had previously designated the cure of demoniacs wrought by himself as a sign that the kingdom of God had come upon the earth, so now he considered what the disciples reported as a token of the conquering power of that kingdom. Before the intuitive glance of his spirit lay open the results which were to flow from his redemptive work after his ascension into heaven; he saw, in spirit, the kingdom of God advancing in triumph over the kingdom of Satan. And, therefore (verse 19), he promises that in their coming labors they should do still greater things. They were to trample the power of the enemy under foot; they were to walk unharmed over every obstacle that opposed the kingdom of God. 20. But rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.** Wonderful works in the future were not to be the source of their joy. “Your great deeds are to be as nothing in comparison to the grace given you, the pardon of your sins, and life everlasting.” N.—Rejoice not, then, in any outward or selfish success—not even that the spirits are subject unto you, but that your names are written in heaven, with the name of your Saviour. Seats of honor, on the right hand and the left, are not promised—but to drink of the Master’s cup, and to be baptized with the same baptism. Patiently and persistently, again and again, by all figures and comparisons, now by this image and now by that, Christ strives to bear up the minds of his followers above every material and earthly impression, to the realization of the blessed and unspeakable fellowship between the believing heart and himself: showing us the water of such secret satisfaction that he who tastes it never thirsts again; meat to eat that the world knows nothing of; the single inward eye lighting the whole body; the Shepherd calling his own sheep by name—by name—leading them out, and they knowing his voice. F. D. H. 21. The hiding and revealing are recognized by him as alike his Father’s work, and the judgment and the grace alike matters for which he renders thanks. This new victory of the kingdom of light over the kingdom of darkness was a matter of the greater joy, that it was these “babes” by whom this victory had been won: they of the household were dividing the spoil. T.—The hiding from the wise and the revealing unto babes are closely connected together; it required childlike submission and devotion to receive the communications of the higher source, and therefore none could receive it but such as, like children, in need of higher light, yielded themselves up to the divine illumination; and for the same reason, those whose imagined wisdom satisfied them, because they were devoid of childlike submission, could not receive the divine communications. N. Rejoiced in spirit. Out of the grief that he endured for the sinful world he came to save, there broke a joy—the purest, the sublimest, the most blissful—that felt by him when he saw that the great ends of his mission were being accomplished, and that the things belonging to their eternal peace were being revealed to the souls of men. Once before Jesus had offered up the same thanksgiving, in the same words, to the Father. From the very repetition of it learn how fixed the order is, and how grateful we should be—that it is to the simple, the humble, the teachable, the childlike in heart and spirit, that the blessed revelation cometh. H.—Christ is never said to have laughed, and yet he never produces the impression of austerity, moroseness, sadness, or even of being unhappy. On the contrary, he is described as one that appears to be commonly filled with a sacred joy; “rejoicing in spirit,” and leaving to his disciples, in the hour of his departure, the bequest of his joy—“that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” There is somewhere in him an ocean of deep joy, and we see that he is, in fact, only burdened with his sympathy for us to such a degree, that his mighty life is overcast and oppressed by the charge he has undertaken. H. B. The wise and prudent. The greatest philosopher and the humblest mind stand upon common and equal ground as respects the requirements of the heart and conscience, and the everlastingly momentous questions of sin and duty, with the whence and the whither of the soul of man. God meets all men here on the same grand level, and Christ returned special thanks for this, that he revealed himself not to “the wise and prudent,” that is, not to them as such, but unto babes. If human wisdom has the grace, for the time, to forget itself and to commune reverently with the sense of spiritual need, side by side with common humanity, it will find the presence of a God of life and love as readily as the most unlearned, and then no union on earth or in heaven can be nobler than that of the lofty intellect and lowly heart, fearing no path of inquiry, and rejoicing everywhere to find the footsteps of God. Let us but take him into our heart, and how sweet shall all “the words of knowledge be unto our taste!” A break will appear in the clouds of darkest doubt, a new light on sea and shore, and the door of death be changed into the gate of a glorious temple where study and adoration walk side by side, and angels who know clasp hands with angels who burn. Ker. 22. With what approach to truth or to propriety could language like this be used by any human, any created being? So it is continually here and there along the track of his earthly sojourn, the hidden glory bursts through the veil that covers it, and in the full majesty of the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-judging, all-directing One—Jesus of Nazareth presents himself to the eye of faith. 25. A lawyer stood up.** Something more than mere curiosity, or a desire to test the extent of Christ’s knowledge, appears to have prompted his question. It is not presented in an abstract form. It is not, “Master, what should be done that eternal life be inherited?” but, “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” It looks as if it came from one feeling a true, deep, and personal interest in the inquiry. The manner in which our Lord entertained it confirms this impression. H. 26. Our Lord’s reply is as much as to say: The answer is contained in the words of that very law, of which you profess to be a searcher and expounder. What is written there concerning this great question? “How readest thou?” T.— 27. It is remarkable that in answer to a question which admitted of such various replies, this man should at once have laid his hand upon two texts, standing far apart from each other—the first in Deuteronomy, the second in Leviticus—texts which are nowhere brought into juxtaposition; the two very texts which, on an after-occasion in answer to another scribe, our Lord himself cited as the two upon which all the law and the prophets hung. The man who, overlooking the whole mass of ceremonial ordinances as being of altogether inferior consideration, so readily and confidently selected these two commandments as containing the substance of the whole, gave good proof how true his reading of the law was. H. The law does not say, Thou shalt love the Lord with an angel’s fervor or strength; but with all thy heart: it exacts of the creature no more than the creature can be expected to give. To love our neighbor as ourselves—not more than ourselves; Christ alone could do that; not less than ourselves, but just as we love ourselves—ready to share with him in all things, to wish him the same good that we wish ourselves. B. 29. Who is my neighbor?** The very question, like Peter’s, “How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?” was itself a wrong question, involving a wrong condition of mind. He who asked, “Whom shall I love?” proved that he understood nothing of that love, whose essence is, that it has no limit except in its own inability to proceed further—that it is a debt which we must be content to be ever paying, and not the less still to owe. Especially wonderful is the reply, in its adaptation to him to whom it was addressed, leading him to take off his eye from the object to which love is to be shown, and to turn it back and inward upon him who is to show the love; for this is the key to the following parable, and with this aim it was spoken. T. 30. A certain man.** Our Lord's first design, in relating this parable, was to prove to the person with whom he was discoursing, that true charity required more than he imagined. His other and main intention was, to teach all persons the nature and extent of benevolence and brotherly love. In this, as in other of our Lord's discourses, may be observed a masterly way of gaining a controverted point, by setting examples and facts before prejudiced or doubting persons, and making them draw the conclusions themselves. Jortin. From Jerusalem to Jericho. If we might conceive of the ocean as being suddenly congealed and petrified when its waves are tossed mountain-high, and dashing in wild confusion against each other, we should then have some idea of the aspect of the desert in which the Saviour has placed so truthfully the parable of the good Samaritan. The ravines, the almost inaccessible cliffs, the caverns furnish admirable lurking places for robbers. H. B. H.—The road from Jerusalem to Jericho passes through the heart of the eastern division of the wilderness of Judea, and runs for a considerable space along the abrupt and winding sides of a deep and rocky ravine, offering the greatest facilities for concealment and attack. From the number of robberies and murders committed in it, Jews of old called it "the Bloody Road," and it retains its character still. We travelled it, guarded by a dozen Arabs, who told of an English party that the year before had been attacked and plundered and stripped; and we were kept in constant alarm by the scouts sent out beforehand announcing the distant sight of dangerous-looking Bedouins. All the way from Bethany to the plain of the Jordan is utter solitude. H. Jericho was a city of priests, as well as a city of publicans. The Talmudists tell us that there were almost as many priests there as at Jerusalem itself; so that it is a stroke from the life to introduce in the parable of the good Samaritan the priest and the Levite, as passing exactly along that road which led from one of these cities where they dwelt to the other where their duties lay. T. 30-32. In its way from the holy city to the city of the world, human nature was encountered by the arch-thief, Satan, and was stripped of its original righteousness, and was left half dead. The priesthood came by, and the law came by, and cast a transitory glance upon it; but they only showed its misery and evinced their own inability to heal it, by leaving it where it was and passing by it on the other side. W.—Leaving him half dead. A more striking case could hardly be imagined; and if their notions were such as could steel their hearts when so much misery called for their relief, there needed no other argument to expose their inhumanity. Herring.—A priest . . . a Levite passed by. Thus did they, who were the express interpreters of that law that twice had said, "Thou shalt not see thy brother's ass, or his ox, fall down by the way, and hide thyself from them; thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again." 33-35. While the priest and Levite—marked out as those who should have been foremost in showing pity—were forgetful of the commonest duties of humanity, it was left to the excommunicated Samaritan, whose very name was a by-word of contempt among the Jews, to show what love was. T.—Christ, the good Samaritan, came from heaven on a blessed journey, and saw mankind lying helpless in the road of this world, stripped and naked, full of bruises and putrefying sores. He bound up its wounds, and poured in the oil and wine of his own cleansing and sanctifying blood, and lifted it up from the ground and put it on his own beast. He himself bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. He himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree. He brought us to the inn and has given us to the keeping of the host, with a charge to take care of us; and at his departure he provided for us, and he has promised to come again and demand an account of our treatment. W. 35. Two pence.** The denarius or penny of the New Testament was, in purchasing value then, an equivalent of the American dollar; and, wherever referred to, represents a fair return for the service it recompenses. J. G. B. 36. It is difficult enough to admire the divine wisdom with which the Saviour, having brought to an end this affecting parable, reverses the question of the lawyer. He had asked, "Who is the neighbor to whom I am bound to show the service of love?" But the Lord asks, "Who is a neighbor, he who shows love, or he who shows it not?" The parable is a reply, not to the question, but to the spirit out of which the question proceeded. It says, "You ask who is your neighbor? I will show you a man who asked not that question, and then your own heart shall be judge between you and him, which had most of the mind of God, which was most truly the doer of his will, the imitator of his perfections." T. 37. Do thou likewise.** Our Lord elicits the answer in an inverted form to bring out a strong contrast by putting the hated and despised Samaritan in the active position, and thus to reflect back the "likewise" more pointedly. A.—We ought to account every man our neighbor, though a stranger, an enemy, a sinner, or one of a different sect and persuasion. Let him be what he will, he is a human creature; and, as such, he is entitled to humanity and courtesy in common intercourse, to direction and instruction if he asks it and stands in need of it, and to relief and assistance if he is in distress. Jortin. Go and do. The good Samaritan wasted no needless sympathy, he shed no idle tears. There are wounds that may be dressed—he puts forth his own hand to the dressing of them. There is a life that may be saved—he sets himself to use every method by which it may be saved. He gives more than time, more than money: he gives personal service. And that is the true human charity that shows itself in prompt, efficient, self-forgetful, self-sacrificing help. It is not those who will weep the readiest over the sorrow who will do the most to relieve it. Tears will fill the eye—should fill the eye—but the hand of active help will brush them away, that the eye may see more clearly what the hand has to do. H.—What new fountains of charity has not this matchless teaching opened up in the human spirit—rivers in the wilderness, streams in the desert! what noble Christian institutions have not such words founded, all undreamed of till that wondrous one came to bless this heartless world of ours with his incomparable love! B. The Christian must be sound at the heart; and he must also be just, pure, and benevolent in life. The Church must abide in Christ as the branch in the vine; but the branch must also bear fruit, or it will be taken away for the burning. Piety must have the good Samaritan character. That which is only of the priest and Levite has no credentials acceptable in heaven. It avails little to recite the catechism without the faith which is proved by its works. They give slender evidence of regeneration whose charity can only say to the needy, “Depart in peace; be ye warmed and filled.” Two great commands, and one of them looks toward men, express the love which is the fulfilling of the law. Thurston. —Our Redeemer came to establish another and closer bond of brotherhood than the earth before had known, to knit all true believers in the pure fellowship of a common faith, a common hope, a common heirship of eternal life through him. But he would have us from the beginning know that this bond, so new, so sacred, so divine, was never meant to thwart or violate that other broader universal tie that binds the whole family of our race together, that makes each man the neighbor of every other man that tenants this earthly globe. Of all influences that have ever descended upon our earth, none has ever done so much as Christianity to break down the walls of separation that differences of country, language, race, religion, have raised between man and man, and to diffuse the spirit of that brotherly love which overleaps all temporary fences, which diffuses itself everywhere over the broad field of humanity—tempering all, uniting all, brightening all, smoothing asperities, harmonizing discords, pouring a healing balm into all the rankling sores of life. H. ## Section 90.—Martha and Mary. How to pray. Bethany. 38. Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman, named Martha, received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered, and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful; and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. 1. And it came to pass, that as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. 2 And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed 3 be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give 4 us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. 5 And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at 6 midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine in his 7 journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him: and he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me 8 in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. 9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, 10 and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that 11 seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he 12 for a fish give him a serpent? or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? 13 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? CONTEMPLATIVE souls like Mary may find their highest pleasures at times in quiet reflection; but let them, like Mary, avoid the by-path of fanatical inactivity; let them never forget that these beautiful, festal hours of still contemplation become a selfish enjoyment when they do not serve to strengthen them for active life, to inspire them to fulfil, more and more faithfully, their earthly calling. Those souls, however, who, like Martha, never enjoy life, and are never in their element if they cannot work and manage in vigorous activity, need not relieve themselves of their unwearied labor in outward life; but let the consciousness everywhere accompany them which Martha, indeed, lost only for the moment—that they walk before God's countenance; let them studiously nourish and strengthen this consciousness out of the living fountain, in earnest, holy contemplation, that their activity may neither be perverted into an empty superficial, nor into an unquiet and passionate pursuit. J. Muller. We ought to be Martha and Mary in one; we should do much service and have much communion at the same time. For this we need great grace. It is easier to serve than to commune. Joshua never grew weary in fighting the Amalekites; but Moses, on the top of the mountain in prayer, needed two helpers to sustain his hands. See to it that sitting at the Saviour's feet is not neglected, even though it be under the specious pretext of doing him service. The first thing for our soul's health, the first thing for his glory, and the first thing for our own usefulness, is to keep ourselves in perpetual communion with the Lord Jesus, and to see that the vital spirituality of our religion is maintained over and above everything else in the world. Spurgeon. THE three months from the feast of Tabernacles to that of Dedication (September to December) were spent in or near Jerusalem. During this period we are first introduced to the family of Bethany, where Jesus found the most restful and home-like tarrying-place that he seems ever to have enjoyed. Situated on the eastward slope of the Mount of Olives, in distance scarcely three-quarters of an hour's walk from Jerusalem, it offered a convenient and agreeable place of occasional quiet retreat from all other human companionship, even that of his disciples. This Bethany cottage on the eastern slope of Olivet, and the more familiar garden of Gethsemane on the western, were his two chief resting-places near Jerusalem, now and hereafter. J. G. B. (Section 86, second note.) 38,39. Martha, Mary.** We see from the gospels that they were a family in easy circumstances, and of sufficient dignity and position to excite considerable attention not only in their own little village of Bethany, but even in Jerusalem. F. —Received him. Blessed is that home whither Christ comes that he may bring blessing. Thrice blessed that home where he loves to come for the congenial fellowship of loving hearts which it affords him. L. A. 40-42. The rebuke administered to Martha showed that he would rather have Mary listening to what could not profit him but would profit her, than Martha serving what would profit him but could not profit her. He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. J. C.—An imperfect soul, seeing what is good and great and true, but very often failing in the attempt to attain to it, is apt to be very hard in its judgments on the shortcomings of others. But a divine and sovereign soul—a soul that has more nearly attained to the stature of the perfect man—takes a calmer and gentler, because a larger-hearted, view of those little weaknesses which it cannot but daily see. And so the answer of Jesus, if it were a reproof, was an infinitely gentle and tender one, one which would purify but would not pain the faithful heart of the busy, loving matron to whom it was addressed. F. Martha we know as one of those peculiar, strong characters which appear to be destined for a restless activity and employment in outward life. Still, lonely contemplation, continuous thought, are not for her. Quick, often somewhat precipitate, the thought ripens into the word, the resolve into the act; and every impulse, every impression which she receives from without at once becomes for her a stimulus to react upon the outward world. Mary, on the contrary, seems to us to be one of those lovely souls which hide in themselves a rich, inner world, with which they love to busy themselves in still thought, and for which they seek to gain a new enrichment by every contact with the outward world. If their knowledge is of narrow compass, its connections are still closer; are they sparing of words, yet their whole nature expresses deep, strong feeling; are they slow, unskilful in action, yet there manifests itself in their actions that thoughtful earnestness which often exerts the greatest power over other souls, without themselves being conscious of it. J. Muller.—Both were true-hearted disciples; but the one was absorbed in the higher, the other in the lower of two ways of honoring their common Lord. Yet neither despised, or would willingly neglect, the other's occupation. The one represents the contemplative, the other the active style of the Christian character. B.—In every soul there should be the sisters of Bethany, active effort and quiet thought, and both agreeing in mutual love and help. Ker. 1. One thing which surprised the Pharisees was that Christ did not lay stress upon outward prayers. He had not, like John the Baptist, prescribed forms of prayer for his disciples. In this respect, as well as others, their religious life was to develop itself from within. From intercourse with Christ, and intuition of his life, they were to learn how to pray. The mind which he imparted was to make prayer indispensable to them, and to teach them how to pray aright. N. 2-4. As the ten commandments are a sum of all duty, or what is to be done, so this prayer is a sum of all things to be desired. As the ten commandments contain our duty toward God and toward our neighbor, so in this prayer are petitions for God's honor, for ourselves, and for others. He gave both the commandments and the prayer that we might see our duty, and pray for ability to perform it. The ten commandments were twice rehearsed, and so this prayer was twice delivered, first in the Sermon on the Mount, and afterward in this text, about a year later. J. L.—There is no ambiguity, no expansion, no repetition here. It is throughout the direct expression of desire, that desire clothing itself in the simplest, compactest forms of speech. It divides itself into two equal parts, each embracing three petitions. In the former part the thoughts and desires of the petitioner are engrossed with the name, the kingdom, the will of the great Being addressed; in the latter with his own wants, and sins, and trials. It is not to God as the Omnipotent, Omnipresent Creator and Lord of all; not to him as the Moral Governor of the Universe, that it invites us to come. But to him as a Father regarding us with infinite pity, loving us with an everlasting love, willing and waiting to bestow, able and ready to help us. H. In the mingled love and reverence with which it teaches us to approach our Father in heaven—in the spirituality with which it leads us to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness—in the spirit of universal charity and forgiveness which it inculcates—in that plural form throughout it, which is meant to show us that selfishness must be absolutely and forever excluded from our petitions, and that no man can come to God as his Father without acknowledging that his worst enemies are also God's children—in the fact that, of its seven petitions, one only is for any earthly blessing, and even that one is only for earthly blessings in their simplest form—in the manner in which it discountenances all the vain repetitions and extravagant self-tortures with which so many fanatic worshippers have believed that God could be propitiated—even in that exquisite brevity which shows us how little God desires that prayer should be made a burden and weariness—it is indeed the pearl of prayers. F. It is not a prayer for any one period of life—for any one kind of character—for any one condition of things—for any one age. The penitent in the first hour of his return to God, the struggler in the thick of the spiritual conflict, the believer in the highest soarings of his faith and love, may use alike this prayer. The youngest, the oldest, the simplest, the wisest, the most sin-stained, the most saintly, can find nothing here unsuitable, unseasonable. It gathers up into one what they all can and should unite in saying as they bend in supplication before God. And from the day when first it was published on the mount, as our Lord's own directory for prayer, down through all these eighteen centuries, it has been the single golden link running through the ages that has bound together in one the whole vast company of the prayerful. H. 2. The Holy One is to be acknowledged and worshipped by all, according to his holy nature and his holy name; not by a knowledge and confession thereof, but by a life allied to him. This "hallowing” of the name of God implies the “coming of his kingdom,” and this last is further developed in the prayer that “his will may be realized on earth, as it is in the communion of perfect spirits.” The kingdom will have come when the will of men is made perfectly at one with the will of God, and to accomplish this is the very aim of the atonement. Among all rational intelligences, the one common essence of the kingdom of God is the doing his will, and thus hallowing his name. N.—We are taught to pray first, “Thy will be done,” and then immediately thereafter, “Give us day by day our daily bread.” The bread is to be asked that by it the life may be preserved, and the life is to be preserved that it may be consecrated to the doing of God’s will. According to the tenor of the prayer and the connection of these two petitions, we are not at liberty to ask for the daily bread irrespective of the object to which the life which it prolongs and the strength it imparts are to be devoted. A natural and moderate request, yet not so easy to present in the spirit in which Jesus would have us offer it. Not so easy to feel our entire dependence on God for those very things that we are most tempted to think we have acquired by our own exertions, and secured to ourselves and our families by our own skill and prudence. Not so easy to pray for a competent portion of the things of this life, only that by the manner of our using and enjoying them the will of our heavenly Father may be carried out. Not so easy to limit thus our desires and efforts in this direction, and to be satisfied with whatever the portion be that God pleases to bestow. Not so easy to renew this petition, day by day, as conscious that all which comes each day comes direct from the hand of God—comes to those who have no right to claim it as their own—who should ask and receive it continually as a gift. Not so easy to narrow the petition to the day, leaving to-morrow in God’s hands. The simplest and easiest, though it seems at first, of all the six petitions, perhaps this one about our daily bread is one that we less frequently than any other present in the true spirit. It stands there in the very centre of the prayer—the only one bearing upon our earthly condition—preceded and followed by others, with whose spirit it must or ought to be impregnated—from which it cannot be detached. Secular in its first aspect, in this connection how spiritual does it appear! H. 4. “Lead us not into such situations as will form for us, in our weakness, incitements to sin;” thus laying it down as a rule of life for Christians not to put themselves, self-confidently, in such situations, but to avoid them as far as duty will allow. But everything depends upon deliverance from the internal incitement to sin; and hence, necessarily, the concluding clause of the petition, “Deliver us from inward temptation by the power of the evil one.” Confiding, in the struggle with evil, upon the power of God, we need not fear such outward temptations as are unavoidable. Thus the prayer accurately defines the relation of the Christian to God. The disciple of Christ, ever called to struggle against evil, which finds a point of contact in his inward nature, cannot fight this battle in his own strength, but always stands in need of the assistance of the Holy Spirit. The prayer holds the fundamental truths of Christian faith before the religious consciousness, in their essential connection with each other—God, revealed in Christ, who redeems man, formed after his image, yet estranged from him by sin; who imparts to him that divine life which is to be led on by him to its consummation through manifold strifes against the power of evil. N. Who can repeat the prayer, Lead us not into temptation, without insult and hypocrisy, if, having said it to the Most High, he goes to seek temptation, or lets his children seek it in unprincipled books, in dissolute companionships, or among any of the residences of guilt? I can never hear parents speak of sending their offspring purposely into perilous company, in order that they may see the world’s worst side early, without painful memories of horrors unutterable which that shallow maxim has sown, hopes it has broken to pieces, spiritual beauty it has disfigured, and the gray hairs it has brought down with sorrow to the grave. Let virtue have the vantage-ground of youth; let holy shapes of purity and love and truth preoccupy the soul, before the rabble of hateful tormentors rush in. The longer these blameless guests pitch their white tents on the unsullied field of the child’s heart, the more will we rejoice and thank the protecting God. Give the first delicate years to goodness; let right principles grow by exercise; let the habits of life learn to run in the even channels of piety and obedience, and it shall be harder by and by to break the blessed barriers down. But we want, it is said, a robust, an exposed, tried virtue, not a virtue feebly grown in solitude, and too sickly to bear the sun. Beyond all question we do. But they who think to find here an apology for commerce with sin, forget that there is just as much discipline and a far greater blessing in resisting the inclination to look at sin, as in resisting the increase of it after looking and listening have rooted it in the soul. The point where the first offenders were to learn how to strengthen their principles was in refusing to taste the forbidden fruit, not in seeing how they could escape it when its virus was once in their blood. It was enough that it was forbidden. The trial of obedience and of faith was there. F. D. H. (For additional comment, see Section 38.) 5-13. Christ did not intend by “the Lord’s Prayer” to prescribe a standing form of prayer to his disciples, but to set vividly before their minds the peculiar nature of Christian prayer in opposition to heathen; and accordingly he followed it up by urging them to present their wants to their heavenly Father with the most undoubting confidence. N.—Not less divine were the earnest and simple words which followed, and which taught the disciples that men ought always to pray and not to faint, since, if importunity prevails over the selfishness of man, earnestness must be all-powerful with the righteousness of God. Jesus impressed upon them the lesson that, if human affection can be trusted to give only useful and kindly gifts, the love of the Father who loves us all will much more certainly give his best and highest gift—even the gift of the Holy Spirit—to all that ask him. F. 5. There is the same argument as in the parable of the Unjust Judge, one from the less to the greater, or, more accurately, from the worse to the better—but with this difference, that here the narrow-heartedness and selfishness of man is set against the liberality of God, while there it is his unrighteousness which is tacitly contrasted with the righteousness of God. The conclusion is, if selfish man can yet be won by prayer and importunity to give, and unjust man to do right, how much more certainly shall the bountiful Lord bestow, and the righteous Lord do justice! T.—We must remember that all reluctance on the part of God to answer our prayer is not real, but apparent only, and arises from deeper reasons working for our good; whereas the reluctance in these two parables is real, arising from selfishness and contempt of justice. 7. The door is shut, etc. An interesting fragment of domestic life is here given us. The door is barred, not only shut; there is the trouble of unbarring it; the father and children are in bed, and he cannot (i. e., will not, cannot from being overcome by reluctance) rise and give to him. A. 8. Because of his importunity.** Through this pertinacity he at length obtains, not merely the three which he asked, but “as many as he needeth”; like that Phenician woman from whom the Lord at first seemed to have shut up all his compassion, but to whom at last he opened the full treasure-house of his grace, and bid her to help herself, saying, “O woman, great is thy faith! be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” Augustine observes, “When sometimes God gives tardily, he commends his gifts, he does not deny them; and again, God for a time withholds his gifts, that thou mayest learn to desire great things greatly.” Faith, and patience, and humility, are all called into exercise by this temporary denial of a request. T.—“So,” it has been beautifully observed, “when the heart which has been away on a journey, suddenly at midnight (i. e., the time of greatest darkness and distress) returns home to us—that is, comes to itself and feels hunger—and we have nothing wherewith to satisfy it, God requires of us bold, importunate faith.” If such persistency conquers the reluctance of ungracious man, how much more shall it prevail with one who loves us better than we ourselves, and who is even more ready to hear than we to pray! F.—Man is hard-hearted even to his friends, when it must cost him something to assist them; because most commonly it is only either his own satisfaction, or his interest, which he loves in them. God does good to all, because he is goodness itself, because he communicates his good things without diminishing them, because he works in all things without being wearied, and because he loves without the least selfish interest. Q. 9,10. The three repetitions of the command are more than mere repetitions; since to seek is more than to ask, and to knock than to seek; and thus in this ascending scale of earnestness, an exhortation is given, not merely to prayer, but to increasing urgency in prayer even till the suppliant carry away the blessing he seeks. T. 11-13. God’s answers to our prayers consist of neither useless nor mischievous things, but of his best gift—his Holy Spirit—in all the various and fitting manifestations of his guidance, consolation, and teaching, in our lives. This is the bread of the parable; the father is our Father in heaven, with whom however the night is as the day, who never slumbers nor sleeps. A.—He who asks shall receive—of the very best. One promise without reserve, and only one, because it includes all, remains: the promise of the Holy Spirit to them who ask it. He who has the Spirit of God, God himself, in him, has the Life in him, possesses the final cure of all ill, has in himself the answer to all possible prayer. McD. The supreme gift of the Holy Spirit, which includes all real good, to be appreciated, and so to be of any value, must come to a longing of the soul itself. The asking expresses dependence, gives reality to faith, brings us near to God, renders the blessing more precious, and renders us the more grateful in the enjoyment of it. Through prayer we have immediate access to the Fountain of spiritual life; and, since the will of God is our sanctification, if we fail to grow in grace, and to have spiritual power over the world, it is for lack of earnest, urgent, believing prayer. J. P. T.—Our progress heavenward need never be delayed, the fruits of holiness need never be blighted for lack of that heavenly influence. Ask then in faith, never doubting. God may not will your earthly prosperity, but your spiritual welfare is dearer to his heart than to your own, and nothing that contributes to it shall be wanting to the earnest supplicant. In every emergency, in every Christian work and effort, therefore, pray for the abundant grace of the Spirit, without which you can do nothing, with which you can do all things. C. ## Section 91.—Imparts Sight to One born blind. The Jews' Inquiry. A Street of Jerusalem. The Temple. 37. And as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him: and he went in, and sat down to meat. 38. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before 39 dinner. And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of 40 the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. Ye 41 fools, did not he that made that which is without, make that which is within also? But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and behold, all things are clean unto you. 42. But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint, and rue, and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to 43 leave the other undone. Woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye love the uppermost seats in 44 the synagogues, and greetings in the markets. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them. 45. Then answered one of the lawyers, and said unto him, Master, thus saying, thou re- 46 proachest us also. And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your 47 fingers. Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers 48 killed them. Truly ye bear witness, that ye allow the deeds of your fathers: for they 49 indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres. Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and per- 50 secute: that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the 51 world, may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily, I say unto you, It 52 shall be required of this generation. Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye enter not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered. 53. And as he said these things unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to urge 54 him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things; laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might accuse him. GROSS wickedness was hidden beneath the forms and the name of sanctity. Spiritual worship, the veneration and love of a God of righteousness, purity, truth, and all moral excellence, was almost unknown. There was a magnificent temple, an established worship, an ordained priesthood, a vast and gorgeous ritual, and sacrifices, and offerings, and feasts, and fasts. There were also synagogues open every day, and recognized forms of prayer which were repeated, not only in private, but in the market-places, and at the corners of the streets. It was even sought to invest the food, the dress, the looks, the postures of the body with the sacredness of religion; and if such things as these had constituted piety, that age must have been preëminently pious. But Jesus declared that true worship is perfectly separable from these things, and is not essentially connected with any of them, though it may consist along with them all. God looks to the soul alone, to its genuine and unconstrained actings, its reverence, trust, and love. Worship in God's sight is wholly spiritual—always, altogether, only within the soul. Y. 37. Jesus, on entering, found himself, not among publicans and sinners, where he could soothe and teach and bless—not among the poor, to whom he could preach the kingdom of heaven—not among friends and disciples, who listened with deep and loving reverence to his words—but among the cold, hard, threatening faces, the sneers and frowns, of haughty rivals and open enemies. F. 39-52. His solemn work of reproof and teaching was never suspended out of mere compliment, nor were the intentions of the Pharisees toward him so friendly as these invitations seem to imply. They were given mostly from deference to popular opinion, and from no love to him; sometimes with a directly hostile object. A.—In the Pharisees, we see ignorance, pride, insolence, selfishness, rapacity—a restless desire for the applause of men, and an overbearing contempt for all but themselves. In him we see knowledge, wisdom, meekness, gentleness, generosity, sincerity, perfect disinterestedness, elevated piety, and unbounded benevolence toward all, however humble or poor. Gentle and peaceful as our Saviour was, he could not, without being false to himself and his mission, have refrained from affixing the brand of his indignant reprobation on characters and conduct such as theirs. Had these expressions fallen from any but the calm, the forgiving, the benevolent Jesus of Nazareth, we might have been ready to impute them to the acerbity of personal feeling; but his whole character forbids such an imputation, and constrains us to regard them as the well-weighed “words of truth and soberness,” wrung from him by the sight of the widespread and enduring mischief which these self-constituted leaders of the people were entailing upon their unhappy followers. W. L. A.—He exposed, in words which were no parables and could not be mistaken, the extent to which their outward cleanliness was but the thin film which covered their inward wickedness and greed. He denounced their scrupulosity in the tithing of potherbs, their flagrant neglect of essential virtues; the cant, the ambition, the ostentation of their outward orthodoxy, the deathful corruption of their inmost hearts. Hidden graves were they over which men walk, and, without knowing it, become defiled. . . . The modern representatives and continuers of the Pharisaic sect are called Perushim. “They proudly separate themselves from the rest of their coreligionists. Fanatical, bigoted, intolerant, quarrelsome, and in truth irreligious, with them the outward observance of the ceremonial law is everything, the moral law little binding, morality itself of no importance.” Such is the testimony of a Jew! (Frankl, “Jews in the East.”) F. 41. Give alms and all clean. As the greed of these hypocrites was one of the most prominent features of their character, our Lord bids them exemplify the opposite character, and then their outside, ruled by this, would be beautiful in the eye of God, and their meals would be eaten with clean hands, though never so fouled with the business of this worky world. B.—42. You lay stress on external trifles, and neglect the principles and duties of the inner life—you tithe petty garden-herbs, like mint and rue, and all kinds besides, and are indifferent to right and wrong, and to the love of God. G.—To understand how vast the number of superstitions, lying vanities, idle fancies, vain ceremonies, abominable deceptions, and foul corruptions, which had overgrown religion in his day, it is only necessary to examine that which claims to be religion in this same country at the present moment. W. M. T. 44. Appear not. As one might unconsciously walk over a grave concealed from view, and thus contract ceremonial defilement, so the plausible exterior of the Pharisees kept people from perceiving the pollution they contracted from coming in contact with such corrupt characters. B.—45. Lawyers. Any one might be a Pharisee, whether a layman, a priest, or a rabbi, as any of these might be a Sadducee. A scribe and a lawyer were different names for the same class—the clergy of the day. They were the authorities for the expositions of the law; they copied the sacred manuscripts, and devoted themselves as the work of their life to rabbinical studies and employments. 47,48. You rebuild these tombs to win favor with the people, while in your hearts you are ready to repeat to the prophets of to-day the deeds of your fathers toward those of old! Your pretended reverence for these martyrs, shown in restoring their sepulchres, while you are ready to repeat the wickedness of their murderers, makes these tombs a witness against you. G.—49. The wisdom of God. Christ himself, as appears from Matt. 23:34. The divine Logos (Word) is the sender of the prophets, and spake by their mouths—c. g., of Zacharias, to whose words Christ refers. W.—52. This metaphor of the key of knowledge is an allusion to the custom among the Jews in the admission of their doctors: for those to whom they gave authority to interpret the law and the prophets, were solemnly admitted into that office by delivering to them a key and a table book. So that by the key of knowledge is here meant the interpretation and understanding of the Scriptures; and by taking away the key of knowledge is meant, not only that they arrogated to themselves the true understanding of the Scriptures, but that they had conveyed away this key of knowledge, neither using it themselves nor suffering others to make use of it. Tillotson. 39-52. A new phase of our Saviour’s character—very different from that which we had before us in his treatment of the penitent sinner—thus reveals itself to our view: his firmness, his courage, his outspokenness, the depth of his indignant recoil from, the sternness of his condemnation of the inconsistencies, the hypocrisies, the haughtiness, the cruelty, the tyranny of the scribes and Pharisees. H. # Section 50.—Cautions the Disciples. The Rich Fool. Galilee. 1. IN the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples 2 first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid that shall not be known. 3 Therefore, whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness, shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets, shall be proclaimed upon the house-tops. 4 And I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after 5 that, have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, 6 Fear him. Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is for- 7 gotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows. 8 Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of 9 man also confess before the angels of God. But he that denieth me before men, shall 10 be denied before the angels of God. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy 11 Ghost, it shall not be forgiven. And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, 12 or what ye shall say: for the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say. 13 And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide 14 the inheritance with me. And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge, or a 15 divider over you? And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. 16 And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought 17 forth plentifully: and he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I 18 have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take 20 thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be which thou hast pro- 21 vided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. GREAT wealth is but a great incumbrance, when a man has not learned to wean his affections from it. How can such things be called goods, of which even the abundance vexes and disturbs the mind, which cannot be preserved without great pains and cost, and which, through the fear of losing them, become the torment of him who possesses them? Q.—Where there is little or no strength of religious principle in the soul, an unbroken continuance of worldly happiness will almost infallibly exert a deteriorating influence on the character. Only in proportion as the dew of God's hidden grace is descending on the heart, can it be safe for a man to be exposed to the hot sun of worldly prosperity; and if that secret element of strength and fertility be not continually supplied, the scorching heat must speedily wither up, in the spiritual soil, every green and beautiful thing. C. He that has no love of God, no large spiritual affections, no share in the unsearchable riches of Christ, no sympathies with his brethren, is in fact "wretched and miserable, and poor and blind, and naked," and shall one day find out that he is so, however now he may say, "I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing.” He only is truly rich, who is rich toward God—who is rich in God—who has made the eternal and the unchangeable the object of his desires and his efforts. He in God possesses all things, though in this world he were a beggar, and for him to die will not be to quit, but to go to, his riches. T. 1-12. The connection may be thus enunciated: Beware of hypocrisy (verse 1), for all shall be made evident in the end (verse 2), and ye are witnesses and sharers in this unfolding of the truth (verse 3). In this your work, ye need not fear men; for your Father has you in his keeping (verses 4-7). And the confession of my name is a glorious thing (verse 8), but the rejection of it (verse 9), and especially the ascription of my works to the evil one (verse 10), is a fearful thing. And in this confession ye shall be helped by the Holy Spirit in the hour of need (verses 11, 12). A. 1. Jesus came out to the multitude with his whole spirit still aglow with the just and mighty indignation by which it had been pervaded. Instantly—addressing primarily his own disciples, but through them the listening thousands—he broke out with a solemn warning, “Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” F. 5. Fear him.** Only the one fear would effectually expel the other. To play false with one’s convictions to save one’s life, may fall of its end after all, for God can inflict a violent death in some other and equally formidable way. There is a hell, it seems, for the body as well as the soul; consequently, sufferings adapted to the one as well as the other. Fear of hell is a divinely authorized and needed motive of action even to Christ’s “friends.” As Christ’s “meekness and gentleness” were not compromised by such harsh notes as these, so those servants of Christ want their Master’s spirit who soften down all such language. B. 6. These birds are snared and caught in great numbers, but, as they are small and not much relished for food, five sparrows may still be sold for two farthings; and when we see their countless numbers, and the eagerness with which they are destroyed as a worthless nuisance, we can better appreciate the assurance that our heavenly Father, who takes care of them, so that not one can fall to the ground without his notice, will surely take care of us, who are of more value than many sparrows. W. M. T.—7. The providence of God is the comfort of the righteous. His wisdom cannot be surprised, his power cannot be forced, his love cannot forget. He alone knows our value, because he alone knows how much he loves us, and because he is himself the price of our love. Q. 10. Considering the part the Holy Ghost had to act, which was to dictate the doctrines of religion, to work the miracles in evidence of those docdoctrines, and inwardly urge the force of the one, and the excellency of the other, both on the understanding and heart, it seems impossible the Divinity could be equally vilified by any resistance given to the person of the Father, or the Son, who throughout the whole dispensation, whenever the minds of men were to be wrought on, acted by the intervention of the Holy Spirit. To him, therefore, directly, immediately, was this blasphemous insult offered, which could not be offered to any other, and that by men who either knew him, or had sufficient reason for knowing him, to be God. A very high degree of pride, of self-sufficiency, and of presumption, in resisting the evidences of divine truth, which the Spirit of God still affords, partakes in the nature of that sin. Skelton. (For fuller comment, read Section 47.) 12. The knowledge of our own inability would serve only to make us despair, if Christ had not promised that his Spirit should supply all our defects, and do all in us. This Spirit is that perfect Master, who enlightens the understanding, inflames the heart, and forms the very words in our mouth. Q. 13. Some covetous and half-instructed member of the crowd, seeing the listening throngs, hearing the words of authority and power, aware of the recent discomfiture of the Pharisees, determined to utilize the occasion for his own worldly ends. F.—Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me! A request not likely to have been made till Christ’s fairness and fearlessness, in recoil from all falsehood and injustice, had been openly manifested and generally recognized—a request, however, grounded upon a total misconception of the nature and objects of his ministry. The dispute that had taken place between the two brothers was one for the law of the country to settle. For the guidance of men in all the different relations in which they can be placed to one another he announced and expounded the great and broad, eternal and immutable, principles of justice and of mercy. But with the application of these principles to particular cases he did not intermeddle. He carefully and deliberately avoided such intermeddling. 15. Beware of covetousness.** The word here rendered “covetousness” is a peculiar and very expressive one; it means the spirit of greed—that ever-restless, ever-craving, ever-unsatisfied spirit, which, whatever a man has, is ever wanting more, and the more he gets still thirsts for more. A passion which has a strange history; often of honest enough birth—the child of forethought, but changing its character rapidly with its growth—getting prematurely blind—losing sight of the end in the means—till wealth is loved and sought and grasped and hoarded, not for the advantages it confers, the enjoyment it purchases, but simply for itself—to gratify that lust of possession which has seized upon the soul, and makes it all its own. H.—It was covetousness which caused the unjust brother to withhold; it was covetousness which made the defrauded brother indignantly complain to a stranger. Covetousness: the covetousness of the oppressed as well as of the oppressor; for the cry “Divide” has its root in covetousness just as truly as “I will not.” There are no innocent classes; no devils who oppress, and angels who are oppressed. In the original the word means the desire of having more—not of having more because there is not enough; but simply a craving after more. More when a man has not enough. More when he has. More, more. Ever more. Give; give. Divide; divide. F. W. R. Covetousness is a grand contradiction to Providence, while it terminates wholly within itself. The covetous person lives as if the world were made altogether for him, and not he for the world; to take in everything and to part with nothing. Charity is accounted no grace with him, nor gratitude any virtue. He is always for making as many poor as he can, but for relieving none whom he either finds or makes so. And he lives and dies as much a debtor to himself as to any one else; while he pines and pinches and denies himself not only in the accommodations but in the very necessities of nature. In the abundance he possesseth. It is not what a man has, but what he is, which must make him happy. The greatest happiness of which this life is capable—the quiet content and inward satisfaction of a man’s mind—may be enjoyed without this abundance; and consequently cannot depend upon it. Every man is happy or miserable as the temper of his mind places him under the influences of the divine nature; which enlighten and enliven the disposed mind with secret, ineffable joys, such as the vicious mind is wholly unacquainted with. R. S. 16. Man’s life is of God, not of his goods, however abundant they may be. And this is the lesson conveyed by the following parable, and lying at the foundation of the still higher lesson conveyed in its application (verse 21). Life here includes time and eternity. A. 17-19. He did not count that he had these from God, but he counted them the products of his own labors; wherefore separating them exclusively for himself, he said, my goods, and my fruits. His plans of felicity rise no higher than to this satisfying of the flesh, so that there is an irony as melancholy as it is profound in making him address this speech, not to his body, but to his soul. The curtain is here drawn back, and we are admitted into the inner council-chamber of a worldling’s heart, rejoicing over his abundance, and realizing to the very letter the making “provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.” 20. Thou fool. This title is opposed to the opinion of his own prudence and foresight which he entertained—this night, to the many years that he promised to himself—and that soul, which he purposed to nourish and make merry, it is declared shall be inexorably required, and painfully rendered up. T.—His folly is fourfold: he forgets the Giver (my fruits)—he reserves all for himself (I will bestow)—he imagines such things to be food for his soul—he forgets death, which is every day possible. Stier.—21. He who is rich for himself, laying up treasure for himself, is by so much robbing his real inward life, his life in and toward God, of its resources. A.—It is not indicated, any more than in the case of Dives, that his riches were unjustly acquired: his fault lay in his forgetting the Giver; forgetting that he was but a steward of them; forgetting that the soul cannot live by them; forgetting how soon death might make him relax his grasp of them. F. ## Section 51.—Unanxious Trust in God. Watching. Galilee. 22. And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap: which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them. How 25 much more are ye better than the fowls? And which of you with taking thought can 26 add to his stature one cubit? If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, 27 why take ye thought for the rest? Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed 28 like one of these. If then God so clothe the grass, which is to-day in the field, and to- morrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith? 29 And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful 30 mind. For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and your Father 31 knoweth that ye have need of these things. But rather seek ye the kingdom of God, 32 and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear not, little flock; for it is your 33 Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, 34 where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 35, 36 Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that, when he 37 cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. Blessed are those ser- vants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching; verily, I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve 38 them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find 39 them so, blessed are those servants. And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have 40 suffered his house to be broken through. Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not. THERE must be more of secret, continuous and real thinking of Him. If prayer is worship of the heart, meditation is that of the mind. Why is there so little meditation among Christians? such a lack of that quietness and thoughtfulness of soul in which chiefly the dews of the Holy Spirit fall on us, and the life of Christ grows? There is much activity of hands and feet, much listening, far too much talking. Yet where the heart is, there the treasure is; and it is in human nature to think of what we love. To be a sheep of the good Shepherd, to be a child of the eternal Father, to be a subject of the heavenly kingdom, to be an heir of the exceeding weight of glory, is to have the machinery of the divine government for our protection, the resources of the divine treasury for our provision; now the love of God for our possession, presently the vision of God for our reward. All that God is, all that God has, is for his people. The outward features of our life may not be all that we should choose them to be; there may be things we wish for that never come to us; there may be much we wish away that we cannot part from. The persons with whom we live, the circumstances by which we are surrounded, the duties we have to perform, the burdens we have to bear, may not only be other than what we should have selected for ourselves, but may even seem inconsistent with that formation and discipline of character which we honestly wish to promote. But it is faith that overcomes the world, not a sense of enjoyment. The end of life is not personal happiness; it is the image and glory of God. We need not envy others what God has given them and denied us, as if he were hard to us and kind to them. God is just in his ways with all men; but he is also wise and kind; and knowing us better than we know ourselves, fully understand- ing how greatly we are affected by the outward events and conditions of life, he has ordered them with a view to our entire and final, not only our immediate, happiness; and whenever we can be safely trusted with pastures that are green and waters that are still in the way of earthly blessing, the good Shepherd leads us there. A. W. T. (Verses 22-34, read Section 39.) 22. Take no thought. The word signifies, be not anxious, miserable about to-morrow. We are bidden not to make ourselves wretched by anxious carings and apprehensions about the future; but, in all cases of difficulty, to perform diligently that which appears wisest and best for us to perform; then to resign the matter into the hands of God; so to use our endeavors, as if they were to effect everything; so to trust in God, as if they were to effect nothing. Horne. This central and comforting faith, that every concern in our lives is directly contrived for us by an interested and sympathizing God, whose hand is shaping, guiding, and bending every little force and event in our discipline toward a definite and special end—a faith which embosoms us in a care so immediate and so fatherly, that we almost want some warmer word than Providence to express it—this faith is not found, in its most radiant and effective exercise, except in hearts that are most alive with the personal love for Christ. Our life seems never, in any way, to be really hid in God, except with and through his Son—and because that is the divinely ordered way. F. D. H. If we have faith to receive it, the life of Jesus is at once the type and the pledge of God's providential care for all his children. Not a head reclines upon the bosom of Christ, but every hair of that head is numbered by his Father and our Father, his God and our God. Not a believer falls asleep in Jesus, but the same fatherly arms are open to receive him. Whether he dies peacefully in his bed, or violently, as his Master did, upon the cross; whether he be buried in his own grave beside kindred dust, or, as his Lord was, in borrowed room belonging to a stranger's sepulchre; all shall be alike under the ordering of the same God; some fragrant token of God's special consolation shall be broken over the disciple's head, as over his Lord's, and the odors of a love, inspired by God, shall float around the still form of the humblest disciple asleep in Jesus. W. I. B. 23. The life.** That uncrowned and often unacknowledged king, the human soul, stands nevertheless the native and hereditary sovereign of our mortal estate. We may trample its royalty under the feet of our passions; we may fill its throne with those vile usurpers, our sensual desires; yet through all abuses the soul waits, pleading its inborn majesty, appealing to its parentage in God, showing its inalienable and immortal right to rule, and expecting its final coronation. The life is more than meat, and the body than raiment. Not the garments, not the meat, not the skill, nor the pleasure, but the life they strengthen and discipline for eternity! What is wanted is to restore the spiritual life to the sovereignty God has designed for it; to recrown the soul and make it master of the flesh; to estimate it as God estimates it; to seek its regeneration as he did who laid down his life for its sake, and declared, that except a man be thus born again, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. F. D. H. 24-36. Again he reminded them how God clothes, in more than Solomon's glory, the untolling lilies, and feeds the careless ravens that neither sow nor reap. Food and raiment, and the multitude of possessions, were not life: they had better things to seek after and to hope for; let them not be tossed on this troubled sea of faithless care; be theirs the life of fearless hope, of freest charity, the life of the girded loin and the burning lamp—as servants watching and waiting for the unknown moment of their lord's return. F. 32. It is your Father's good pleasure.** Blessed and thrice happy are that little flock, that have such a Father! He hath promised that he will give them an everlasting kingdom in the heavens; and they may be certain that nothing can keep them from it, nothing can happen that will not help to bring them nearer to it. Beveridge. 33. Sell; provide a treasure in the heavens. God freely gives his kingdom, and yet it must be purchased. It costs little, if we have but little; much, if we have much. But we must give all, either by actually parting with everything, if God require it of us; or at least by disengaging our heart from everything, if God vouchsafe to be satisfied therewith. We can give nothing but what we have received, and we receive even the grace to give it; and the hundred-fold of that which is given by us we receive again in treasure which is eternal, which faileth not, and which cannot possibly be either lost or corrupted.—34. Your treasure.** Every one lays up his treasure on earth, if he take not great care; and this earthly treasure is whatever he loves contrary to the will of God, and in which he seeks his own satisfaction. One person, his gold, silver, furniture; his estate, position, power; his business, diversions, pleasure. Another, his learning, books, reputation, ease; his friends, their esteem, affection, approval, and companionship. Q. 35. Loins be girded. Girding helps to facilitate motion, and adapts for work. Here accordingly the Lord requires that we should maintain a state of constant readiness to go out to meet him. C. B.—The just and clear image which our divine Master employs may be stated in a single word: Be detached. What hinders us from departing, or departing willingly, or walking with a firm and rapid step when the signal is given, is the attachments which, like the foldings and refoldings of a flowing robe, embarrass and retard us. A. V.—38.** Let us not be lulled asleep by his delay. One thing is evident, though he may come in the night, he will bring light with him. C. B. # Section 52.—The Faithful Servant. Divisive Effects of the Gospel. Galilee. 41. THEN Peter said unto him, Lord, speakest thou this parable unto us, or even to all? 42 And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season? 43, 44 Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Of a truth 45 I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath. But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to beat the men- 46 servants, and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken; the lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. And that servant which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither 47 did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes, for unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required; and to whom men have committed much, of him will they ask the more. 48, 49 I am come to send fire on the earth, and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished! 51 Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: for from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, 52 and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 53 And he said also to the people, When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is. And when ye see the south wind blow, 54 ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass. Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky, and of the earth; but how is it, that ye do not discern this time? Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right? 55 When thou goest with thine adversary to the magistrate, as thou art in the way, give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from him; lest he hale thee to the judge, and 56 the judge deliver thee to the officer, and the officer cast thee into prison. I tell thee, thou shalt not depart thence, till thou hast paid the very last mite. Ir is by no means of so much consequence what a man does as how he does it. Accuracy, perseverance, conscientiousness, patience, industry, are all invaluable properties of human character; and when the King comes to take account of his servants, each faithful servant's character and powers will at the end of his earthly career come up to judgment, not for condemnation, but for scrutiny; not only in reference to the past, but also to the future. Surely it is a noble and elevating reflection—one, moreover, to give much consolation and light about many otherwise unintelligible circumstances in the providential government of God—that nothing we do or suffer now that pleases God can be lost, or go unrewarded and forgotten. Every man shall receive his own reward, according to his own labor. Humble diligence, uncomplaining patience, cheerful self-denial, unworldly simplicity, are seen of God, if neglected by men; and in the next world, he who has thought most of God and his brother will be found the truly wise man; and in the day when God makes up his jewels to set in his Son's diadem, those shall be very near the throne who have postponed the praise of men to the praise of God, who have been contented to do modest duties well, rather than important duties badly; who have never suffered any earthly motive to blind their eyes to the seeking of God's glory, or to blunt their hearts to the sense of his love. A. W. T. 42. He answers Peter's question indirectly by another. The meaning they were left to gather is this: "To you certainly in the first instance, representing the 'stewards' of the 'household' I am about to collect, but generally to all 'servants' in my house." Faithful and wise. Fidelity is the first requisite in a servant, wisdom (discretion, and judgment in the exercise of his functions) the next. B.—47, 48. That servant which knew. According to the degree of knowledge which God has afforded to men, so will their crimes receive aggravation of guilt, and be visited with increase of punishment. And the more light and grace he bestows on any, the greater and more perfect Christian performances he will require of them. Hammond.—Few stripes. Degrees of future punishment proportioned to the knowledge sinned against. Even heathens are not without knowledge enough for future judgment; but the reference here is not to such. It is a solemn truth, and though general, like all other revelations of the future world, discloses a tangible and momentous principle in its awards. B. 49. Fire. The highest spiritual element of life which Jesus came to introduce into this earth, with reference to its mighty effects in quickening all that is akin to it and destroying all that is opposed. To cause this element of life to take up its abode on earth, and wholly to pervade human hearts with its warmth, was the lofty destiny of the Redeemer. O.—50. What a pressure of spirit is upon me, till it be over! Before a promiscuous audience, such obscure language was fit on a theme like this; but what surges of mysterious emotion in the view of what was now so near at hand does it reveal! The connection of all this with the foregoing warnings about hypocrisy, covetousness, and watchfulness, is deeply solemn: "My conflict hastens apace; mine over, yours begins; and then, let the servants tread in their Master's steps, uttering their testimony entire and fearless, neither loving nor dreading the world, anticipating awful wrenches of the dearest ties in life, but looking forward, as I do, to the completion of their testimony, when, reaching the haven after the tempest, they shall enter into the joy of their Lord." B. 56. Ye do not discern this time? The signs of this time were very plain: the sceptre had departed from Judah: the general expectation of the coming of the Messiah is testified even by profane authors: the prophets had all spoken of him, and the greatest of them, the Baptist, had announced his arrival. 57-59. In what follows, our Lord takes occasion from the request about the inheritance, which had begun this discourse, to pass to infinitely more solemn matters: "Why do ye not discern of yourselves your true state—that which is just—the justice of your case as before God? You are going (the course of your life is the journey) with your adversary (the just and holy law of God) before the magistrate (God himself); therefore by the way take pains to be delivered from him (by repentance, and faith in the Son of God), lest he drag thee to the judge (i. e., the Son, to whom all judgment is committed), and the judge deliver thee to the exactor, and the exactor cast thee into prison." A.—If thou sin, the word of God is thy adversary. It is the adversary of thy will till it becomes the author of thy salvation. But if thou maintain a good will to thine adversary, and agree with him, instead of a judge, shalt thou find a father; instead of a stern officer, an angel taking thee into Abraham's bosom; instead of a prison, a paradise. How rapidly hast thou changed all things in the way, because thou hast "agreed with thine adversary!" Aug. ## Section 53.—Calamities are not Judgments. The Barren Fig-tree. Galilee. 1. THERE were present at that season some that told him of the Galileans, whose blood 2 Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering, said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered 3, 4 such things? I tell you, Nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they 5 were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. 6 He spake also this parable: A certain man had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard; and 7 he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig-tree, and find 8 none: cut it down; why eumbereth it the ground? And he answering, said unto 9 him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: and if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down. THE previous discourse of Jesus, severe and full of rebuke, is here closed by a parable, in which the merciful Son of man again brings the side of grace prominently forward. He appears as the Intercessor for men before the heavenly Father; as he who obtains for them space for repentance. This deferring of the judgment of God, so to leave men opportunity to turn, runs through all the Scripture; before the deluge, a period of a hundred and twenty years was fixed; Abraham prayed for Sodom; the destruction of Jerusalem did not follow till forty years after the ascension of the Lord; and the coming again of Christ is put off through the patience of God. O.—If the history of men's lives were writ as large as the history of nations and of churches, we should often perceive that what is true of the last is also true of the first: we should mark critical moments in men's lives to which all the future was linked, on which it was made altogether to depend—times of gracious visitation which it was of the deepest importance to know, and not to suffer to escape unobserved and unimproved. T. 1. Of the particular event to which they alluded nothing further is known; and that a few turbulent zealots should have been cut down at Jerusalem by the Roman garrison was too commonplace an event in these troublous times to excite more than a transient notice. The inflammable fanaticism of the Jews at this epoch, the restless hopes which were constantly kindling them to fury against the Roman governor, had necessitated the construction of the tower of Antonia, which flung its shadow over the temple itself. This tower communicated with the temple by a flight of steps, so that the Roman legionaries could rush down at once, and suppress any of the disturbances which then endangered the security of Jerusalem at the recurrence of every religious feast. The main fact which seems in this instance to have struck the narrators, was not so much the massacre as that the blood of these murdered rioters had been actually mingled with the red streams that flowed from the victims they had been offering in sacrifice. F. 2. In thinking that these Galileans were sinners above all, there were certain great truths in their conclusion, as well as certain great falsehoods. Among the truths: that suffering is the result of sin—that when we see suffering we are not to blame God, but sin—that sin and suffering are not only associated, but that they make manifest that God reigns. Among the falsehoods: they judged of inner personal character by outer providential dispensations, contrary to all that God's Word authorizes—they judged, also, that so sad and awful a catastrophe must have been the punishment of some very signal sin; it may be that there was great guilt in those who perished, but it may be that there was guilt as great, if not greater, in those who remained. Again: they falsely concluded that in this life punishment is meted out exactly to sin, and reward, of course, exactly to righteousness. There is in this world enough of connection between sin and suffering to let us see that the one is the parent of the other; and there is enough of confusion to make us long for the judgment-day when all will be adjusted. Further: they falsely concluded that suffering in all cases is necessarily penal. In the case of Christians it is never penal, but always paternal: "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." We too are prone to see God in calamities but not in blessings. Anything terrible, destructive, we associate with God; but anything prosperous and happy we associate too much with ourselves. J. C. 3. Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. In these words, we are exactly taught how rightly to use the calamities which befall others; what their significance is, as regards ourselves—that they are loud calls to an earnest repentance. When we have learned to see in ourselves the bitter root of sin, we shall learn to acknowledge that whatever deadly fruit it bears in another, it might have borne the same or worse, under like circumstances, in ourselves. 5. The resemblance is more than accidental between these two calamities here adduced, and the ultimate destruction which did overtake the rebellious Jews, those who refused to obey the Lord's bidding, and to repent. As the tower of Siloam fell and crushed eighteen of the dwellers at Jerusalem, exactly so multitudes of its inhabitants were crushed beneath the ruins of their temple and their city; and during the last siege and assault of that city, there were numbers also who were pierced through by the Roman darts in the courts of the temple, in the very act of preparing their sacrifices, so that literally their blood, like that of these Galileans, was mingled with their sacrifices, one blood with another. These two calamities then are adduced as slight foretastes of the doom prepared for the whole rebellious nation. T.—Those around him, some of whom were to witness and to share in the calamity, were living in security, not knowing that the time then present was but for them a season of respite. It was to indicate how false that feeling of security was, to give them the true key to the Lord's present dealings with them as a people, that Jesus told them of a fig-tree planted in a vineyard. H.—The reference here to the impending destruction of Jerusalem is far from exhausting our Lord's weighty words; they manifestly point to a "perdition" of a more awful kind—future, personal, remediless. B. 7. The cumbering the ground implies something more than that it occupied the place which might have been filled by another and a fruit-bearing tree; the barren tree injured the land, drawing off to itself the fatness and nourishment which should have gone to the trees that would have made a return. 8. Allusion is here more immediately made to that larger, richer supply of grace—that freer outpouring of the Spirit, which was consequent on the death, and resurrection, and ascension of the Lord. T. ## Section 54.—The Sower. Why Christ used Parables. The Lake-side at Capernaum. 22. AND he went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem. Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? And he said unto them, Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are: Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets. But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out. And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God. And, behold, there are last, which shall be first; and there are first, which shall be last. The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart hence; for Herod will kill thee. And he said unto them, Go ye and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless, I must walk to-day, and to-morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood 35 under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. And verily, I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Nor only to the unforgiven and impenitent soul, drifting helplessly on toward its final doom, is the thought of death a thing of sadness; it is often for a time both a humiliation and a bitterness to the soul, which long before had cast its sins on Christ, and found rest and peace through his blood. Life come to an end, and so little done in it! Sin still so strong, the world still so powerful, self still so dominant, prayer still so hard! We recall past opportunities, and feel how sinfully we have neglected them; this soul and that soul have come in our way, and we did not even try to do them good. How much money we have wasted on selfish vanity; how little we have denied ourselves for the sake of Christ or his kingdom! Talking, listening, planning, beginning! Of that indeed there has been an abundance; but what will there be to show Christ, when he returns, of actual finished work, that will stand the fire? A. W. T. 22. The map is inserted here to indicate the general locality of the Perean ministry, included in Sections 100 to 115. No names of places are given in the gospel records. Only this verse intimates that the ministry was a slow progress toward Jerusalem. J. G. B. 23-30. Christ here signifies that it was not the business of men to pry into what God has hid, but to mind what he has revealed, and to master another difficulty, that of fulfilling his commands; that multitudes who professed his religion would finally appear to have professed it in vain; but that this was not to be matter of idle speculation among men: they are each to take care and practise their own duties; whatever number may be saved, great or small, they knew the way, and but one way there was, to become part of that number. Seeker. 23. Lord, are there few that be saved? Our Lord's answer involved a disapproval of the inquiry, and a statement of the wholly different manner in which such questions should be approached. Waste not the precious opportunities of life in idle wonderment, but strive. Through that narrow gate none can enter without earnest effort. F.—Strive to enter. There is enough in the gospel to attract and convince at last every man who has a sense of spiritual need and a desire of spiritual deliverance, but it is presented in such form as to try whether the soul really possesses this, and therefore we may have obstacles of various kinds at the very entrance. But let it be remembered that what makes an obstacle is the state of heart of the man himself. And no one will be able to complain of any real wrong from such obstacles. The false seeker is not injured, because he never sincerely sought at all. There was no sense of sin's evil, no wish to be saved from it, and till this exists nothing can be sought, and nothing found. The true seeker is not injured, for never was such a one disappointed. True need asks and seeks and knocks, increases its appeal with every difficulty, cries after Christ like the woman of Canaan, and wrestles till it conquers at the breaking of the day. Ker. 25. The figure is the usual one—of a feast at which the householder entertains (in this case) the members of the family. These being assembled, he rises and shuts the door, and none are afterward admitted. A. 26,27. We have sat with thee at the same table. Do we not remember listening in our own streets to thy teaching? Surely we are not to be denied admittance? But he shall say. No nearness of external communion with Christ will avail at the great day, in place of that "holiness without which no man shall see the Lord." Observe the style which Christ intimates that he will then assume, that of absolute disposer of men's eternal destinies, and contrast it with his "despised and rejected" condition at that time. B. 28. Heaven preserves the identity of a personal faith. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are there in their individuality, and with all the sacred associations of their lives. You thrust out. This not by an excluding act of sovereignty, but as a result of incorrigible sin. With tenderest love and care he would save them; but they would not. Salvation is of God: perdition comes of impenitence and unbelief. J. P. T. 31. Came the Pharisees. Since Herod's relations with the Pharisees were not the most friendly, and since he must have known their hostility to Jesus, it is not likely that they were his instruments in approaching the Saviour. N.—'Twas Herod who was wishing him to depart; 'twas Pharisees who were wishing to kill him. The Pharisees were only too ready to urge our Lord to leave a land where his life was comparatively safe, for one where, as they well knew, it was now in extremest jeop-  ardy. E.—They did but pretend the malice of Herod, who, if he had desired to rid himself of the Lord's presence, had other means at his command. We may affirm, with tolerable certainty, that Herod Antipas entertained no such design of killing Jesus as by these Pharisees is ascribed to him here. If so, the Pharisees, who were now in deadliest conflict with the Lord, would have been the last to warn him of his danger, or in any way to assist him in escaping from the snares which were being laid for his life. T. 32. He deservedly bestowed on Herod Antipas the sole word of contempt which is ever recorded to have passed his lips. And if ever there was a man who richly deserved contempt, it was the paltry, perjured princeling—false to his religion, false to his nation, false to his friends, false to his brethren, false to his wife—to whom Jesus gave the name of "this fox." What has been said of Agrippa is equally true of Antipas, viz., that "he had been the meanest thing the world had ever seen—a courtier of the early empire. He had been corrupted by the influence of the Roman court, and had flattered the worst vices of the worst men in the worst age of the world's history." F. He does not say, I preach the gospel—that would have made little impression upon Herod. In the light of the merciful character of Christ's actions, the malice of Herod's snares is laid bare. Beng.— To-day, to-morrow, the third day. Language expressive of successive steps of his work yet remaining, the calm deliberateness with which he meant to go through with them one after another, to the last, yet the rapid march with which they were now hastening to completion. B.—"I shall put forth my beneficent powers, casting out devils, healing the sick for the present ('to-day'), for the future ('to-morrow'), and only at a remoter period ('the third day') will my life and course reach their appointed term." The words are exactly parallel to others spoken on not a very dissimilar occasion, when his timid disciples would have dissuaded him from affronting the dangers of Judea; to whom he replied: "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" "To-day and to-morrow and the third day" will here exactly correspond to the "twelve hours" there, signifying as they do a certain fixed, appointed time. 33. "My danger is not in Galilee, nor yet from Herod. I shall not perish here, but in Jerusalem, your seat, your headquarters, where you reign supreme. When the day of my death, or of my consummation, arrives, you, and not Herod, will be the authors of the murderous deed." T. 35. Your house. That was God's, now become yours, being made "a den of thieves;" that is left to you, being soon to be deserted by God. W.—Marvellously has that woe been fulfilled. Every Jewish pilgrim who enters Jerusalem to this day has a rent made in his dress, and says, "Zion is turned into a desert, it lies in ruins!" (Dr. Frankl, "Jews in the East"). Sapir, the Jewish poet of Wilna, addressed Dr. Frankl thus: "Here all is dust. After the destruction of the city, the whole earth blossoms from its ruins; but here there is no verdure, no blossom, only a bitter fruit—sorrow. Look for no joy here, either from men or from mountains." A wealthy and pious Jew came to settle at Jerusalem; after two years' stay he left it with the words, "Let him that wishes to have neither aulom haze ('the pleasures of this life') nor aulom habo ('those of the life to come') live at Jerusalem." The translation is Dr. Frankl's, not mine. F. 34,35. For fuller exposition, read Section 127, verses 37-39. # Section 102.—Dropsy healed on the Sabbath. Humility. Perea. 1. AND it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat 2 bread on the sabbath-day, that they watched him. And behold, there was a certain man 3 before him which had the dropsy. And Jesus answering, spake unto the lawyers and 4. Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath-day? And they held their peace. 5. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go: and answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out 6 on the sabbath-day? And they could not answer him again to these things. 7. And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they 8 chose out the chief rooms; saying unto them, When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room, lest a more honourable man than thou be 9 bidden of him; and he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man 10 place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room. But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them 11 that sit at meat with thee. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. 12. Then said he also to him that bade him, When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest 13 they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a 14 feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be blessed: for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just. WE behold him in every conceivable variety of positions, mingling with all sorts of persons, and with all kinds of events; we follow the steps of his public life, and we watch his most unsuspecting and retired moments; we see him in the midst of thousands, or with his disciples, or with a single individual; we see him in the capital of his country, or in one of its remote villages, in the temple and the synagogue, or in the desert, or in the streets; we see him with the rich and with the poor, the prosperous and the afflicted, the good and the bad, with his private friends and with his enemies and murderers; and we behold him at last in circumstances the most overwhelming which it is possible to conceive, deserted, betrayed, falsely accused, unrighteously condemned, nailed to a cross! But wherever he is, and however placed, in the ordinary circumstances of his daily life, or at the last supper, or in Gethsemane, or in the judgment hall, or on Calvary, he is the same meek, pure, wise, godlike Being. Y. 1. No cooking was done (Exod. 16: 23); but, as those feasts must have necessitated more or less labor, the fact shows how little real earnestness there was in the Jewish Sabbatarianism; how fast and loose they could play with their own convictions; how physical self-indulgence and unintelligent routine had usurped the place of spiritual enlightenment. On the contrary, there was no inconsistency whatever in our Lord's accepting such invitations; there was nothing wrong in them, and nothing out of accordance with true principles; and therefore Jesus could sanction them with his presence. But had there been any true principle involved in the Jewish view, they ought to have thought them wrong. 3. The Sabbath was a Mosaic, nay, even a primeval institution, and it had become the most distinctive and the most passionately reverenced of all the ordinances which separated the Jew from the Gentile as a peculiar people. It was at once the sign of their exclusive privileges, and the centre of their barren formalism. Their traditions, their patriotism, even their obstinacy, were all enlisted in its scrupulous maintenance. Its observance had been fenced round by the minutest, the most painfully precise, the most ludicrously insignificant restrictions. Here was one claiming to be a prophet, yea, and more than a prophet, deliberately setting aside, as it seemed to them, the traditional sanctity of that day of days! An attentive reader of the gospels will be surprised to find how large a portion of the enmity and opposition which our Lord excited, not only in Jerusalem, but even in Galilee and in Perea, turned upon this point alone. F.—In all these cases, it is plain that the Jews, by the corrupt glosses of their tradition, had loaded the Sabbath with burdens not imposed by the spirit of the fourth commandment; and that Christ was authoritatively taking these burdens off, and showing the true meaning of that precept. Stone.—The Jews had turned the blessing of the Sabbath into a curse. From the moment of hearing the ram's horn, a sacred trumpet, called the shofa, blown from the temple wall, announcing that the Sabbath had commenced, he was not allowed to light a fire or make a bed, to boil a pot; he could not pull his ass from a ditch, nor raise an arm in defence of his life. A Jew could not quit his camp, his village, or his city on the day of rest. He might not begin a journey; if going along a road, he must rest from sundown till the same event of the coming day. He might not carry a pencil, a kerchief, a shekel in his belt; if he required a handkerchief for use, he had to tie it round his leg. If he offended against one of these rules, he was held to deserve the doom awarded to the vilest of sinners. Some rabbins held that a man ought not to change his position, but that whether he was standing or sitting when the shofa sounded, he should stand or sit immovable as a stone until the Sabbath had passed away. W. H. D. 4-6. They held their peace. They would not say "Yes;" but, on the other hand, they dared not say "No!" Had it been unlawful, it was their positive function and duty to say so then and there, and without any subterfuge to deprive the poor sufferer, so far as in them lay, of the miraculous mercy which was prepared for him, and to brave the consequences. Their silence was his entire justification. They could not answer. They knew that they could only admit the fact, and then the argument was irresistible; a man was more important than a beast; the extrication of a beast involved more labor by far than the healing of a man. Their base little plot only ended in the constrained and awkward silence of a complete refutation which they were too ungenerous to acknowledge. The dropsy of their inflated self-satisfaction was a disease far more difficult to heal than that of the sufferer whom they had used to entrap him. F.—As on other occasions, the Lord brings back those present to their own experience, and lets them feel the keen contradiction in which their blame of Christ's free work of love sets them with themselves, in that, where their worldly interests were at hazard, they did that very thing whereof they made now an occasion against him. T. 12-14. This parable is only a continuation of the foregoing. As the guests ought to humble themselves by taking the lowest place, so should the host humble himself by inviting the poorest. He should exercise condescending, humble love. O. —Call not thy friends, but call the poor. This language does not forbid hospitality, nor the entertaining of friends. His own practice shows that it does not. He means to say, If you wish recompense, as you Pharisees do (for you give dinners that you may gain power and advance yourselves in the synagogue and temple), call the poor, etc. Entertain your friends; but, still more, feed the hungry, and relieve those who are in distress. J. C. # Section 103.—The Great Supper. Counting the Cost. 15. And when one of them that sat at meat with him heard these things, he said unto him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God. 16, 17 Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: and sent his servant at supper-time to say to them that were bidden, Come, for all things are now 18 ready. And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me 19 excused. And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: 20 I pray thee have me excused. And another said, I have married a wife: and therefore 21 I cannot come. So that servant came, and showed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry, said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the 22 blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is 23 room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and 24 compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say unto you, That none of those men which were bidden, shall taste of my supper. 25, 26 And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them, If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the 29 cost, whether he hath sufficient to finish it? Lest haply after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. 31 Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him 32 with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an 33 ambassade, and desireth conditions of peace. So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. 34, 35 Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill; but men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. THE unparalleled boldness of Christ's teaching, the tremendous claims which he makes on those who offer to join themselves to him, may well fill us with marvel and with awe. How intolerable the pride and presumption of any less than the greatest, lower than the highest, to impose the conditions of discipleship which he here imposes, to demand of men the sacrifices which he here demands; and this, be it observed, not in the name of One whose messenger he is, but in his own; standing forth as himself the object, to whom all this measureless devotion of all men is justly due; who, claiming it all, claims nothing but his own! What man, that was not man's maker as well as his fellow, could have required that father and mother, wife and children, should all be postponed to him; that, where any competition between his claims and theirs arose, he should be everything and they nothing; that not merely these, which, though very close to a man, are yet external to him, but that his very self, his own life, should be hated, when on no other conditions Christ could be loved? How could this be, except as he also stood in the place of God and was God? T. 15. According to the notions then current among the Jews, the open setting up of the kingdom of God would be ushered in by a great and glorious festival, of which all the members of that kingdom should be partakers. This man spoke these words with a comfortable assurance that he should make one of those that should thus eat bread in the kingdom of God. He, as a Jew, a member of the elect nation, had been invited to that great feast of God. He had not at all considered whether in the refusal to enter into that higher spiritual life of the gospel, to which Christ was now inviting him, there was not involved his own ultimate rejection from the heavenly festival. For his warning, and for the warning of all like-minded with him, the parable was spoken. 18 21. In what remarkable connection do the words, put into the mouth of the guests, stand with the declaration of the Saviour which presently after follows, "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple;" and how apt a commentary on the parable is supplied by the words of Paul, "This I say, brethren, the time is short; it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none, and they that weep as though they wept not, and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and they that buy as though they possessed not, and they that use this world as not abusing it;" since it was not the having—for they had nothing which it was not lawful for men to have—but the unduly loving these things, which proved their hinderance, and ultimately excluded them from the feast. . . . None of the guests are kept away by any occupation in itself sinful—and yet all become sinful, because they are allowed to interfere with higher objects. T.—Each excuse differs from the other, and each has its own plausibility, but all come to the same result: "We have other things to attend to, more pressing just now." Nobody is represented as saying, I will not come; nay, all the answers imply that but for certain things they would come, and when these are out of the way they will come. So it certainly is in the case intended, for the last words clearly imply that the refusers will one day become petitioners. B. 17. These customs remain unchanged. The message, "Come, for the supper is ready," may be heard to this day; and to refuse is a high insult. F. —18. They all began to make excuse. This always was and still is the practice of the world. Though men be invited to the greatest feast that heaven can afford, they slight it on some pretence or other. These have their ambition, those their covetousness, a third sort their revenge, a fourth their luxury, to gratify and indulge. They have the cares of this life upon their hands, and in their hearts too; with which they are so occupied, that there is no room left for the thoughts of another life to come. Beveridge. 23. Compel them to come in. Invite them, entreat them, be importunate to them. The "compelling" here spoken of was an act of kindness, not of rigor, toward those who had no reason to expect so great a favor from the lord. Jortin. —The words imply, not any reluctance to accept the invitation, but rather that these houseless dwellers in the highways would hold themselves so unworthy of the invitation as scarcely to be induced—without earnest persuasion—to enter the rich man's dwelling, and share in his magnificent entertainment. And when we pass on to the spiritual thing signified, what can this compelling men to come in mean, save that strong, earnest exhortation, which the ambassadors of Christ will address to men, when they are themselves deeply convinced of the mighty issues which there are for every man, linked with his acceptance or rejection of the gospel? They will speak as delivering the words of him who has a right to be heard by his creatures—who not merely entreats, but commands all men everywhere, to repent and believe the gospel. T. 24. I say unto you. The words of Christ to those around the table, and the key to the parable. Thus it appears that he is "the man that made a great supper." He was there an invited guest, and he tells those before him that he also has made a great supper and has bidden many—and he puts it to their hearts whether they as cordially attended to his invitation as they had accepted that of their host. The invitation was first given by John the Baptist to the Pharisees and rulers. These all with one consent began to make excuse; i. e., the exceptions are so few that they are thus correctly described as a class. The second sending forth of the servant refers to the commission given to the apostles of Christ to invite Jewish “sinners and publicans” to the feast. The third message was sent to the heathen, or Gentiles. The feast is salvation, with its untold blessings. D. K. D.—The application to all present was obvious. The worldly heart—whether absorbed in the management of property, or the acquisition of riches, or the mere sensualisms of contented comfort—was incompatible with any desire for the true banquet of the kingdom of heaven. The Gentile and the Pariah, the harlot and the publican, the laborer of the roadside and the beggar of the streets, these might be there in greater multitudes than the scribe with his boasted learning, and the Pharisee with his broad phylactery. “For I say unto you,” he added, to point the moral immediately to their own hearts, “that none of those men who were called shall taste of my supper.” It was the lesson which he so often pointed. “To be invited is one thing, to accept the invitation is another.” F. 26. Hate not his father, etc. Matthew (10 : 37) expresses the true meaning, “Loveth father or mother more than me.” Pearce.—Our Saviour’s meaning is to be extended no further than to a readiness and willingness, whenever God shall call us to it, to quit all our temporal interests and enjoyments, and even life itself, the dearest of all other things to us, and to submit to any temporal inconvenience and suffering for his sake. Tillotson.—The “hate” is adopted in strict accordance with our Lord’s habit of stating the great truths which he uttered in the extremest form of what, to his hearers, must even sound like paradox, in order that their inmost essential truth might be recognized, and so fixed eternally in their memory. It was necessary that they should be uttered in such a way as to seize and dominate over the imagination of mankind forever. F.—Jesus presents himself to men as one having absolute authority over them. Everything about him breathes this authority. He regards men as belonging to him of absolute right; as having been given him by his Father, that he again might give them eternal life, and reign eternally over them. “Follow me!” he says to Philip, to Levi, to the sons of Zebedee; and these men leave all and follow him. He requires all to consider not only their souls, but their possessions, their entire life, as devoted to him who calls himself their Saviour. Jesus allows no rival; his disciple must subordinate, and if need be, sacrifice to him even this holiest affection. R. C. 28. Intending to build a tower. It is those who, counting up their means, discover that they have not enough to carry through the work, and that of their own they never will have enough, and who therefore renounce all that they have—it is these, and not they who walk in a vain conceit of their own riches, who are able to finish this tower. How it fares with the others, what a swift and shameful coming to the end of all their fancied resources inevitably awaits them, Christ puts vividly before our eyes in the words which follow (verses 29, 30). 32. How profound is the lesson here, when we recognize in this king who might come against us with his twenty thousand, with a might altogether overpowering ours, no other than God himself! He is a fighter against God who would fain be anything in his sight, who, face to face with God, would assert himself at all; who does not renounce all that he hath, and that which is dearest to the natural man, his own righteousness the first of all. Paul would have been such a fighter against God, if, refusing to submit himself to the righteousness of God, he had stood out upon a righteousness of his own. When, with his face to the ground, he asked, “What wilt thou have me to do?” he was exactly falling in with that which Christ here declares to be the only wisdom for every man, demanding conditions of peace from that far mightier King, with whom it is impossible for flesh and blood, for sinful man, to contend. 33. Forsaketh all he hath. In that “forsaketh,” or “renounces,” “bids good-by to,” lies the key to the whole passage. Christ has spoken of the absolute renunciation of all, even of a man’s own life, as the condition without which no man could be his disciple. But this self which needs to be renounced is oftentimes the self of one who proposes to serve God, but to serve him in his own strength, and not in God’s; who may have renounced much, but has not renounced a vain confidence in his own powers, and that these will enable him to carry to a successful end a service thus undertaken. Christ uses these two similitudes, borrowed from two enterprises, the one grave to a private man, the other even to a king; by aid of the first he warns us of the shameful close which may attend a service in this spirit begun; while in the second he points out to all the only wise course for the avoiding of such perils as would thus lie before them. T.—He warned them that all who would be his disciples must come to him, not expecting earthly love or acceptance, but expecting alienation and opposition, and counting the cost. They must abandon, if need be, every earthly tie; they must sit absolutely loose to the interests of the world. They must take up the cross and follow him: strange language, of which it was only afterward that they learnt the full significance. For a man to begin a tower which he could not finish—for a king to enter on a war in which nothing was possible save disaster and defeat —involved disgrace and indicated folly; better not to follow him at all, unless they followed him prepared to forsake all that they had on earth; prepared to sacrifice the interests of time for those of eternity. F. ## Section 104.—The Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin. 1,2. THEN drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. 3, 4 And he spake this parable unto them, saying, What man of you having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and 5 go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it 6 on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which 7 was lost. I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance. 8 Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light 9 a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; 10 for I have found the piece which I had lost. Likewise, I say unto you, There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. HERE, opened by the hand of the incarnate Revealer and Redeemer, we have a window into the very heart of God. We see his feelings of compassion toward our race and our own selves. He leaves the society of the sinless and the angelic, and the anthems of seraphim and cherubim, and the communion of heaven, for an earthly allotment of toil and exposure. He must traverse “dark mountains,” when he confronts the contradiction of sinners and the assaults of the tempter, and he becomes denied of earth and buffeted of hell. To lift the victim of sin, and the heir of wrath, to his shoulders, as the recovered and ransomed one, that shoulder must bear the cross of shame and agony; that soul of his must stoop to the yoke of denial, mockery, and betrayal. He must encounter the hidings of the face of the Father. And this redemption is not all. He is, as the High-Priest, now and after his exaltation to the heavenly glory, still the burden-bearer of his people. The high-priest of the Jewish economy had the breastplate, with its twelve jewels, bearing the names of the twelve tribes, supported by bands that passed over his shoulders. The names of Judah and Levi and their brethren thus lay on his heart; while the weight of the record and the memorial was pressing on his shoulder. The heart is the seat of feeling; the shoulders are the seat of strength. Affection and power are shown thus blended together in undertaking the cause and sustaining the remembrance of his people. So is it in the great Antitype. His shoulder of omnipotence sustains, and his bosom, with its infinite tenderness and unforgetting omniscience, registers and defends his own Israel. “The great Shepherd of the sheep,” as the Apostle entitles him, has shed his blood, not idly and ineffectually, but as the gory sanction, “the blood of an Everlasting Covenant.” W. R. W. THE Pharisees and scribes could not understand that any one should walk pure and unspotted amid the pollutions of the world, seeking and not shunning sinners. They had neither love to hope the recovery of such, nor medicines to effect that recovery. T.—He will draw aside for a moment the veil that hides the invisible world, and let it be seen what is thought among the angels of God of that ready reception of sinners on his part which has evoked such aversion. Christ does this in three parables—that of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Piece of Money, and the Lost Son. H. Of the three parables, the first two, those of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Piece of Money, set forth to us mainly the seeking love of God; while the third, that of the Prodigal Son, describes to us rather the rise and growth, responsive to that love, of repentance in the heart of man. It is, in fact, only the same truth presented successively under different aspects, God's seeking love being set forth first, and this not without reason, since we thus are taught that all first motions toward good are from him, that grace must go before as well as follow us. But yet is it the same truth in all; for it is the confluence of this drawing and seeking love from without, and of the faith awakened by the same power from within—the confluence of these two streams, the grace and the faith—out of which repentance springs. T. As, in that great scheme of human recovery, the gospel of the great salvation, the whole of the divine Trinity was embarked, so these several parables, here interlocked, seem to allude each primarily to the work of one as distinguished from the others of the persons of the divine Trinity. The first parable presents the great doctrine of the atonement, and the work of God the Son as the Redeemer. It is a condensation of the Epistle to the Hebrews: Christ shown in his sacrifice and priestly intercession. The shepherd seeking his estrayed sheep must be reminding us of the divine speaker of the parable, when elsewhere he denominates himself the good shepherd laying down his life for the sheep. Then, on this redemption go forth, in the second parable, the Providence of God, and the Spirit of God, and the Revelation of God, as the lamp and besom and the diligent search of the housewife, recovering the lost coin; and bringing and enabling the soul of man to see the danger of its condition by sin, and its need of the gracious provisions of the great atonement. The second parable brings out the work of God the Holy Spirit, who convicts that he may convert, and disturbs that he may comfort; like the besom sweeping off the dust that has gathered in the heart and conscience, and upon the Bible and on the Book of Providence, and making all the soul for the time confused and discordant. But by the lamp, enlightening as well as confounding; searching out truths once disparaged and neglected, and finding clews once utterly lost, and bringing to view treasures before unsuspected. So this parable brings out the great truths of conversion and regeneration. The last or third delineation tion presents the great truths of effectual calling and adoption and justification, the lessons of the Epistle to the Romans. These are eminently the work of God the Father. Thus the three graphic sketches together blend the work of the divine Trinity, and bring out the full Godhead embodied in the work of human recovery. W. R. W. 4. We are not to understand "the wilderness" as a sandy or rocky desert, without herbage; but rather as wide-extended grassy plains or savannas, called desert because without habitations of men, but exactly the fittest place for the pasture of sheep. Christ's incarnation was a girding of himself to go after his lost sheep. His whole life upon earth, his entire walk in the flesh, was a following of the strayed one; for in his own words this was the very purpose of his coming, namely, "to seek and to save that which was lost." And he sought his own till he found it. 7. A slight yet majestic intimation of the dignity of his person he gives in that "I say unto you"—I who know; I who, when I tell you of heavenly things, tell you of mine own—I say to you that this joy shall be in heaven on the recovery of the lost. T.—Because of its revelation of the divine nature, because of their own surer confirmation in holiness by the great drama of human Redemption, and because of their full sympathy with Jesus, who rejoices in his own kingly and priestly triumph as head of the Church, there is especial joy among angels over every journey of the good Shepherd to rescue his lost and perishing charge. It is God's statement of God's regard for the sinner, and of the high interest that heaven, though stainless and happy, has, through all its angelic ranks, in the work of the Lord of the angels to recover the estrayed, to win back the alienated, and to rescue the self-destroyed. W. R. W. 8. Ten pieces of silver. The most noticeable feature in the attire of the women is their headdress of silver coins. They are regarded as in a sense sacred, and are said to be exempt from taxation and from seizure at law. N. C. B.—These coins are the woman's private property, descending from mother to daughter. Poor, indeed, must she be who had only ten such pieces. How would she miss and bewail the loss of one piece of her little store! How would she light her lamp and search her dark room—for the houses have no windows to the inner apartments—where are stored all the goods, chattels, and implements of the family; and how joyously would she proclaim her good fortune to her neighbors! H. B. T. In the one piece of money, which the woman loses out of her ten, expositors have delighted to trace a resemblance to the human soul, which was originally stamped with the image and superscription of the great King (“God created man in his own image”), and which still retains traces of the mint from which it proceeded, though by sin the image has been nearly effaced, and the superscription has wellnigh become illegible. Nor is this all; as the piece of money is lost for all useful purposes to its right owner, so man, through sin, is become unprofitable to God, who has not from him that service which is due. T. Truth introduced into the heart, and providential disturbances and unsettlements in order to its introduction—these are the things symbolized by the lighting of the candle and the sweeping of the house. W. T.—Man needs repentance. The Son of God provided for the bestowment of that penitence, being himself “exalted as a Saviour to give repentance and the remission of sins.” The Father welcomes the exhibition and exercise of that repentance. But it is the Spirit of God who works the repentance itself, who inspires the contrite desire, and who sheds around the sepulchre of our spiritual death, and wafts down upon this moral decay that light of life—that breath of heaven—which disperses the gloom, and arrests the corruption. It is the Spirit who restores to God’s treasure-house that soul which, at first, was coined in God’s image, and garnered for his revenues; but which has since escaped, helplessly and hopelessly, from his service, to be trodden in the dust, and to be swept into the indiscriminate offscourings “whose end is to be burned,” had not mercy thus interposed. His first lessons are of necessity humiliating, alarming, and arousing. Men feel themselves strangely conscious of a misery and guilt and weakness, which before they had never suspected as belonging to them. But as the light shines from the strait gate and the atoning cross, they begin to hope, and believe, and love, and repent. They fall at the feet of the Redeemer, whom they have so long forgotten or spurned. They find under the strong, steady light of Scripture, as expounded and made intense by the Spirit, that Saviour in his glorious fulness. In finding him they find themselves; and their own souls thus saved are in him become resplendent centres, each in its orbit, of a glory never to be clouded, and fountains of a peace unspeakable and eternal. 10. Joy . . . the angels of God.** Beings of a higher world regard man as the creature and the charge of God, the denizen of eternity. To them the true sorrow for sin, and the consequent welcome of the Redeemer, displayed in the case of earth’s vilest transgressor, are causes of joy. To us the victor’s palm, and the capitalist’s revenues, and the poet’s laurel, and the crown of empire, show like realities. To them the realities are God’s smile, or God’s ban—heaven or hell—souls in their apostasy—souls in their recovery—souls in their communion with God—or souls self-banished from God to an irremediable sin and an unreturning exile. W. R. W. The application of this to the reception of those publicans and sinners that stood around our Lord is grand in the extreme: “Ye turn from these lost ones with disdain, and because I do not the same, ye murmur at it; but a very different feeling is cherished in heaven. There the recovery of even one such outcast is watched with interest and hailed with joy; nor are they left to come home of themselves or perish; for lo! even now the great Shepherd is going after his lost sheep, and the Owner is making diligent search for the lost property; and he is finding it, too, and bringing it back with joy, and all heaven is full of it.” B.—He seeks to shame the murmurers out of their murmurs, holds up to them God and the angels of God rejoicing at the conversion of a sinner, and silently contrasts this with the discontent and envious repinings that found place in their hearts. T. That repenteth. This is the vindication of Christ from any reproach in having fellowship with sinners. He seeks out sinners—endures all suffering until he finds sinners—carries them home rejoicing, and makes heaven ring with shouts of joy by reason of his finished work. But the sin has been left behind. It has been blotted out in its condemning power. The guilt of it has been lost in the depths of his own mighty sacrifice and death; the stain and the pollution of it have been by grace put away from the sinner. D. K. D. 8-10. The Church of God needs in her own home and house to be busy, grieving not the Spirit, but earnest in keeping the light burning clearly, and vigilant that she may prevent the dust from settling on her inner furniture. To remain by the past is not the sufficient safeguard of religious life and usefulness. The dust of formalism, and lethargy, and worldliness, may soon bury up all her treasures of grace and truth, as far as these consist in Christian example. The discipline, that for the time agitates, may be the first and inevitable condition precedent, for the life and growth that is promised to her prayers and her efforts. W. R. W. # Section 105.—The Lost Son. 11,12. And he said, A certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat; and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. And he was angry, and would not go in; therefore came his father out, and entreated him. And he answering, said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment; yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: but as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me; and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found. THE simple pathos of this parable speaks to the heart without an interpreter. The picture moves before us; rather, it lives within us. We see the human heart, in its self-will and self-sufficiency, turning away from God, and, in the flush of worldly pleasure, abandoning itself to the enjoyment of the present. We see this heart disappointed, emptied, beggared, wrung with the feeling of want; we see it for a while fighting the sense of want with the sense of shame, and, rather than confess its sin, accepting a lower humiliation; then, at last, conscience and reason awake, and with the remembrance of God's goodness comes the first feeling of penitence, and the determination to go to the Father with an unreserved acknowledgment of folly and sin. That decision turns the scale. The penitent, seeking nothing but forgiveness, finds in God nothing but love: hardly waiting for his confession, that love meets him in advance, and overwhelms him with favor. So touchingly does man's deepest extremity illustrate the mercy of God in seeking and recovering the lost! Who could resist the love of such a Father? J. P. T. 11-24. Closely linked with the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Piece of Money, this may with greater fitness be called the parable of the Lost Son. This my son was lost and is found. The leading subject of all the three is the lost soul of man—guilty, sinful man. D. K. D.—The first two set before us God seeking and finding the sinner, through the incarnation of the Son, and the agency of the Spirit. The third shows us the sinner seeking God. They are all three true of every real conversion. Viewed from the divine side, God seeks the sinner; but we, who see only the earthly side, perceive only the sinner rising and returning to God. W. T.—It is not that some of fallen humankind are saved after the manner of the strayed sheep, and others after the manner of the prodigal son; not that the Saviour bears one wanderer home by his power, and that another of his own accord arises and returns to the Father. Both these processes are accomplished in every conversion. The man comes, yet Christ brings him; Christ brings him, yet he comes. Arnot. Drawn from the simplest elements of daily experience, these parables, the last especially, illustrate, in a rising climax of tenderness, the deepest mysteries of the divine compassion—the joy that there is in heaven over one sinner that repenteth. Where, in the entire range of human literature, sacred or profane, can anything be found so terse, so luminous, so full of infinite tenderness—so faithful in the picture which it furnishes of the consequences of sin, yet so merciful in the hope which it affords to amendment and penitence—as this little story? All sin and punishment, all penitence and forgiveness, find their best delineation in these few brief words. F. 12. Portion that falleth to me.** His claiming of his share in this technical, and almost legal, form is a delicate touch, characteristic of the entire alienation from all home affections which has already found place in his heart. Its spiritual significance is the expression of man's desire to be independent of God, to be a god to himself, and to lay out his life according to his own will and for his own pleasure. It is man growing weary of living upon God and upon his fulness, and desiring to take the ordering of his life into his own hands, and believing that he can be a fountain of blessedness to himself. All the subsequent sins of the younger son are included in this one, as in their germ—are but the unfolding of this, the sin of sins. . . . Directly opposed to "Give me my portion of goods," is our daily petition, "Give us this day our daily bread:" we therein acknowledge that we desire to wait continually upon God for the supply of our needs, both bodily and spiritual, that we recognize our dependence upon him as our true blessedness. . . . The father "divided unto them his living." It would have little profited to retain him at home against his will, who had already in heart become strange to that home: rather he will let the young man discover, by bitter experience, the folly of his request. T. He only intends to wander on, and get the most selfish enjoyment out of the world that it can be made to yield him. The one bad determining act was done where he set up his own headstrong will, took the means of self-gratification into his hands, and made the world's great sensual saloon his only home. But the prodigal was no extraordinary monster. Thousands of men are doing the same thing in kind every day, and doing it reputably enough. The one characteristic fact about him was that his back was turned to his father and his father's house. He sought another kingdom first. Precisely how far he had gone, or into what company, was not the first consideration; but which way he was moving. His father let him have his portion of the property, to try his unfilial and dismal experiment with; and so Providence lets irreligious and unchristian men have money and prosperity, for the same purpose, here. There is something unspeakably pathetic, sad, in the sight of a man, with a heart in his breast which God made, getting worldly success, nothing else, and working this experiment out. The badges of fortune that he hangs out about him, and about his family, are only the mockeries of his mistake. How he is to discover it is only a question of time; and this is partly the sadness of it. You look at him as one after another of his purposes is accomplished, as one token after another of his rising and flourishing condition is put forth in his establishment, and you wonder when and how it will be that the hunger in his heart is to discover itself to him. What will be the mysterious influence—whose infidelity, whose treachery, what disorder, what miscalculation—that will turn all these splendors into husks, and these apples into ashes? Fulness of the intellect, fulness of the estate, will not keep the sense of hunger away—and the sense of it is the reality of it. F. D. H. 14,15. Began to be in want. The sinner for a while may flatter himself that he is doing well at a distance from God; for the world has its attractions, and the flesh its pleasures; his affections are not all at once laid waste, nor the sources of natural delight drawn dry in an instant. The time arrives when he begins to discover that there is a great spiritual famine in the land where he has chosen to dwell—a famine of truth and love, and of all whereby the soul of man lives; he begins to discover his wretchedness and misery, and that it is an evil thing, and a bitter, to have forsaken God. To feed swine.** Our Lord gives us a hint here of that awful mystery in the downward progress of souls, by which he who begins by using the world to be a servant to minister to his pleasures, submits in the end to a reversing of the relationship between them, so that the world uses him as its drudge, and sin as its slave. T. 16. Husks.** The word so rendered signifies "little horns," with reference to the extended and slightly curved shape of the pods of the fruit of the carob-tree; that fruit being the article of food which the prodigal is represented as having eaten. The poorer class of people employ it as food in the countries where it is produced. It is not meant that the prodigal resorted to food absolutely fit only for swine; but that he who had been brought up in wealth and luxury was reduced to such want as to be obliged to subsist on the meanest fare. H. B. H.—In his hunger he was glad to fill himself with these husks, and did so, no man giving him any nobler sustenance. All he could hope from them was to dull his gnawing pain, for the food of beasts could not appease the cravings of man. Thus a deepest moral truth lies under the words—that none but God can satisfy the longing of an immortal soul—that as the heart was made for him, so he only can fill it. No man gave unto him. But though he has forsaken God, he has not been forsaken by him—not even in that far land; for the misery which has fallen upon him there is indeed an expression of God's anger against sin, but at the same time of his love to the sinner. He hedges up his way with thorns, he makes his sin bitter to him, that he may leave it. In this way God pursues his fugitives, summoning them back in that only language which now they will understand. 17. How full of consolation for man, how deeply significant are these words, "he came to himself!"—so that to come to one's self and to come to God are one and the same thing. T. 18. I will arise and go to my father. The change has come at last, and what a change!—couched in terms of such exquisite simplicity and power as if expressly framed for all heart-broken penitents. B.—Father. As that relation was one which his obedience has not constituted, so his disobedience could not annul. T. The change is wrought immediately within him. But what change? Not a change of place; he has done nothing yet but think and feel. Not a change in his outer man; neither time nor miracle has repaired the waste of dissipation in his body. Not a complete revolution yet, in all the courses and tendencies of his thoughts and desires—for it takes time to swing all these round, in the new-born man, so that they shall play spontaneously and harmoniously with the motions of the Spirit in the "new creature." But, a change in his relations to his father and his father's house. In that point, which is the decisive point in every character, the change is entire. Before, every longing impulse, passion, from intellectual curiosity down to fleshly lust, looked for its indulgence away from home, which means away from God; and obeying that choice, every step bore him literally away. Place is not essential at first; but destination is essential. Distance is not the principal thing; direction is. The first sign and proof of the inward transformation is in the character of the first thought and desire. Before, it was to get away from the father and forget him; now, it is to get home and abide with him. F. D. H. 20,21. Arose and came. The coming is the giving back of his love and loyalty and allegiance to his heavenly Father: the surrender to God of the sovereignty of his soul which, in the outset, he had determined to retain to himself. No doubt the Spirit is in it all; yet the soul gives itself up. The Spirit works for us by working in us, and through us; and his agency is not such as we can distinguish, apart from the common operation of our faculties. Hence, if we wish the Spirit to lead us to give back our souls to God, we must ourselves seek to make this spiritual surrender; and when we do, we shall discover that he has been beforehand with us, has already anticipated us with his quickening grace. W. T.—Had compassion, and ran. The evidences of the father's love are described with a touching minuteness; he does not wait for the poor returning wanderer till he has come all the way, but hastens forward to meet him; at once welcomes him with the kiss, which is more than evidence of affection, being the significant pledge of reconciliation and peace. And thus the Lord draws nigh to them that draw nigh unto him. It was he who put within them even the first weak notions toward good; and as his grace went before them, so also it meets them. And though there may be very much of ignorance in them still, far too slight a view of the evil of their sin, or of the holiness of God, yet he meets them with the evidences of his mercy; at once embraces them in the arms of his love, giving them at this first moment strong consolations. And this he does, because such they need at this moment, to assure them that notwithstanding their moral defilement and misery, they are accepted in Christ Jesus, to convince them of that which it is so hard for the sinner to believe, which it is indeed the great work of faith to realize, that God has put away their sin, and is pacified toward them. T. Admirably has one said here—"The coming out of the father to meet his son figuratively exhibits the sending of the Son." All the way to the cross of Calvary has God come, running to meet sinners. That cross is the meeting-place between the righteous God and the repentant prodigal. In Christ, the Father has come as far as he righteously can come to save sinners; and when the sinner is by faith in Christ also, then is he received by God. In Him; mark that! Till we are "in Him" God has not met us; but when we unite ourselves to him by simple trust, then we, too, are in Him, and the Father embraces us. W. T.—We behold all around us a world estranged from holiness; a world cast out from the bosom of its God. But not cast out forever. Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift; that bosom opens itself for our return. Nay, it comes throbbing down to meet us. The Divine clasps the Human, that the Human may make its way back to the Divine. Great indeed is this mystery of the gospel; but no greater than our need of it. R. D. H. I have sinned in thy sight. Note that it is after, and not before, the kiss of reconciliation, that this confession finds place; for the more the sinner knows and tastes of the love of God, the more he grieves ever to have sinned against that love. In Augustine's words, "He shows himself worthy, in that he confesses himself unworthy." He shows his repentance to have been divinely wrought, a work of the Spirit, in that he acknowledges his sin in its root, as being wrought against God. Thus David exclaims, "Against thee, thee only have I sinned;" while his offences had been against the second table. We may injure ourselves by our evil, we may wrong our neighbor, but, strictly speaking, we can sin only against God; and the recognition of our evil as first and chiefly an offence against him, is the essence of all true repentance, and distinguishes it broadly from many other kinds of sorrow which may follow on evil deeds. T. 22,23. But the father said. The son has not said all he purposed, not so much because the father's demonstrations had rekindled the filial, and swallowed up all servile, feeling, but because the father's heart is made to appear too full to listen to more in this strain. B.—Robe and ring. By this bringing out of the best robe, and putting it upon him, is especially signified that act of God which, on its negative side, is a release from condemnation, a causing the sinner's iniquity to pass from him; on its positive side, an imputation to him of the merits and righteousness of Christ. We have the gift of the Spirit indicated in the ring with which the returning wanderer is also adorned. These all being the ornaments, not of the slave, but of the free; all, therefore, speaking of restoration to his lost privileges, and being accounted tokens of the highest honor and favor. T.—Eat and be merry.** The feast indicates the joy of a forgiving God over a forgiven man, and the joy of a forgiven man in a forgiving God. Arnot. 24. Gazing through the parables, and across the sufferings of our Lord and Saviour, into the heart of God thus laid bare, what cause of adoring gratitude and wonder have we in the pledged readiness of God to meet and to pardon the self-accusing, self-destroyed sinner! The new and overwhelming view of our folly and demerit; the juster sense than was ever before attained of our own provocations, of the brightness of the divine holiness, of the excellent righteousness of the divine law, and of the glory of the salvation long spurned, seems now to make our offences hopeless of forgiveness. But look up, through the mist and storm of self-reproach, to the Father, as these parables paint him, and see, in the errand of the ransoming Son, and of the convincing, converting Spirit, the incredible and surpassing goodness of the Father. W. R. W.—God, his Father, instead of reproaching him, has met him half way, and interrupted his confessions by the voice of fatherly forgiveness—has taken him in, and made him a feast, and counts that a day of joy and gladness which has brought back, however soiled and scarred, a living soul from the grasp of hell and death. It is the very gospel of the sinner's Friend. V. 1-24. These three parables show that God is in earnest in seeking to save souls. The Son becomes incarnate, and offers himself a sacrifice for sin; the Spirit gives the truth, and secures its entrance into the soul; and the Father gladly welcomes the wanderer to his home again. There are no obstacles to man's salvation now on God's side. Everything done by him is in the interest of the sinner's return. His electing love, the enlightening agency of his Spirit, his sovereignty, are all to be interpreted in the light of this chapter, and are to be understood as all designed to help, and not to hinder, the sinner's restoration. W. T. 25. Since no strain could rise into sweeter and nobler tenderness—since death itself could reveal no lovelier or more consolatory lesson than it conveys to sinful man—to us it might seem that this is the true climax of the parable, and that here it would end as with the music of angel harps. And here it would have ended had the mystery of human malice and perversity been other than it is. But the conclusion of it (25-32) bears most directly on the very circumstances that called it forth. The angry murmur of the Pharisees and scribes had shown how utterly ignorant they were, in their cold, dead hardness and pride of heart, that, in the sight of God, the tear of one truly repentant sinner is transcendently dearer than the loveless, fruitless formalism of a thousand Pharisees. And therefore it was that Jesus added how the elder son came in, and was indignant at the noise of merriment, and was angry at that ready forgiveness, and reproached the tender heart of his father, and dragged up again in their worst form the forgiven sins of this brother whom he would not acknowledge, and showed all the narrow, unpardoning malignity of a heart which had mistaken external rectitude for holy love. Such self-righteous malice is an evil more inveterate—a sore more difficult to probe, and more hard to cure—than open disobedience and passionate sin. F. 28. Note here with what delicate touches the ungenial character of the man is indicated already. He does not go in; he does not take for granted that when his father makes a feast, there is matter worthy of making merry about. T.—29. That I might make merry with my friends—here lay his misapprehension. It was no entertainment for the gratification of the prodigal: it was a father's expression of the joy he felt at his recovery. B.— 32. Thy brother.** Not merely "my son," as thou hast ungraciously put it, but "thy brother," kinned to thee, and to whom therefore kindness is due. T.—Had not the younger child, of the same hearthstone and roof-tree, been dead? was he not alive again? Had he not been lost? was he not found? Was it natural, manly, filial, fraternal, thus to scowl on redemption from hell? What right had they (the Pharisees), as true sons and as true brothers, to remain thus strange to the joys of the loving and the holy Jehovah, and have thus no response, no ear, no tolerance for the anthems and gratulations of all his holy and heavenly worshippers, over the conversion and recovery of the estrayed and the self-destroyed, now brought happily and forever back? W. R. W. 25-32. The two parties standing in the foreground of the parabolic mirror are the scribes and Pharisees, as the elder son; the publicans and sinners, as the younger—all Jews, all belonging to God's (visible) family. The difficulties which have been found in the latter part of the parable, from the uncontradicted assertion in verse 29, if the Pharisees are meant, and the great pride and uncharitableness shown, if really righteous persons are meant, are considerably lightened by the consideration that the contradiction of that assertion would have been beside the purpose of the parable—that it was the very thing on which the Pharisees prided themselves—that, besides, it is sufficiently contradicted by the spirit and words of the elder son. He was breaking his father's commandment even when he made the assertion; and the making it is a part of his hypocrisy. A. The elder brother—the type or emblem of those against whom Jesus is defending himself—is brought prominently out: a full revelation of his distrustful, spiteful, envious spirit is made. If thirteen verses are given to the story of the younger brother, no fewer than eight are given to that of the elder brother. H.—This elder is now the lost son: he has lost all childlike, filial feeling: he betrays the hypocrite within. Stier.—He forgets for the moment all his family relationships. He will not call his parent father; he will not speak to him as to one to whom he had been indebted—rather he will charge him with injustice and unkindness; he will not call the once lost but now found one his brother—"this thy son" is the way that he speaks of him. Notwithstanding all his unfilial, unbrotherly, contemptuous arrogance, how kindly, how patiently is he dealt with; how mildly is the father's vindication made; how gently is the rebuke administered! Just as in the parable of the barren fig-tree and the great supper, the curtain drops as the scene should come upon the stage in which the final fortunes of those of whom we take the elder brother as the type should have been disclosed. H. ## Section 106.—The Unjust Steward. 1. AND he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man which had a stew- 2 ard; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stew- 3 ardship: for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; 4 to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stew- 5 ardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord's 6 debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down 7 quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and 8 write fourscore. And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. 9 And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; 10 that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is 11 unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, 12 who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in 13 that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. 14 And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided 15 him. And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men, is abomination in 16 the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the 17 kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. And it is easier for 18 heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail. Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband, committeth adultery. As the unjust steward secures the favor of the debtors by gratuities, in order to make sure of a home for himself when his office is taken away, so the children of light, by the right use of earthly possessions, are to make for themselves friends who will receive them into everlasting mansions when they are called away from this life. As the children of the world aim steadily at their selfish objects, and, with ever-watchful prudence, seize upon all the means necessary to secure them, so the children of light are to keep constantly before their eyes the relations of life to the divine kingdom, and to press everything into their service in its behalf. It is, indeed, a difficult task to combine the singleness of aim and simplicity of heart which the gospel requires with that shrewd sagacity which can bend all earthly things to its holy purposes. Yet if the aim to serve God's kingdom be the ruling power of one's life, and all the manifold interests of life are made subordinate thereto; if the holy decision be once made and never swerved from, it will bring forth, as one of its necessary fruits, this true sagacity and moral presence of mind. It is precisely this connection of prudence with a single, steadfast aim, though a bad one, that is illustrated in the conduct of the unjust steward. A bad man was necessarily chosen for the example; its very object was to show how much the children of light might do for the kingdom of God, if they would, in this respect, imitate the children of the world. N. WHAT makes these parables so impressive and pathetic is the fact that they incarnate spiritual truths and realities, show them to us in men of like passions with ourselves; and thus, not only bring them to the level of our thoughts, but make them a thousand-fold more attractive. If, instead of parables, we had fables of talking beasts and birds, their charm would be quite gone. 1-3. Wasted his master's goods. He had been negligent and luxurious; and so had fallen into that most common of all dishonesties which, because it breaks into no man's house, or steals no man's purse, has no notion that it is dishonest. I cannot dig, etc. Luxury had unfitted him for toil; alms would choke his pride. S. Coz. —Wanting everything, it is a double poverty to be able to do nothing, and to be willing to ask nothing. Q. 4-7. As steward to an Oriental landlord, it was his duty to admit and dismiss tenants; to value their land and its produce; to fix, collect, and sell their rents; for in the East, then, as often now, rents were paid in kind, not in money. If an olive-yard yielded a thousand measures of oil annually, a certain proportion, say a tenth, was paid to the landlord. In that case the rent was a hundred measures of oil. If a farm yielded a thousand bushels of wheat, the rent would be a hundred bushels. The steward had to fix the value of the crop, to see that the due proportion of it was paid as rent, to sell what produce was not needed for the supply of the household, and to pay in the cash received for it. S. Cox.—The steward here made use of this power to purchase the good-will and friendship of his lord's tenants. Whereas one had bound himself to pay yearly a hundred baths of oil, he let him have it at fifty: and whereas another was to pay a hundred homers of wheat yearly, he gave him his lease at eighty, and altered the writings accordingly. This interpretation of the parable may be gathered not only from the nature of the thing, but from the proper sense of the words debtor and bill; the one signifying any kind of debtor, and among the rest a tenant, and the other any kind of obligatory writing, and among the rest a lease. In this light the favor that was done to the tenants was substantial, and laid them under lasting obligations; whereas according to the common interpretation, the steward could not reap as much benefit from any requital the debtors would make him for the sums forgiven them, as these sums were worth to himself; and therefore he might rather have exacted them, and put them into his own pocket. M. Mark the audacity, yet ability, of the fraud. The steward had hitherto, through wasteful luxury perhaps, paid the landlord less than the estate produced. He has now to send in his accounts and vouchers, and run the risk of having his malversation exposed. But by falsifying his accounts, by lowering the rents, he keeps the revenue of the estate at the same low mark, and has a chance of persuading his master that the estate was never worth more, and escaping the worst risks of detection. On the other hand, these bills, or documents, which he handed to the tenants, and which would be at least the basis of any future estimate of rents, would, perhaps for years, secure them a considerable saving, and incline them to deal generously with him. By accepting his fraudulent valuations, too, they became parties to the fraud; henceforth, if their generosity failed, he had them in his power. So, by one stroke, he did much both to conceal his former delinquencies, and to secure a provision for his future necessities. S. Cox.—Everybody [in Palestine] trades, speculates, cheats. The shepherd-boy on the mountains talks of piastres from morning to night; so does the muleteer on the road, the farmer in the field, the artisan in his shop, the merchant in his magazine, the pasha in his palace, the kady in the hall of judgment, the mullah in the mosque, the monk, the priest, the bishop—money, money, money! the desire of every heart, the theme of every discourse, the end of every aim. Everything, too, is bought and sold. Each prayer has its price, every sin its tariff. Nothing for nothing, but everything for money—at the counter of the merchant, the divan of the judge, the gate of the palace, the altar of the priest. W. M. T. 8. It is the lord of the steward, he who has twice before in the parable been called by this name (verses 3, 5), that is here meant, and not our Lord, who does not speak directly in his own person till verse 9. T.—The steward is not only expressly called "unjust," but his injustice was branded by his dismissal. What his master praised was his wisdom and foresight, his subtle and ingenious management in securing to himself friends. He punished his dishonesty, but acknowledged his art and cunning. Newcome.—"Wisely" may not be the happiest word, since wisdom is never in Scripture disconnected from moral goodness. "Prudently" is the word that should have been chosen. "The children of this world are wiser in their generation" (in worldly matters) "than the children of light" in theirs, that is, in heavenly matters; the children of light being thus rebuked that they are not at half the pains to win heaven which the men of this world are to win earth—that they are less provident in heavenly things than those are in earthly—that the world is better served by its servants than God is by his. T.—The children of this world have, for the most part, a steady regard to the end which they pursue; they are wise in choosing proper means, and finding out the nearest way to compass their end; they are vigilant and active, constant and resolute in their pursuits. On the other hand, the children of light sometimes quite overlook and forget their great concern, have intervals of remissness and indifference, are easily deterred and unsettled, and drawn aside by every impediment and discouragement. Jortin. 9. The man's deed has two sides on which it may be contemplated—one, the side of its dishonesty, upon which it is most blameworthy; the other, the side of its prudence, its foresight. Our Lord distinguishes the steward's dishonesty from his prudence: the one can only have his rebuke—the other may be extolled for the purpose of provoking his people to a like prudence about things of far higher importance. T.—The point held up for imitation in the steward is not his injustice and extravagance, but the foresight with which he anticipated, and the skill with which he provided against, his ultimate difficulties. What can be clearer than the very simple deductions? This steward, having been a bad steward, showed diligence, steady purpose, and clear sagacity in his dishonest plan for extricating himself from the consequences of past dishonesty: be ye faithful stewards, and show the same diligence, purpose, sagacity, in subordinating the present and the temporal to the requirements of the eternal and the future. Just as the steward made himself friends of the tenants, who, when his income failed, received him into their houses, so do ye use your wealth—and time, opportunity, knowledge, is wealth, as well as money—for the good of your fellow-men; that when you leave earth poor and naked, these fellow-men may welcome you to treasures that never fail. The parables of the unjust judge and the importunate suitor show quite as clearly as this parable that the lesson conveyed by a parable may be enforced by principles of contrast, and may involve no commendation of those whose conduct conveys the lesson. F.—The heavenly habitations being termed “everlasting,” are thus tacitly contrasted with the temporary shelter which was all that the steward, the child of the present world, procured for himself with all his plotting and dishonesty. T.—The wisdom of this world’s children is only a wisdom for this world. Measure their conduct on the scale of their own generation, and you say, “These are capable, sagacious men.” But measure it on the scale of eternity, that is, on the scale of their whole life, and you add, “What fools and blind they are, after all!” Their thoughts and their gains perish with them. S. Cox. 9–11. Mammon, coming from the Hebrew, signifies whatever one is apt to confide in; and because men put their trust generally in external advantages, as riches, authority, honor, knowledge, the word mammon is used to denote everything of that kind, and particularly riches by way of eminence. By the mammon of unrighteousness he does not mean unrighteous or ill-gotten riches, but false and uncertain riches. So in verse 11, “unrighteous” means false, deceitful, as opposed to “true.” M. 10–13. The things earthly, by which men may show their faithfulness and fitness for a higher stewardship, are slightly called “that which is least,” as compared with spiritual gifts and graces which are “much,” they are termed “unrighteous,” or deceitful, “mammon,” as set against the heavenly riches of faith and love, which are “true” and durable “riches,” they are called “that which is another man’s,” by comparison with the heavenly goods, which when possessed are our own. T.—The faithfulness in the least is the same as the prudence and shrewdness just spoken of: in the case of the children of light they run into—“who is that faithful and wise steward?” That which is least, is the deceitful mammon; that which is another man’s, is the wealth of this present world, which is not the Christian’s own, nor his proper inheritance. The “much,” the “true riches,” is that which is your own, the true riches of God’s inheritance. The wealth of this world is “another’s,” forfeited by sin—only put into our hands to be rendered an account of. A.—Wealth, if bestowed, is the gift of a power from God that may be made glorious by right use. But a right use, a Christian use, will never be made of it till its true relations to other and higher forces of power in the Church are rightly understood. Riches pass “like a flower of the field,” in precious but brief trust, given not for pride or elation, but for Christian use. Character is power for eternity, has the beauty and life of its divine spirit on it. As productive of this power in the possessor or others, wealth turns to value. Used for selfish ends, it will bring shame and sorrow here and in the day of God. A Christian use glorifies God, and glorifies the soul; and prepares friends that, when the possessor shall “fail,” and go alone to “the eternal mansions,” “shall receive him to everlasting habitations.” Post. 10. Faithful in that which is least.** True faithfulness knows no distinction between great and small duties. From the highest point of view, that is, from God’s point of view, nothing is great, nothing small, as we measure it. The worth and the quality of an action depend on its motive only, and not at all on its prominence, or on any other of the accidents which we are always apt to adopt as the tests of the greatness of our deeds. The largeness of the consequences of anything that we do is no measure of the true greatness or true value of it. Nothing is small that a spirit can do. Nothing is small that can be done from a mighty motive. The least action of life can be as surely done from the loftiest motive, as the highest and the noblest. Faithfulness measures acts as God measures them. True conscientiousness deals with our duties as God deals with them. McLaren. Verse 13 then teaches that the only way of attaining to this faithfulness in little things, which qualifies us for what is great, is by a total renunciation of mammon, and by a surrender of the heart to God. C. B.—It was impossible—such was the recurrent burden of so many discourses—to be at once worldly and spiritual; to be at once the slave of God and the slave of mammon. F.—It is clear that this passage (placed out of its connection in M. 6 : 24) stands properly here, closely joined to the parable; and, indeed, requisite to set the idea of the parable in its proper light. The principal scope of the latter is to show the connection between wisdom and a steadfast aim of life; and this passage (verse 13) contains precisely the same thought; as it teaches that we cannot rightly use our earthly goods unless we make our choice decidedly between God and the world, and then, with undivided aim, refer all things to the one Master to whom we have consecrated our whole life. N. It has been said that the difference between one man and another is in their choice of their masters. Some master every human being has, and none are in so complete a bondage as those who fancy themselves to be absolutely independent. There are as many masters as there are interests, appetites, tastes, passions, and pursuits—of the body and the mind. There are people who scorn the idea of working at all, who yet work harder, put up with more humiliations, and part with more real liberty, for vanity, for fashion, for a certain standing in society or a certain amount of prosperity, or a sensual pleasure, than the serf that is bought and sold and whipped. So it appears that men are always choosing their masters. Every heart chooses. Every life is the result of that choice. We may go on choosing and choosing again, trying many masters. Every passion and appetite and interest may take its turn in playing master. We may fancy we make some progress, because we change, when really the selfish principle, the root of all the evil, is just as vital, and as bitter and poisonous in its vitality, as ever, under all the refinements of culture and manners. The external habits may become more orderly and decent; the tastes less gross; the results of labor more useful to others. But God is not mocked, and we must not deceive ourselves. Changing our masters is of no avail till we exchange every other for God. Hence it is that the Bible always treats the false masters of the soul as altogether but one: “He that is not for Christ is against him,” it says. So it presents but one alternative. “No man can serve two masters.” F. D. H. 14. Covetous . . . . derided him.** Sneered at him; their master-sin being too plainly struck at for them to relish. B.—16-18. That dispensation of which they were administrators was passing away; and a larger dispensation, in which they shall no more have the “key of knowledge” to admit or to exclude, is begun. Yet not that the law itself was to be abolished, for that would be eternal as the God that gave it (verse 17), being the expression of his perfections and holy will. How great then was their guilt, who, while they pretended to be guardians of its purity, were continually tampering with it in its most sacred enactments, as in those concerning marriage (verse 18). T. 17. Of the law to fail.** The Lord Jesus Christ, as the principal part of his prophetic function, came to confirm the whole law of God, by an ampler revelation, a more authoritative commission, a more perfect example, a more impressive evidence. Elsewhere he declares that heaven and earth shall pass away sooner than his word; while here he proclaims that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than one tittle of the law to fail. Thus he identifies his word and the Law of God, in a common authority and a common perpetuity. W. A. B. ## Section 107.—The Rich Man and Lazarus. 19. THERE was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared 20 sumptuously every day: and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid 21 at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich 22 man's table: moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man 23 also died, and was buried: and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and 24 seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried, and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in 25 water, and cool my tongue: for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil 26 things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you, 27 cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence. Then he said, I pray 28 thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. 29, 30 Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will re- 31 pent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. THIS impressive parable, one of the most awful sayings of our Lord, was but a momentary unveiling of the spirit-world and the state of the departed; yet it has left for all after-ages the impress of these momentous truths. Directly consequent upon death is a state of consciousness, in which the soul remembers the past, and knows its own condition and its prospects. There are two opposite states—the one of happiness, the other of misery—to which men are allotted according to their character and conduct in this life. These two conditions are immensely and irrevocably separated. The blessed can do nothing for the alleviation of the miserable; nor can the lost ever hope to reach the abode of the saved. The parable does not propose to remedy in the hereafter any inequalities of condition in the present state, but to compensate for losses here in the body by the superlative gain to the soul that lives unto God. How mean, how wretched, the lot of one who revels in sensual abundance, but has nothing for the soul! J. P. T. He who believes not in an invisible world of righteousness and truth and spiritual joy, must of necessity place his hope in the things which he sees, will come to trust in them, and to look to them for his blessedness, for he knows of no other: whether he hoards or squanders, in either case he sets his hope on the world. This was the sin of Dives and the origin of all his other sins, that he believed not in this higher world, which is apprehended by faith—a world not merely beyond the grave—but a kingdom of God, a kingdom of truth and love existing even in the midst of this cruel and wicked world; and his punishment was, that he made the discovery of the existence of that truer state of things only to his own unutterable and irremediable loss. T. 19. The extreme costliness of the purple dye of antiquity is well known. And the byssus, rightly translated “fine linen,” was hardly in less price or esteem, so that he plainly sought out for himself all that was costliest and rarest. This was his ordinary apparel; so his sumptuous fare was his every day’s entertainment. And what was his crime? A lazar lying at his gate, and lying unrelieved. Nor is he even accused of being, as he is sometimes called, “a glutton.” On the contrary, he is one of whom none could say worse than that he loved to surround himself with all things pleasurable. His name Christ has not told us, but the poor man’s only. “Seems he not to you,” asks Augustine, “to have been reading from that book where he found the name of the poor man written, but found not the name of the rich; for that book is the book of life?” T. 20,21. Was laid at his gate.** Three circumstances aggravate the rich man’s uncharitableness; the object was presented to him at his very gate; such an object as would have moved any one’s pity, a fellow-creature reduced to extreme misery and necessity; and a very little relief would have contented him. Tillotson.—Man neglected his fellow-man, beheld his sufferings with a careless eye and an unmoved heart, yet was it a misery which even the beasts had pity on, so that what little they could they did to alleviate his sufferings. We have in fact in the two descriptions stroke for stroke. Dives is covered with purple and fine linen; Lazarus is covered only with sores. The one fares sumptuously, the other desires to be fed with crumbs. The one has numerous attendants to wait on his least caprice, the other only dogs to tend his sores. T.—Lazarus lay at the rich man’s gate, neglected by all, and receiving kindness only from the brutes. He is depicted, not merely as poor and afflicted, but likewise as very patient. He neither upbraided the rich man for his treatment, nor murmured against God. We must notice this especially, or we shall be led into the erroneous belief that the poor man, for the sake of his poverty, and apart from the disposition with which he endures it, has a claim upon heaven, or that the rich, on account of his riches, and apart from the use he makes of them, will have hell for his reversion. C. B. 22. The beggar died. He died, and how mighty the change! he whom but a moment before no man served, whom none but the dogs cared for, is tended of angels, is carried by them into the blessedness prepared for him. Into Abraham’s bosom. The Jews spoke of all true believers as going to Abraham. To be in Abraham’s bosom was equivalent to being in “the garden of Eden.” It is the “Paradise” of Luke 23 : 43, the place of the souls under the altar (Rev. 6 : 9); it is, as some distinguish it, blessedness, but not glory. Hither, to this haven of rest and consolation, Lazarus, after all his troubles, was safely borne. The rich man was buried.** There is a sublime irony in this mention of his burial, connected as it is with what is immediately to follow. No doubt we are meant to infer that he had a funeral according to the most approved pomp of the world; this splendid carrying to the grave is for him what the carrying into Abraham’s bosom was for Lazarus—it is his equivalent, which, however, profits him but little where now he is. T.—Here, too, we must not understand the meaning to be, that temporal welfare of itself excludes from heaven, and that temporal misery, on the other hand, is sufficient to constitute a right of admission. The teaching of the parable is, that such a frame of mind as seeks mere temporal pleasure leads to hell; whereas that which inclines obediently to the path, often rough and painful, of God's appointment, conducts eventually to his rest. C. B. 23. In hell.** Hades in the Greek signifies an invisible place, and is used to express the place of separate souls at large, as well of the good as the bad. And in this sense is hades in the Greek (and where translated hell in the English) to be taken; i. e., for the place of souls in general, where they wait for their last and final state at the resurrection hereafter. It is true indeed, the parable shows that the rich man was placed among the unhappy souls: but this appears not from his being in hades, but from his being in torments: for even Lazarus in Abraham's bosom was also in hades, only in a different state or region of it: Lazarus in a state of rest and repose, the rich man in a state of anguish and despair; Lazarus even in immediate and present bliss, the rich man even in present and immediate torments. Wheatly. 24. I am tormented in this flame.** The torments of the wicked are usually described to us in Scripture by one of the sharpest and quickest pains with which human nature is acquainted: that of burning. All that we need infer from these descriptions is, that the sufferings of wicked men will be as great and severe, and probably greater than can possibly be described to us by anything we know: for who knows the power of God's anger, and the utmost of what Omnipotent justice can do? Tillotson.—And he cried, Father Abraham. Still clinging to the hope that his descent from Abraham, his fleshly privileges, will profit him something. Nor does Abraham deny the relationship, for he addresses him not as a stranger but a son, yet thus, in the very allowance of the relationship, coupled with the refusal of the request, rings the knell of his latest hope. In this prayer of the rich man we have the only invocation of saints in Scripture, and certainly not a very encouraging one. T. 25. The key to the parable. This rich man, instead of making friends of his riches, using them for God's glory as a faithful and wise steward, has just taken them as his own, until, called to give account, he is found guilty and condemned. D. K. D.—Thy lifetime. The wisdom of God has judged one world enough for one man, though it gives him his choice of two. Receivedst thy good things. His they are called emphatically, his by peculiar choice. They were the things he chiefly valued, and pitched upon as the most likely to make him happy. Having enjoyed them, and actually compassed the utmost of his desires, his happiness was at an end. He had had his option; and there was no further provision for him in the other world: nor indeed was it possible that he should find any, where he had laid up none. Only where men sow may they expect to reap; it being infinitely absurd to bury their seed in the earth, and to expect a crop in heaven. R. S. From this and other parts of the parable it is plain, that our Lord's principal view in this whole discourse was to warn men of the danger of that total intentness on present pleasure, which is not so much a particular vice, as the foundation of all vices. It is this which makes men regardless of futurity, and without God in all their thoughts. It is this which exposes men to temptations of every kind, and makes them continually sacrifice the interests of truth and virtue whenever they come in competition with the good things of this life, on which alone their heart is set. S. C.—Wealth is to be regarded not as of necessity excluding humility, but only as a great hinderance and temptation; for the very Abraham into whose bosom Lazarus was carried, was one who had been on earth rich in flocks, and in herds, and in all possessions. . . . But the receiving of this world's good without any portion of its evil, the course of an unbroken prosperity, is ever an augury of ultimate reprobation. Nor is the reason of this hard to perceive; for that dross which has need to be purged out can only be purged out by the fire of pain and affliction. Thus Dives, to his endless loss, had in this life received good things without any share of evil. But now all is changed: Lazarus, who received in this mortal life evil things, is comforted, but Dives is tormented. 26. A great gulf fixed.** Not a mere handbreadth only, as the Jews fabled, but "a great gulf," and not merely there, but "fixed" there—an eternal separation, a yawning chasm, too deep to be filled up, too wide to be bridged over. Christ moves in that world as with a perfect familiarity, speaking without astonishment as of things which he knows. T. 29. Moses and the prophets.** A remarkable testimony from Christ himself that the canon of the Old Testament is what it was believed by the Jews to be, the word of God, speaking by Moses and the prophets; and that it had been preserved by the Jewish Church to our Lord's age (whence it has come down to our own) in purity and integrity; that it is genuine, authentic, and divine; and that they who will not receive it as such are in so hardened a state that they would not be persuaded though one rose from the dead. It is here intimated also, that men come into the "torment" of Hades, as Dives did, because they will not hear the Old Testament Scriptures. What, then, will be the condition of those who refuse to hear Christ and the apostles speaking in the New? W. 31. Though one rose from the dead.** The unbelieving Jews themselves became a signal instance of this; who withstood all the miracles of Christ, even that greatest of all, his resurrection from the dead, no less than they had done the ordinary preaching of the prophets. S. C.—Where unbelief proceeds, as frequently it does, from a vitiated mind, which hates to be reformed; which rejects the evidence because it will not admit the doctrine; in such a case, all proofs will be alike, and it will be lost labor to afford new evidence, since it is not the want of evidence that causes the unbelief. Bp. Sherlock. 27-31. What may be called the epilogue of this parable contains a lesson more solemn still—namely, that the means of grace which God's mercy accords to every living soul are ample for its enlightenment and deliverance; that if these be neglected, no miracle will be wrought to startle the absorbed soul from its worldly interests. "We are saved," says Bengel, "by faithful hearing, not by ghosts." F.—The rich man's unbelief shows itself again in his supposing that his brethren would give heed to a ghost, while they refused to give heed to the sure word of God—to Moses and the prophets. For it is of the very essence of unbelief, that it gives that credence to portents and prodigies which it refuses to the truth of God. We have here reappearing in hell that "Show us a sign that we may believe," which was so often on the lips of the Pharisees on earth. They believe, or at least think they would believe, signs and portents, but will not believe God's word. Dives had said, "they will repent;" Abraham replies, they will not even "be per- suaded." Dives had said, "if one went unto them from the dead;" Abraham, with a prophetic glance at the world's unbelief in a far greater matter, makes answer, "No, not if one rose from the dead." This reply of Abraham's is most weighty for the insight it gives us into the nature of faith, that it is an act of the will and the affections no less than of the understanding, something therefore which cannot be forced by signs and miracles: for where there is a determined alienation of the will and affections from the truth, no impression which these miracles make, even if allowed to be genuine, will be more than transitory. When the historical Lazarus was raised from the dead, the Pharisees were not by this miracle persuaded of the divine mission and authority of Christ, and yet they did not deny the reality of the miracle itself. A greater, too, than Lazarus has returned from the world of spirits; nay, has arisen from the dead; and yet what multitudes who acknowledge the fact, and acknowledge it as setting a seal to all his claims to be heard and obeyed, yet are not brought by this acknowledgment at all nearer to repentance and the obedience of faith! It is very observable how exactly in the spirit of Abraham's refusal to send Lazarus the Lord himself acted after his resurrection. He showed himself, not to the Pharisees, not to his enemies, "not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God" (Acts 10: 41), to his own disciples alone. T. ## Section 108.—A Forgiving, Believing, and Serving Spirit. Perea. 1. THEN said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe 2 unto him through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these 3 little ones. Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; 4 and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and 5 seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him. And 6 the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith. And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you. 7 But which of you having a servant plowing, or feeding cattle, will say unto him by 8 and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I 9 have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank 10 that servant, because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do. THERE is a weak faith, like a grain of mustard seed, and there is a strong faith, like a great tree of the forest. From first to last that which waters and refreshes inward faith is the river of divine truth, constantly kept in its channel and directed to the roots by the Holy Spirit. Truth is at once means and object. Every proposition of the word which is taken up by genuine faith becomes a source of new strength. Some of these are never whispered out of doors, being communications from the Heavenly Spouse within the curtains of the heart's tabernacle, concerning the person and grace of Jesus. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant." Every one of these blessed experiences, often little flowers of heaven, will be found, on examination, to have proceeded from some bud of distinct revealed truth. The more, therefore, truth is added, the more does faith advance. And, as faith is an immediate product of the life of God in the soul, whatever adds to the vigor of that life—that is, whatever increases inward piety—gives strength to the habitude of faith. All the means of grace, therefore, and all that elevates, purifies, and comforts the soul, go to help forward the disposition to believe. J. W. A. 5. Though we cannot be more or less dead, we may be more or less alive. We may believe more or less, we may know more or less, feel more or less, enjoy more or less, be more or less in health. There is progression in the life of faith, as in every life; and this progress is even the condition and the sign of life. Faith may increase in certainty, clearness, vivacity, and energy. It was this that the disciples asked of Jesus when they said, "Increase our faith." A. V.—Our Lord had just enforced two duties, requiring much self-denial, watchfulness, and prayer. The one was the duty of walking so circumspectly as to give no cause of offence (verses 1, 2); the other was the duty of frank forgiveness (verses 3, 4). The apostles began to see that they were not to advance by a royal road to ease and distinction as followers of the Messiah; but that their first grand duty was to subdue themselves, and this was a warfare which could be conducted only by faith in him who alone could give them the victory. 6. If ye had faith, ye might. As if He had said: You have asked aright. The things of which I have spoken are indeed contrary to all your natural feelings, and seem in themselves almost impossible to acquire; but a living faith in me will so "strengthen" you as to enable you to "do all things." D. K. D.—This sycamine tree. It is easily propagated merely by planting a stout branch in the ground, and watering it until it has struck roots into the soil. This it does with great rapidity, and to a vast depth. It was with reference to this latter fact that our blessed Lord selected it to illustrate the power of faith. Look at this tree—its ample girth, its wide-spread arms branching off from the parent trunk only a few feet from the ground; then examine its enormous roots, as thick, as numerous, and as wide spread into the deep soil below as the branches extend into the air above—the very type of invincible steadfastness. What power can pluck up such a tree? Heaven's thunderbolt may strike it down, the tornado may tear it to fragments, but only miraculous power can fairly pluck it up by the roots. W. M. T. 7-9. The connection here is: But when your faith has been so increased as both to avoid and forgive offences, and do things impossible to all but faith, be not puffed up as though you had laid the Lord under obligation to you. 10. Unprofitable: i. e., "We have not, as his servants, profited or benefited God at all." B.—The apostles, acting simply as servants to Christ, were to call themselves unprofitable servants after they had fulfilled his express commands; they lacked as yet the all-prevailing love that would of itself, without such commands, impel them to every service which his cause required. This disposition obtained, they would be no more servants, but friends; and all disputes for rank, all longing for rewards, would fall away. They would then never think that they had done enough for the Master. To this spirit, the essence of genuine Christianity, they were to be exalted. N. Needful is it that in hours when we are tempted to draw back, to shun and to evade our tasks, we should feel that a necessity is laid upon us; that while we do them willingly, we do them also the most acceptably: yet, whether willingly or not, they must be done; that we are servants who are not to question our Master's will, but to do it. Gratitude and love, indeed, must ever be the chief and prominent motive to obedience, and so long as they prove sufficient, the others will not appear; but it is well for us that behind these there should be other sterner summonses to duty, ready to make themselves felt when our corruption causes them to be needed. Well for us, too, that while the Lord is pleased to accept our work and reward it, we should ever be reminded that it is an act of his free grace, of his unmerited mercy, by which our relation to him has been put upon this footing. T.—Only from the merits of Christ may we expect our imperfections to be made up, our omissions overlooked, and our sins forgiven. For in the best of our works all these will meet: and therefore all our confidence and hope must be placed in the mediation and intercession of Christ. Wheatly. # Section 109.—Destruction of the Jewish State. Perea. 20. And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. 21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for behold, the kingdom of God is within you. 22 And he said unto the disciples, The days will come, when ye shall desire to see one 23 of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. And they shall say to you, See 24 here! or, See there! Go not after them, nor follow them. For as the lightning that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; 25 so shall also the Son of man be in his day. But first must he suffer many things, and 26 be rejected of this generation. And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in 27 the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and 28 destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they 29 drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. 30, 31 Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to 32 take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. Remember 33 Lot's wife. Whosoever shall seek to save his life, shall lose it; and whosoever shall 34 lose his life, shall preserve it. I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one 35 bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding 36 together; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two men shall be in the field; 37 the one shall be taken, and the other left. And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together. As the destruction of the Jewish polity and worship was, in reference to the past, the great climax of temporal judgment on those who had rejected God's ancient covenants, so, in relation to the future, it forms the great type of the last judgment. Each of God's three dispensations toward the disobedient is closed by a catastrophe; and all three are included in our Lord's discourse: the reckless security of those who perished in the flood being a pattern of the folly both of the Jews and of the finally impenitent. S. 20,21. He means to refute the Pharisaic notion that the kingdom of God must make its approach with pomp and circumstance, and to demonstrate at the same time that it is formed and reveals itself from within. C. B.—It was, in its very nature, to come "without observation;" unmarked, for it was not political like earthly kingdoms, but the invisible reign of truth in the souls of men—a kingdom not of this world. G.—His answer indicated that their point of view was wholly mistaken. The coming of the kingdom of God could not be ascertained by the kind of narrow and curious watching to which they were addicted. False Christs and mistaken rabbis might cry, "Lo here!" and "Lo there!" but that kingdom was already in the midst of them; nay, if they had the will and the wisdom to recognize and to embrace it, that kingdom was within them. F.—As it should be rendered, "in the midst of you." He in whom the kingdom had its origin stood with them; and the life of loyalty to God, the characteristic of the kingdom, was in him and in the souls of the faithful men whom he had drawn into fellowship with his own Spirit. G. P. F.—In his gospel and his Spirit, Christ is moving through the great inner world which men too much neglect—the world of souls; and there in the solitude of the heart, alone with him, it must be ours to seek and find. Ker. 22. One of the days. Himself again among them but for one day. This is said to guard against the mistake of supposing that his visible presence would accompany the manifestation and establishment of his kingdom. 24.** When the whole polity of the Jews, civil and ecclesiastical alike, was broken up at once, and its continuance rendered impossible, by the destruction of Jerusalem, it became as manifest to all as the lightning of heaven that the kingdom of God had ceased to exist in its old, and had entered on a new and perfectly different, form. So it may be again, ere its final and greatest change at the personal coming of Christ, of which the words in their highest sense are alone true. 26-30. All the ordinary occupations and enjoyments of life. Though the antediluvian world and the cities of the plain were awfully wicked, it is not their wickedness, but their worldliness, their unbelief and indifference to the future, their unpreparedness, that is here held up as a warning. These recorded events of Old Testament history—denied or explained away nowadays by not a few—are referred to here as facts. B. 30. When the Son of man is revealed.** When he will visibly display his power in the destruction of this sinful people. The Jewish nation was as careless and confident as if there was not the least danger; indulging themselves in all kinds of luxury and extravagance, till they saw ruin surrounding them, from which they found it as impossible to escape as it was for the sinners of the old world, or the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorra. 31. The Jewish houses were built with a flat roof, and had stairs on the outside to go down from the top, the readiest way of escape. D. 32. Lot's wife.** Many centuries after the fact, he directed that it should be kept in memory. These dark monuments have obtained a place in the word that liveth and abideth forever, that their warning may be available in all nations and all times. Arnot. —34. Two in one bed. Realized before the destruction of Jerusalem, when the Christians found themselves forced by their Lord's directions at once and forever away from their old associates: but most of all when the second coming of Christ shall burst upon the world. B.—37. A common proverb, applied here to the Jews, pursued by the vengeance of God, the Roman eagles flying upon them as a helpless prey. D.—Josephus asserts that there was no part of Judea which did not partake of the calamities of the capital city. The Romans pursued and took and slew the Jews everywhere; fulfilling again that prediction, "Where-soever the carcass is (the Jewish nation, morally and judicially dead), there will the eagles (the Romans, whose ensign was an eagle) be gathered together." G. T. 24-37. Is not all history one long, vast commentary on these great prophecies? In the destinies of nations and of races, has not the Christ returned again and again to deliver or to judge? F. ## Section 110.—The Importunate Widow. The Pharisee and Publican. Perea. 1. 1 AND he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and 2. 2 not to faint; saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither re- 3. 3 garded man. And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, 4. 4 Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while: but afterward he said 5. 5 within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; yet because this widow 6. 6 troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the 7. 7 Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, 8. 8 which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? 9. 9 And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were 10. 10 righteous, and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a 11. 11 Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. At the hour of prayer in the temple courts, one stands forth for all to see, and speaks aloud—and what is his prayer? It is a thanksgiving, not a confession: a thanksgiving for his own virtues: a boastful self-vaunting, and comparison of his good with others' evil! Afar off, as unworthy to draw near where God is, there stands a sinner—one whom men point at as an outcast from Israel—and he dares not to lift so much as his eyes toward heaven, but can only smite upon his breast, and say, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" The pent-up sins of years are gathered into one single utterance, and he plunges in, as all-defiled and all-guilty, into the fountain opened in the blood of Jesus for sin and for uncleanness. And it is he—it is the poor sinner—who goes down to his house justified! The other came and returns, self-complacent, self-satisfied, self-admiring: but this one, the altogether sinner, has upon him the hand of blessing, has within him the answer of the divine forgiveness. This is the gospel of the sinner. He who thus spake is of right the sinner's Friend. V. While the Pharisee enumerates his merits, his abstinences and proprieties and almsgivings, the publican does not pretend to enumerate his offences. Now, goodness that can be measured and counted off is not enough. Goodness is a principle, and that is measureless. Christ would show this publican as knowing that down underneath all particular sins there lies the one worse sin of a wrong soul, from which all the little ones spring and take their energy of mischief—the parent-sin of Satanic self-love that brings the whole vile progeny forth. It is not so much sins as sin that we have to confess and deplore. Some acts of evil will ever remain to be renounced. But the state of sin, nothing but a Christian renewal or a regeneration from the Spirit of God in the cross of Christ will change that. A mere indifference to the right, a mere unfilial forgetfulness of God, the mere coldness of disregard to Christ's compassion, makes up that godless condition. The Father asks a filial spirit in his child; the Saviour asks a disciple's affection. We cannot veil that deep gulf which stretches always between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not with any brilliant mist of kindly instincts or graceful accomplishments. This is life eternal—to know thee and thy Christ! "Thou shalt love thy God." F. D. H. 1. Men ought always to pray. That men must needs pray always, if they would escape the things coming on the earth. It is not so much the duty or suitableness, as the absolute necessity, of instant persevering prayer that is here declared. T.—To pray always, and to speak but little, is one of the paradoxes of the gospel: this duty requires little of the tongue, much of the heart. A man may be justly said always to pray, when he has God always present to his mind, and always desires him; whether he do it standing or kneeling, in rest or labor, in grief or joy. Q.—It becomes us to be earnest and fervent, to testify our confidence in his goodness, and the deep sense of our own weakness, wants, and unworthiness; also to show that we set a true value on his blessings, as worth all the importunity we can use: and in this sense the success of our prayers may be truly said to depend on our importunity; not that God is to be moved to grant our requests, but that it becomes us to have these dispositions, in order that we may be more fitly qualified for the grace and mercy which God is willing to bestow upon us. Tillotson. 7. Part of the teaching here is that God often seems to man to be acting as this unjust judge, to be turning a deaf ear to the prayer of his people. For even the elect are impatient under suffering and affliction. The parable is intended to meet this very difficulty and temptation, to which the faithful, suffering long under sore earthly trials, are exposed. If the unjust judge acts thus, shall not the just God avenge his own elect? If a bad man will yield to the mere force of the importunity which he hates, how much more certainly will a righteous God be prevailed on by the faithful prayer which he loves! . . . Prayer is the calling in of a mightier to aid, when the danger is felt to be urgent lest the enemy should prevail. And the words in which the need finds utterance, "Avenge me of mine adversary," wonderfully express the relation in which we stand to the evil of which we are conscious as mightily working within us: that it is not our very self, but an alien power, holding us in bondage—not the very “I,” as Paul (Rom. 7) is so careful to assert, for then redemption would be impossible, but sin which, having introduced itself, is now seeking to keep us in bondage. And this is the same petition that we make daily, when we say “Deliver us from evil,” or rather, “from the Evil One”—from him who is the source and centre of all evil. T.—To long for a revelation of divine justice before all the world, and for the time when he shall judge between the good and the bad, is not at all inconsistent with prayer for the salvation of the enemies of his kingdom, as enjoined both by Christ’s teaching and example. The combination of the two is a thoroughly Christian one. N. 8. He may be slack in avenging his people as “men count slackness,” as compared with their impatience; but “he will avenge them speedily,” not leaving them a moment longer in the fire of affliction than is needful. T.—When. The Saviour finally put the question whether, under the delays of divine justice, all that believed on him would hold fast their integrity; whether the Son of man would find faith remaining in them all when he should reveal himself a second time. N.—The point is not that there will be then few faithful or none, but that the faith even of the faithful will be almost failing: the distress will be so urgent, the darkness so thick, at the moment when at last the Son of man shall come forth for salvation and deliverance, that even the hearts of his elect people will have begun to fail them for fear. All help will seem utterly to have failed, so that the Son of man at his coming will hardly find that faith, the faith which does not faint in prayer, with allusion to verse 1—the faith which hopes against hope, and believes that light will break forth even when the darkness is thickest, and believing this continues to pray—he will hardly find that faith upon earth. The verse stands parallel to, and may be explained by, those other words of our Lord’s: “For the elect’s sake,” lest their faith also should fail, and so no flesh should be saved, “those days shall be shortened.” T.—From this we learn—1. That the primary and historical reference of this parable is to the Church in its widowed, oppressed, defenceless condition during the present absence of her Lord in the heavens; 2. That in these circumstances importunate, persevering prayer for deliverance is the Church’s fitting exercise; 3. That notwithstanding every encouragement to this, so long will the answer be delayed, while the need of relief continues the same, that all hope of deliverance will have nearly died out, and “faith” of Christ’s coming scarcely be found. But the application of the parable to prayer in general is so obvious as to have nearly hidden its more direct reference, and so precious that one cannot allow it to disappear in any public and historical interpretation. B. 10. The Pharisee, a specimen of that class of men, who, satisfying themselves with a certain external freedom from gross offences, have remained ignorant of the plague of their own hearts, and have never learned to say, Deliver me from mine adversary, who do not even know that they have an adversary; the other, the representative of all who, though they have much and grievously transgressed, are now feeling the burden of their sins, and heartily mourning them, who also are yearning after one who shall deliver them from those sins, and from the curse of God’s broken law. 11. Stood and prayed. To pray standing was the manner of the Jews (1 K. 8 : 22; 2 Chr. 6 : 12; M. 6 : 5; Mk. 11 : 25); though in moments of a more than ordinary humiliation or emotion of heart, they changed this attitude for one of kneeling or prostration (Dan. 6 : 10; 2 Chr. 6 : 13; Acts 9 : 40, 20 : 36, 21 : 5). Not as other men. Dividing the whole of mankind into two classes, his arrogance reaches even to such a pitch as this; he in one class, all the world besides in the other. And as he can think nothing too good for himself, so nothing too bad of them. 12. He would lay claim to doing more than might strictly be demanded of him; he would bring in God as his debtor. Acknowledgment of wants or confession of sin, there is none in his prayer, if prayer it can be called, which is without these. T.—Besides doing all his duty, he did works of supererogation; while sins to confess and spiritual wants to be supplied he seems to have felt none. What a picture of the Pharisaic character and religion! B. 13. In the publican we are to see one who at this very moment was passing into the kingdom of God, who had come in the fulness of a contrite heart, to make, as I think evidently is meant, the first deep confession of his sins past which had ever found utterance from his lips. How horrible a thing does the Pharisee’s untimely scorn appear, when we think of it, mingling as a harshest discord with the songs of angels, which at this very moment hailed the lost which was found, the sinner that repented! He “smote upon his breast,” an outward sign of inward grief or self-accusation, as one judging himself that he might not be judged of the Lord; at the same time “saying, God be merciful to me a sinner,” or “to me, the sinful one;” as the other had singled himself out as the holy one. T.—He smites upon his breast, as conscious of the pollutions which lodged there; alleges nothing in his own behalf; feels no refuge and seeks no comfort, except in the mercy of a forgiving God; brings no motive to incline that mercy but a sorrowful sense of his own unworthiness, and a humble hope in God's unbounded goodness. He casts himself entirely on this saving, this only supporting attribute. Stanhope. — Be merciful. Be propitiated, a very unusual word in such a sense, only once else used in the N. T., in the sense of "making reconciliation" by sacrifice. B. This expression of conscious unworthiness is simply the irrepressible confession of sincerity, pressed out of the soul by a longing for forgiveness —short, because so terribly sincere. The straitened spirit in its anguish has no room for particulars. The very sound of the words, the downcast look, the withdrawn position, the agonized gesture, as well as the character Christ puts upon these things, betray the reality of his repentance. The thing they expose to us is human sin—its self-conviction, its wretchedness, its way of relief. F. D. H.—This unearthly experience has ever had one beginning. Its first step has ever been one of self-abasement. There may be different degrees and intensities of feeling; but in every case there has been something of the emotion or state of soul that called out the prayer of the publican, "God be merciful to me, the sinner," as though all else was lost sight of in the sense of the soul's distance from God and holiness. He who has known nothing of this has never entered upon the Christian life. He has no right to speak about it; and nothing that he says about the soul, its culture, and its aspirations, its soaring or its expanding, its progress, its destiny, its "sweetness and light," is entitled to the least consideration. T. L. 14. Every one that exalteth himself will be abased by his own vanity, which blinds those whom it infects, and draws them into many errors and indiscretions pernicious to their worldly interests. He will be abased by men, who seldom miss any fair opportunity of humbling vainglorious persons. He will be abased in the sight of God, who abhors the proud; for pride of every kind is a direct offence against God: it is to forget, or practically to deny, that we receive everything from him. Jortin. —He that humbleth himself shall be exalted. This great law of the kingdom of God is, in the teaching of Christ, inscribed over its entrance-gate. And in many different forms is it repeated. To be self-emptied, or "poor in spirit," is the fundamental and indispensable preparation for the reception of the "grace which bringeth salvation:" wherever this exists, the "mourning" for it which precedes "comfort," and the earnest "hungerings and thirstings after righteousness" which are rewarded by the "fulness" of it, will, as we see here, be surely found. Such therefore, and such only, are the justified ones. B. He "went down to his house justified," with a sweet sense of a received forgiveness shed abroad upon his heart; for God's justification of the sinner is indeed a transitive act, and passes from him to its object. The other meanwhile went down from the temple, his prayer being finished, with the same cold, dead heart with which he had gone up. The whole parable fitly concludes with that weighty saying, which had already formed part of another of the Lord's discourses, and which, indeed, from the all-important truth which it contains, might well have been often uttered: "For every one that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted;" words which here form a beautiful transition to the bringing of the children to Jesus, the incident next recorded by this Evangelist. T. ## Section 111.—Divorce and Marriage. Little Children blessed. Perea. 11. And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately 12 appear. He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for 13 himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called his ten servants, and delivered them 14 ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come. But his citizens hated him, and 15 sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us. And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he 16 might know how much every man had gained by trading. Then came the first, saying, 17. Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds. And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities. 18, 19 ies. And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds. And he 20 said likewise to him, Be thou also over five cities. And another came, saying, Lord, 21 behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin: for I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reap- 22 est that thou didst not sow. And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up 23 that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow: wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with 24 usury? And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to 25, 26 him that hath ten pounds. (And they said unto him, Lord, he hath ten pounds.) For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath 27 not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him. But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me. 28. And when he had thus spoken, he went before, ascending up to Jerusalem. THE kingdom of God is a kingdom where all the property belongs to him, and where he is ever at perfect liberty to dispose of everything as he will. And this arrangement is not arbitrary, but gracious. He disposes of all things with reference to the happiness of all. Men insist upon being sovereigns of what has been committed to them. They hold it for themselves and not for him. Then when they lose it they are without consolation. What is worse than their loss, they see a tyrant upon the throne of the universe. As far as their own misery is concerned, this tyranny is a real one. Viewing God as a tyrant, and being ever in bitter conflict with his government, it is the same to them, in respect to their wretchedness, as though God were a tyrant. What torment, what an antepast of future woe do men give unto themselves, when they malign God in their thoughts! On the other hand, they who look upon all their possessions as strictly speaking the possessions of God, and who cherish a perpetual readiness to yield everything at his command, sustain no losses. They do not perhaps get broken into the habit of parting company with loved and familiar things without a pang; but with the pang there is the consolation of knowing that God has taken his own for some sufficient reason, and that a God of boundless goodness still sits upon the throne of the universe. G. B. 11. In the whole bearing of Jesus in and about Jericho there was much to indicate that some great crisis in his history was at hand. It does not surprise us to be told of the disciples' believing "that the kingdom of God should immediately appear." It was because he knew that they were so misconceiving the future that lay before him and them, that Jesus addressed to them the parable of the Pounds. He would have them know that so far from any such kingdom as they were dreaming of being about to be set up for him in Jerusalem, he was going through the dark avenue of death to another, to a far country, to receive the kingdom there, and after a long interval to return; and that, so far from their being about to share the honors and rewards of a newly-erected empire, they were to be left without a Head, each man to occupy and to labor till he came again. Another parable, that of the Laborers in the Vineyard, spoken but a day or two before, had a kindred object—was intended to check the too eager and ambitious thirst for the distinctions and recompenses that the apostles imagined were on the eve of being dispensed. H. This parable was one of many-sided application; it indicated his near departure from the world; the hatred which should reject him; the duty of faithfulness in the use of all that he intrusted to them; the uncertainty of his return; the certainty that, when he did return, there would be a solemn account; the condemnation of the slothful; the reward of all who should serve him well; the utter destruction of those who endeavored to reject his power. F.—It is addressed, in part, to that light-minded multitude who were following Jesus with an expectation that his cause would speedily triumph, and who, when they should find their expectations disappointed, might many of them turn against him and join in the cry, Crucify him. He warns them that his triumph over his enemies, though not speedy, yet should be certain even as it would be terrible; it contains for them a double warning, that they be not offended or prevented from attaching themselves yet closer to him by the things which should befall him at Jerusalem; and that, least of all, they should suffer themselves to be drawn into the ranks of his foes, since these were doomed to an utter destruction. For the disciples also it contains a warning, that this long period which should intervene before his coming again in glory was not to be a period of inactivity, but a time in which they would be required to show all good fidelity to their absent Lord: which fidelity would by him be acknowledged and abundantly rewarded, even as negligence and sloth would meet also their due recompense of reward. 12. In the great Roman Empire, wherein the senate of Rome, and afterward its emperors, though not kings themselves, yet made and unmade kings, such a circumstance as that which serves for the groundwork of this parable can have been of no unfrequent occurrence. T.—A nobleman going into a far country to receive a kingdom. This was done both by Archelaus and by Antipas. And in the case of Archelaus the Jews had actually sent to Augustus a deputation of fifty, to recount his cruelties and oppose his claims, which, though it failed at the time, was subsequently successful. The magnificent palace which Archelaus had built at Jericho would naturally recall these circumstances to the mind of Jesus, and the parable is another striking example of the manner in which he utilized the most ordinary circumstances around him, and made them the bases of his highest teachings. It is also another unsuspected indication of the authenticity and truthfulness of the gospels. F.—13. Occupy. Trade ye till I come. L. 14. It was not over strangers but over his fellow-citizens that the nobleman departed to solicit a dominion—else would there be no meaning in their message, "We will not have this man to reign over us." So we find him on his return exercising kingly functions among his fellow-citizens—setting his servants over five cities, and over ten—having power of life and death, and executing extreme judgment on those that had refused to admit his authority. The Jews were especially Christ's fellow—"citizens," for, according to the flesh, he was of the seed of Abraham and a member of the Jewish polity—and they hated him not merely in his life, and until his departure out of this world, but every persecution of his servants, and all the wrongs which they did to his people because they were his, were all messages of defiance sent after him, "We will not have this man to reign over us." And Theophylact well observes, how twice this very declaration found formal utterance from their lips—once when they cried to Pilate, "We have no king but Cesar;" and, again, when they said, "Write not, The King of the Jews." When we give this parable a wider range, and find the full accomplishment of all it contains, not at the destruction of Jerusalem, but at the day of judgment—and it is equally capable of the narrower and the wider interpretation—then these rebellious citizens will no longer be merely the Jews, but all such evil men as by word or deed openly deny their relation and subjection to Jesus as their Lord and King. 15. How remarkable is this still ministry, these occupations of peace in which the servants of the future king should be engaged, and that, too, while a rebellion was going on! Their part was, with the still and silent occupation of their talent to lay the rudiments of that kingdom, and so to prepare the world for its outbreaking—which outbreaking should yet not actually come to pass till the King returned in his glory. T. 20. Laid up in a napkin. The Jews had a custom which they called possession by a napkin or linen cloth, which is, that when they buy or sell anything, they use a piece of cloth which they call sudar, the word used in this passage; this the parties lay hold of to ratify and confirm the bargain. Upon which custom, as connected with these words, Dr. Gill observes, that this man made no use of his sudar, or napkin, in buying or selling; he traded not at all; he wrapped up his money in it, and both lay useless. Burder.—23. Into the bank. The talent gathereth nothing in the napkin, unless it be rust and canker, but travelling in the bank, besides the good it doth as it passeth to and fro, it ever returneth home with increase. Sanderson.—25. The surprised interpellation of the people, "Lord, he hath ten pounds," is an interesting proof of the intense and absorbing interest with which they listened to these parables. F.—27. This slaying of the king's enemies in his presence is not to be mitigated or explained away, as though it belonged merely to the outer shell of the parable. The words set forth his unmitigated wrath against his enemies, which shall be revealed in that day when grace shall have come to an end, and judgment without mercy will have begun. All this found its nearest fulfilment in the overthrow of Jerusalem, and in the terrible calamities which went before and followed it: that was, without doubt, a coming of Christ to judgment; but it will find its full accomplishment when the wickedness of an apostate world, having come to a single head, shall in that single head receive its final doom—in the final destruction of Antichrist and his armies. T. ## Section 117.—The Anointing by Mary. Bethany. J. 12 On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus 13 was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him.L. 29 And it came to pass on the next day, when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, when he was come to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, Jesus 30 sendeth forth two of his disciples, saying unto them, Go ye your way into the village over against you; in the which at your entering straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt tied with her whereon yet never man sat: loose them, and bring them hitherMk. 3 unto me. And if any man say unto you, Why do ye this? Thus say ye unto him, The 4 Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them hither. And the disciples that were sent went their way, and did as Jesus commanded them, and found the colt, even as he had said unto them, tied by the door without, in a place where two ways L. 33 met: and they loose him. And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof that 34 stood there said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? And they said unto them, even as 35 Jesus had commanded, The Lord hath need of him; and they let them go. And they brought the ass and the colt to Jesus, and they cast their garments upon the colt; and they set Jesus thereon.M. 4 All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, 5 as it is written, Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Fear not, behold, thy King cometh unto J. 16 thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things unto him. 17 The people therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus out of his grave, and 18 raised him from the dead, bare record. For this cause the people also met him, for that they heard that he had done this miracle. L. 36 And as he went, a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; and others cut down branches off the trees, and strewed them in the way. And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice, for all the mighty works that they had seen. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he, the King of Israel, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest! And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples. And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? Behold, the world is gone after him. THE next morning he took up his sorrowful journey again, and moved slowly toward the Temple. As the Passover, with its sacrifices, was just at hand, companies of pilgrims, driving sheep for the altar, would be seen in the highways, all gathering up from the four quarters, to the centre of the nation's faith. Among them goes the Lamb of God—the one sacrifice—final, perfect, and sufficient, whom these typical altars of thousands of years had heralded with their banners of smoke and flame. The day to see that marvellous fulfilled Scripture, that the Lamb should be slain in the fulness of ages and yet slain from the foundation of the world, is, at last, close by; "the hour" of which he so often spoke, as if all reckonings of days, in the knowledge of history, ran to and from that central point of time. But then he is not only Sacrifice and Priest; not only Prophet and Fulfilment; but another of his comprehensive characters is Kingship. So, in token of that royal office whereby he is to reign forever, he must enter the city of his sacrifice with kingly honors, in meekness, to die, yet in majesty, to triumph. F. D. H. J. 12. Much people that were come to the feast. Josephus estimates the numbers present on a Passover occasion at about three millions, little short of half the population of the two provinces. The number of lambs slain is stated to have been 256,500. H.—Heard that Jesus was coming. Jesus of Nazareth had now, for three years, assumed the character of a public teacher; his wonderful works were generally acknowledged; all considered him an extraordinary being; but whether he was the Messiah still hung in the balance. And now the Passover rapidly approached; the roads from all quarters were crowded with the assembling worshippers. Not only the great mass of the inhabitants of Palestine, but many foreign Jews thronged from every quarter—from Babylon, Arabia, Egypt, from Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, probably even from Gaul and Spain. Through all this concourse of the whole Jewish race, animated more or less profoundly with the same national and religious feelings, rumors about the appearance, the conduct, the pretensions, the language of Jesus, could not but have spread abroad, and be communicated with unchecked rapidity. H. M. L. 29. Bethphage and Bethany. Of Bethphage, "the house of figs," no trace has been discovered. Bethany has continued, beyond question. On the eastern slope of Mount Olivet, screened from sight of Jerusalem by the crest of the hill, stands the little mountain hamlet, containing little more than twenty houses, scattered irregularly in a labyrinth of narrow lanes and ruinous walls: a shrivelled and decaying place. H. B. T.  He determines to enter Jerusalem publicly, with such circumstance as would openly announce his claim to be the Messiah. G.—Jesus was now in circumstances to come forward in his Messianic character, as king, after having demonstrated, by his doctrine and walk, for three years, of what kind his kingdom was. The style in which he made his entrance was such as must have proved to every reflective spectator that he had no intention, at least at his first advent, to act the part of an earthly monarch, but only that of the King of hearts. C. B. 35. He had seldom if ever before used this mode of travelling, one not having any special dignity in our eyes, but one that highest dignitaries in the East, kings and princes, prophets and priests, might not unsuitably, upon the most important occasions, make use of. H.—M. 4, 5. As it is written. Five hundred years before, the prophet Zechariah had foretold that the King of Zion would one day appear “riding upon an ass.” At the time of the prophecy, there were no kings in Jerusalem. The kingdom had ceased at the captivity. J. 16. Remembered they had done these things. Long after the triumphant entry, the disciples found that they had been unconscious actors in a mighty accomplishment of Scripture. A thought for us all. During the greater part of our lives, many of God’s purposes on earth are being carried on through us and by us, without our being conscious of it. J. C. R. L. 36. A very great multitude. 37. That went before and that followed. Two vast streams of people met on that day. The one poured out from the city, and, as they came through the gardens whose clusters of palm rose on the southeastern corner of Olivet, they cut down the long branches, as was their wont at the feast of Tabernacles, and moved upward toward Bethany with shouts of welcome. From Bethany streamed forth the crowds who had assembled there the previous night. The two streams met midway. Half of the vast mass, turning round, preceded; the other half followed. A. P. S.—And when the two streams of people met—those who had accompanied him from Bethany, and those who had come to meet him from Jerusalem—they left him riding in the midst, and some preceding, some following him, advanced, shouting “hosannas” and waving branches, to the gate of Jerusalem. At the descent of the Mount of Olives. There, through the clear atmosphere, rising out of the deep, umbrageous valleys which surrounded it, the city of ten thousand memories stood clear before him, and the morning sunlight, as it blazed on the marble pinnacles and gilded roofs of the Temple buildings, was reflected in a splendor which forced the spectator to avert his glance. F. 38. They hail him as their Messiah, their King. He does now what he never so fully did before: he accepts the title, he receives the homage. All is true, then, that they had been thinking and hoping. It is openly and avowedly as Christ their king that he is about to go into Jerusalem. Then let all the honors that they can give him be bestowed. It is but little of outward pomp or splendor they can throw around this regal procession. They cannot turn the narrow mountain-path into a broad and covered roadway for their king, but they can strip off their outer garments, and cast them as a carpet beneath his feet. They can cut down leafy branches from the olive-trees and strew them in his way. Royal standards they have none to carry, they have no emblazoned flags of victory to wave. No choice instruments of music are here, through which practised lips may pour the swelling notes of joy and triumph; but they can pluck the palm-tree branches (nature’s own emblems of victory) and wave them over his head, and they can raise their voices in hosannas round him. He allows all this, receives it all as seemly and due. Swelling in numbers, freer and more animated in its expressions, the procession moves on till the ridge of the hill is gained, and the city begins to open to the view. The mighty multitude breaks out into acclamations of praise; those going before and those following after vie with one another, and fill the air with their hosannas—applying to Jesus, and this entry into Jerusalem, passages that all understood to relate to the Messiah. H.—The transient popularity of Jesus arose from the enforced admiration of his commanding demeanor, and the notoriety of his wonderful works; but it was no doubt supported in the mass of the populace by a hope that even yet he would conform to the popular views of the Messiah’s character. Their present brief access of faith would not have stood long against the continued disappointment of that hope. And it was no doubt by working on the reaction of this powerful feeling that the Sanhedrim were able so suddenly to change the prevailing sentiment. H. M.—The angelic hymn which was earliest sung in heaven in honor of the Saviour’s birth, is reëchoed by the band of disciples as he approaches Jerusalem for the last time before the close of his work. B. F. W. 40. The stones would cry out. Hitherto the Lord had discouraged all demonstrations in his favor. On this one occasion he seems to yield his whole soul to the wide and deep acclaim with a mysterious satisfaction, regarding it as so necessary a part of the regal dignity in which as Messiah he for this last time entered the city, that if not offered by the vast multitude, it would have been wrung out of the stones rather than be withheld. B.—In the mouth of any other, even the greatest of men, these words would have been an unjustifiable self-exaltation; uttered by him, they showed the weighty import which he gave to his manifestation. Christ’s conduct in this respect, moreover, shows that such an entry into Jerusalem formed part of his plan. N. CHRIST undertakes a plan, universal in extent, perpetual in time; viz., to unite all nations in a kingdom of righteousness under God; laying his foundations in the hearts of the poor, as no great teacher had ever done before, and yet without creating ever a faction, or stirring one partisan feeling in his followers. He is never warped by the expectation of his friends; always in a balance of truth, swayed by no excesses, running to no oppositions or extremes; clear of all superstition, and equally clear of all liberalism; presenting the highest doctrines in the lowest and simplest forms; establishing a pure, universal morality, never before established; and, with all his intense devotion to the truth, never anxious, perceptibly, for the success of his doctrine. Finally, to sum up all in one, he grows more great and wise and sacred, the more he is known, and this, we say, is Jesus, the Christ; manifestly not human, not of our world. H. B. Receive Christ as the disciples received him, as the true God and eternal life. Sages of the earth, he is the key of your problems; troubled spirits, your peace; lovers of wealth, your true treasure; he is the word which solves the enigma of life and conquers the power of death. Without him, wandering through life between an unknown past and a gloomy future, by turns the sport of our passions and our reason, a prey to infinite desires which nothing can satisfy, reduced laboriously to construct poor imitations of happiness, tired of living and afraid to die; above all, afraid to be judged, we must approach, without guide or support, that frightful limit where the earth gives way under our feet. Looking, then, to the Finisher of our salvation, rejoicing in his advent, scattering at his feet tears and palms: these tears shall be wiped away by a divine hand; these palms shall become our crown in the city of peace, when, quenching our thirst at the fountain of all perfection and felicity, we shall repeat the acclamations of the ancient believers, "Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest!" A. V. ## Section 119.—Weeps over the City. The Fig-tree cursed. Sunday and Monday. L. 41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou 42 hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy 43 peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep 44 thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knowest not the time of thy visitation.M. 10 And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple. And when he was come 11 into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? And the multitude said, 14 This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee. And the blind and the lame came 15 to him in the temple; and he healed them. And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and say- 16 ing, Hosanna to the Son of David, they were sore displeased, and said unto him, Hear- est thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? 17 And when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he left them and went out of the city into Bethany with the twelve: and he lodged there.Mk.12 Now on the morrow, in the morning as he returned from Bethany into the city, he was 13 hungry. And seeing a fig-tree afar off in the way, having leaves, he came to it, if haply he might find anything thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing thereon but 14 leaves only; for the time of figs was not get. And Jesus answered and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward: no man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it. And presently the fig-tree withered away. WHEN we conceive him surveying on the one hand the multitudes of giddy, thoughtless, infatuated beings around him, engrossed with the affairs of the passing hour, trifling with the grandest concerns in the universe—gay, sportive, careless, hurrying on to the verge of life; and then, on the other hand, turning to behold the dread futurity, the awful gulf of ruin flaming forth the wrath of the Almighty God against the impenitent—is there not in this an explanation that may well appall the sinner, of the compassion, the grief, the yearning expostulations of Jesus? It was an awful testimony to the grandeur of the event that was taking place when, at the death of Jesus, the sun in heaven was darkened, and the solid earth beneath was rent; but surely it testifies to a still more terrible catastrophe, when the face, not of the sun, but the sun's Creator, is overshadowed—when, not the material earth is moved, but the spirit of him who made it is rent with anguish. Surely it is impossible for imagination to conceive a more awful measure of the guilt and danger of sin than the grief of Jesus. C. THOUGH there are three paths from the mount to the Holy City, the triumphal entry was by that round the southern base of Olivet. Paths, like wells, are in the East the most unchanging of human institutions. It is little more than fifteen furlongs. Bethany stands in a shallow hollow, scooped out of the shoulder of the hill. The path follows this till the descent begins at a turn where the first view of the temple is caught. First appeared the castles and walls of the City of David; and immediately afterward the glittering roofs of the temple, and the gorgeous royal arcade of Herod, with its long range of battlements overhanging the southern edge of Moriah. H. B. T.—The triple temple of Jerusalem—the lower court standing on its magnificent terraces, the inner court raised on its platform in the centre, and the temple itself rising out of the group and crowning the whole—must have formed, when combined with the beauty of the situation, one of the most splendid architectural combinations of the ancient world. Fergusson. L. 41. As they approached the shoulder of the hill, where the road bends downward to the north, Jerusalem in its glory rose before them. The City of God, seated on her hills, shone at the moment in the morning sun. Straight before stretched the vast white walls and buildings of the temple, its courts, glittering with gold, rising one above the other; the steep sides of the hill of David crowned with lofty walls; the mighty castles towering above them; the sumptuous palace of Herod in its green parks, and the picturesque outlines of the streets. Over all rested the spell of a history of two thousand years; and the mystic Holy of Holies linked the seen to the invisible. The whole scene was overpowering to Jesus. He was crossing the ground on which, a generation later, the tenth Roman legion would be encamped, as part of the besieging force destined to lay all the splendor before him in ashes. Knowing the future as he did, his heart was filled with indescribable sadness. G. Forgetting his own momentary glory, he beheld only the mighty misery of the rebellious people. He knew what lay beneath that fair exterior; the queenly city, overflowing that very hour with streams of pilgrims, that Zion of the prophets, was an accursed city, which had not "known the day of her visitation." Glory and suffering are with him always inseparable, and in this triumphant King of Zion we behold the man of sorrows! De P.—He had dropped silent tears at the grave of Lazarus; here he wept aloud. All the shame of his mockery, all the anguish of his torture, was powerless, five days afterward, to extort from him a single groan, or to wet his eyelids with one trickling tear; but here, all the pity that was within him overmastered his human spirit. F. 42. "In this thy day, when, all his other messengers rejected, the Father has sent forth his own Son to thee—if thou in thy day hadst known the things belonging to thy peace spoken so often, so earnestly by him." The sentence is cut short. For a moment the bright vision rises of all that Jerusalem might have been had she but known the time of her visitation. The pause, the tears, the lament over the doomed city, must have produced a deep impression on those around. How little could they understand the meaning of what Christ said, or the source of the emotion he displayed! One thing was clearly shown: the absence of all anticipation on the part of Jesus of any present individual success and triumph. How impressively are we here taught that the day of grace, the opportunity of return to and reconciliation with God, has its fixed limits,  Mount of Olives. narrower often than the day of life! Apparently Jerusalem's day of grace extended for years beyond the time when he uttered the words of doom, and let fall the tears of sympathy. Miracles were wrought in her streets, exhortations and remonstrances addressed to her children; but to that all-seeing eye before which the secret things of God's spiritual kingdom lie open, the things belonging to her peace were from that time hid from her eyes. The door was shut, the doom was sealed. H. 43,44. Sternly, literally, terribly, within fifty years, was that prophecy fulfilled. F.—A trench—rampart: first of wood, and, when this was burnt, a built wall, four miles circuit, built in three days—so determined were they. This "cut off all hope of escape," and consigned the city to unparalleled horrors. B.—Who save he to whom the future was as the present could have spoken as Jesus did of the days when the enemy should cast a trench, and raise a mound, and compass it round, and keep it in on every side? Josephus tells us how to the very letter all this was fulfilled—how at an early stage of the four months' siege, Titus, the Roman general in command, summoned a council of war, at which three plans were discussed: to storm the city, or to repair and rebuild the engines that had been destroyed, or to blockade the city and starve it into surrender. The third was the method adopted, and by incredible labor, the whole army engaging in the work, a wall was raised, which compassed the city round and round, and hemmed it in on every side. H. Thy children within thee. While Titus was completing his preparations at Cesarea, almost the whole Jewish population left in the desolated country districts flocked to Jerusalem, to keep the Passover of A. D. 70, just one generation after that Passover at which they had refused their day of visitation and cut off the Messiah. Her children were still within her when, after an attempt to storm the city, the siege was converted into a blockade, and the fugitives, who fled from the unutterable horrors of famine and faction within the walls, perished between the lines, or were crucified in attitudes of cruel mockery to deter imitators. S.— Even with the ground. The Romans burnt the most extreme parts of the city, and dug up the foundations of the walls, reserving only three towers, and a part of the wall, as a memorial of their own valor, and for the better encampment of the soldiers. Afterward, we read in the Jewish Talmud, and in Maimonides, that Terentius Rufus, who was left to command the army, did with a plough-share tear up the foundation of the temple; thereby signally fulfilling the prophecy of Micah 3: 12. Eusebius too affirms that it was ploughed up by the Romans, and that he saw it lying in ruins. So literally were our Saviour's words accomplished, in the ruin and desolation of the city and of the temple! G. T.—Titus did not wish to sacrifice the temple—nay, he made every possible effort to save it—but he was forced to leave it in ashes. He did not intend to be cruel to the inhabitants, but the deadly fanaticism of their opposition so extinguished all desire to spare them, that he undertook the task of wellnigh exterminating the race—of crucifying them by hundreds, of exposing them in the amphitheatre by thousands, of selling them into slavery by myriads. Josephus tells us that, even immediately after the siege of Titus, no one, in the desert waste around him, would have recognized the beauty of Judea. F. (Read Section 185.) M. 15. Even in the temple itself, the children prolong the acclamations; and as the sick, the infirm, the afflicted with different maladies are restored at once to health or the use of their faculties, the same uncontrolled acclamations from the younger part of the multitude are renewed with increasing fervor. H. M.—Pleasant ever to the eye of Jesus was childhood with its charm of freshness, simplicity, buoyant freedom and open ardent love and trust, and sweet ever to his ear the strains of juvenile devotion, but never so pleasant as when he saw these bands of children clustering round him in the temple; never so sweet as when—no others left to do it—they lifted up their youthful voices in those hosannas, the last accents of earthly praise that fell upon his ear. H. 16. Have ye never read?** Psalm 8:2. This Psalm is frequently cited in the New Testament of Christ. In understanding such citations as this, we must bear in mind that the external fulfilment of a prophecy is often itself only a type and representation of that inner, deeper sense of the prophecy which belongs to the spiritual dealings of God. A.—He did not finish the passage, but left it to them to supply the words, “that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.” N. A. We must imagine the agitation and tumult of the crowded city, or we shall be unable fully to enter into the beauty of the calm and unostentatious dignity with which Jesus pursues his course. He preserves the same equable composure in the triumphant procession into the temple, and in the hall of Pilate. At every step he feels himself more inextricably within the toils. Yet he moves onward with the self-command of a willing sacrifice, intimating that his death was necessary, to secure indescribable benefits for his followers and for mankind. Yet there is no needless exasperation of his enemies; he observes the utmost prudence, though so fully aware that his prudence can be of no avail; he never passes the night within the city. And it is only by the treachery of one of his followers that the Sanhedrim at length make themselves masters of his person. H. M. Mk. 13. A fig-tree having leaves. There is a kind of tree which bears a large green-colored fig that ripens very early. I have plucked them in May, from trees on Lebanon, a hundred and fifty miles north of Jerusalem, and where the trees are nearly a month later than in the south of Palestine; it does not, therefore, seem impossible but that the same kind might have had ripe figs at Easter, in the warm, sheltered ravines of Olivet. The reason why he might seek fruit from this particular tree at that early day, was the ostentatious show of leaves. The fig often comes with or even before the leaves, and especially on the early kind. If there was no fruit on this leafy tree, it might justly be condemned as barren. W. M. T.—In walking along this same Bethany road we came upon just such a precocious fig-tree. It was, in all likelihood, the very road on which our Lord had travelled; it was the same week in the year, for it was the Passover week when we were on Olivet; and while in general the few fig-trees that we saw were showing little more than the first signs of life, there was one more favorably placed, which was several weeks in advance of all the others, all green with foliage, and with ripe fruit underneath it. We plucked a branch and brought it home with us. The large leaves had shrivelled, but the fruit was still sweet, two months afterward. A. Thomson. 13,14. The fig-tree was the type of the Jewish people (L. 13:6-9). They had the law, the temple, all rites of worship, the externals of righteousness; but bore none of its fruits. Andrews.—Yesterday, he had bewailed the foreseen desolation of Israel, as having been unfaithful to her covenant promises, and about to frustrate her covenant hopes. To-day, he teaches the same fact by symbols. The tree is Israel. He—the same who planted it in times of old—goes to it, expecting the fruit which its fair appearance warranted; but finding none, he pronounces judicially upon it the sentence of destruction. K.—They had a divine revelation to guide them, by which they were distinguished from all nations; they had the worship of God established among them; they had the appearance of sanctity and religion, but all was outside show, hypocrisy, and dissimulation, without any solid and substantial goodness: they had nothing besides leaves, and therefore, by a just judgment, that which they had was to be taken from them. Jortin. Our Lord had already spoken the parable of the fig-tree that bore no fruit. This miracle was but the acted parable. Here was an opportunity in their very path of enforcing, by a visible sign proceeding from himself, one of the most important truths he had striven to teach them. He condemned the tree to become in appearance that which it was in fact—a useless thing. McD.—Christ did not attribute moral responsibilities to the tree, when he smote it because of its unfruitfulness, but he did attribute to it a fitness for representing moral qualities. All our language concerning trees, a good tree, a bad tree, a tree which ought to bear, is exactly the same continual transfer to them of moral qualities, and a witness for the natural fitness of the Lord’s language—the language indeed of an act, rather than of words. He did not, like Moses and Elijah, make the assertion of God’s holiness and his hatred of evil at the cost of many lives, but only at the cost of a single unfeeling tree. His miracles of mercy were unnumbered, and on men; his miracle of judgment was but one, and on a tree. It was punished not for being without fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those leaves that it had such—not for being barren, but for being false. And this was the guilt of Israel, a guilt so much deeper than the guilt of the nations. The other trees had nothing, but they did not pretend to have anything; this tree had nothing, but it gave out that it had much. So was it severally with Gentile and with Jew. The Gentiles were bare of all fruits of righteousness, but they owned it; the Jews were bare, but they vaunted that they were full. T.—And as the fruitless tree, failing to realize the aim of its being, was destroyed, so the theocratic nation, for the same reason, was to be overtaken, after long forbearance, by the judgments of God, and shut out from his kingdom. N. The tree was a fit type of that premature outward show of devotion with which he was even now welcomed by the people, the fruit of whose “Hosannas” would soon be “Crucify him!” and it was on such a deceitful show that his sentence really fell. In any case, let us remember that he was the Lord of the creation; and this, his only miracle of destruction, furnished a most emphatic warning to the people who had often been described as trees of the Lord’s planting, but as often warned that they would be rooted up, if they bare no fruit worthy of repentance. S.—And should the great Creator desire to deal with any barren human spirit as he dealt with that barren fig-tree, what has he to do in order to punish it for its barrenness? He has but to desert that spirit, and call away after him as he goes all those powers and influences that had been at work there so long and so fruitlessly, to leave it finally and forever to itself. Poor, solitary, forsaken spirit, cut off from God, and cast adrift upon a wild and shoreless sea, with thine own vulture passions in thee, let loose from all restraint, to turn upon thee and torture thee, and prey upon thee forever! What darker, drearier hell than that? The soul breeding within it the worm that never dies; itself kindling the fire it cannot quench. H. ## Section 120.—Cleansing of the Temple. Lesson of the Withered Tree. Monday and Tuesday. Mk. 15 And they come to Jerusalem. And Jesus went into the temple of God and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold doves; and would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple. And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called, of all nations, the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves. And he taught daily in the temple. But the chief priests, and the scribes, and the chief of the people heard, and sought how they might destroy him; and could not find what they might do: for they feared him, because all the people were very attentive to hear him, and were astonished at his doctrine. And when even was come, he went out of the city. L. 37 And in the day-time he was teaching in the temple; and at night he went out, and abode in the mount that is called the mount of Olives. And all the people came early in the morning to him in the temple, for to hear him. Mk. 20 And in the morning as they passed by, when the disciples saw the fig-tree dried up from the roots, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig-tree withered away! And Peter, calling to remembrance, saith unto him, Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away. And Jesus answering, saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig-tree; but also whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; it shall be done, and he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them; and all things ye 25 shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you 26 your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses. THOUGH Jesus taught that prayer is influential as a direct appeal to our Father in heaven, he also announced certain conditions upon which prayer, to be efficacious, must proceed. The object prayed for must be in harmony with the divine wisdom as seeing, and the divine love as choosing always that which is best for the suppliant. Mere importunity ought not to procure for us anything which, upon the whole, is not for our good. Prayer must be offered in faith; not as an experimental essay with Providence, nor for the manipulation of our own feelings; but with the earnest conviction that the thing we pray for will be bestowed, if, on the whole, this is best for us, and if, under all the circumstances, this is wisely possible. In praying for temporal benefits we should have in view chiefly the spiritual benefit to be attained through freedom from worldly anxieties. By the virtue that is lodged in the prayer of faith, whosoever will may approximate himself to God in character. "This is the will of God, even your sanctification." J. P. T. 15,16. For the convenience of the Jews from a distance who wished to offer sacrifices, booths had been erected in the temple-court, in which everything necessary for the purpose was kept for sale, and money-changers were also allowed to take their stand there; but, as might have been expected from the existing corruption of the Jewish people, many foul abuses had grown up. The merchants and brokers made everything subservient to their avarice, and their noisy huckstering was a great disturbance to the worship of the temple. N.—The second cleansing of the courts of the temple appears to have taken the custodians of the holy place as much by surprise as did the first. They made no attempt to interrupt it, nor did they interfere with Jesus in the use to which he turned the courts that he had cleansed. He remained to keep guard over the place, not suffering any man to carry even a common vessel across the court, which the Jews had turned into a common thoroughfare. He remained for hours to occupy it unchallenged; the people flocked into it, and he taught them there. All this while the priests and the Levites, the rulers and the temple-guard, are looking on bewildered, their earlier antipathy kindled into a tenfold fervor of hate. H. 17. My house shall be called the house of prayer. All the sacrifices which were offered from the beginning of the world, all the incense of the tabernacle, all the smoke of the altar, were the vehicles of prayer, intercession, and atonement. Prayer ever was, and ever will be, the vital part of religion: without it there is no religion. The devotion of the congregation upon earth is preparatory to the felicity of heaven; and he must pray with Christians in this vale of tears, who would join in the worship of angels in the sanctuary above. An. As once near the beginning, so here at the close of his great work of life, the Son of God cleanses his Father's house, with holy and indignant zeal, of its secular profanations. What does the purifying mean? It means that every true, right work in this world must begin and end with the reverent acknowledgment of God our Father; it means that in every Christian life, of man or woman, youth or child, large and clean and unobstructed place must be made for prayer; it means that business must be marked off from worship with a fully drawn and definite line, not suffered under any pretext or apology to take more than its share of time or thought, or to intrude into the sanctuary, or to do what is just as bad—hold men out of the sanctuary. It means that neither outwardly, in sordid acts, nor inwardly, in selfish, exclusive, uncharitable dispositions, are we to make our Father's house a house of merchandise. F. D. H. 18. At the rebuke and the quotation, the baffled scribes and high-priests retire to mature their plans, to wait for the morrow, and see what it will bring forth. So closed the last day but one of the active ministry of Jesus. H. 20. Trees were made for men; they have no volition, and therefore cannot sin, and have no feeling of punishment. And this barren fig-tree, withered by Christ's word, bears fruit forever in the garden of Scripture by the warning it gives against hypocritical ostentation and luxuriant unfruitfulness. Our Lord was going to his crucifixion, and he therefore confirmed the minds of his disciples by this assurance of his power. W. 23. Say to this mountain, Be thou removed. It was a common saying among the Jews, when they intended to commend any of their doctors for dexterity in solving difficult questions, that he was a rooter up of mountains. In allusion to this adage, Christ tells his disciples that if they had faith they might say to a mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, and it should be done; that is, in confirmation of the Christian faith, they should be able to do the most difficult things. Burder.—Shall not doubt. Whoever does not make a difference between great and lesser miracles, or hesitate because he thinks the miracle too great, but really believes that God can do it, and has commissioned him to do it, shall undoubtedly succeed. It shall be to him whatever he may say, i. e., command or predict in God's name and by his authority. J. A. A.—We accept it then as true to its whole extent, that at that time, and as to these men, there was no miracle of power needful or useful for the furtherance of their apostolic work, which their faith, had it been perfect, might not have enabled them to accomplish. Prayer, it has been said, moves the arm that moves the universe. But it is faith which gives to prayer the faculty of linking itself in this way with Omnipotence, and calling it to human aid. And so you find that Jesus couples faith and prayer together. Wonderful words, assigning an absolutely unlimited efficacy to faith and prayer—but words of truth and soberness, notwithstanding the compass of their embrace, if we remember that true faith will confide in God or Christ only for that as to which he invites and so warrants its confidence; and true prayer will ask for that alone which is agreeable to the will of God, and will promote the spiritual and eternal good of him upon whom it is bestowed. These are the conditions—natural and reasonable—which underlie all that Christ has said of the power of faith and prayer. H.—From the nature of the case put by our Lord—that they might wish a mountain removed—it is quite plain that what he designed to teach was the great lesson that no obstacle shall be able to stand before a confiding faith in God. And certainly when one thinks of the “mountains” that have already been “removed and cast into the sea” by the victorious faith of Christ's disciples—the towering paganisms of the old world which have fallen before the Church of Christ—we may well exclaim of all other obstacles whatever to the triumphs of the cross, “Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain.” B. 24. What ye desire, ye shall have.** Longing desire prayeth always, though the tongue be silent. If thou art ever longing, thou art ever praying. When stayeth prayer? When desire groweth cold. Aug.—All things ye ask, believing, ye shall receive. Not, believing that ye shall receive what ye ask, but, believing in God as a faithful promise who will answer your prayer; it may be, by giving the thing asked, or by giving something else which he sees more desirable and better for you. The spirit in you, of faith, is the thing upon which the receiving turns. Without this, no receiving. With this, always a receiving, either the object asked, or something better. J. G. B.—Who, it may be said, ever received all the blessings he prayed for? But this is answered by asking again, Who ever, when he prayed, believed that he received what he asked for in the full meaning of our Saviour's words? For by such belief it should seem that he meant full trust in him, and entire submission to his will. Any person thoroughly willing to let God choose for him, would in reality always believe that he receives of God what he prays for. For he would be more sure of God's love and disposition to do the very best for him, than of his own love for himself. Therefore, how earnestly soever he may feel and utter any particular wish, it will always be tempered with this conviction that, however God may appear to deny him, yet the blessing he asks for will come somehow, in a way which God knows to be better. Keble.* 25,26. To prevent the obvious inference from the fulfilment of his malediction against the fig-tree, Jesus mingles with his promise of power to his apostles to perform acts as extraordinary, the strictest injunctions to the milder spirit inculcated by his precept and his example. These prayers were to be for the forgiveness, not for the providential destruction, of their enemies. H. M.—When praying, forgive. Our Lord has reference to the twelve apostles still; and after stating the necessity of faith and of believing prayer in working miracles, reminds them that the same moral dispositions were required in this as in all other prayer, particularly specifying that forgiving temper which he may have seen to be especially deficient in some of them. J. A. A.—The connection between the two is so constant, invariable, that neither can you ever find the humble, contrite heart, which sues for mercy at the throne of grace, without finding there also the meek and gentle spirit that goes forth forgivingly toward others; nor do you ever meet with such free, full, generous forgiveness of others, as from those who have themselves partaken of the pardoning grace of God. H. # Section 121.—His Authority questioned. The Two Sons. The Temple. Tuesday. Mk. 27 AND on one of those days they come again to Jerusalem: and when he was come into the temple, it came to pass, as he was walking, as he taught the people and preached the gospel, there came unto him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the L. 2 elders of the people: and spake unto him, saying, Tell us by what authority doest thou 3 these things? or who is he that gave thee this authority? And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask you one thing, which, if ye tell me, I in like wise will tell you by 4 what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or 5 of men? answer me. And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From 6 heaven; he will say unto us, Why then believed ye him not? But if we shall say, Of men, we fear the people: all the people will stone us, for they all be persuaded 7 that John was a prophet indeed. And they answered and said unto Jesus, We cannot 8 tell whence it was. And Jesus answering said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things. Mk. 1 And he began to speak unto them and to the people by parables. But what think ye? M. 28 A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day 29 in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and 30 went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I 31 go, sir: and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans 32 and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not; but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him. SIN may have its enormity measured in speculation without being bitterly repented of and forsaken. God and his ways may be justified without being loved. The plan of salvation through atoning blood may be saluted as a grand solution of a stupendous moral problem, without being made the stay of hope; welcomed as a relief to reason, but not applied as a healing power to the wounded heart. "The head can as easily amuse itself with a living and justifying faith in the blood of Jesus, as with any other notion." As of the doctrines, so also of the duties of our religion. These duties may be objects merely of belief, arrayed in well-ordered systems, and acknowledged to be the proper code of life, without being actually reduced to practice. The study of God's word, the keeping of holy time, prayer and praise, a clean heart and a clean life, with self-denying exertions, in all feasible and hopeful ways, for the good of others, may all be clearly recognized as Christian duties, without being discharged. The most sacred duty may thus decay into a dogma, asking only to be believed. "I go, sir," answered the son in the parable, "but went not." R. D. H. 27. The teachings contained in Sections 121-127 were all given publicly in the temple on Tuesday. They constitute the close of Christ's public ministry. Tuesday, the 4th day of April, was by far the most eventful in the life of Christ, prior to his passion and death. When he first entered the temple, it was evident that systematic plans had been formed to silence him. Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians united against him; assumed to be his disciples; mingled their questions with those of honest inquirers; endeavored to entrap him into answers that should arouse popular prejudice or embroil him with the Roman government. L. A. Chief priests, scribes, elders. Of these three sections of the Sanhedrim, the first was composed of priests (perhaps heads of the twenty-four classes, not deposed high-priests); the second, of expounders and transcribers of the law; the third, of the heads of the principal families of Israel. E.—The chief priests, the learned scribes, the leading rulers, representatives of all the constituent classes of the Sanhedrim, were there, to overawe him—whom they despised as the poor ignorant prophet of despicable Nazareth—with all that was venerable in age, eminent in wisdom, or imposing in authority in the great council of the nation. F.—The qualifications for membership of this court, as stated by Jewish writers, are curious. They must be religious, and learned in arts and languages. They must have some skill in physic, arithmetic, astronomy, astrology, and be acquainted with what belonged to magic, sorcery, and idolatry, that they may know how to judge of them. They must be without maim or blemish of body; men of years, but not extremely old, because such are commonly of too great severity; and they must be fathers of children, that they might be acquainted with tenderness and compassion. When Judea became a Roman province, the Sanhedrim either, as is more likely, assumed for the first time, or recovered, its station as a kind of senate or representative body of the nation; possessed itself of such subordinate functions of the government as were not actually administered by the Roman procurator. It is the Sanhedrim, under the name of the chief priests, scribes, and elders of the people, who take the lead in all the transactions recorded in the gospels. Jesus Christ was led before the Sanhedrim, and by them denounced before the tribunal of Pilate. H. M. L. 2. They demanded of him his warrant for thus publicly assuming the functions of rabbi and prophet, for riding into Jerusalem amid the hosannas of attendant crowds, for purging the temple of the traffickers, at whose presence they connived. F.—Their question seems a fit and fair one. They are the constituted keepers of the temple, of the only public building of the city that the Romans have left entirely under Jewish control. There has been a manifest invasion of the territory committed to their guardianship, of the offices that they alone are held competent to discharge; for who is this that, being neither priest nor Levite, nor scribe nor elder, deals with the sacred place as if it were his own? H. 4. The Baptism of John, whence?** The Sanhedrim had heard two years before (J. 1 : 19) from the mouth of the Baptist an indirect answer to the very question they were now proposing; meet, then, was it that they should first declare the estimation in which they held him who had so answered them. E.—If they had recognized the divine mission of John, they must also have acknowledged the authority by which Jesus did these things, for John expressly declared that he was sent to testify of him, and bore witness to having seen the Holy Spirit descend and rest upon him. A. 7. We cannot tell.** It was ignorance in a sphere wherein ignorance was for them inexcusable. They, the appointed explainers of the law—they, the accepted teachers of the people—and yet to be compelled, against their real convictions, to say, and that before the multitude, that they could not tell whether a man of immense and sacred influence, a man who acknowledged the Scriptures which they explained, and carried into practice the customs which they reverenced—was a divinely-inspired messenger or a deluding impostor! F.—They could at least have told what they themselves believed. They could, but dared not; and so by this piece of cowardice and hypocrisy they forfeit the title to have any other or fuller satisfaction given them as to the nature and origin of that authority which Jesus exercised, beyond that which was already in their hands. H. 8. Neither tell I you.** An answer, not to their outward words, “We know not,” but to their inward thoughts, “We will not tell.” A.—He well knew—as the form of his answer showed—that their “do not know” was a “do not choose to say.” Since, however, their failure to answer clearly absolved him from any necessity to tell them further of an authority about which, by their own confession, they were incompetent to decide. F. Mk. 1. Our Lord now becomes himself the assailing party, and commences that series of parables, in which his adversaries might see themselves, the impurity of their hearts, their neglect of the charge laid upon them, their contempt of the privileges afforded them, the aggravated guilt of that outrage against himself which they were already meditating in their hearts. T.—In this series of parables and discourses of our Lord with his enemies, he develops, more completely than ever before, his hostility to their hypocrisy and iniquity—and so they are stirred up to compass his death. A. M. 28. A certain man had two sons. Here, as at L. 15 : 11, are described, under the image of two sons of one father, two great moral divisions of men, under one or other of which might be ranged almost all with whom our blessed Lord came in contact. In one are included all who have sought a righteousness through the law, and by the help of it have been kept in the main from open outbreakings of evil. In the second class are contained all who have thrown off the yoke, openly and boldly transgressed the laws of God, done evil with both hands earnestly. 31. The Lord immediately makes the application of the words which have been reluctantly wrung from them, “Verily, I say unto you, that the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." When he says, they "go before you," or take the lead of you, he would indicate that the door of hope was not yet shut upon them—the others indeed had preceded them, but they might still follow, if they would. T.—True repentance saves the greatest sinners; a false righteousness does but blind and harden the worldly-wise the more. Men recover more easily from gross disorders than from a false righteousness and secret pride, which corrupt the whole life and lull the sinner asleep. Q. 32. Ye repented not, that ye might believe him. It was the treatment given to John and to his ministry that Jesus had been setting forth in the conduct of the two sons to their father. They, the chief priests and elders of the people, were the second son; and those publicans and harlots, who repented at the preaching of the Baptist, were the first. H.—When the Baptist came unto them "in the way of righteousness," and summoned to earnest repentance, to a revival of God's work in the hearts of the entire people, then many of those hitherto openly profane were baptized, confessing their sins; and like the son who at first contumaciously refused obedience to his father's bidding, "repented and went;" while, on the other hand, the real unrighteousness of the Pharisees, before concealed under a show of zeal for the law, was evidently declared: professing willingness to go, they yet "went not." T. In its modern application, the parable teaches, not that there is more hope for a flagrant sinner than for a virtuous man, but that the flagrant sinner who forsakes his sins enters the kingdom of heaven before the orthodox and moral man who clings to his sins. The first son is commended, not because of the daring wickedness of his reply, but because he regretted it and showed his regret by his action. The second son is not condemned for his answer, but in spite of it, and because, having promised obedience, he refused to render it. L. A. ## Section 122.—The Faithless Husbandmen. The Temple. Tuesday. M. 33 HEAR another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen; and went into a far country for a long time. And at the season, when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard. But the husbandmen caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty. And again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head; and they beat him also, and entreated him shamefully, and sent him away empty. And again he sent a third; and they wounded him also, and cast him out. And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some and killing some. Then the lord of the vineyard, having yet one son, his well-beloved, said, What shall I do? I will send my beloved son: it may be they will reverence him when they see him. Therefore he sent him also, last of all, unto them. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance, and it shall be ours. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen? He shall come and miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons. And when they heard it, they said, God forbid. And Jesus beheld them, and said, Did ye never read in the scriptures this that is written, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the 44 fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. 45 And when the chief priests and the scribes and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he had spoken against them; and the same hour they sought to lay hands 46 on him; but they feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet. And they left him, and went their way. THE guilty consciences of the chief priests and Pharisees addressed, felt instinctively that in these parables he had pointed to them. The vineyard of God, separated from the wilderness of heathenism, was clearly Israel. The husbandmen were the priests, rabbis, and Pharisees, to whom he had left his vineyard, with the charge to tend it, and to render him duly its fruits. The servants sent were the prophets, from their first appearance in the distant past to John the Baptist. They had been despised, beaten, martyred. Only one could follow them—the last and highest representative of God, who should have commanded respect even from murderers—his only and well-beloved Son, the Messiah; who had come, not as the nation fancied, to bring them political glory and earthly prosperity, but to receive the fruits which, kept back for hundreds of years, could no longer be left unrendered. But Jesus, the Messiah, had long foreseen his fate. He had had it before his eyes every hour since his public entry to Jerusalem. He, the rightful heir of the vineyard, had been received by the husbandmen with jealous eyes and deadly purposes. The revolt he had come to end had grown rampant. It had risen from a refusal to render the fruits, to a rejection of their dependence and a daring resolution to take the vineyard into their own hands: to cast out God in casting out him whom he had sent. The fierce anger of God could not long delay. The rebels, smitten by his wrath, must perish. The vineyard must pass into other hands. But “the others” could only be the heathen whom Israel despised. Loyal to the Son whom Israel had rejected and slain, disciples and followers gathered from other nations, would be intrusted with the inheritance. Changing the figure, these would willingly accept, as the foundation and chief corner-stone of the new kingdom of God, him whom the first builders—of whom those now before him were the representatives—had rejected. Was there any doubt that God would transfer that kingdom to those thus loyal to his Son? G.—By the great Architect he had been laid of old in Zion, the chief foundation of the great spiritual edifice to be reared out of the ruins of the Fall. For many a generation he had been a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. All these wrongs of the past he passively had borne, and now in his own person he is to submit to reproach and suffering and death; but the hour that was to see him exalted because of this, and proclaimed to be the head of the corner, was to see him coming also in judgment. H. 33. He looks back to the treatment which these men’s forefathers had given to messenger after messenger of the Most High, and he looks forward to that which they, fit sons of such sires, were about to give himself; and bringing the past, the present, and the future into the picture, he tells of a vineyard, well fenced, well furnished, let out to husbandmen. H.—One of the few instances—perhaps the only one—in which an image of the Old Testament is almost exactly repeated in the discourses of Christ. A. P. S. The explanation of the hedging round the vineyard is suggested by passages like Ephes. 2:14, where the law is described as “the middle wall of partition” between the Jew and Gentile. By their circumscription through the law, the Jews became a people dwelling alone, and not reckoned among the nations. That law was a hedge at once of separation and of defence. Outwardly also Judea, through its geographical position, was hedged round—on the east by the river Jordan and the two lakes, on the south by the desert and mountainous country of Idumea, on the west by the sea, and by Anti-Libanus on the north—for so, observes Vitringa, had God in his counsels determined, who willed that Israel should dwell alone. T. Built a tower. These watch-towers are sometimes as high as forty or fifty feet. Those which I examined had a small door near the ground, and a level space on the top, where a man could sit and command a view of the plantation. Some of the towers near Hebron are so built as to serve as houses; and, during the vintage, it is said that the inhabitants take up their abode in them in such numbers as to leave the town almost deserted. H. B. H.—Let it out to husbandmen. These must be the spiritual leaders and teachers of the people, while the vineyard itself will then naturally signify the great body of the people, who were to be instructed and taught, to the end that, under diligent cultivation, they might bring forth fruits of righteousness, and so realize the idea of the kingdom of God. Mk. 5. The servants, that is, the prophets, and other more eminent ministers of God in his theocracy, were sent, being raised up at particular times, having particular missions. The patience of the householder is thus brought out and magnified that it may set forth the yet more wonderful forbearance and long-suffering of God: "Howbeit I sent unto you all my servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate" (Jer. 44: 4). "Nevertheless they were disobedient, and rebelled against thee, and cast thy law behind their backs, and slew thy prophets who testified against them, to turn them to thee, and they wrought great provocations" (Neh. 9: 26). The whole confession made in that chapter by the Levites is in itself an admirable commentary on this parable. T. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ J. 12 On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus 13 was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees, and went forth to meet him.L. 29 And it came to pass on the next day, when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, when he was come to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount called the mount of Olives, Jesus 30 sendeth forth two of his disciples, saying unto them, Go ye your way into the village over against you; in the which at your entering straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt tied with her whereon yet never man sat: loose them, and bring them hitherMk. 3 unto me. And if any man say unto you, Why do ye this? Thus say ye unto him, The 4 Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them hither. And the disciples that were sent went their way, and did as Jesus commanded them, and found the colt, even as he had said unto them, tied by the door without, in a place where two ways L. 33 met: and they loose him. And as they were loosing the colt, the owners thereof that 34 stood there said unto them, Why loose ye the colt? And they said unto them, even as 35 Jesus had commanded, The Lord hath need of him; and they let them go. And they brought the ass and the colt to Jesus, and they cast their garments upon the colt; and they set Jesus thereon.M. 4 All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, 5 as it is written, Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Fear not, behold, thy King cometh unto J. 16 thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things unto him. 17 The people therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus out of his grave, and 18 raised him from the dead, bare record. For this cause the people also met him, for that they heard that he had done this miracle. L. 36 And as he went, a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; and others cut down branches off the trees, and strewed them in the way. And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice, for all the mighty works that they had seen. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he, the King of Israel, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest! And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples. And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? Behold, the world is gone after him. THE next morning he took up his sorrowful journey again, and moved slowly toward the Temple. As the Passover, with its sacrifices, was just at hand, companies of pilgrims, driving sheep for the altar, would be seen in the highways, all gathering up from the four quarters, to the centre of the nation's faith. Among them goes the Lamb of God—the one sacrifice—final, perfect, and sufficient, whom these typical altars of thousands of years had heralded with their banners of smoke and flame. The day to see that marvellous fulfilled Scripture, that the Lamb should be slain in the fulness of ages and yet slain from the foundation of the world, is, at last, close by; "the hour" of which he so often spoke, as if all reckonings of days, in the knowledge of history, ran to and from that central point of time. But then he is not only Sacrifice and Priest; not only Prophet and Fulfilment; but another of his comprehensive characters is Kingship. So, in token of that royal office whereby he is to reign forever, he must enter the city of his sacrifice with kingly honors, in meekness, to die, yet in majesty, to triumph. F. D. H. J. 12. Much people that were come to the feast. Josephus estimates the numbers present on a Passover occasion at about three millions, little short of half the population of the two provinces. The number of lambs slain is stated to have been 256,500. H.—Heard that Jesus was coming. Jesus of Nazareth had now, for three years, assumed the character of a public teacher; his wonderful works were generally acknowledged; all considered him an extraordinary being; but whether he was the Messiah still hung in the balance. And now the Passover rapidly approached; the roads from all quarters were crowded with the assembling worshippers. Not only the great mass of the inhabitants of Palestine, but many foreign Jews thronged from every quarter—from Babylon, Arabia, Egypt, from Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, probably even from Gaul and Spain. Through all this concourse of the whole Jewish race, animated more or less profoundly with the same national and religious feelings, rumors about the appearance, the conduct, the pretensions, the language of Jesus, could not but have spread abroad, and be communicated with unchecked rapidity. H. M. L. 29. Bethphage and Bethany. Of Bethphage, "the house of figs," no trace has been discovered. Bethany has continued, beyond question. On the eastern slope of Mount Olivet, screened from sight of Jerusalem by the crest of the hill, stands the little mountain hamlet, containing little more than twenty houses, scattered irregularly in a labyrinth of narrow lanes and ruinous walls: a shrivelled and decaying place. H. B. T.  He determines to enter Jerusalem publicly, with such circumstance as would openly announce his claim to be the Messiah. G.—Jesus was now in circumstances to come forward in his Messianic character, as king, after having demonstrated, by his doctrine and walk, for three years, of what kind his kingdom was. The style in which he made his entrance was such as must have proved to every reflective spectator that he had no intention, at least at his first advent, to act the part of an earthly monarch, but only that of the King of hearts. C. B. 35. He had seldom if ever before used this mode of travelling, one not having any special dignity in our eyes, but one that highest dignitaries in the East, kings and princes, prophets and priests, might not unsuitably, upon the most important occasions, make use of. H.—M. 4, 5. As it is written. Five hundred years before, the prophet Zechariah had foretold that the King of Zion would one day appear “riding upon an ass.” At the time of the prophecy, there were no kings in Jerusalem. The kingdom had ceased at the captivity. J. 16. Remembered they had done these things. Long after the triumphant entry, the disciples found that they had been unconscious actors in a mighty accomplishment of Scripture. A thought for us all. During the greater part of our lives, many of God’s purposes on earth are being carried on through us and by us, without our being conscious of it. J. C. R. L. 36. A very great multitude. 37. That went before and that followed. Two vast streams of people met on that day. The one poured out from the city, and, as they came through the gardens whose clusters of palm rose on the southeastern corner of Olivet, they cut down the long branches, as was their wont at the feast of Tabernacles, and moved upward toward Bethany with shouts of welcome. From Bethany streamed forth the crowds who had assembled there the previous night. The two streams met midway. Half of the vast mass, turning round, preceded; the other half followed. A. P. S.—And when the two streams of people met—those who had accompanied him from Bethany, and those who had come to meet him from Jerusalem—they left him riding in the midst, and some preceding, some following him, advanced, shouting “hosannas” and waving branches, to the gate of Jerusalem. At the descent of the Mount of Olives. There, through the clear atmosphere, rising out of the deep, umbrageous valleys which surrounded it, the city of ten thousand memories stood clear before him, and the morning sunlight, as it blazed on the marble pinnacles and gilded roofs of the Temple buildings, was reflected in a splendor which forced the spectator to avert his glance. F. 38. They hail him as their Messiah, their King. He does now what he never so fully did before: he accepts the title, he receives the homage. All is true, then, that they had been thinking and hoping. It is openly and avowedly as Christ their king that he is about to go into Jerusalem. Then let all the honors that they can give him be bestowed. It is but little of outward pomp or splendor they can throw around this regal procession. They cannot turn the narrow mountain-path into a broad and covered roadway for their king, but they can strip off their outer garments, and cast them as a carpet beneath his feet. They can cut down leafy branches from the olive-trees and strew them in his way. Royal standards they have none to carry, they have no emblazoned flags of victory to wave. No choice instruments of music are here, through which practised lips may pour the swelling notes of joy and triumph; but they can pluck the palm-tree branches (nature’s own emblems of victory) and wave them over his head, and they can raise their voices in hosannas round him. He allows all this, receives it all as seemly and due. Swelling in numbers, freer and more animated in its expressions, the procession moves on till the ridge of the hill is gained, and the city begins to open to the view. The mighty multitude breaks out into acclamations of praise; those going before and those following after vie with one another, and fill the air with their hosannas—applying to Jesus, and this entry into Jerusalem, passages that all understood to relate to the Messiah. H.—The transient popularity of Jesus arose from the enforced admiration of his commanding demeanor, and the notoriety of his wonderful works; but it was no doubt supported in the mass of the populace by a hope that even yet he would conform to the popular views of the Messiah’s character. Their present brief access of faith would not have stood long against the continued disappointment of that hope. And it was no doubt by working on the reaction of this powerful feeling that the Sanhedrim were able so suddenly to change the prevailing sentiment. H. M.—The angelic hymn which was earliest sung in heaven in honor of the Saviour’s birth, is reëchoed by the band of disciples as he approaches Jerusalem for the last time before the close of his work. B. F. W. 40. The stones would cry out. Hitherto the Lord had discouraged all demonstrations in his favor. On this one occasion he seems to yield his whole soul to the wide and deep acclaim with a mysterious satisfaction, regarding it as so necessary a part of the regal dignity in which as Messiah he for this last time entered the city, that if not offered by the vast multitude, it would have been wrung out of the stones rather than be withheld. B.—In the mouth of any other, even the greatest of men, these words would have been an unjustifiable self-exaltation; uttered by him, they showed the weighty import which he gave to his manifestation. Christ’s conduct in this respect, moreover, shows that such an entry into Jerusalem formed part of his plan. N. CHRIST undertakes a plan, universal in extent, perpetual in time; viz., to unite all nations in a kingdom of righteousness under God; laying his foundations in the hearts of the poor, as no great teacher had ever done before, and yet without creating ever a faction, or stirring one partisan feeling in his followers. He is never warped by the expectation of his friends; always in a balance of truth, swayed by no excesses, running to no oppositions or extremes; clear of all superstition, and equally clear of all liberalism; presenting the highest doctrines in the lowest and simplest forms; establishing a pure, universal morality, never before established; and, with all his intense devotion to the truth, never anxious, perceptibly, for the success of his doctrine. Finally, to sum up all in one, he grows more great and wise and sacred, the more he is known, and this, we say, is Jesus, the Christ; manifestly not human, not of our world. H. B. Receive Christ as the disciples received him, as the true God and eternal life. Sages of the earth, he is the key of your problems; troubled spirits, your peace; lovers of wealth, your true treasure; he is the word which solves the enigma of life and conquers the power of death. Without him, wandering through life between an unknown past and a gloomy future, by turns the sport of our passions and our reason, a prey to infinite desires which nothing can satisfy, reduced laboriously to construct poor imitations of happiness, tired of living and afraid to die; above all, afraid to be judged, we must approach, without guide or support, that frightful limit where the earth gives way under our feet. Looking, then, to the Finisher of our salvation, rejoicing in his advent, scattering at his feet tears and palms: these tears shall be wiped away by a divine hand; these palms shall become our crown in the city of peace, when, quenching our thirst at the fountain of all perfection and felicity, we shall repeat the acclamations of the ancient believers, "Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest!" A. V. ## Section 119.—Weeps over the City. The Fig-tree cursed. Sunday and Monday. L. 41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou 42 hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy 43 peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep 44 thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knowest not the time of thy visitation.M. 10 And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple. And when he was come 11 into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? And the multitude said, 14 This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee. And the blind and the lame came 15 to him in the temple; and he healed them. And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and say- 16 ing, Hosanna to the Son of David, they were sore displeased, and said unto him, Hear- est thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? 17 And when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he left them and went out of the city into Bethany with the twelve: and he lodged there.Mk.12 Now on the morrow, in the morning as he returned from Bethany into the city, he was 13 hungry. And seeing a fig-tree afar off in the way, having leaves, he came to it, if haply he might find anything thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing thereon but 14 leaves only; for the time of figs was not get. And Jesus answered and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward: no man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it. And presently the fig-tree withered away. WHEN we conceive him surveying on the one hand the multitudes of giddy, thoughtless, infatuated beings around him, engrossed with the affairs of the passing hour, trifling with the grandest concerns in the universe—gay, sportive, careless, hurrying on to the verge of life; and then, on the other hand, turning to behold the dread futurity, the awful gulf of ruin flaming forth the wrath of the Almighty God against the impenitent—is there not in this an explanation that may well appall the sinner, of the compassion, the grief, the yearning expostulations of Jesus? It was an awful testimony to the grandeur of the event that was taking place when, at the death of Jesus, the sun in heaven was darkened, and the solid earth beneath was rent; but surely it testifies to a still more terrible catastrophe, when the face, not of the sun, but the sun's Creator, is overshadowed—when, not the material earth is moved, but the spirit of him who made it is rent with anguish. Surely it is impossible for imagination to conceive a more awful measure of the guilt and danger of sin than the grief of Jesus. C. THOUGH there are three paths from the mount to the Holy City, the triumphal entry was by that round the southern base of Olivet. Paths, like wells, are in the East the most unchanging of human institutions. It is little more than fifteen furlongs. Bethany stands in a shallow hollow, scooped out of the shoulder of the hill. The path follows this till the descent begins at a turn where the first view of the temple is caught. First appeared the castles and walls of the City of David; and immediately afterward the glittering roofs of the temple, and the gorgeous royal arcade of Herod, with its long range of battlements overhanging the southern edge of Moriah. H. B. T.—The triple temple of Jerusalem—the lower court standing on its magnificent terraces, the inner court raised on its platform in the centre, and the temple itself rising out of the group and crowning the whole—must have formed, when combined with the beauty of the situation, one of the most splendid architectural combinations of the ancient world. Fergusson. L. 41. As they approached the shoulder of the hill, where the road bends downward to the north, Jerusalem in its glory rose before them. The City of God, seated on her hills, shone at the moment in the morning sun. Straight before stretched the vast white walls and buildings of the temple, its courts, glittering with gold, rising one above the other; the steep sides of the hill of David crowned with lofty walls; the mighty castles towering above them; the sumptuous palace of Herod in its green parks, and the picturesque outlines of the streets. Over all rested the spell of a history of two thousand years; and the mystic Holy of Holies linked the seen to the invisible. The whole scene was overpowering to Jesus. He was crossing the ground on which, a generation later, the tenth Roman legion would be encamped, as part of the besieging force destined to lay all the splendor before him in ashes. Knowing the future as he did, his heart was filled with indescribable sadness. G. Forgetting his own momentary glory, he beheld only the mighty misery of the rebellious people. He knew what lay beneath that fair exterior; the queenly city, overflowing that very hour with streams of pilgrims, that Zion of the prophets, was an accursed city, which had not "known the day of her visitation." Glory and suffering are with him always inseparable, and in this triumphant King of Zion we behold the man of sorrows! De P.—He had dropped silent tears at the grave of Lazarus; here he wept aloud. All the shame of his mockery, all the anguish of his torture, was powerless, five days afterward, to extort from him a single groan, or to wet his eyelids with one trickling tear; but here, all the pity that was within him overmastered his human spirit. F. 42. "In this thy day, when, all his other messengers rejected, the Father has sent forth his own Son to thee—if thou in thy day hadst known the things belonging to thy peace spoken so often, so earnestly by him." The sentence is cut short. For a moment the bright vision rises of all that Jerusalem might have been had she but known the time of her visitation. The pause, the tears, the lament over the doomed city, must have produced a deep impression on those around. How little could they understand the meaning of what Christ said, or the source of the emotion he displayed! One thing was clearly shown: the absence of all anticipation on the part of Jesus of any present individual success and triumph. How impressively are we here taught that the day of grace, the opportunity of return to and reconciliation with God, has its fixed limits,  Mount of Olives. narrower often than the day of life! Apparently Jerusalem's day of grace extended for years beyond the time when he uttered the words of doom, and let fall the tears of sympathy. Miracles were wrought in her streets, exhortations and remonstrances addressed to her children; but to that all-seeing eye before which the secret things of God's spiritual kingdom lie open, the things belonging to her peace were from that time hid from her eyes. The door was shut, the doom was sealed. H. 43,44. Sternly, literally, terribly, within fifty years, was that prophecy fulfilled. F.—A trench—rampart: first of wood, and, when this was burnt, a built wall, four miles circuit, built in three days—so determined were they. This "cut off all hope of escape," and consigned the city to unparalleled horrors. B.—Who save he to whom the future was as the present could have spoken as Jesus did of the days when the enemy should cast a trench, and raise a mound, and compass it round, and keep it in on every side? Josephus tells us how to the very letter all this was fulfilled—how at an early stage of the four months' siege, Titus, the Roman general in command, summoned a council of war, at which three plans were discussed: to storm the city, or to repair and rebuild the engines that had been destroyed, or to blockade the city and starve it into surrender. The third was the method adopted, and by incredible labor, the whole army engaging in the work, a wall was raised, which compassed the city round and round, and hemmed it in on every side. H. Thy children within thee. While Titus was completing his preparations at Cesarea, almost the whole Jewish population left in the desolated country districts flocked to Jerusalem, to keep the Passover of A. D. 70, just one generation after that Passover at which they had refused their day of visitation and cut off the Messiah. Her children were still within her when, after an attempt to storm the city, the siege was converted into a blockade, and the fugitives, who fled from the unutterable horrors of famine and faction within the walls, perished between the lines, or were crucified in attitudes of cruel mockery to deter imitators. S.— Even with the ground. The Romans burnt the most extreme parts of the city, and dug up the foundations of the walls, reserving only three towers, and a part of the wall, as a memorial of their own valor, and for the better encampment of the soldiers. Afterward, we read in the Jewish Talmud, and in Maimonides, that Terentius Rufus, who was left to command the army, did with a plough-share tear up the foundation of the temple; thereby signally fulfilling the prophecy of Micah 3: 12. Eusebius too affirms that it was ploughed up by the Romans, and that he saw it lying in ruins. So literally were our Saviour's words accomplished, in the ruin and desolation of the city and of the temple! G. T.—Titus did not wish to sacrifice the temple—nay, he made every possible effort to save it—but he was forced to leave it in ashes. He did not intend to be cruel to the inhabitants, but the deadly fanaticism of their opposition so extinguished all desire to spare them, that he undertook the task of wellnigh exterminating the race—of crucifying them by hundreds, of exposing them in the amphitheatre by thousands, of selling them into slavery by myriads. Josephus tells us that, even immediately after the siege of Titus, no one, in the desert waste around him, would have recognized the beauty of Judea. F. (Read Section 185.) M. 15. Even in the temple itself, the children prolong the acclamations; and as the sick, the infirm, the afflicted with different maladies are restored at once to health or the use of their faculties, the same uncontrolled acclamations from the younger part of the multitude are renewed with increasing fervor. H. M.—Pleasant ever to the eye of Jesus was childhood with its charm of freshness, simplicity, buoyant freedom and open ardent love and trust, and sweet ever to his ear the strains of juvenile devotion, but never so pleasant as when he saw these bands of children clustering round him in the temple; never so sweet as when—no others left to do it—they lifted up their youthful voices in those hosannas, the last accents of earthly praise that fell upon his ear. H. 16. Have ye never read?** Psalm 8:2. This Psalm is frequently cited in the New Testament of Christ. In understanding such citations as this, we must bear in mind that the external fulfilment of a prophecy is often itself only a type and representation of that inner, deeper sense of the prophecy which belongs to the spiritual dealings of God. A.—He did not finish the passage, but left it to them to supply the words, “that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.” N. A. We must imagine the agitation and tumult of the crowded city, or we shall be unable fully to enter into the beauty of the calm and unostentatious dignity with which Jesus pursues his course. He preserves the same equable composure in the triumphant procession into the temple, and in the hall of Pilate. At every step he feels himself more inextricably within the toils. Yet he moves onward with the self-command of a willing sacrifice, intimating that his death was necessary, to secure indescribable benefits for his followers and for mankind. Yet there is no needless exasperation of his enemies; he observes the utmost prudence, though so fully aware that his prudence can be of no avail; he never passes the night within the city. And it is only by the treachery of one of his followers that the Sanhedrim at length make themselves masters of his person. H. M. Mk. 13. A fig-tree having leaves. There is a kind of tree which bears a large green-colored fig that ripens very early. I have plucked them in May, from trees on Lebanon, a hundred and fifty miles north of Jerusalem, and where the trees are nearly a month later than in the south of Palestine; it does not, therefore, seem impossible but that the same kind might have had ripe figs at Easter, in the warm, sheltered ravines of Olivet. The reason why he might seek fruit from this particular tree at that early day, was the ostentatious show of leaves. The fig often comes with or even before the leaves, and especially on the early kind. If there was no fruit on this leafy tree, it might justly be condemned as barren. W. M. T.—In walking along this same Bethany road we came upon just such a precocious fig-tree. It was, in all likelihood, the very road on which our Lord had travelled; it was the same week in the year, for it was the Passover week when we were on Olivet; and while in general the few fig-trees that we saw were showing little more than the first signs of life, there was one more favorably placed, which was several weeks in advance of all the others, all green with foliage, and with ripe fruit underneath it. We plucked a branch and brought it home with us. The large leaves had shrivelled, but the fruit was still sweet, two months afterward. A. Thomson. 13,14. The fig-tree was the type of the Jewish people (L. 13:6-9). They had the law, the temple, all rites of worship, the externals of righteousness; but bore none of its fruits. Andrews.—Yesterday, he had bewailed the foreseen desolation of Israel, as having been unfaithful to her covenant promises, and about to frustrate her covenant hopes. To-day, he teaches the same fact by symbols. The tree is Israel. He—the same who planted it in times of old—goes to it, expecting the fruit which its fair appearance warranted; but finding none, he pronounces judicially upon it the sentence of destruction. K.—They had a divine revelation to guide them, by which they were distinguished from all nations; they had the worship of God established among them; they had the appearance of sanctity and religion, but all was outside show, hypocrisy, and dissimulation, without any solid and substantial goodness: they had nothing besides leaves, and therefore, by a just judgment, that which they had was to be taken from them. Jortin. Our Lord had already spoken the parable of the fig-tree that bore no fruit. This miracle was but the acted parable. Here was an opportunity in their very path of enforcing, by a visible sign proceeding from himself, one of the most important truths he had striven to teach them. He condemned the tree to become in appearance that which it was in fact—a useless thing. McD.—Christ did not attribute moral responsibilities to the tree, when he smote it because of its unfruitfulness, but he did attribute to it a fitness for representing moral qualities. All our language concerning trees, a good tree, a bad tree, a tree which ought to bear, is exactly the same continual transfer to them of moral qualities, and a witness for the natural fitness of the Lord’s language—the language indeed of an act, rather than of words. He did not, like Moses and Elijah, make the assertion of God’s holiness and his hatred of evil at the cost of many lives, but only at the cost of a single unfeeling tree. His miracles of mercy were unnumbered, and on men; his miracle of judgment was but one, and on a tree. It was punished not for being without fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those leaves that it had such—not for being barren, but for being false. And this was the guilt of Israel, a guilt so much deeper than the guilt of the nations. The other trees had nothing, but they did not pretend to have anything; this tree had nothing, but it gave out that it had much. So was it severally with Gentile and with Jew. The Gentiles were bare of all fruits of righteousness, but they owned it; the Jews were bare, but they vaunted that they were full. T.—And as the fruitless tree, failing to realize the aim of its being, was destroyed, so the theocratic nation, for the same reason, was to be overtaken, after long forbearance, by the judgments of God, and shut out from his kingdom. N. The tree was a fit type of that premature outward show of devotion with which he was even now welcomed by the people, the fruit of whose “Hosannas” would soon be “Crucify him!” and it was on such a deceitful show that his sentence really fell. In any case, let us remember that he was the Lord of the creation; and this, his only miracle of destruction, furnished a most emphatic warning to the people who had often been described as trees of the Lord’s planting, but as often warned that they would be rooted up, if they bare no fruit worthy of repentance. S.—And should the great Creator desire to deal with any barren human spirit as he dealt with that barren fig-tree, what has he to do in order to punish it for its barrenness? He has but to desert that spirit, and call away after him as he goes all those powers and influences that had been at work there so long and so fruitlessly, to leave it finally and forever to itself. Poor, solitary, forsaken spirit, cut off from God, and cast adrift upon a wild and shoreless sea, with thine own vulture passions in thee, let loose from all restraint, to turn upon thee and torture thee, and prey upon thee forever! What darker, drearier hell than that? The soul breeding within it the worm that never dies; itself kindling the fire it cannot quench. H. ## Section 120.—Cleansing of the Temple. Lesson of the Withered Tree. Monday and Tuesday. Mk. 15 And they come to Jerusalem. And Jesus went into the temple of God and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold doves; and would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple. And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called, of all nations, the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves. And he taught daily in the temple. But the chief priests, and the scribes, and the chief of the people heard, and sought how they might destroy him; and could not find what they might do: for they feared him, because all the people were very attentive to hear him, and were astonished at his doctrine. And when even was come, he went out of the city. L. 37 And in the day-time he was teaching in the temple; and at night he went out, and abode in the mount that is called the mount of Olives. And all the people came early in the morning to him in the temple, for to hear him. Mk. 20 And in the morning as they passed by, when the disciples saw the fig-tree dried up from the roots, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig-tree withered away! And Peter, calling to remembrance, saith unto him, Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away. And Jesus answering, saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig-tree; but also whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; it shall be done, and he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them; and all things ye 25 shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you 26 your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses. THOUGH Jesus taught that prayer is influential as a direct appeal to our Father in heaven, he also announced certain conditions upon which prayer, to be efficacious, must proceed. The object prayed for must be in harmony with the divine wisdom as seeing, and the divine love as choosing always that which is best for the suppliant. Mere importunity ought not to procure for us anything which, upon the whole, is not for our good. Prayer must be offered in faith; not as an experimental essay with Providence, nor for the manipulation of our own feelings; but with the earnest conviction that the thing we pray for will be bestowed, if, on the whole, this is best for us, and if, under all the circumstances, this is wisely possible. In praying for temporal benefits we should have in view chiefly the spiritual benefit to be attained through freedom from worldly anxieties. By the virtue that is lodged in the prayer of faith, whosoever will may approximate himself to God in character. "This is the will of God, even your sanctification." J. P. T. 15,16. For the convenience of the Jews from a distance who wished to offer sacrifices, booths had been erected in the temple-court, in which everything necessary for the purpose was kept for sale, and money-changers were also allowed to take their stand there; but, as might have been expected from the existing corruption of the Jewish people, many foul abuses had grown up. The merchants and brokers made everything subservient to their avarice, and their noisy huckstering was a great disturbance to the worship of the temple. N.—The second cleansing of the courts of the temple appears to have taken the custodians of the holy place as much by surprise as did the first. They made no attempt to interrupt it, nor did they interfere with Jesus in the use to which he turned the courts that he had cleansed. He remained to keep guard over the place, not suffering any man to carry even a common vessel across the court, which the Jews had turned into a common thoroughfare. He remained for hours to occupy it unchallenged; the people flocked into it, and he taught them there. All this while the priests and the Levites, the rulers and the temple-guard, are looking on bewildered, their earlier antipathy kindled into a tenfold fervor of hate. H. 17. My house shall be called the house of prayer. All the sacrifices which were offered from the beginning of the world, all the incense of the tabernacle, all the smoke of the altar, were the vehicles of prayer, intercession, and atonement. Prayer ever was, and ever will be, the vital part of religion: without it there is no religion. The devotion of the congregation upon earth is preparatory to the felicity of heaven; and he must pray with Christians in this vale of tears, who would join in the worship of angels in the sanctuary above. An. As once near the beginning, so here at the close of his great work of life, the Son of God cleanses his Father's house, with holy and indignant zeal, of its secular profanations. What does the purifying mean? It means that every true, right work in this world must begin and end with the reverent acknowledgment of God our Father; it means that in every Christian life, of man or woman, youth or child, large and clean and unobstructed place must be made for prayer; it means that business must be marked off from worship with a fully drawn and definite line, not suffered under any pretext or apology to take more than its share of time or thought, or to intrude into the sanctuary, or to do what is just as bad—hold men out of the sanctuary. It means that neither outwardly, in sordid acts, nor inwardly, in selfish, exclusive, uncharitable dispositions, are we to make our Father's house a house of merchandise. F. D. H. 18. At the rebuke and the quotation, the baffled scribes and high-priests retire to mature their plans, to wait for the morrow, and see what it will bring forth. So closed the last day but one of the active ministry of Jesus. H. 20. Trees were made for men; they have no volition, and therefore cannot sin, and have no feeling of punishment. And this barren fig-tree, withered by Christ's word, bears fruit forever in the garden of Scripture by the warning it gives against hypocritical ostentation and luxuriant unfruitfulness. Our Lord was going to his crucifixion, and he therefore confirmed the minds of his disciples by this assurance of his power. W. 23. Say to this mountain, Be thou removed. It was a common saying among the Jews, when they intended to commend any of their doctors for dexterity in solving difficult questions, that he was a rooter up of mountains. In allusion to this adage, Christ tells his disciples that if they had faith they might say to a mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, and it should be done; that is, in confirmation of the Christian faith, they should be able to do the most difficult things. Burder.—Shall not doubt. Whoever does not make a difference between great and lesser miracles, or hesitate because he thinks the miracle too great, but really believes that God can do it, and has commissioned him to do it, shall undoubtedly succeed. It shall be to him whatever he may say, i. e., command or predict in God's name and by his authority. J. A. A.—We accept it then as true to its whole extent, that at that time, and as to these men, there was no miracle of power needful or useful for the furtherance of their apostolic work, which their faith, had it been perfect, might not have enabled them to accomplish. Prayer, it has been said, moves the arm that moves the universe. But it is faith which gives to prayer the faculty of linking itself in this way with Omnipotence, and calling it to human aid. And so you find that Jesus couples faith and prayer together. Wonderful words, assigning an absolutely unlimited efficacy to faith and prayer—but words of truth and soberness, notwithstanding the compass of their embrace, if we remember that true faith will confide in God or Christ only for that as to which he invites and so warrants its confidence; and true prayer will ask for that alone which is agreeable to the will of God, and will promote the spiritual and eternal good of him upon whom it is bestowed. These are the conditions—natural and reasonable—which underlie all that Christ has said of the power of faith and prayer. H.—From the nature of the case put by our Lord—that they might wish a mountain removed—it is quite plain that what he designed to teach was the great lesson that no obstacle shall be able to stand before a confiding faith in God. And certainly when one thinks of the “mountains” that have already been “removed and cast into the sea” by the victorious faith of Christ's disciples—the towering paganisms of the old world which have fallen before the Church of Christ—we may well exclaim of all other obstacles whatever to the triumphs of the cross, “Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain.” B. 24. What ye desire, ye shall have.** Longing desire prayeth always, though the tongue be silent. If thou art ever longing, thou art ever praying. When stayeth prayer? When desire groweth cold. Aug.—All things ye ask, believing, ye shall receive. Not, believing that ye shall receive what ye ask, but, believing in God as a faithful promise who will answer your prayer; it may be, by giving the thing asked, or by giving something else which he sees more desirable and better for you. The spirit in you, of faith, is the thing upon which the receiving turns. Without this, no receiving. With this, always a receiving, either the object asked, or something better. J. G. B.—Who, it may be said, ever received all the blessings he prayed for? But this is answered by asking again, Who ever, when he prayed, believed that he received what he asked for in the full meaning of our Saviour's words? For by such belief it should seem that he meant full trust in him, and entire submission to his will. Any person thoroughly willing to let God choose for him, would in reality always believe that he receives of God what he prays for. For he would be more sure of God's love and disposition to do the very best for him, than of his own love for himself. Therefore, how earnestly soever he may feel and utter any particular wish, it will always be tempered with this conviction that, however God may appear to deny him, yet the blessing he asks for will come somehow, in a way which God knows to be better. Keble.* 25,26. To prevent the obvious inference from the fulfilment of his malediction against the fig-tree, Jesus mingles with his promise of power to his apostles to perform acts as extraordinary, the strictest injunctions to the milder spirit inculcated by his precept and his example. These prayers were to be for the forgiveness, not for the providential destruction, of their enemies. H. M.—When praying, forgive. Our Lord has reference to the twelve apostles still; and after stating the necessity of faith and of believing prayer in working miracles, reminds them that the same moral dispositions were required in this as in all other prayer, particularly specifying that forgiving temper which he may have seen to be especially deficient in some of them. J. A. A.—The connection between the two is so constant, invariable, that neither can you ever find the humble, contrite heart, which sues for mercy at the throne of grace, without finding there also the meek and gentle spirit that goes forth forgivingly toward others; nor do you ever meet with such free, full, generous forgiveness of others, as from those who have themselves partaken of the pardoning grace of God. H. # Section 121.—His Authority questioned. The Two Sons. The Temple. Tuesday. Mk. 27 AND on one of those days they come again to Jerusalem: and when he was come into the temple, it came to pass, as he was walking, as he taught the people and preached the gospel, there came unto him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the L. 2 elders of the people: and spake unto him, saying, Tell us by what authority doest thou 3 these things? or who is he that gave thee this authority? And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask you one thing, which, if ye tell me, I in like wise will tell you by 4 what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or 5 of men? answer me. And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From 6 heaven; he will say unto us, Why then believed ye him not? But if we shall say, Of men, we fear the people: all the people will stone us, for they all be persuaded 7 that John was a prophet indeed. And they answered and said unto Jesus, We cannot 8 tell whence it was. And Jesus answering said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things. Mk. 1 And he began to speak unto them and to the people by parables. But what think ye? M. 28 A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day 29 in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and 30 went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I 31 go, sir: and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans 32 and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not; but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him. SIN may have its enormity measured in speculation without being bitterly repented of and forsaken. God and his ways may be justified without being loved. The plan of salvation through atoning blood may be saluted as a grand solution of a stupendous moral problem, without being made the stay of hope; welcomed as a relief to reason, but not applied as a healing power to the wounded heart. "The head can as easily amuse itself with a living and justifying faith in the blood of Jesus, as with any other notion." As of the doctrines, so also of the duties of our religion. These duties may be objects merely of belief, arrayed in well-ordered systems, and acknowledged to be the proper code of life, without being actually reduced to practice. The study of God's word, the keeping of holy time, prayer and praise, a clean heart and a clean life, with self-denying exertions, in all feasible and hopeful ways, for the good of others, may all be clearly recognized as Christian duties, without being discharged. The most sacred duty may thus decay into a dogma, asking only to be believed. "I go, sir," answered the son in the parable, "but went not." R. D. H. 27. The teachings contained in Sections 121-127 were all given publicly in the temple on Tuesday. They constitute the close of Christ's public ministry. Tuesday, the 4th day of April, was by far the most eventful in the life of Christ, prior to his passion and death. When he first entered the temple, it was evident that systematic plans had been formed to silence him. Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians united against him; assumed to be his disciples; mingled their questions with those of honest inquirers; endeavored to entrap him into answers that should arouse popular prejudice or embroil him with the Roman government. L. A. Chief priests, scribes, elders. Of these three sections of the Sanhedrim, the first was composed of priests (perhaps heads of the twenty-four classes, not deposed high-priests); the second, of expounders and transcribers of the law; the third, of the heads of the principal families of Israel. E.—The chief priests, the learned scribes, the leading rulers, representatives of all the constituent classes of the Sanhedrim, were there, to overawe him—whom they despised as the poor ignorant prophet of despicable Nazareth—with all that was venerable in age, eminent in wisdom, or imposing in authority in the great council of the nation. F.—The qualifications for membership of this court, as stated by Jewish writers, are curious. They must be religious, and learned in arts and languages. They must have some skill in physic, arithmetic, astronomy, astrology, and be acquainted with what belonged to magic, sorcery, and idolatry, that they may know how to judge of them. They must be without maim or blemish of body; men of years, but not extremely old, because such are commonly of too great severity; and they must be fathers of children, that they might be acquainted with tenderness and compassion. When Judea became a Roman province, the Sanhedrim either, as is more likely, assumed for the first time, or recovered, its station as a kind of senate or representative body of the nation; possessed itself of such subordinate functions of the government as were not actually administered by the Roman procurator. It is the Sanhedrim, under the name of the chief priests, scribes, and elders of the people, who take the lead in all the transactions recorded in the gospels. Jesus Christ was led before the Sanhedrim, and by them denounced before the tribunal of Pilate. H. M. L. 2. They demanded of him his warrant for thus publicly assuming the functions of rabbi and prophet, for riding into Jerusalem amid the hosannas of attendant crowds, for purging the temple of the traffickers, at whose presence they connived. F.—Their question seems a fit and fair one. They are the constituted keepers of the temple, of the only public building of the city that the Romans have left entirely under Jewish control. There has been a manifest invasion of the territory committed to their guardianship, of the offices that they alone are held competent to discharge; for who is this that, being neither priest nor Levite, nor scribe nor elder, deals with the sacred place as if it were his own? H. 4. The Baptism of John, whence?** The Sanhedrim had heard two years before (J. 1 : 19) from the mouth of the Baptist an indirect answer to the very question they were now proposing; meet, then, was it that they should first declare the estimation in which they held him who had so answered them. E.—If they had recognized the divine mission of John, they must also have acknowledged the authority by which Jesus did these things, for John expressly declared that he was sent to testify of him, and bore witness to having seen the Holy Spirit descend and rest upon him. A. 7. We cannot tell.** It was ignorance in a sphere wherein ignorance was for them inexcusable. They, the appointed explainers of the law—they, the accepted teachers of the people—and yet to be compelled, against their real convictions, to say, and that before the multitude, that they could not tell whether a man of immense and sacred influence, a man who acknowledged the Scriptures which they explained, and carried into practice the customs which they reverenced—was a divinely-inspired messenger or a deluding impostor! F.—They could at least have told what they themselves believed. They could, but dared not; and so by this piece of cowardice and hypocrisy they forfeit the title to have any other or fuller satisfaction given them as to the nature and origin of that authority which Jesus exercised, beyond that which was already in their hands. H. 8. Neither tell I you.** An answer, not to their outward words, “We know not,” but to their inward thoughts, “We will not tell.” A.—He well knew—as the form of his answer showed—that their “do not know” was a “do not choose to say.” Since, however, their failure to answer clearly absolved him from any necessity to tell them further of an authority about which, by their own confession, they were incompetent to decide. F. Mk. 1. Our Lord now becomes himself the assailing party, and commences that series of parables, in which his adversaries might see themselves, the impurity of their hearts, their neglect of the charge laid upon them, their contempt of the privileges afforded them, the aggravated guilt of that outrage against himself which they were already meditating in their hearts. T.—In this series of parables and discourses of our Lord with his enemies, he develops, more completely than ever before, his hostility to their hypocrisy and iniquity—and so they are stirred up to compass his death. A. M. 28. A certain man had two sons. Here, as at L. 15 : 11, are described, under the image of two sons of one father, two great moral divisions of men, under one or other of which might be ranged almost all with whom our blessed Lord came in contact. In one are included all who have sought a righteousness through the law, and by the help of it have been kept in the main from open outbreakings of evil. In the second class are contained all who have thrown off the yoke, openly and boldly transgressed the laws of God, done evil with both hands earnestly. 31. The Lord immediately makes the application of the words which have been reluctantly wrung from them, “Verily, I say unto you, that the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." When he says, they "go before you," or take the lead of you, he would indicate that the door of hope was not yet shut upon them—the others indeed had preceded them, but they might still follow, if they would. T.—True repentance saves the greatest sinners; a false righteousness does but blind and harden the worldly-wise the more. Men recover more easily from gross disorders than from a false righteousness and secret pride, which corrupt the whole life and lull the sinner asleep. Q. 32. Ye repented not, that ye might believe him. It was the treatment given to John and to his ministry that Jesus had been setting forth in the conduct of the two sons to their father. They, the chief priests and elders of the people, were the second son; and those publicans and harlots, who repented at the preaching of the Baptist, were the first. H.—When the Baptist came unto them "in the way of righteousness," and summoned to earnest repentance, to a revival of God's work in the hearts of the entire people, then many of those hitherto openly profane were baptized, confessing their sins; and like the son who at first contumaciously refused obedience to his father's bidding, "repented and went;" while, on the other hand, the real unrighteousness of the Pharisees, before concealed under a show of zeal for the law, was evidently declared: professing willingness to go, they yet "went not." T. In its modern application, the parable teaches, not that there is more hope for a flagrant sinner than for a virtuous man, but that the flagrant sinner who forsakes his sins enters the kingdom of heaven before the orthodox and moral man who clings to his sins. The first son is commended, not because of the daring wickedness of his reply, but because he regretted it and showed his regret by his action. The second son is not condemned for his answer, but in spite of it, and because, having promised obedience, he refused to render it. L. A. ## Section 122.—The Faithless Husbandmen. The Temple. Tuesday. M. 33 HEAR another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen; and went into a far country for a long time. And at the season, when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent to the husbandmen a servant, that he might receive from the husbandmen of the fruit of the vineyard. But the husbandmen caught him, and beat him, and sent him away empty. And again he sent unto them another servant; and at him they cast stones, and wounded him in the head; and they beat him also, and entreated him shamefully, and sent him away empty. And again he sent a third; and they wounded him also, and cast him out. And again he sent another; and him they killed, and many others; beating some and killing some. Then the lord of the vineyard, having yet one son, his well-beloved, said, What shall I do? I will send my beloved son: it may be they will reverence him when they see him. Therefore he sent him also, last of all, unto them. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they reasoned among themselves, saying, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance, and it shall be ours. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen? He shall come and miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons. And when they heard it, they said, God forbid. And Jesus beheld them, and said, Did ye never read in the scriptures this that is written, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the 44 fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. 45 And when the chief priests and the scribes and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he had spoken against them; and the same hour they sought to lay hands 46 on him; but they feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet. And they left him, and went their way. THE guilty consciences of the chief priests and Pharisees addressed, felt instinctively that in these parables he had pointed to them. The vineyard of God, separated from the wilderness of heathenism, was clearly Israel. The husbandmen were the priests, rabbis, and Pharisees, to whom he had left his vineyard, with the charge to tend it, and to render him duly its fruits. The servants sent were the prophets, from their first appearance in the distant past to John the Baptist. They had been despised, beaten, martyred. Only one could follow them—the last and highest representative of God, who should have commanded respect even from murderers—his only and well-beloved Son, the Messiah; who had come, not as the nation fancied, to bring them political glory and earthly prosperity, but to receive the fruits which, kept back for hundreds of years, could no longer be left unrendered. But Jesus, the Messiah, had long foreseen his fate. He had had it before his eyes every hour since his public entry to Jerusalem. He, the rightful heir of the vineyard, had been received by the husbandmen with jealous eyes and deadly purposes. The revolt he had come to end had grown rampant. It had risen from a refusal to render the fruits, to a rejection of their dependence and a daring resolution to take the vineyard into their own hands: to cast out God in casting out him whom he had sent. The fierce anger of God could not long delay. The rebels, smitten by his wrath, must perish. The vineyard must pass into other hands. But “the others” could only be the heathen whom Israel despised. Loyal to the Son whom Israel had rejected and slain, disciples and followers gathered from other nations, would be intrusted with the inheritance. Changing the figure, these would willingly accept, as the foundation and chief corner-stone of the new kingdom of God, him whom the first builders—of whom those now before him were the representatives—had rejected. Was there any doubt that God would transfer that kingdom to those thus loyal to his Son? G.—By the great Architect he had been laid of old in Zion, the chief foundation of the great spiritual edifice to be reared out of the ruins of the Fall. For many a generation he had been a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. All these wrongs of the past he passively had borne, and now in his own person he is to submit to reproach and suffering and death; but the hour that was to see him exalted because of this, and proclaimed to be the head of the corner, was to see him coming also in judgment. H. 33. He looks back to the treatment which these men’s forefathers had given to messenger after messenger of the Most High, and he looks forward to that which they, fit sons of such sires, were about to give himself; and bringing the past, the present, and the future into the picture, he tells of a vineyard, well fenced, well furnished, let out to husbandmen. H.—One of the few instances—perhaps the only one—in which an image of the Old Testament is almost exactly repeated in the discourses of Christ. A. P. S. The explanation of the hedging round the vineyard is suggested by passages like Ephes. 2:14, where the law is described as “the middle wall of partition” between the Jew and Gentile. By their circumscription through the law, the Jews became a people dwelling alone, and not reckoned among the nations. That law was a hedge at once of separation and of defence. Outwardly also Judea, through its geographical position, was hedged round—on the east by the river Jordan and the two lakes, on the south by the desert and mountainous country of Idumea, on the west by the sea, and by Anti-Libanus on the north—for so, observes Vitringa, had God in his counsels determined, who willed that Israel should dwell alone. T. Built a tower. These watch-towers are sometimes as high as forty or fifty feet. Those which I examined had a small door near the ground, and a level space on the top, where a man could sit and command a view of the plantation. Some of the towers near Hebron are so built as to serve as houses; and, during the vintage, it is said that the inhabitants take up their abode in them in such numbers as to leave the town almost deserted. H. B. H.—Let it out to husbandmen. These must be the spiritual leaders and teachers of the people, while the vineyard itself will then naturally signify the great body of the people, who were to be instructed and taught, to the end that, under diligent cultivation, they might bring forth fruits of righteousness, and so realize the idea of the kingdom of God. Mk. 5. The servants, that is, the prophets, and other more eminent ministers of God in his theocracy, were sent, being raised up at particular times, having particular missions. The patience of the householder is thus brought out and magnified that it may set forth the yet more wonderful forbearance and long-suffering of God: "Howbeit I sent unto you all my servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate" (Jer. 44: 4). "Nevertheless they were disobedient, and rebelled against thee, and cast thy law behind their backs, and slew thy prophets who testified against them, to turn them to thee, and they wrought great provocations" (Neh. 9: 26). The whole confession made in that chapter by the Levites is in itself an admirable commentary on this parable. T. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ L. 1 Now the feast of unleavened bread drew nigh, which is called the Passover. And it M. 1 came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples, Ye 2 know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified. 3 Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, 4 unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, and consulted and sought 5 how they might take Jesus by subtilty, and kill him. But they said, Not on the feast-day, lest there be an uproar among the people; for they feared the people. L. 3 Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve. 4 And he went his way unto the chief priests and captains, and communed with them how 5 he might betray him unto them. And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. And he said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver 6 him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. And he promised, and from that time sought opportunity how he might conveniently betray him unto them in the absence of the multitude. Mk. 12 Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed, the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we go and prepare 13 for thee, that thou mayest eat the passover? And he sendeth forth two of his disciples, Peter and John, and saith unto them, Go ye into the city, and behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall meet you a man bearing a pitcher of water; follow him 14 into the house where he entereth in. And wheresoever he shall go in, say ye to the good man of the house: the Master saith unto thee, My time is at hand, I will keep the passover at thy house; where is the guest-chamber where I shall eat the passover with 15 my disciples? And he will shew you a large upper room furnished and prepared: there 16 make ready for us. And his disciples went forth, and came into the city, and found as he had said unto them: and, as Jesus had appointed, they made ready the passover. SCARCELY had Jesus commenced his work, when covetousness lifted itself up against him; it everywhere intruded upon his path; it disputed every step that he took. It misunderstood and forsook him, in the person of the rich young man; it excited his holy anger in the person of the sellers in the temple; it hated him; it railed at him; it persecuted him in the person of the Pharisees; and in the person of Judas it tithed the fruit of his charity for the poor; it begrudged the honor destined to his burial; it betrayed him, it delivered him up, it sold him. Oh, prophetic crime, which casts a sad light upon the future of the Church of Jesus Christ! This same crime of him, who for thirty pieces of silver sold the blood of the Son of God, is the very crime which will show itself most active in depriving men of the ineffable benefit of this shed blood; for covetousness will oppose equally the salvation of the individual, the fidelity of the Church, and the conversion of the world. A. M. M. 1. 2. Jesus sat down upon the Mount of Olives, over against the temple; and as the shadows of evening deepened in the valley of Kedron, he addressed to his wondering disciples the prophecies and parables preserved in the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of Matthew's gospel. It was after he had finished all these sayings that he said to his disciples, "Ye know that after two days is the feast of the Passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified." He had previously in his discourse been dealing with a broad and distant future, been sketching the world's history, describing its close—giving no dates, leaving much as to the sequence of events shadowy and undefined. Now he turns to a nearer future, to an event that was to happen to himself; and in terms free of all indistinctness he announces that the day after the next he would be betrayed, and afterward crucified. H. L. 3. Then entered Satan. But not yet in the full sense. The awful stages of it were these: 1. Covetousness being his master-passion, the Lord let it reveal itself and gather strength by intrusting him with "the bag," as treasurer to himself and the twelve. 2. In the discharge of that sacred trust he became "a thief," appropriating its contents from time to time to his own use. Satan, seeing this door into his heart standing wide open, determines to enter by it, but cautiously; first merely "putting it into his heart to betray him," suggesting the thought to him that by this means he might enrich himself. 3. This thought was probably converted into a settled purpose by what took place in Simon's house at Bethany. 4. Starting back perhaps, or mercifully held back, for some time, the determination to carry it into immediate effect was not consummated till, sitting at the Paschal supper, "Satan entered into him," and conscience, effectually stifled, only rose again to be his tormentor. B. 5. Thirty pieces of silver.** The price of a slave that had been slain (Ex. 21 : 32). Thus the prophecy was fulfilled in which it had been particularly specified (Zech. 11 : 12, 13). The sum was equivalent to about fifteen dollars. D. 6. For a man to accuse Christ of nothing and not to complain of him while he betrays him, is to justify Him and to condemn himself. He who nourishes any passion in his heart is in great danger of delivering up Christ to his enemies upon every temptation. When a man hopes for anything from the world, he ought to fear everything from himself. Q.—The life of man furnishes many analogies that may help to clear up the enigmatical conduct of Judas. He who does not follow the impulses of good which he receives, but gives himself up to the selfish propensities which those impulses are meant to counteract, becomes finally and irrecoverably enslaved to them; all things that ought to work together for his good serve for his harm; the healing balm becomes for him a poison. This is the severe judgment upon which our free agency is conditioned; and to it may we apply the saying of our Lord: "From him that hath not, shall be taken away even that which he hath." N. In the absence of the multitude. The Jews, having an opportunity of seizing Jesus privately in the night, determined to have him examined by the high-priest and condemned by the Roman governor early in the morning, before the people came together. Therefore Judas sought opportunity to betray him in the absence of the multitude. W. G. Mk. 12. The 15th of Nisan was the first day of the feast. But, as all leaven was scrupulously removed about noon on the 14th, in preparation for the feast, it was not unnatural to call this "the day," or as Matthew and Mark have it, "the first day of unleavened bread." So Josephus, in one place, makes the 14th of Nisan the first day of the feast, which he elsewhere fixes to the 15th; and he assigns eight days as its duration. S. (See variant opinion of Robinson: Section 155, J. 14.) 13. Sendeth forth Peter and John.** In sending them before the others, he could easily have indicated where the room was in which they were to meet in the evening. Instead of this he gives them a sign which was to conduct them to it. This way of ordering it, whatever was its real purpose, served effectually to conceal from the others the locality of the guest-chamber, and may have been meant to keep the traitor in the mean time in ignorance. H. —A man bearing a pitcher of water. To bring home water is part of woman's work, in the East. So singular would be the sight of a man thus engaged, that our Saviour here gives it as a sign to his disciples, that a man should meet them bearing water, as though in all the throng not more than a single instance of the kind would occur. N. C. B. 14. "Where is the guest-chamber where I shall eat the Passover?" the Master saith. It is a personal question, a proposal to the inner life of us all. It is an offer of the one infinite divine blessing, for, in receiving the Master, Christ, the Son of Mary and the Son of God, we receive all the real good there is in earth and heaven. There seems to be in this question just that twofold sound of invitation and authority, offer and command, which is always to be found in the word of the Saviour when he proposes to take up his abode in any of our hearts. He offers to come in if we will suffer him; for the act must be free. He commands us to suffer him, because he has a right there; and though faith holds the key, we cannot keep him out without disobedience to him, and guilt and misery following. This is what our Christian life—part a task and part a delight, part duty and part privilege, part drudging and part festival, part of law and part of grace—must always include, the proportions of the service of obligation and the service of joy constantly varying, according as we have more or less of the Master's own spirit, and live nearer to him. F. D. H. ## Section 137.—The Passover Meal. Washes the Disciples' Feet. The Guest-Chamber. J. 55 AND the Jews' passover was nigh at hand: and many went out of the country up to Jerusalem before the passover, to purify themselves. Then sought they for Jesus, and spake among themselves, as they stood in the temple, What think ye, that he will not come up to the feast? Now both the chief priests and the Pharisees had given a commandment, that, if any man knew where he were, he should shew it, that they might take him. 1. Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper in the house of Simon the leper, and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. Then, as he sat at meat, came Mary unto him, having an alabaster box with a pound of ointment of spikenard, very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head; and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with 4 her hair; and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Then saith one of 5 his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, Why was not this 6 ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what Mk. 4 was put therein. And there were some disciples that had indignation within them- 5 selves, and said, To what purpose is this waste? for this ointment might have been 6 sold for much, and given to the poor; and they murmured against her. When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Let her alone: why trouble ye the woman? for she 7 hath wrought a good work upon me. For ye have the poor with you always, and when- 8 soever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always. She hath done what she could: for in that she hath kept this ointment and poured it on my body, she is 9 come aforehand to anoint it for my burial. Verily, I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that this woman hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her. J. 9 Much people of the Jews therefore knew that he was there: and they came, not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might see Lazarus also, whom he had raised from the 10 dead. But the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus also to death; 11 because that by reason of him many of the Jews went away, and believed on Jesus. THE inspiration of a loving heart has the gift of prophecy. Its insight is foresight, because it is taught of God. And what a rebuke to those who would bring down everything that is lovely and of good report to the hard utilitarian measurement, and, in the pretended interest of fruit, would strike off all the spontaneous blossoms of Christian affection! Ker.—The Lord's eye beheld more in this anoint- ing than Mary could understand. She had done what she could; she had deposited her whole love in this sacrifice of anointing, but in holy simplicity she had done more than she knew. This is our Saviour's manner; thus does he interpret the love of his disciples. Let us only do what we can, and then will he do what we cannot do; if we put into our doing all that we can, then will he put therein what far exceeds our power and thoughts. "In the works of the children of God there are often hidden myste- ries which they themselves understand not," says an experienced Christian. How shall we marvel, when in the light of eternity we review our earthly course; when for the first time we shall fully under- stand all that God meant by what he led us to do through his Spirit! R. B. J. 55. Many went, to purify themselves. Thousands of devout Jews came anxiously before the Passover to be made ceremonially clean and fit for the feast. All strict Jews were careful to go through ceremonial washings, purifications, and atonements, before eating the Passover. J. C. R. —57. That was not to be allowed to come to pass which his enemies were planning to effect, that they should bring him by force to Jerusalem; instead of that, he was to enter in triumph, and that too as Zion's King, on Palm-Sunday. "Not on the feast- day," they afterward said; but, nevertheless, the hour for the presenting of the sacrifice, full of grace and truth, was ordained to be on the great feast of deliverance. R. B. 2. Made him a supper.** All our human- ity, with all its possible moods and conditions, is somehow included and mastered and interpreted by him. He goes with us in our recreation as well as in the funeral procession; he sits in the full circle of health at festivals, as well as with the mourner by the new-made grave, or amidst the fragments of ruined plans; he comes to Bethany when the three there are well, not only when Lazarus is dead. All the rooms of our houses are for him, to come in and abide, as well as the chambers of sickness or of the laying out of the dead. F. D. H. Martha served. The natural temperament of this good woman comes out here as elsewhere. She could not sit still and do nothing while her Lord was in her house. She must be actively stirring and trying to do something. Grace does not take away our peculiar characteristics. J. C. R.— This, with what is afterward said of Mary's way of honoring her Lord, is so true to the character in which those two women appear in L. 10: 38-42, as  Bethany. to constitute one of the strongest confirmations of the truth of both narratives. B. 3. Mary was not occupied like her sister in the active ministrations of the feast, but she sat and thought and gazed until the fire burned, and she felt impelled to some outward sign of her love, her gratitude, her adoration. So she arose and fetched an alabaster vase of Indian spikenard, and came softly behind Jesus where he sat, and broke the alabaster in her hands, and poured the precious perfume first over his head, then over his feet, and then—unconscious of every presence save his alone—she wiped those feet with the long tresses of her hair, while the atmosphere of the whole house was filled with the fragrance. It was an act of devoted sacrifice; and the poor Galileans who followed Jesus, so little accustomed to any luxury, so fully alive to the costly nature of the gift, might well have been amazed that it should have all been lavished on the rich luxury of one brief moment. None but the most spiritual-hearted there could feel that the delicate odor which breathed through the perfumed house might be to God a sweet-smelling savor; that even this was infinitely too little to satisfy the love of her who gave, or the dignity of him to whom the gift was given. F. Poured it on his head. This act, however strange to us, was perfectly conformable to the customs of ancient times, not only in Asia, but in the more polished parts of Europe; and, among the Jews particularly, the custom of anointing the head seems to have been almost as common a custom as that of washing the face. P.—Kingly guest at royal banquet could not have had a costlier homage of the kind rendered to him. That Mary had in her possession so rich a treasure may be accepted as one of the many signs that her family was one of the wealthiest in the village. That she now took and spent the whole of it upon Jesus, was but a final expression of the fulness and the intensity of her devotion. 4. Judas Iscariot. Love so ardent, sacrifice so costly as that of Mary, he could not appreciate. He disliked it, condemned it; it threw such a reproach by contrast upon his own feeling and conduct to Christ. H.—6. Cared for the poor. The true friends of the poor, who give most and do most for them, will always be found among those who do most for Christ. It is the successors of Mary of Bethany, and not of Judas Iscariot, who really “care for the poor.” A thief, and had the bag.** Than the love of money, no besetting sin seems more thoroughly to wither up and harden the heart. No wonder it is called “the root of all evil.” J. C. R.—A dreadful thing is this love of money! It disables both eyes and ears, and makes man worse to deal with than a wild beast, allowing him to consider neither conscience, nor friendship, nor fellowship, nor salvation. Chrys.—Christ trusts a thief with his money, because he sets no value upon it; but he keeps souls in his own custody, and redeems them with his blood, because, having received them of his Father, he values them more than all the world besides. He suffers his money to be stolen from him, but never his sheep. Q. Mk. 6. “She hath done a good work,” he said —“one not only far from censure, but worthy of all praise. She hath done it unto me, done it out of pure, deep love—a love that will bring the best, the costliest thing she has, and think it no waste, but rather its fittest, worthiest application, to bestow it upon me.” Upon that ground alone, upon his individual claims as compared with all others, Jesus might well have rested his vindication of Mary’s act. It does not require that we should assign to her any preeminence of faith. It was the intensity of the personal attachment to Jesus that her act expressed which drew down upon it the encomium of the Lord. H.—On Me, the Lord says; because “on Him,” therefore Mary’s work had its goodness and beauty, as all good works. Love to Christ is the rich source and the living soul of every other love which reckons as such before God. R. B. The inherent grace and beauty of the act forbade any direct reproof; and so jealousy meanly suggests that the precious perfume might have been better sold, the price given to the poor, and this woman have rendered her demonstrations of gratitude in some more “practical” or active way. The answer of Jesus not only rebukes the littleness which these censures betrayed, but it instructively vindicates the woman’s cordial, unstudied sacrifice; and not hers only, but the offerings of humble loyalty and silent love to him in all time and over all the earth. It is the acceptance, by the Son of God, of lowly and retiring goodness. It is the legitimation and approval of all hearty gifts to the Master, by the Master’s voice. It is the eternal benediction of the gospel on despised fidelity and neglected love. . . . We ought not to forget that God may have, that he asks, that he requires of us that there shall be, servants of his love as self-denying, as heroic, as resolute, of whom hospital never knew and poetry never sang, right here in these homely houses and these prosaic streets. And to all that sit at his feet and follow in his steps in the spirit of her who poured the fragrant offering on his head, he is ready to speak the same benediction with his infinite love—hiding in it the sure promise of life everlasting. F. D. H. 7. The poor with you always, but not me.** The Bible is such a friend to the poor, such an enemy of luxury, prodigality, and mere bodily gratification, that it seems an unnatural thing to have, even in appearance, Judas taking the side of the poor, and Christ standing in their way. But the position of the parties has a deep truth underlying it. Judas the thief takes the side of poverty that he may plunder it; and Christ, who became poor that he might make many rich, teaches that there are more ways of doing good than almsgiving. All heavenly charity is not bound up in bags of flour. “Not that he cared for the poor,” is the truth about the one; “because he cared for the poor,” is the motive of the other. Try to measure the amount of bread which would have been provided by the three hundred pence with the fragrance that has exhaled from this woman’s deed into millions of weary hearts among the poorest of the poor. Ker. 8. If Judas could yet have been saved, the Lord’s patience and gentleness must have brought him on his knees before him. There he stood, his whole heart before Jesus laid bare. And the Lord does not thrust him out, does not upbraid him with being a hypocrite and a thief, and presently about to become a murderer. He only knocks gently at the door of his heart with the foretelling of his death. It is as if he had said to him: “Mary has made me ready for my burial; and thou, Judas—how canst thou will to make me ready for death?” Judas could bear unmoved the Lord’s look, and he went out to betray him. R. B. She hath done what she could. The whole spiritual meaning of gifts consists in the disposition of the giver. Distinctions of weight and measure, standards of value, calculations of outlay, vanish before that simple and royal touchstone in the breast. Christ’s eye falls, not on the box of ointment, but it falls on Mary’s secret, inmost soul. That being sound, all is sound. She believes, she trusts, she loves; therefore “she hath done what she could.” Out of that deep and rooted affection all manner of obedient fruits must grow, in time, as surely as love is the willing servant of the beloved. To anoint it for my burial. Her gift, he seems to add, is an unconscious embalming before my agony. These most sacred impulses of divine reverence are greater than any common almsgivings. Let each have its due. Whoso loveth me will love my poor, and serve them in the time and place. Let the heart be fastened personally on me as a living Redeemer, and Christian duties will soon fall into their order, and abound. F. D. H.—“For my burying”—clearly, therefore, his condemnation and burial were near at hand. This was another death-blow to all false Messianic hopes. No earthly wealth, no regal elevation could be looked for by the followers of one who was so soon to die. F. 9. Jesus is surrounded by men looking joyously forward to days and years of success and triumph. But he knows what they do not—that on that day week his body will be lying in the new-made sepulchre. And he accepts the anointing at Mary’s hand as preparing his body for the burial. With serene eye he looks down into the future, and abroad over the earth, and speaks of it as a thing of certainty that this gospel—the gospel of glad tidings of salvation in his name—was to be preached throughout the whole world. H.—We cannot but be struck with the majesty of this prophetic announcement; conveying by implication the whole mystery of the gospel which should go forth from his death as its source—looking forward to the end of time when it shall have been preached in the whole world—and specifying the fact that this deed should be recorded wherever it should be preached. A.—While the victories of many kings and generals are lost in silence, and many who have founded states and reduced nations to subjection are not known by reputation or by name, the pouring of ointment by this woman is celebrated throughout the whole world. Time hath passed away, but the memory of the deed she did hath not waned away. Chrys.—Fourteen hundred years have passed and gone since in the great church of St. Sophia at Constantinople Chrysostom uttered these words, but still wider and wider is the tale of Mary's anointing of her Master being told, the fragrance of the ointment spreading, yet losing nothing of its sweetness; such fresh vitality, such self-preserving power, lodging in a simple act of pure and fervid love. H. J. 9, 10. Lazarus is mentioned throughout the incident as forming an element in the unfolding of the hatred of the Jews which issued in the Lord's death. Notice the climax, from mere connecting mention in verse 1, then nearer connection, verse 2, to his being the cause of the Jews flocking to Bethany in verse 9, and the joint object with Jesus of the enmity of the chief priests in verse 10. A. 11. Believed on Jesus.** An intellectual conviction that Jesus must be the Messiah. This was the state of mind in which many hundreds of Jews were before the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the day of Pentecost, convinced but not converted, persuaded that Jesus was the Christ of God, but afraid to confess him. Hence on the day of Pentecost many hundreds of Peter's hearers were prepared to believe. J. C. R.—What served further to nurture in the breasts of the high-priests, the lawyers, and the Pharisees the design to put Jesus to death, appears in the transaction of the following day, viz., the entrance into Jerusalem. Accordingly, in the incidents of these first two days of the great week we perceive the human cause of the sufferings and death of Jesus. C. B. ## Section 118.—Public Entry into Jerusalem. J. 1 Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. L. 14 And in the evening when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles 15 with him. And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with 16 you before I suffer. For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be 17 fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, 18 Take this, and divide it among yourselves. For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come. 24 And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the 25 greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over 26 them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is 27 chief, as he that doth serve. For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth. J. 2 And supper being ended (the devil having now put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, 3 Simon's son, to betray him); Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his 4 hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God; he riseth from supper, and 5 laid aside his garments, and took a towel, and girded himself. After that, he poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the 6 towel wherewith he was girded. Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith 7 unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said unto him, What I 8 do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter. Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part 9 with me. Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands, and 10 my head. Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but 11 is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all. For he knew who should betray him: therefore said he, Ye are not all clean. 12 So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down 13 again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master, and 14. Lord; and ye say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your 15 feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that 16 ye should do as I have done to you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not 17 greater than his Lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. HUMAN characters are always reduced in their eminence, and the impressions of awe they have raised, by a closer and more complete acquaintance. But it was not so with Christ. With his disciples, in closest terms of intercourse, for three whole years; their brother, friend, teacher, monitor, guest, fellow-traveller; seen by them under all the conditions of public ministry, and private society, he is yet visibly raising their sense of his degree and quality; becoming a greater wonder and holier mystery, and gathering to his person feelings of reverence and awe, at once more general and more sacred. And it will be discovered in all the disciples, that Christ is more separated from them, and holds them in deeper awe, the closer he comes to them and the more perfectly they know him. He grows sacred, peculiar, wonderful, divine, as acquaintance reveals him. At first he is only a man, as the senses report him to be; knowledge, observation, familiarity, raise him into the God-man. And exactly this appears in the history, without any token of art, or even apparent consciousness that it does appear—appears because it is true. H. B. J. 1. He loved them unto the end. It was when he drew near the end that our Lord's love was most severely tested. But, in the most trying circumstances, to the end he said and did everything to maintain and strengthen the confidence of all who had once trusted in him. He interested himself, too, in their condition to the end. In all that he suffered, our Lord could not have been adjudged selfish if it had occupied his thoughts almost to the exclusion of the dangers that surrounded his followers, since he suffered voluntarily in their behalf; but they had his counsel and sympathy and prayers as freely as if he had not been the first to suffer—as if they alone had anything to dread. When assailants, led by Judas, came upon him again after falling backward to the ground in his presence, he was ready to surrender himself, but not his afflicted brethren: "Let these go their way." When a great company followed him on his way to the crucifixion with their lamentations, he turned to them with more pity for their doom than dread of his own. So also he bore with the inconstancy of his disciples to the end. Often indeed they had stood in need of his forbearance, and in all his treatment of them on such occasions he showed himself a lenient Master; but as the end drew near they wavered most in their allegiance. If ever their devotion could be grateful to his heart, it was not when the multitude crowded about him with wonder and applause, but rather when he prayed alone in agony and then was treacherously kissed and arrested; yet it was in the conclusion of that very scene, when he was finally in the hands of malignant foes, that "all the disciples forsook him and fled." But he did not forsake them. When Peter thrice denied him, the Master, who had before rebuked his rash violence, only turned and looked upon him, and his silent love broke down the fear and pride of that follower, who now wept the more bitterly because Jesus loved him to the end. But the love that endured so long survived the end, and in itself was without end. It could not die on the cross, nor be stifled in the sepulchre. It rose with him; and again he associated with them, inspired them with new confidence, concerned himself with their wants, and bore with their folly, as in the case of Thomas. And the same love was drawn up to heaven as he ascended, thence to "drop as the rain" and "distil as the dew" upon them, till they ascended to enjoy it unutterably in their abode with him in paradise. To this hour he has never ceased to love his own. He loves them "from everlasting to everlasting." O. E. D.—The few hours that intervened between the end of Christ's public ministry and his arrest were devoted to instructing and comforting his disciples in view of his approaching departure, and the severe conflicts they were to undergo. In these conversations he displayed all his heavenly love and calmness of soul; his loftiness and his humility. N.—From first to last, his love was a self-forgetting love, even upon the cross; his love was to the very last a Saviour's love. Instead of thinking of his own sufferings, he thought of the guilt of others. A. T. L. 14. The supper began with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, which, when the Master and the rest of the company had tasted, one of the younger persons present—generally a child—asked the reason of what was peculiar in that feast, which introduced the haggadah, that is, the showing forth or declaration of it (in allusion to which we read of showing forth the Lord's death). Then the Master rose up and took another cup, and washed his hands again before the lamb was tasted; and in this interval it is supposed Christ also washed the feet of his disciples. Then, after eating the Passover, followed another cup, which (after having delivered to each a piece of bread) was the sacramental cup at this supper. Then, after some discourse, the whole family, having drunk at least a fourth cup, sang some psalms of praise; and so the solemnity ended. A. 15. This passover.** Among all the types the Passover holds the foremost place, floating down through the old dispensation to tell of its greatest deliverance, as the Communion has come down to us to tell of the great redemption of the new. It was now about to resign its charge, for it had served its purpose. It had stirred, year by year, the ashes of memory in the Jewish heart, and kindled them into the flame of hope—had taught men to look for a greater prophet than Moses, and to long for a higher salvation than the freedom from Egypt. And now, with this last Passover, it has come. The foreshadowed sufferings of that ancient covenant all meet in his cross, and its promised blessings all flow from it. He is the victim and the offerer, the Passover and the Moses; he endures and does, suffers and saves. He passed through a deeper than Egypt's darkness—was baptized with the baptism of blood—was the slain lamb, and stricken first-born for our sins. He led his chosen to the sea which barred the way, and stretched over it his delivering cross, and it opened, and a way was made through the deep for the ransomed of the Lord to pass over. He is the heavenly manna—the water and the smitten rock—the pillar of defence and light—the ark of the covenant that dries up Jordan's stream—the tree of life that scatters its healing leaves and sheds its fruit through all the goodly land. The divine history of the past now completes its cycle, and this last Passover begins to speak the word of the cross—"It is finished." Before I suffer! They seem strange words from such lips—from him who had already earned his title to be "the man of sorrows"—who had passed through privation and reproach and grief, and who seems to count all these as nothing to that which lay before him. It is because he is standing on the verge of Gethsemane, and beneath the shadow of his cross, and such words, "before I suffer," tell us that there was an agony of endurance in view which was to cast into the shade all that laid behind him. It is this suffering that makes the death of Christ the centre of gospel truth, and that brings us together to remember him who was bruised for our iniquities. Ker.—Clear before the Saviour's eye were all the scenes of the impending midnight hour in the garden, the next forenoon in the judgment-hall, the afternoon upon the cross. A few quiet hours lay between him and his entrance into the cloud. He wished to spend those hours with his apostles, to take his last leave of them, to give his farewell instructions to them. He had never before partaken of the Passover with them. He desired to do it this once. He knew that this was virtually the last Jewish Passover: that with the offering up of himself in the great sacrifice of the following day that long line of Passover celebrations that had run now through fifteen hundred years, down from the night in Egypt when the first-born were slain, was to be brought to its close. He knew that all which this rite prefigured was then to be fulfilled, and that that fulfilment was to issue in the erection of a spiritual kingdom, in which other kind of tables were to be spread, and other kind of wine to be drunk. H. 16. Will not eat. 18. Will not drink. A declaration of the fulfilment of the Passover rite in both its usual divisions—the eating of the lamb, and drinking the cup of thanksgiving. Henceforward he who fulfilled the law for man will no more eat and drink of it. 17. The cup.** This is generally supposed to have been the first cup in the Passover meal, with which the whole was introduced. It has no reference to the subsequent cup in verse 20 (Section 140). That was the institution of a new rite; this, the abrogation of an old one, now about to be fulfilled in the person of the true Lamb of God. A.—"It is to be your last as well as mine, until the kingdom of God come" (verse 18). It was the point of transition between two economies and their two great festivals, the one about to close forever, the other immediately to open and run its majestic career until from earth it be transferred to heaven. B.—Henceforth the Levitical sacrifice was to cease, being transfigured into an evangelical sacrament. W. 24. Spring up how it might, we have the fact that around the first communion-table among the apostles, in the presence of their Master, in the critical and solemn position in which he and they stood, there was actually a quarrel about their individual rights and privileges; a petty ambition, the love of place and power, finding its way into the hearts of those most honored of the Lord, entering to defile the most sacred season and solemnity. H.—This was not the first time that the followers of the meek and lowly one had striven for the highest place. It is a fearful proof of the strong hold which ambition has upon the human heart, that the disciples, after a two years' training in the school of humility, had yet made so little progress, that at such an hour as this they could feel disposed to begin quarrelling about precedence. R. B.—It showed how little, as yet, even these his chosen followers had entered into the meaning of his life. It showed that, even now, they had wholly failed to understand his many and earnest warnings as to the nature of his kingdom, and the certainty of his fate. Not by mere verbal reproof, but by an act more profoundly significant and touching, he determined to teach to them, and to all who love him, a nobler lesson. F.—Our Lord showed the greatest kindness in his manner of correcting their false ideas. Having stated the difference between his kingdom and worldly ones, exaltation among his followers depending on their humility, he proposes to them his own example during his intercourse with them, and enforces his words by a most eminent act of humility in washing their feet, a condescension which he exhorts them to imitate in their general conduct toward each other. Newcome. J. 2. Being ended. Rather having begun. P. S.—The devil put into the heart. Literally “cast.” The heart is the seed-plot which Satan sows. Suggestion is one of his chief weapons. The sin of man consists in opening his heart to the suggestion; giving it a place and letting it sink down. This is obvious in the first temptation in Eden. J. C. R.—3. Jesus came from God, not leaving him, and went to God, not leaving us. Bernard.—4. Riseth from supper. He rose from the supper-table before the repast had fully commenced. The guests had taken their half-recumbent positions around the table in the usual Oriental style, reclining upon the left side, resting on the elbow, leaving the right hand free for service in eating, and with feet extended outward. H. C. (See p. 182.) 5. The master of the house had relinquished for the strangers the best apartment of his dwelling, and furnished it as well as he could. He saw that in the room the necessary apparatus for the washing, the basin and the water and the towel, were all provided, but he left it to the guests themselves to see that it was done. But which of the twelve will do it for the others? H.—He into whose hands the Father had given all things, with those same hands washes, not the hands, but the feet of his disciples. Aug.—Verily, the heart of man never could have imagined such a scene! All that the world can show that is great and high vanishes into nothing before this lowliness. R. B.—In this act Jesus became a servant of servants to his disciples. He showed that to serve was the business of his life, and in his view was not to his shame but to his glory. It was an example to illustrate a principle. All that his example meant then, it means now. The real service which the law of Christ demands of us is not abated by the least jot or tittle in consequence of the change in social customs which renders it improper now to wash one another’s feet. It were more than a misfortune to lose the sweet power of this divine example; it were worse than a blunder to miss its precious influence toward the crucifying of human selfishness and the culture of Christian humility and of loving service toward all the Christian brotherhood. H. C. 7. Not now, but hereafter.** God’s ways may appear inscrutable, and indeed must be so, for life on the earth is but a beginning and a fragment, a beginning to find its end, and a fragment to be made whole, in the all-revealing life beyond the grave. But looking at our life, in the light shed upon it by Christ’s, and meekly receiving what God sends in submission and hope, we will be learning more and more now, and all hereafter. The teaching of the Spirit, it is enough to say, becomes the providence of the Christian. It is of less consequence for him to know what betides him, than to have the assurances begotten of the Spirit, that come what may, God will fit him for it, carry him through it, and make it, in the end, the best possible experience for him. If one have but the meekness to pray, to do, and to wait, the issue cannot be otherwise than happy. God’s word and Spirit are our warrant. The world is God’s, and its heirs are God’s people. W. I. B. 8,9. If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.** This at last carries the disciple away, for whither should he go if he were to have no part with him who was his life? Vehement as he was in refusing, he is now still more vehement in submitting. He answers in the language of devoted love—love which, though inconsiderate, is yet perfect love. R. B.—“If to be washed of Thee have such significance, then not my feet only, but hands, head, and all, be washed!” This artless expression of clinging attachment to Jesus, and felt dependence upon him for his whole spiritual well-being, furnishes such evidence of historic verity as no thoroughly honest mind can resist. 10. He that is washed—in this thorough sense, to express which the word is carefully changed to one meaning to wash as in a bath: needeth not—to be so washed any more: save to wash his feet—needeth to do no more than wash his feet (and here the former word is resumed, meaning to wash the hands or feet): but is clean every whit—or, “as a whole.” This sentence is singularly instructive. Of the two cleansings, the one points to that which takes place at the commencement of the Christian life, embracing complete absolution from sin as a guilty state, and entire deliverance from it as a polluted life, or, in the language of theology, justification and regeneration. This cleansing is effected once for all, and is never repeated. The other cleansing, described as that of “the feet,” is such as one walking from a bath quite cleansed still needs, in consequence of his contact with the earth. It is the daily cleansing which we are taught to seek, when in the spirit of adoption we say, “Our Father which art in heaven—forgive us our debts.” B.—And where we make this confession, then he who washed his disciples’ feet is faithful and just to forgive us our sin, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Aug.—When burdened with the sense of manifold shortcomings, as what tender spirit of a Christian is not? is it not a relief to be permitted thus to wash our feet after a day’s contact with the earth? This is not to call in question the completeness of our past justification. Our Lord, while graciously insisting on washing Peter’s feet, refuses to extend the cleansing farther, that the symbolical instruction intended to be conveyed might not be marred. And ye are clean—in the first and whole sense: but not all**—important, as showing that Judas, instead of being as true-hearted a disciple as the rest at first, and merely falling away afterward—as many represent it—never experienced that cleansing at all which made the others what they were. B.—Concerning this twofold purification: that which is once performed through justification, and that which takes place daily through sanctification, the Lord speaks also in John 15: 2, 3. He says: “Now ye are clean,” and yet at the same time “he purgeth them.” R. B. 14–17. He their Lord and Master had washed their feet. He had done it to teach them humility, to teach them self-denial, to teach them love: blessed they if they learned the lesson! He should be chief among them who, for the sake of others, gladly laid on himself the lowliest burdens, and sought for himself the humblest services. Again and again he warned them that they were not to look for earthly reward or earthly prosperity; the throne, and the table, and the kingdom, and the many mansions were not of earth. F.—His own act stands before us, not as a model act to be exactly copied, but as an act representative to us of the whole circle of kindly offices that we are called upon to render to one another, and as illustrative of the humble, self-denying spirit in which all these offices should be discharged. H.—Whoever serves his brother in self-denying love is obeying this command of the Lord, in whatever way he may be called upon to do it, whether it be by washing his feet, or whether it be by filling his hand, or whether it be by drying from his eyes the tears, or whether it be by watching and praying for his soul. It is not what we do, so much as the mind with which we do. And this the disciples and the first Christians, who glowed with brotherly love, well knew. They drew from this feet-washing no literal law, but have sought to enter into the spirit of him who, Lord over all, yet dwelt among his own as a servant, to whom no lowliness was so lowly that the height of his love did not stoop down thereunto. Jesus’ serving love was writing in their hearts this fundamental principle in the kingdom of God, namely, that every office, even the highest, the apostolic office, is appointed to serve. How easy this to learn, but how difficult to do! “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” R. B. All our noblest enlargements of power and of peace are sacrificial: there is something hard to do, or hard to bear—human nature being what it is. But the yoke is eased if by it you help other men. Learn to love the brotherhood. Hate nothing so much as hatred—dropping every grudge and every revenge, every bitter or cruel vestige of the old satanic life out of your heart, forgiving even them that will not forgive. Live fairly and generously with men. God makes the path of obedience to himself to be the path of honesty and sweet temper and loving-kindness to his children. Let thine eyes look right on, and thine eyelids straight before thee. Then it will prove that you are blessed children of the Father. You walk at large, like sons of God. The road of duty will still be narrow, but, travelling in it, you will breathe the immortal air, and every deepening breath will be an inspiration of the life eternal. Your daily landscape will be the scenery of both worlds—all things yours, because ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. F. D. H. CHRIST never conforms to an expectation, even of his friends. When they look to find a great prophet in him, he offers nothing in the modes of the prophets. When they ask for places of distinction in his kingdom, he rebukes their folly, and tells them he has nothing to give, but a share in his reproaches and his poverty. When they look to see him take the sword as the great Messiah of their nation, calling the people to his standard, he tells them he is no warrior and no king, but only a messenger of love to lost men; one that has come to minister and die, but not to set up or restore the kingdom. Every expectation that rises up to greet him, is repulsed; and yet, so great is the power of his manner, that multitudes are held fast, and cannot yield their confidence. Enveloped as he is in the darkest mystery, they trust him still; going after him, hanging on his words, as if detained by some charmed influence which they cannot shake off or resist. Never was there a teacher that so uniformly baffled every expectation of his followers, never one that was followed so persistently. H. B. # Section 138.—One of You shall betray Me. # The Guest-Chamber. L. 28 Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations; and I appoint unto 29, 30 you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; that ye may eat and drink at J. 18 my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen; but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He 19 that eateth bread with me, hath lifted up his heel against me. Now I tell you before 20 it come, that when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me 21 receiveth him that sent me. When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in spirit; and as they sat and did eat, he testified and said, Behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table. Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you which eateth 22 with me shall betray me. Then the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom he spake; and they began to inquire among themselves, which of them it was that should M. 22 do this thing. And they were exceeding sorrowful, and, one by one, began every one 23 of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I? And he answered and said unto them, It is one of the twelve, that dippeth his hand with me in the dish; the same shall betray me. 24 The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had never been born. 25 Then Judas, which betrayed him, answered and said, Master, is it I? He said unto him, Thou hast said. J. 23 Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved. 24 Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, that he should ask who it should be of whom 25, 26 he spake. He then, lying on Jesus' breast, saith unto him, Lord, who is it? Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he 27 had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. And after the sop 28 Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly. Now 29 no man at the table knew for what intent he spake this unto him. For some of them thought, because Judas had the bag, that Jesus had said unto him, Buy those things that 30 we have need of against the feast; or, that he should give something to the poor. He then, having received the sop, went immediately out: and it was night. “AND after the sop Satan entered into him.” There is something appalling in the successive stages by which he reached the climax of his guilt. First, “the devil (simply) put it into his heart to betray” him. But many a struggle may he have endured ere he could nerve himself for the deed. Even with the thirty pieces of silver in his hand, he probably still quailed at the thought of such an act, and for such a sum—the price of the lowest slave! When Jesus stooped to wash his feet, the last struggle may have been only reaching its crisis. But that word, about one that did eat of his bread lifting his heel against him; the still more explicit announcement that a traitor was at the table; the inquiry which was forced out of him, after it had come from all the rest, “Master, is it I?” and above all, the answer (certainly not audible to the rest), “Thou hast said it”—would make the feeling irresistible, “I am detected, it is now too late to draw back.” And the sop given, and Satan now seated in his breast, he went immediately out (thus severing himself forever from that holy society with which he never had any spiritual sympathy); and it was night—but far blacker night in the soul of Judas than in the sky over his head. B.—O night the most criminal, dreadful, and dark, and yet the most holy, hopeful, and bright!—since the Son of God is therein betrayed, sold, and delivered up by the most execrable sacrilege, and since he therein gives, delivers up, and sacrifices himself, leaves the most divine pledge of his love, and teaches therein the sublimest truths of that religion which he institutes! Q. L. 29. I appoint a kingdom. Who is this that dispenses kingdoms, nay, the kingdom of kingdoms, within an hour or two of his own apprehension, and less than a day of his shameful death? B.—He undertakes to organize a kingdom of God, or kingdom of heaven on earth. His purpose includes a new moral creation of the whole human race. H. B.—The first conception is due to the mind of Jesus Christ, and in his teaching the conception is presented, not vaguely and confusedly, but with luminous precision. It is the reign of God in men, when the Father of minds shall be known, loved, and revered by his children. It is the reign of righteousness, purity, truth, love, and peace, the universal reception and dominion among men of all true, just, holy, generous and divine principles. Y.—It is a plan as universal in time, as it is in the scope of its objects. It does not expect to be realized in a lifetime, or even in many centuries to come. His expectation reaches boldly out beyond his own death; that, in fact, is to be the seed of his great empire—“except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth,” he says, “alone.” Is this great idea, which no man ever before conceived, the raising of the whole human race to God, a plan sustained with such evenness of courage, and a confidence of the world’s future so far transcending any human example—is this a human development? Regard the benevolence of it, the universality of it, the religious grandeur of it, as a work readjusting the relations of God and his government with men—the cost, the length of time it will cover, and the far-off date of its completion—is it in this scale that a Nazarene carpenter, a poor uneducated villager, lays out his plans and graduates the confidence of his undertakings? H. B.—His great central conception of the kingdom of God—a kingdom based on truth, administered by moral influences, pervaded by love, and holiness, and joy, and open to all of whatever class or clime—is a conception as magnificent as it is original. And, with this, all the rest of his doctrine is in perfect and beautiful harmony, every line of truth being like a radius starting from and conducting to this central idea, and the whole forming one perfect sphere of knowledge. W. L. A. (Read Section 174.) J. 18. Hath lifted up his heel. Ps. 41: 9. It was fulfilled in the case of Judas in the sense that this case filled out fully the very idea of David in the Psalm. The same thing befell David’s greater son which befell David. 21. Troubled in spirit. The same word we met in the scenes at the grave of Lazarus (John 11: 33)—indicating deep and painful emotion—it seemed so inexpressibly sad that one of his chosen twelve—one who had sat beside him at table; was sitting (perhaps) next him at this moment—who had been lifted so high in privilege and honor, and in the possibilities of a noble life, should turn against him in the foulness of the basest treason! H. C.—To the apostles he had said, “Ye are clean;” but, as this could not be applied to Judas, he added, “yet not all.” Intimations of this kind he threw out more and more frequently, partly, as he himself said (verse 19), to prepare them for the act of treachery, that it might not take them unawares, and lead them to infer that he, too, had been deceived; and partly, perhaps, in order to rouse, if possible, the conscience of Judas himself. But his foresight of the awful deed—that one who had been a special object of his love should disarm him and become a tool of his enemies—and of the conflict with depravity that he must go through, even up to his last hour, moved him most deeply; and he now spoke more plainly, “Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.” N.—That night all, even the best beloved, were to forsake him, but it was not that; that night even the boldest-hearted was to deny him with oaths, but it was not that; nay, but one of them was to betray him. F.—M. 22. Lord, is it I? Their language expresses in the original a much stronger negation than in our version. Surely not I, Lord? L. A. 24. A great crime is made to minister to the greatest act of the divine love, yet the criminal is stripped of no part of his guilt. “The Son of man goeth as it is written;” that writing is but the expression of the divine will; that will is sovereign, just, and good; yet woe to the man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! human freedom, human agency, human guilt taken up into that vast and complicated machinery by which the counsels of the Most High God are carried out. H.—It were good for that man if he had not been born? “Words,” it has been well said, “of immeasurable ruin, words of immeasurable woe”—and the more terrible because uttered by the lips of immeasurable love; words capable, if any were capable, of revealing to the lost soul of the traitor all the black gulf of horror that was yawning before his feet. F.—25. Thou hast said. No man at the table then could have heard that answer of our Lord; we can scarcely imagine how it could be but by supposing that Judas lay upon the seat immediately next to Jesus on the one side, as John lay upon the one nearest to him on the other. Assuming this, Jesus might easily have spoken to one so near in such an undertone that none could overhear. H. J. 23. Leaning on Jesus’ bosom. The rare combination of contemplativeness and passion, of strength and sweetness, in the same soul—the perfect faith which inspired his devotion, and the perfect love which precluded fear—these were the gifts and graces which rendered him worthy of leaning his young head on the bosom of his Lord. F.—In modest self-concealment, and under a sense of the deepest gratitude, John designates himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” P. S.—25. Lying on. Rather, leaning back on. A.—26. Two men of the twelve now knew to whom the Lord referred—Judas, on the one side, to whom Jesus had directly said, “Thou art the man,” and John, now, on the other, to whom the sign was as explicit as any words could be—a sign, however, only to John himself, the others not having heard the words that gave the act its meaning. H.—But for the concluding scenes of the history, no reader of it would gather that one of the twelve differed in character from all his fellows. If there was a radical defect in the moral and religious character of Judas, it certainly remained undeveloped to his constant associates up to the fatal night when they all met for the last time together. B. 27. After the sop, Satan. At first Satan came to make the heart of Judas his own; now he enters, because it is his own. Bp. H.—The kingdom of evil, as well as that of good, has a personal head. That he should have the power of tempting is no more strange than that human spirits should possess it. He can no more compel than they, and he gains in influence only as we yield him place. Ker.—That which thou art doing, do more quickly.** Reproving his lingering, and his pretending to share in the general doubt. A. 29. Huy things needed. Our Lord did not work miracles to procure the necessaries required by himself and his disciples. Give to the poor. The supposition shows our Lord’s custom in the matter of almsgiving. He sanctified and adorned the practice of caring for the poor by his own example. Judas had the bag.** Snares attend the possession and handling of money. The man who has the care of the money in our Lord’s little company is the man that makes shipwreck of his soul, through the love of money. J. C. R. 30. In that bewildering chaos of a soul spotted with mortal guilt, the Satanic had triumphed over the human; in that dark heart earth and hell were thenceforth at one; in that lost soul sin had conceived and brought forth death. And so from the lighted room, from the holy banquet, from the blessed company, from the presence of his Lord, he went immediately out, and—as the beloved disciple adds, with a shudder of dread significance letting the curtain of darkness fall forever on that appalling figure—“and it was night.” F. ## Section 139.—Foretells the Denial of Peter, and the Dispersion of the Twelve. The Guest-Chamber. M. 26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had blessed, or given thanks, he brake it and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body, which is given, broken, for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also after supper he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; and they all drank of it. And he said unto them, This cup is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins. This do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. Verily I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my 1 Cor. Father's kingdom. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew 26 the Lord's death till he come. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ M. 3 THEN Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, 4 saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What 5 is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. 6 And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them 7 into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought 8 with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, 9 The field of blood, unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that 10 was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; and gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me. 1 And straightway, when the morning was come, all the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council, against Jesus to put him to 2 death. And the whole multitude of them arose, and when they had bound Jesus, they led him away from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment, and delivered him to Pontius J. 28 Pilate the governor. And it was early; and they themselves went not into the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover. 29 Pilate then went out unto them, and said, What accusation bring ye against this man? 30 They answered and said unto him, If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee. Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye him, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put 32 any man to death: that the saying of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he spake, signifying what death he should die. And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Cesar, saying, that he himself is Christ a King. J. 33 Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus. And Jesus stood before the governor; and the governor asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the 34 Jews? Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee 35 of me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation, and the chief priests, have 36 delivered thee unto me. What hast thou done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. 37 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth my 38 voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all. Mk. 3 And the chief priests and elders accused him of many things: but he answered nothing. And Pilate asked him again, saying, Answerest thou nothing? hearest thou not 5 how many things they witness against thee? But Jesus yet answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly. L. 4 Then said Pilate to the chief priests and to the people, I find no fault in this man. 5 And they were the more fierce, saying, He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place. WHAT human heart can be untouched by the demeanor of Jesus toward Judas when sin had begun to do its work? On the one hand, there is that divine earnestness with which, from time to time, he uttered the voice of prophetic warning in his ear. And on the other hand, that considerate love with which, in these warnings, he ever spared him before the disciples, never mentioning his name, just as if he was addressing a secret word to his heart alone, by which he constantly and unweariedly wooed his heart—ever up to that majestic close, when he washed the traitor's feet! And by all that, Judas was untouched; to all he was insensible. For he that has himself ceased to love, can no longer understand the love of others. In his dead heart all is voiceless and mute. But he awoke at last. Then the pent-up storm burst within the conscience of the traitor. And as he heard a voice cry out against him from every fold of that conscience, the feeling that awoke within him was—“Once I loved; once I was loved by him!” But alas! he had then no longer power to believe or love! A. T. As the death of Jesus was designed to atone for all guilt, nearly all guilt combined to accomplish it. It was covetousness that betrayed him; it was perjury that bore false witness against him; it was envy that delivered him up. Cruelty scourged and crowned him with thorns. Popular fickleness chose Barabbas, and rejected Him; while, in the soldiers, coarse brutality buffeted and mocked him. If we look beneath the outward acts of human conduct to the hidden principles from which they spring, it will be found that the guilt of crucifying the Lord is oft repeated—by avowed disciples, who desert and deny, and would even sell him, and with him every principle of conscience; by those who would aid his cause, but that to identify themselves too closely with Christ might compromise them with the world; by those who believe but do not confess; whose admiration ends when they feel the pressure of the morality of his gospel, and the self-denying character of the Christian life; and by those who in every age have preferred the specious to the real, or who have mocked with empty lip-service that divine King who is satisfied with nothing less than the homage of the heart! J. A. M. 3. Judas stands alone in sacred history as a man devoted by name, by the voice of the Lord himself, to perdition. He is the most marked type of those false disciples who joined Christ in the expectation of an earthly kingdom; and when our Lord’s repeated announcements of his sufferings and death showed this to be a vain hope, he prepared to sell himself and his Master to the rulers. S. Judas had made ready his own nature for the tempter. He, and none but he, could have rendered himself capable of yielding. And now that he has yielded, the power at work becomes apparent in the disenchantment which follows. After sin has made a man so that he cannot look steadily into his own soul, it ends by destroying his enjoyment in that fictitious pleasure for which it has induced him to sell all that is divine and real. It cheats him of the substance for a shadow, and of that shadow it robs him, or changes it into a frightful phantom, from which he would escape if he could—as Judas from the hire of his treachery. The remorse of Judas at this moment can be perfectly explained by the full consequences of his act now looking him in the face. It is the murderer’s horror when the deed is committed and cannot be undone—that awful revulsion which, among all calculations, is never reckoned on. For now, not only Christ’s guiltlessness of the charge, but his spotless and loving character—the good he had received at his hands, and never evil—the gentle considerateness—the unwearied patience—the pitying tenderness he had shown him and his fellow-disciples—rose up before the soul of his betrayer, and smote him with unutterable remorse. No one word, no one act, could he call up that would help his own thoughts to justify his treachery. Ker. Judas repented himself. There are two Greek words used in the N. T., both of which are rendered repent. The one signifies literally to know after, and hence indicates a change of mind or purpose; the other signifies literally to care after, and so to carry a burden of sorrow for the past. The latter is the word used here. The distinction is well stated by Trench: “He who has changed his mind about the past is in the way to change everything; he who has an after-care may have little or nothing more than a selfish dread of the consequences of what he has done.” This appears to have been the state of mind of Judas. It is manifested in remorse for the past, not in any new purpose for the future; and it leads not to a new life in Christ Jesus, but to a despairing death. Repentance inspires to a new life, remorse leads to despair and death; repentance seeks forgiveness, remorse oblivion; repentance conducts Peter to Christ, remorse drives Judas from him. L. A. 4. I have sinned . . . innocent blood.** What a testimony this to Jesus! Judas had been with him in all circumstances for three years; his post as treasurer to him and the twelve gave him peculiar opportunity of watching the spirit, disposition, and habits of his Master; while his covetous nature would incline him to dark and suspicious, rather than frank and generous, interpretations of all that he said and did. If, then, he could have fastened on one questionable feature in all that he had so long witnessed, no such speech as this would ever have escaped his lips, nor would he have been so stung with remorse as not to be able to keep the money and survive his crime. B. What is that to us? This answer of the chief priests was perfectly natural for men of their character. Men who had any feeling, any sentiments of common humanity, or even of common justice, would naturally have paused under these circumstances; would have examined Judas, and investigated the grounds of his repentance. But with the guilt or innocence of Jesus they did not concern themselves. All they wanted was the destruction of a man whom they hated and feared, and whose life and doctrine were a standing reproach to them. This was their sole object; as to the justice of the case, they were utterly indifferent. P. If Christ is innocent it is not their concern. The traitor who knew him so well should have thought of this when he surrendered him. And in this they touch the very point which stung Judas to the quick, the one thing which made his guilt blacker than theirs. He knew Christ better, and sinned more against the purity and love of his nature. See thou to that. Even Judas himself could not complain. They had kept their share of the contract, and he must abide by his. This is the remorseless logic which belongs to these cases, and among such men it is all-powerful. And this is the natural end of all alliances that are made for mutual aid in the pursuit of revenge or unhallowed ambition, of unjust gain or sinful pleasure. Ker. 5. Terribly soon did the Nemesis fall on the main actor in the lower stages of this iniquity. When the morning dawned upon that chilly night, and he knew the decision of the priests and of the Sanhedrim, and saw that Jesus was now given over for crucifixion to the Roman governor, then he began fully to realize all that he had done. In Judas, as in so many thousands since, this opening of the eyes which follows the consummation of an awful sin to which many other sins have led, drove him from remorse to despair, from despair to madness, from madness to suicide. F.—We only see in his fearful end the most dread instance of the regular development and enhancement of sin in the individual that is contained in the history of man, and with awe we behold in him the only one who received his sentence in person before the last day. E. 6. Not lawful to put them into the treasury. These very men, who had no scruple at all in murdering an innocent person, yet had wonderful qualms of conscience about putting into the treasury the money which they themselves had given as “the price of blood.” P. 2. Pontius Pilate the governor. The Roman provinces were of two kinds, senatorial and imperial. The latter were governed by military officers, who held their office and power at the pleasure of the emperor. They looked after the taxes, paid the troops, preserved order, and administered a rude sort of justice; from their decisions there was ordinarily no appeal, except in the case of a Roman citizen. Judea was an imperial province; Pontius Pilate was its governor or procurator, and was directly amenable to the emperor, Tiberius Cesar, for his administration. L. A.—Pilate had arrived from Cesarea, to secure in person the preservation of order in the dangerous days of the feast. His quarters were in the new palace, built by Herod the Great on Zion. It was the pride of Jerusalem. G. It was probably about seven in the morning that, thinking to overawe the procurator by their numbers and dignity, the imposing procession of the Sanhedrists and priests, headed, no doubt, by Caiaphas himself, conducted Jesus from their hall of meeting over the lofty bridge which spanned the valley of the Tyropæon, in presence of all the city, with the bound hands of a sentenced criminal, a spectacle to angels and to men. “SUFFERED under Pontius Pilate”—so, in every creed of Christendom, is the name of the Roman procurator handed down to eternal execration. Yet of all the civil and ecclesiastical rulers before whom Jesus was brought to judgment, Pilate was the least guilty of malice and hatred, the most anxious, if not to spare his agony, at least to save his life. F. J. 28. The Pretorium, translated “hall of judgment,” was the headquarters of the Roman military governor, wherever he happened to be. S.—One of the ground apartments of Herod’s palace on Zion appears to have been the procurators’ Pretorium, mentioned here; as Josephus informs us that the Roman governors took up their quarters in the palace, and set up their tribunal in front (i. e., at the eastern entrance) of it, namely, on the “Pavement” (of John 19 : 13). Strong. Lest they should be defiled. Jewish authorities on defilement inform us that going into the house of a Gentile made a Jew unclean for one day. Notice how sanctimoniousness and crime consort together in the same bosoms—the spirit of murder firing their hearts, yet afraid to defile their hallowed garments or soil their holy feet by going into Pilate’s judgment-hall! H. C. Eat the passover. The word passover is employed in the New Testament in three different and specific acceptations, viz.: 1. The paschal lamb. 2. The paschal meal. 3. The paschal festival. The last may be taken in its literal and widest sense. Then, to eat may be understood to keep or celebrate the passover. Or, the paschal festival may be taken in the sense of paschal sacrifices; that is, the voluntary peace-offerings and thank-offerings, made more especially on the 15th day of Nisan. There is nothing in the language of John, nor in the attendant circumstances, which, upon fair interpretation, requires or permits us to believe that he intended to correct the unquestionable teaching of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The language of these three evangelists is full, explicit, and decisive, to the effect that our Lord’s last meal with his disciples, as recorded by them all, was the regular and ordinary paschal supper of the Jews, introducing the festival of unleavened bread, on the evening of the 14th day of Nisan. R. (Section 155, J. 14.) 31. Take ye him, and judge him. Pilate’s Roman knowledge of law, his Roman instinct of justice, his Roman contempt for their murderous fanaticism, made him not choose to act upon a charge so entirely vague. F.—As he had heard of no disturbance produced by Jesus, the statement made by the Sanhedrim appeared by no means credible; and, suspecting that religious disputes were at the bottom, he wished to get rid of the whole affair, and told them “to take him, and judge him according to their law.” N. It is not lawful for us to put to death. Judea was now under the Roman yoke; one badge of its servitude being this, that while the old Jewish courts were permitted to try and to punish minor offences, the final judgment of all capital offences was reserved for the Roman tribunals. A Roman judge must pass the sentence, or, at least, must sign the warrant that consigns the criminal to execution. At Jerusalem, these reserved cases were brought up for adjudication at the time of the great festivals, when the Roman procurator, who resided ordinarily at Cesarea, visited the capital. For the last six years, Pontius Pilate had held this office in Judea, and he was now in the city on occasion of this Passover. H. 32. Signifying what death he should die. It stood written in the eternal councils that Christ was to die by that Roman form of execution which inspired the Jews with a nameless horror, even by crucifixion; that he was to reign from his cross—to die by that most fearfully significant and typical of deaths—public, slow, conscious, accursed, agonizing—worse even than burning—the worst type of all possible deaths, and the worst result of that curse which he was to remove forever. F. The Lord was not to be stoned, according to the Jewish custom; for his holy body must be preserved from all mutilation. R. B.—This remark John makes for the strengthening of our faith, and to show us how wisely everything was ordered by the counsel of God under such complicated circumstances. His enemies dared not do what they would, but throughout the whole trial of Christ everything was ordered by God’s decree, determined long before. But this very Providence, which watched over our blessed Saviour from his birth to his death, will watch over us in our hours of life and death, if only we yield ourselves wholly up to it, and commit all our ways to God alone. Rambach. L. 2. They here bring three different accusations against him, not one of which—in the sense they desire Pilate to understand them—is true; and one of which, the second, they know is absolutely false. But it suits their object to represent the accused to Pilate as stirring up sedition, refusing to pay custom, claiming to be king of the country in his own right. H. The grounds on which the Sanhedrim condemned Christ were not sufficient to induce Pilate, the Roman procurator, to inflict capital punishment upon him. To serve the purpose, recourse was had to his claim of Messiahship, on which they had professed to found their own decision, with the addition of a political element: “He has claimed to be a king;” and hence “he perverts the nation (contests the Roman authority), and forbids to give tribute to Cesar.” An accusation of this sort could be the more readily admitted, as the Roman authorities were well aware that the Jews felt themselves degraded and disgraced by paying taxes to a heathen power. N. J. 33. Jesus stood before the governor. The future Judge of quick and dead stood before this earthly judge. He stood there, a King in bonds. Pilate beheld him, and his impression that this was no malefactor was legible on his countenance. Then began the Lord’s accusers to bring forward the accusations upon which they had previously agreed. He had confessed that he was Christ; therefore they represent him to the governor as a rebel, who had called himself an anointed king; and thereto add that he seduced the people and refused to pay tribute to the emperor. They make out the Lord to be just the kind of Messiah which they were hoping for; and in this character they deliver him up to the heathen Pilate. R. B.—The hypocrites! They were hunting Jesus to death simply because he would not identify himself with them, and use his supernatural power to drive out the Romans, and set them on the vacant throne. They were demanding his death on the pretext that he had threatened to use force to establish his kingdom, when the truth was—his real offence, in their eyes, was that he would not use force! G. 36,37. My kingdom is not of this world. He does not say “not over,” but “not of this world”—i. e., in its origin and nature; therefore “no such kingdom as need give thee or thy master the least alarm.” Our Lord only says whence his kingdom is not—first simply affirming it, next giving proof of it, then reaffirming it. This was all that Pilate had to do with. The positive nature of his kingdom he would not obtrude upon one who was as little able to comprehend it, as entitled officially to information about it. B. As the Lord owned himself the Son of God before the most exalted theocratic council, so he confessed his regal dignity in presence of the representative of the highest political authority on earth. O.—The words implied that in another sense he certainly claimed to be both a king and the founder of a kingdom. He then defined more exactly the sense in which he was both. N. “Thou art a king, then!” said Pilate to him, in astonishment. Yes! but a king not in this region of falsities and shadows, but one born to bear witness unto the truth, and one whom all who were of the truth should hear. F.—For my kingdom is an empire of truth. “Every one that is of the truth,” whose heart receives and loves the truth, hears my voice and is one of my subjects; a member of my kingdom. In the sense in which he is a king, his claim to be one is no crime. H. C. The only weapon of which he made use was spiritual truth. His life, his words, all the manifestations of his character, are consistent only with the design to achieve, not a material, but a moral conquest, and to effect not a political, but a spiritual revolution in the world. He had the conception of a purely spiritual reign, the conception of a palace and a throne for God in the soul of man, the conception of the regeneration of man’s inward nature. Y. After he had disclaimed any purpose of setting up an earthly kingdom, affirming at the same time that he was King in a certain sense, he added that he came into the world to testify of the truth. These three propositions, taken together, set forth his purpose to found his kingdom, not by worldly means, but by the testimony of the truth. But he testified of the truth by his whole life, by his words and works, comprising the entire self-revelation of him who could say, “I am the Truth.” N. Then Christ is a King of Truth. Should not Pilate have desired to behold a King of Truth, a witness whose possession the truth is, in the midst of the fruitless search which the heathen world was making after the true God? To a Jew he might perhaps have said, salvation; to the heathen Pilate he holds out salvation as an object of attraction under the form of the truth. To reveal in his own person this saving truth, that God’s holy love desires the redemption of sinners—for this purpose it was that Christ was born and became man, a born King of Truth; for this cause did he come into the world, of which he is not; to this end did he live in the world, and preach, and work, and suffer. Jesus, the friend of souls, bears witness to that which our soul is seeking for; and his word would fain sound to us like the sweet accents of home. R. B. Our Lord’s reply was particularly adapted to the position, acquirements, experience, of him before whom he stood—a Roman official of high rank, educated, cultivated; a man of large experience of men—men in different countries and of different creeds; not given much to thought about religious matters, yet sufficiently acquainted with the rival schools of philosophy and religion by which the Roman commonwealth was distracted. Truth, moral and religious truth, was the proclaimed object of research, of which some were saying, Lo, here it is, and others, Lo, there it is; but of which he, Pilate, in pursuit of quite a different object, had learned to think that neither here nor there nor anywhere was it to be found. “Here,” thinks Pilate, “is a new rival of those old Stoics, who were ever teaching that every wise man was a king—the setter-up of a new system. One thing at least is clear enough, that it is a quite empty charge these Jews are urging against him. He may sit as long as he likes upon that ideal throne of his, without the throne of Tiberius being endangered; he may get as many subjects as he can to enter that ideal kingdom, and my master, the emperor, have not a loyal subject the less.” 38. And so with that passing question to Jesus, “What is truth?”—a question he does not stay to get answered, as he has no faith that any answer to it can be given; a question not uttered sneeringly or scoffingly, but rather sadly and bitterly, he himself having come to regard all truth as a phantom; and with a tolerant, half-pitying feeling toward Jesus—with that question put to Jesus by the way, Pilate goes out to the Jews. H. It was the half-pitying question of the practical man of the world, who felt that truth was a phantom, a word that had no political import, and regarded the attempt to connect it with a kingdom and matters of real life as a delusion of harmless though pitiable enthusiasm. E.—He wholly set aside the idea of an unearthly royalty; he saw in the prisoner before his tribunal an innocent and high-souled dreamer, nothing more. F. That the peace of a nation or the life of an individual should be endangered on account of the truth or falsehood of any system of speculative opinions, was so opposite to the opinion and feeling of the Roman world, that Pilate inquired what he meant by truth; what truth had to do with a question of life and death. Apparently despairing, on one hand, of bringing this blameless enthusiast to his senses; on the other, unwilling to attach importance to what appeared to him in so different a light, he wished at once to put an end to the whole affair. He abruptly left Jesus and went out to the Jewish deputation at the gate. H. M.—To them he pronounced his first emphatic and unhesitating acquittal: “I find in him no fault at all.” F. Mk. 3 5. He answered nothing. The silence of Jesus was the most dignified and speaking reply to such charges as they had to bring. B.—One observes an almost exact parallel as to his silences and his speakings in our Lord’s conduct before the Jewish and the Gentile courts of justice. So far as we can understand the principle determining the time to speak and the time to be silent, it was this: that when the matter directly concerned his divine Sonship and Kingship, he will help his judges in every way he can; nay, he will himself supply the evidence they want. Upon that count he will coöperate with his enemies in bringing about his condemnation; but will leave the attempts to fasten on him any other charge to break down of themselves, that it might be solely as the Son of God, the King of Israel, that he should be convicted, condemned, and crucified. H. WITH what meek majesty did Jesus confront the representative of the greatest empire of the world, declaring himself a king in that higher realm of spiritual powers where truth rules over all! Even the temporizing truckling governor was awed by this strange assertion of a kingdom which his power could not touch, and to which every soul must bow. Yet the Roman empire long ago crumbled away, while Christ's kingdom lives and grows. J. P. T. The Kingship of Christ rests on a foundation which forms part of the very throne of God. His dominion is established in human hearts. It is founded in willing submission. It is maintained by spiritual authority. It is established in righteousness. It will ultimately unite heaven and earth. It begins in individual conversion. Its grandest earthly manifestation will be seen in the general extension of truth; the richest and noblest manifestation of all will be seen in heaven. Christ's death founds it; Christ's Spirit forms it; Christ's will, ever in harmony with the will of the Father, rules it; Christ's glory (which is also the glory of the Father, and comprehends the full blessedness of the redeemed) is its end. J. A. ## Section 154.—Before Herod, and Pilate again. Barabbas preferred. L. 6, 7 WHEN Pilate heard of Galilee, he asked whether the man were a Galilean. And as soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem at that time. 8. And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad: for he was desirous to see him of a long season, because he had heard many things of him; and he hoped to have seen 9 some miracle done by him. Then he questioned with him in many words; but he answered him nothing. And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused 11 him. And Herod with his men of war set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed 12 him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate. And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together; for before they were at enmity between themselves. 13 And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests, and the rulers, and the 14 people, said unto them, Ye have brought this man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and, behold, I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this 15 man, touching those things whereof ye accuse him: no, nor yet Herod: for I sent you 16 to him; and, lo, nothing worthy of death is done unto him. I will therefore chastise him, and release him. M. 15 Now at that feast, the governor was wont to release unto the people a prisoner, whom- 16 soever they desired. And they had then a notable prisoner, called Barabbas, a robber, who, for a certain sedition made in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison with them that had made insurrection with him. And the multitude crying aloud, began to desire him to do as he had ever done unto them. (For of necessity he must release one unto 17 them at the feast.) Therefore when they were gathered together, Pilate said unto them, Ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the passover: whom will ye therefore that I release unto you? Barabbas, or Jesus, which is called Christ? will ye 18 that I release unto you the king of the Jews? For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy. 19 When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man: for I have suffered many things this day in a dream, because of him. 20 But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you? And they cried out all at once, Away with this L. 20 man, and release unto us Barabbas. Pilate therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them, saying, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? him 21 whom ye call the king of the Jews? And they all cried out again, saying, Crucify him, 22 crucify him. Then Pilate said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him; I will therefore chastise him, and let him go. 23 And they cried out the more exceedingly, they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed. M. 24 When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the 25 blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His 26 blood be on us, and on our children. Then Pilate, willing to content the people, gave sentence that it should be as they required. And he released Barabbas unto them, that for sedition and murder was cast into prison, whom they had desired; but he delivered Jesus to their will. DECISIVE, great, and strong, Christ is yet all this, even the more sublimely, that he is invested in the lovely but humanly feeble garb of innocence. And that this is the true conception is clear, in the fact that no one ever thinks of him as weak, and no one fails to be somehow impressed with a sense of inno- cence by his life. When his enemies are called to show what evil or harm he hath done, they can specify nothing, save that he has offended their bigotry. Even Pilate, when he gives him up, confesses that he finds nothing in him to blame, and shuddering with apprehensions he cannot subdue, washes his hands to be clear of the innocent blood! Thus he dies, a being holy, harmless, undefiled. And when he hangs, a bruised flower, drooping on his cross, and the sun above is dark, and the earth beneath shudders with pain, what have we in this funeral grief of the worlds, but a fit honor paid to the sad majesty of his divine innocence? H. B. L. 7. Pilate sent Jesus to Herod, hoping thus to escape the dilemma of an unjust condemnation or of an unpopular release. B. 8,9. Herod hoped to see some miracle. Nothing but the craving of an empty curiosity, the thirst for some showy exhibition of knowledge or of power. Herod asks and asks again that some sign may be shown, some token of his alleged power exhibited. Jesus makes not a single move- ment to comply. Herod is the only one of all his judges before whom Jesus preserves an unbroken silence. H. 10,11. Though the chief priests and scribes stood about his throne, instigating him to a fresh and more heinous act of murder by their intense ac- cusations, he practically showed that he thought their accusations frivolous, by treating them as a jest. F.—Greatly galled, yet in no way softened, when he could make nothing of this mysterious man, he and his men of war found nothing else to do than to set Christ at naught, and mock him, and array him in a white robe, and send him back to Pilate. 12. For some fancied interference with his ju- risdiction, Herod had taken offence at Pilate. The recognition of his jurisdiction, then, by sending to him for trial such a notorious person as Jesus, would be the very kind of compliment most soothing to his kingly vanity. Herod appreciated the compli- ment; and Pilate got the quarrel between himself and Herod healed. 15. Jesus was sent back to him by Herod; sent back in such a way as to indicate that Herod made light of this poor Galilean's pretensions to be a king—thought it, in fact, more a matter for mock- ery and ridicule than for serious judicial entertain- ment. H.—Is done unto him. Rather, hath been done by him. P. S. 16. Will chastise and release him. Pi- late wanted to release the Lord to satisfy his con- science; he wanted to chastise him to satisfy his fear of man. He imagined that a king who had been disgraced by scourging would no longer be an object of envy to the chief priests. He has already gone thus far in deciding against the Lord. He will scourge him. R. B. It was a weak and unworthy concession, the first faltering of Pilate's footstep. He cannot but say that he has found nothing worthy of death in this man; he is himself thoroughly satisfied that there is nothing in him worthy of any punishment; but it will please his accusers, it will conciliate the people, it may open the way to their readier acquiescence in his after-dismissal, to inflict on him some punishment, a proposal springing rather from the wish to protect Jesus from the greater penalty by inflicting on him the less, yet one that weakened his position, that made those sharp-sighted Jews at once perceive that he could be moved, that he was not ready to stand firmly and fixedly upon the ground of Christ's innocence. H. M. 16. Barabbas was plainly a ringleader in one of those fierce and fanatic outbreaks against the Roman domination, which fast succeeded one another in the latter days of the Jewish commonwealth. This at once explains how it was possible for the chief priests, with their religious pretensions, to show the interest on his behalf which they did, and explains no less the enthusiasm with which the Jewish populace demanded his liberation. Whether, indeed, Barabbas had actually played the part of a false Christ, setting himself up as the true, we have no means of knowing. It is far from unlikely. Keeping in mind the significance of names in Scripture, we can hardly fail to recognize a fearful mockery in his name, Barabbas, or "son of the Father;" as though in the very name which he bore, not to speak of the work which he wrought, he should be the devil's counterfeit and caricature of the true Holy One of God. He had wrought, we may well believe, in that false Messias spirit, which was filling with wild and insane hopes the whole nation, and rapidly hurrying it to that final conflict with the Roman power, in which, as a nation, it should be forever broken in pieces. T. 18. For envy. Pilate knew very well that no such sedition as they charged could have existed without his knowledge, or would have disturbed these restless, seditious Jews if it had been never so serious. He knew they were ready enough to throw off the Roman yoke if only some leader powerful enough might appear, to be their head. Hence he saw that they were pushing this prosecution "for envy." H. C.—From all he had learned, Jesus was only a well-meaning enthusiast, and he could easily see how such a man might well be dangerous to the vested interests and mock-holiness of the Jewish magnates, but not at all so to Roman authority. G. 19. His own wife—Claudia Procula—ventured to send him a public message, even as he sat there on his tribunal, that in the morning hours she had had a troubled and painful dream about that just man; and, bolder than her husband, she bade him beware how he molested him. F.—That she should have learned so much of Jesus as to think and speak of him as "that just man"—that she should have been so much concerned when she heard that her husband had been asked to try him, as to take this uncommon step of sending a warning to him on the judgment-seat—may be regarded as a proof how wide-spread and deep the impression Christ had made. H. 20. Cried out. While Pilate was receiving this message from his wife, and waiting the answer to his question, "Whom will ye that I release?" the chief priests and elders were busy in the crowd, persuading them what answer to give. L. A. The people, persuaded by their priests, clamored for the liberation of the man who not only was what they falsely said of Christ, a leader of sedition, but also a robber and a murderer. To him every hand was pointed; for him every voice was raised. For the holy, the harmless, the undefiled—for him whom a thousand hosannas had greeted but five days before—no word of pity or of pleading found an utterance. "He was despised and rejected of men." F.—Thus they committed the great sin which Peter charges upon them not long after: "Ye denied Jesus in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. Ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you." J. C. R. The same moral state of the people now led them to reject Jesus and demand the release of Barabbas, which, forty years later, provoked the unrelenting vengeance of Titus. It was the brooding hope of sovereignty, at least of political independence, moulded up with religious enthusiasm, which rendered it impossible that the pure, humane, unworldly, and comprehensive doctrines of Jesus should be received, or his character appreciated. And the nation which could thus incur the guilt of his death was prepared to precipitate themselves to such a fate as at length it suffered. H. M. L. 20. What shall we do with Jesus, if we make him not our Mediator, our Saviour, our life, our refuge in all our evils, and the object of our adoration, love, and confidence; since God has made him our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption? Q. 21,22. Crucify! It is the first time the word has been named in Pilate's hearing, the first time they tell him articulately what it is they desire to have done with Jesus. Crucify him—give up to that most ignominious of all deaths this meek and gentle man, who he is sure has done no wrong; whom he sees well enough that the chief priests seek to get rid of from some religious antipathy that they have taken against him: can the people mean it? Why, what evil hath he done? H. Crucifixion, entirely foreign to the Jewish code, had been introduced into Jerusalem by the proconsuls. Crosses had been planted at the same time as the Roman eagles on the soil of Judea, and were the tokens of a detested rule. But enmity against Jesus overmastered hatred of the foreigner in the hearts of the Pharisees. Thus they did not hesitate to demand for the Galilean a sentence of death, the very thought of which, on other occasions, would have roused all their indignation. De P. 23. The very mention of letting him go stirs the crowd to a tenfold frenzy, and now the voices of the chief priests themselves are heard swelling and intensifying the cry, “Crucify him! crucify him!” Before a storm like this who can stand? He has done—so Pilate thinks—the most he can. If he go further, he will raise another city tumult which it will cost many lives to quell, and the quelling of which by force may expose him to the very same charges of tyranny and cruelty which, upon more than one occasion of the kind before, had actually been transmitted to Rome against him, and drawn down upon him the rebuke and displeasure of the emperor. The yielding is but the sacrifice of a single life, which may be made without involving the governor in any danger. But the resisting—who can tell in what that might land? Still, however, he is not at ease. H. M. 24, 25. The dream of Pilate’s wife, and the symbolic purification of the governor himself, express the influence which the righteousness of the Saviour exercised upon their imagination and judgment. B. F. W.—First a ceremony was enacted between the governor and the Jews, vain on his part, but of awful significance on theirs! Pilate washed his hands before the people, protesting, “I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it;” and they accepted the tremendous responsibility: “His blood be on us and on our children.” The providence of God took them at their word, when their last efforts for freedom ended in their dispersion over all the world. No less signal was the retribution which befell the other actors in this greatest crime of the world’s history. S. Before the dread sacrifice was consummated, Judas died in the horrors of a loathsome suicide. Caiaphas was deposed the year following. Herod died in infamy and exile. Stripped of his procuratorship very shortly afterward, on the very charges he had tried by a wicked concession to avoid, Pilate, wearied out with misfortunes, died in suicide and banishment, leaving behind him an execrated name. The house of Annas was destroyed a generation later by an infuriated mob, and his son was dragged through the streets, and scourged and beaten to his place of murder. Some of those who shared in and witnessed the scenes of that day—and thousands of their children—also shared in and witnessed the long horrors of that siege of Jerusalem which stands unparalleled in history for its unutterable fearfulness. They had forced the Romans to crucify their Christ, and they and their children were themselves crucified in myriads by the Romans. They had given thirty pieces of silver for their Saviour’s blood, and they were themselves sold in thousands for yet smaller sums. He must be blind indeed who does not see that when the murder of Christ was consummated, the ax was laid at the root of the barren tree of Jewish nationality. Since that day Jerusalem and its environs, with their “ever-extending miles of gravestones and ever-lengthening pavement of tombs and sepulchres,” have become little more than one vast cemetery—an Acel-dama, a field of blood, a potter’s field to bury strangers in. F. They put Jesus to death, when the nation was assembled to celebrate the Passover; and when the nation too was assembled to celebrate the Passover, Titus shut them up within the walls of Jerusalem. The rejection of the true Messiah was their crime: and the following of false Messiahs to their destruction was their punishment. They preferred a robber and murderer to Jesus, whom they crucified between two thieves: and they themselves were afterward infested with bands of thieves and robbers. They put Jesus to death, lest the Romans should come and take away their place and nation: and the Romans did come and take away their place and nation. They crucified Jesus before the walls of Jerusalem: and before the walls of Jerusalem they themselves were crucified, in such numbers, that it is said room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses for the bodies. Bp. Newton. PILATE’S CHARACTER.—The fair statement seems to be that Pilate was a thorough type of the later Roman man of the world. Stern but not relentless, shrewd and world-worn, prompt and practical, haughtily just, and yet self-seeking and cowardly, able to perceive what was right, but without moral strength to follow it out, he stands forth a sad instance of a man whom the fear of endangered self-interest drove to act against the deliberate conviction of his conscience, to commit an act of the utmost cruelty and injustice, even after his convictions had been deepened by warnings, and strengthened by presentiment. E.—Agrippa the elder speaks of the iniquity of his government in the strongest terms: “He feared lest they should examine and expose the misdeeds of his former procuratorship, the taking of bribes, the acts of violence, the extortions, the tortures, the menaces, the repeated murders without any form of trial, the harsh and incessant cruelty.” G. R. The secular history shows that the state of the public mind in Judea, as well as the character of Pilate, harmonize in the most remarkable manner with the narrative of the Evangelists. The general expectation of the Messiah, the impatience of the Roman sovereignty, the extraordinary excitement of the more fanatical part of the people, the rigid prudence of the chief priests, lest the slightest indication of revolt should compromise the safety of the city and the temple—these circumstances of the times sufficiently account for the reception of such a teacher as Jesus at Jerusalem. Appearing with doctrines so alarming to the authority of the priesthood, so full of disappointment to the fanatic populace, so repugnant to the national pride, and, above all, openly assuming the mysterious title, the Son of God—it excites less astonishment than sorrow that the passions of such a people should at once proceed to the most awful violence against a Teacher whose tenets were too pure and spiritual for their comprehension, and whose character was so remote from their preconceived notions of the expected Messiah. H. M. # Section 155.—Jesus scourged, mocked, and delivered up. M. 26 THEN Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged him. And when he had scourged 27 Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, called Pretorium, and gathered unto him the whole band of sol- 28, 29 diers. And they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe. And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed the knee before him, worshipped and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of 30 the Jews! And they spit upon him, and smote him with their hands, and took the reed and smote him on the head. J. 4 Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring him forth to 5 you, that ye may know that I find no fault in him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man! 6 When the chief priests therefore and officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify him: for I find no 7 fault in him. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God. 8, 9 When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid; and went again into the judgment hall and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no 10 answer. Then saith Pilate unto him, Speakest thou not unto me? Knowest thou not 11 that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin. 12 And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release him. But the Jews cried out, saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Cesar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a king, 13 speaketh against Cesar. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat, in a place that is called the Pavement, but in 14 the Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth 15 hour. And he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King! But they cried out, Away with him! Away with him! crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your 16 King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Cesar. Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified. "BEHOLD the man!" Pilate unwittingly spoke a word in which is contained the secret of our redemption, our deepest disgrace, and our highest glory. In the man Christ Jesus, the only Mediator, we see at once our sin and our righteousness, our curse and our blessing, our shame and our glory; both what we deserved and what he deserved. "Therefore (so Luther exhorts) do thou learn Christ, the crucified Christ, till, having lost all trust in thyself, thou canst extol him, and say: Thou, my Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, while I am thy sin. Thou hast taken upon thee what is mine, and thou hast given me what is thine. Thou hast taken to thyself that which thou wast not, and thou hast given to me that which I was not!" When, in the hour of temptation, the devil shall cast our sins in our teeth, and whisper to us: Behold the man thou art! then may we also answer him: Behold the man! while we point the accuser to our surety, who, in the crown of thorns and the purple robe, expiated our sins, and through his blood so abundantly shed, has obtained for us abundant forgiveness. Under suffering and the cross, if we hear such whispers as these: Behold the man thou art! by God and man forsaken—where is now thy God? and if we are ready to lose patience, and utterly despair, let us make answer to the tempter: Behold the man! and let us flee to our dear Lord, who, for our sakes, has suffered far greater and more heavy woes than we, and has sanctified our every burden. He opened not his mouth, no cry of impatience escaped his holy lips; and should we murmur and fret over the sufferings which are made so precious by his sympathy with us as his members? We should rather rejoice in any conformity to the likeness of his suffering; for then in glory too we shall be like him; "because as he is, so are we in this world." Behold the man! The sight will not weary us. It will continue to refresh us until we shall behold our King in his beauty, and recognize him by the marks of his passion, as the "Lamb that hath been slain." R. B. 26. Scourged him.** The word used for the scourging implies that it was done, not with rods, for Pilate had no lictors, but with what Horace calls the "horribile flagellum," of which the Russian knout is the only modern representative. F.—According to the Roman custom, his hands are bound fast to a low pillar, and his breast and back are bared. The soldiers then approach. They hold in their hands whips plaited with thongs, tipped with iron wire. Therewith they strike, heaping lash upon lash. Consentingly and patiently does the Lord submit his body to these painful lashes, that sacred body, intended and prepared for sacrifice. "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The punishment lay upon him, that we might have peace, and with his stripes we are healed." R. B. Behold affronts and indignities which the world thinks it right never to pardon, which the Son of God endures with a divine meekness! Let us cast at the feet of Jesus Christ, thus unworthily treated by his creatures, that false honor, that quick sense of affronts, that mischievous refinement which is punctilious about a trifle, which exaggerates everything and pardons nothing, and, above all, that devilish determination in resenting injuries. Q. 27-30. After the scourging, fresh scorn and shame were heaped upon the suffering Jesus. He had said: "I am a King;" therefore the soldiers of the governor now began to mock his royalty, just as the servants of Caiaphas had before derided him as Prophet. And the governor allows it all. He even desires that Jesus should be thus pitifully treated, hoping that thereby he might perhaps even yet escape the guilt of his death. R. B. They went through the whole heartless ceremony of a mock coronation, a mock investiture, a mock homage. Around the brows of Jesus, in wanton mimicry of the emperor's laurel, they twisted a green wreath of thorny leaves; in his tied and trembling hands they placed a reed for sceptre; from his torn and bleeding shoulders they stripped the white robe with which Herod had mocked him—which must now have been all soaked with blood—and flung on him an old scarlet war-cloak. F. 29. They platted a crown of thorns, and put it on his head. This they did to deride and torture him. To torture him, for with their harnessed fists they press the sharp thorns into his brow; to deride him, for they placed on his head the crown of thorns, in order to adorn his mock royalty. And, yet, what crown could have been imagined for our King Jesus which should have so exactly suited him as this crown of thorns? He who came to obtain for us the blessing, bears what the curse-laden earth brings forth, being made a curse for us. The thorns might with justice have been turned into instruments of our torture, for they are emblems of our earthly lusts and cares, growing and flourishing in our heart, and choking there so many noble grains of seed; but now they torture him—and to us the crown of glory is given, the crown of life and righteousness. R. B. 30. Then, when they have got him robed, and crowned, and sceptred thus, they bow the knee, and hail him as a king. But they tire even of that mock homage; the demon spirit that is in them inspires the merriment with a savage cruelty; and so they snatch the reed out of his hand, and smite with it the crown of thorns, and drive it down upon his pierced and bleeding brow, and spit upon him, and smite him with their hands. H. Not one member of the Lord's only, but his whole body, had to suffer the most cruel torture; his head was wounded by the crown of thorns, by smiting with the reed; his face suffered spitting and cuffs with the hand; his whole body was mangled with scourging, it was stripped, it was covered with a cloak of scorn; his hands held the reed; and afterward his tongue was forced to taste vinegar and gall. Because in all our members sin dwells and works, therefore has Christ willed for our sins to suffer in all his members. Chrys.—And so, amid the conflict of human passions and the advancing tide of crime, the Scripture was fulfilled which said, in Messiah's name, many hundred years before he came into the world, "I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting." (Is. 50 : 6.) B. J. 4-6. All this is done in an inner court or guard-room, out of sight of the crowd that is still waiting without. Pilate sees it all; makes no attempt to mitigate the suffering or the mockery; is absorbed in wonder as he gazes upon Jesus—such a picture of silent, meek, unmurmuring, uncomplaining patience! standing there, and taking all that treatment as though no strange thing were happening, as if he had expected all, were prepared for all. There is no weakness in that patience; but a strength, a power, a dignity. The sight moves Pilate's heart: may it not move even the hearts of those people without? may it not satisfy their thirst for vengeance to see the suffering Jesus reduced to such a pitiable plight as this? He will try at least what the sight can do in the way of stirring such sympathy. He goes forth, with Jesus following, and says to the multitude, "Behold, I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in him;" then, turning and pointing to Jesus, as he stood wearing still the purple robe and the crown of thorns, bearing on his face and person the marks of all the sufferings and indignities of the guard-house, Pilate says, "Behold the man!" "behold and pity, behold and be satisfied—behold, and suffer me, now that I have thus chastised him, to let him go!" H. I find no fault in him. It was meet that he who had the chief hand in slaying the Lamb of God, should three times publicly declare that he found no spot or blemish in him. Three times he vainly tried to evade condemning our Lord, or to make the Jews desist from their bloody design: once by asking the Jews to choose between Christ and Barabbas—once by sending him to Herod—and once by scourging him. J. C. R. 6. But his appeal only woke a fierce outbreak of the scream, "Crucify! crucify!" The mere sight of him, even in this his unspeakable shame and sorrow, seemed to add fresh fuel to their hate. In vain the heathen soldier appeals for humanity to the Jewish priest. The Roman who had shed blood like water, on the field of battle, in open massacre, in secret assassination, might well be supposed to have an icy and a stony heart; but yet icier and stonier was the heart of those scrupulous hypocrites and worldly priests. F.—If God ever showed his long-suffering great, it was here, when this outcry for the blood of his Son rose up into his ear, and yet he held his peace. 7-9. They had failed in bringing Christ to the cross as a rebel; they therefore now brought forward the accusation upon which he had previously been found guilty of death by the Sanhedrim. "He made himself the Son of God!" R. B.—The name "Son of God," the lofty sense evidently attached to it by his Jewish accusers, the dialogue he had already held with him, and the dream of his wife, all working together in the breast of the wretched Pilate, he went again into the palace, and saith to Jesus, Whence art thou?—beyond all doubt a question relating not to his mission but to his personal origin. B.—No answer. His silence is a judgment. By his silence he judges and by his silence he condemns a high-priest, a king, and a governor. A. T. 11. From above. Thus did Christ declare that no human will limited his life, but that his death took place in consequence of a higher necessity ordained by God, for a higher end. N.—He that delivered me.** The words appear to refer to Caiaphas as the official representative of those who formally gave over our Lord to the Roman governor, and to imply that his guilt was greater, because, when he had no power granted him from above against our Lord, he gave the Lord up to one who had, and whose power was plenary. E. Therefore—the Lord says—because thou imaginest that it is out of thine own power that thou canst judge me, because thou knowest not what is above, nor him who is from above, therefore is thy sin less heavy than the sin of Caiaphas and the chief priests; for these wilfully refuse to know who I am, that I am Christ, the Son of the true God, and their King. R. B.—Thou art indeed committing a great crime—but Judas, Annas, Caiaphas, these priests and Jews, are more to blame than thou. Thus, with infinite dignity, and yet with infinite tenderness, did Jesus judge his judge. In the very depths of his inmost soul Pilate felt the truth of the words—silently acknowledged the superiority of his bound and lacerated victim. F. There is something surely very impressive here; that, sunk as Jesus was beneath the weight of his own sufferings—sufferings so acute that they well might have engrossed his thoughts and feelings—he yet so calmly weighs in the judicial balance the comparative guilt of the actors in this sad scene, and excuses, as far he is able, the actings of Pilate. It had something of its proper effect upon the procurator. Instead of diminishing, it but increased the desire he already had to deliver him. H. The extreme reluctance of Pilate to sentence Christ, considering his merciless character, is signally remarkable; and, still more, his repeated protestations of the innocence of his prisoner, although he generally made no scruple of confounding the innocent with the guilty. But he was unquestionably influenced by the overruling providence of God, to make the righteousness of his Son appear in the clearest light, by the fullest, the most authentic, and the most public evidence. Hales. The words, and the whole bearing of Jesus, struck into the heart of the Roman. Presence of mind and self-respectful dignity, even in the most helpless victim of injustice, have an irresistible power over the oppressor. How much more such a unique grandeur as diffused itself round this mysterious man! Pilate was more than ever resolved to release him. Returning once again to the tribunal, Jesus at his side, he strove to bring the priests and the crowd to content themselves with what their victim had already suffered. G. 12. Thou art not Cesar's friend.** That Cesar was the dark and jealous Tiberius. Up to this period the Jewish nation, when they had complained of the tyranny of their rulers, had obtained a favorable hearing at Rome. Even against Herod the Great their charges had been received. On their complaint Archelaus had been removed from his throne. Not yet had their turbulence and insubordination effaced the influence of that attachment to the Cesarean family, which had obtained for their nation distinguishing privileges. In what manner such a charge, of not being "Cesar's friend," might be misrepresented or aggravated, it was impossible to conjecture; but the very strangeness of the accusation was likely to work on the gloomy and suspicious mind of Tiberius. H. M. 13. If he could have dared to show his real instincts, he would have driven them from his tribunal. But Pilate was guilty, and guilt is cowardice, and cowardice is weakness. His own past cruelties, recoiling in kind on his own head, forced him now to crush the impulse of pity, and to add to his many cruelties another more heinous still. He knew that serious complaints hung over his head. Panic-stricken, the unjust judge, in obedience to his own terrors, consciously betrayed the innocent victim to the anguish of death. He who had so often prostituted justice, was now unable to achieve the one act of justice which he desired. He who had so often murdered pity, was now forbidden to taste the sweetness of a pity for which he longed. He who had so often abused authority, was now rendered impotent to exercise it, for once, on the side of right. F. 14. Preparation of the passover.** Not "the hour for preparing the Passover meal." It means "this was the day before the great Sabbath of the Passover week, a day well known among the Jews as 'the preparation,' or day of preparing for the Passover Sabbath, which was peculiarly a high day." Mark (15 : 42) expressly says this. J. C. R. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/ M. 2 AND, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from 3 heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His coun- 4 tenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: and for fear of him the keep- ers did shake, and became as dead men. Mk. 1 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. L. 1 Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning when it was yet dark, as it began to dawn, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had Mk. 3 prepared, and certain others with them. And they said among themselves, Who shall 4 roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. J. 1, 2 And Mary Magdalene seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. Then she runneth and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved. L. 3 And they [the other women] entered in [the sepulchre] and found not the body of 4 the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments. And they saw a young man sitting on the 5 right side, clothed in a long white garment: and they were affrighted. And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: be not affrighted: for I know that ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, 6 which was crucified. Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here; for he is risen, as he said: come, see the place where the Lord lay. Remember how he 7 spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be delivered M. 7 into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And go quickly, and tell his disciples, and Peter, that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him, as he said unto you: lo, I 8 have told you. And they remembered his words, and they departed quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man: for they were afraid; and with fear and great joy did run to bring his disciples word. J. 2 And [Mary] saith unto them [Peter and John], They have taken away the Lord out of 3 the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him. Peter therefore went forth, 4 and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. So they ran both together: and 5 the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he stooping 6 down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes laid 7 by themselves: and the napkin that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, 8 but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple which 9 came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed. For as yet they knew not the 10 scripture, that he must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples went away again unto their own home, wondering at that which was come to pass. JESUS CHRIST proves himself the Redeemer of the human race, in the act of enduring death himself, and then rising victorious over it. This one event proves, by the majesty of facts, and not by uncertain reasoning, that the Being who invites our faith in himself has shown that Death is disarmed; that there is a power superior to his dread and cold touch. We come to the sepulchre now, though it be with reverent step, sorrow bearing her burden there with a most becoming awe; yet it is with thanks to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Come to the vacant sepulchre of Christ, and sing for joy. Death is abolished; let us rejoice and be glad. Angels, those spirits of purity and love, hasten to meet us here with their message of joy. They too are interested in the redemption of Christ; for they sung on the night of his advent; they ministered to the sufferer in the garden of agony; they rejoice over every sinner that repenteth; and they bear the spirits of the righteous to the bosom of God. Heaven and earth, angels and men, meet happily together at the open tomb of Christ. Sorrow may be for a night; joy cometh in the morning. With grateful hearts, with a head lifted up, and with a full-toned voice should we ever repeat the great articles of our faith: "I believe in Jesus Christ, who was crucified, who died, and was buried; who rose again from the dead; and who is now at the right hand of God: I believe in the forgiveness of sins, in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting." W. A. # OUR LORD'S INTERCOURSE WITH THE DISCIPLES AFTER HIS RESURRECTION (Sections 160-166). OUT of the forty days there were but six on which he held intercourse with any human being, and in those six days he did not give more than as many hours to fellowship with those to whom he showed himself. How brief, too, and abrupt the meetings! In the twilight of the garden; in the dim-lighted upper chamber; in the gray dawn of the lake-side—he appears, speaks but a few sentences, and vanishes as mysteriously as he had appeared. What impression was all this studied distance and reserve fitted to make upon the minds of his disciples? Remember that not one of them before his death had risen to any thought or belief in his divinity; that from all their earlier earthly notions of him they had to be weaned; that after days and years of the easiest companionship with him, they had to be raised to the belief that it was the very Lord of heaven and earth with whom they had been holding converse; yet that belief was to be so formed within them as not to militate against the idea of his true and proper humanity. See, then, what an important part in the execution of this needful but most difficult task must have been fulfilled by his mode of dealing with them during the forty days. For let us only conceive what should have happened if one or other of two alternatives had been realized: If at once, after a few interviews, sufficient simply to do away with all doubt as to his resurrection, Jesus had passed up into the heavens; let us imagine that the descent of the Spirit had immediately ensued; that the day of Pentecost had followed immediately on the day of the resurrection; that the eyes of the apostles had thus at once and fully been enlightened, and the great truth of their Master's Godhead had been flashed upon their minds—the danger undoubtedly would have been that, seen in the blaze of that new glory, the man Christ Jesus had been lost, the humanity swallowed up in the divinity; nor would it have been so easy to persuade those men that, ascended up on high, seated at the right hand of the Father, he was the same Jesus still—a brother to them as truly as when he lived among them, equally alive to all human sympathies as when he walked with them by the way, or sat down with them in the upper chamber. Take, again, the other alternative: That, after his resurrection, Christ had immediately resumed and continued—even, let us say, for no longer a time than these forty days—the exact kind of life that he had led before—would not such a return on his part to all the old familiarities of his former intercourse have had a tendency to check the rising faith in his divinity; to tie his disciples down again to a knowing of him only after the flesh; to give to the humanity of the Lord such prominence as to make it overshadow the divinity? Can you conceive a treatment more nicely fitted to the spiritual condition, to the spiritual wants of those men at that time, than the very one which the Lord adopted and carried out—so well fitted as it was, gradually, gently, without violence, to lead those disciples on from their first imperfect, unworthy ideas of his person, character, and work, on and up to clearer, purer, loftier conceptions of him? In what better way could a faith in their Master's divinity have been superinduced upon their former faith in him as a man, a friend, a brother, so that the two might blend together without damage done to either by the union; their knowledge of him as human not interfering with their trust in him as divine; their faith in him as God not weakening their attachment to him as man? H. The various manifestations which the Saviour made of himself to his disciples, as recorded by the Evangelists and Paul, may be arranged and enumerated as follows: 1. To the women returning from the sepulchre. Only by Matthew. 2. To Mary Magdalene at the sepulchre. Reported by John and Mark. 3. To Peter, perhaps early in the afternoon. By Luke and Paul. 4. To the two disciples going to Emmaus, toward evening. By Luke and Mark. 5. To the apostles (except Thomas) assembled at evening. By Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. N. B. These five appearances all took place at or near Jerusalem, upon the first day of the week, the same day on which the Lord arose. 6. To the apostles, Thomas being present, eight days afterward at Jerusalem. Only by John. 7. To seven of the apostles on the shore of the Lake of Tiberias. Only by John. 8. To the eleven apostles and to five hundred other brethren, on a mountain in Galilee. By Matthew and Paul. 9. To James, probably at Jerusalem. Only by Paul. 10. To the eleven at Jerusalem, immediately before the ascension. By Luke in Acts, and by Paul. Then follows the ascension. R. [The numbers 1 and 2 in the above outline we have exchanged in our arrangement. J. G. B.] Any one who will attentively read the narratives of these appearances on the first day of the resurrection will see that they have only been preserved for us in general, interblended, and scattered notices, which, in strict exactness, render it impossible to produce from them a certain narrative of the order of events. Our belief in the resurrection as an historic fact, as absolutely well attested by subsequent and contemporary circumstances as any other event in history, rests on grounds far deeper, wider, more spiritual, more eternal, than can be shaken by divergences of which we can only say that they are not contradictions, but of which the true solution is no longer attainable. As Lange finely says, the great fugue of the first Easter tidings has not come to us as a "monotonous chorale," and mere verbal criticism cannot understand the common feeling and harmony which inspire the individual vibrations of those enthusiastic and multitudinous voices. Westcott points out the differences in the narrative of the four Evangelists. Matthew dwells chiefly on the majesty and glory of the resurrection; Mark insists upon it as a fact; Luke, as a spiritual necessity; John, as a touchstone of character. F. It is not possible to determine certainly the order of events in this and in the following section. The fair inference from the four accounts is, that Mary Magdalene came with the other women to the sepulchre, saw that the stone was rolled away and the sepulchre empty, but saw not the angels; then instantly turned and went to report to Peter and John. The interview of the women with the angels having taken place, they had scarce gone when Peter and John, running in advance of Mary, came, saw the empty tomb, and turned homeward again. (Thus far this section.) Then Mary comes again, Jesus appears to her, and gives her a brief message. A little afterward, before the other women had found the now scattered disciples, Jesus meets them, and confirms the specific message already given by the angel in the sepulchre. It may be added that, while there are differences (readily perceived in our arrangement of the text), seeming discrepancies in the four accounts, there are no contradictory statements. J. G. B. Mk. 1. No writer of a fictitious story, had he previously put into Christ's lips such distinct foretellings of his death and resurrection, would have attributed to his followers such an entire forgetfulness of these predictions, such an utter prostration of all faith and hope, as that which the Evangelists describe as coming upon all our Lord's disciples immediately after his death. Yet, after all, is it not true to human nature, that upon the minds and hearts of those simple, uncultivated men and women, filled as they had been with other quite different expectations, the shock of such a shameful death, coming in such a way upon their Master, was so sudden and stunning, that all power of forming a new conception of their Master's character, and taking up a new faith in him, was gone; the power even of remembering what he had said about himself beforehand for the season paralyzed? But love lives on, even where faith dies out, among those disconsolate and utterly hopeless friends and followers of our Lord. H. It was night in the disciples' hearts. Their love was crucified, their glory dishonored, their hope destroyed, their life was waste and desolate. The seven stars of those words from the cross were fading fast away behind the stormy clouds of their soul. They wept and lamented. Scattered without hope, united again without hope, one thing alone occupied their thoughts and sight and words, and that was his grave. R. B. L. 1. First day. The portion, however brief, of this day (according to Jewish reckoning) that Jesus remained in the tomb is reckoned as one day, like the brief interval between his burial and the Friday's sunset, and thus he remained three days in the earth. S. Mark says, "at the rising of the sun." These various popular forms of expression present some of the finer points in proof of the truth of the narratives. Their meaning is substantially the same—somewhere between the night and the sunrising, in the morning twilight. J. G. B.—Mark first specifies the time by very early. He used the phrase "rising of the sun" in a broad and less definite sense. As the sun's earliest rays produce the contrast between darkness and light, between night and dawn, so the term sunrising might easily come in popular language to be put for all that earlier interval, when his rays, still struggling with darkness, do nevertheless usher in the day. R. On Sunday he chose to rise, because on this day began the creation of the world with the calling into being of light: the light which is the life of the created world was to have one birthday with the life which is the light of the restored world. Sunday, the day of Christ's resurrection, is the Lord's day (Rev. 1: 10); this day has been set apart by the Church gathered together through the preaching of the resurrection, as the day for their services of divine worship. R. B. As the resurrection of Christ is the great fact, so the day of its occurrence is the great day of Christianity. From the time of the apostles its weekly return has been called by the name of the LORD'S DAY; and to this epoch of the new creation of all things, marked by the new life of Christ, all the permanent sanctity of the primeval Sabbath was transferred. S.—Henceforth it was not only God the Creator that was to be chiefly remembered, but God the Saviour and Regenerator of mankind. To mark this great event the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day of the week—changed most clearly by our Lord. The early Christian Church, those who received the gospel direct from the apostles, kept this day. Hence the apostles must have kept the first day as the Sabbath. They were Jews, and would not have changed the day themselves. Christ only is Lord of the Sabbath. He only could have given the necessary authority. And now we are to keep the Sabbath-day holy, in remembrance of both Maker and Redeemer. The obligation therefore is twofold. Bartlett. (Read Section 184.) Mk. 4. Altogether secret, the exact time and manner unnoticed and unknown, was that great rising from the dead. The clearest and amplest proof was afterward given of the fact that, some time between sunset of the last and sunrise of the first day of the week, the resurrection had taken place; but it pleased not the Lord who then arose to do so under the immediate eye or inspection of any human witness. H.—In the dark recesses of the sepulchre, through almighty power, his spirit revived, unseen and unknown to every mortal eye. Angels ministered unto him, and opened before him the door of the tomb. R. His cross was surrounded by thousands of beholders of his shame, many saw his sufferings, observed how he bowed his head and gave up the ghost; John, from the wound of the spear, saw blood and water flow: but his resurrection was to have no beholders but the angels—he was already risen when the women came. The rising Christ is King of a kingdom which comes not with outward observation, whose glory is an inward glory, and whose visible form is the cross. And not to all the people did the risen one appear, but only to those in whose hearts he had already found a place as the crucified one. R. B. J. 2. The disciple whom Jesus loved. Through the whole fourth gospel, while the Apostle John is never named, there moves an unnamed, as it were, veiled form, which sometimes comes forward, yet without the veil being entirely lifted. How natural to suppose that he designates himself with that name which expresses the highest contents and the whole joy of his life—as "that disciple whom Jesus loved!" The objection of Weisse, that this would have been an arrogant assumption, shows that he has not entered into that joyous pride, mingled with all humility, which grows out of the consciousness of having been loved, without desert on his part, by him who is the object of his own supreme love. Hase. L. 4. Two men. Mark and Luke describe the persons as "men," according to the appearance; Matthew and John as angels, according to the reality. That there were two angels is clear from John's more minute account, confirmed by Luke. Matthew and Mark mention only one angel, perhaps because they knew only of one, not getting the details fully, perhaps because one was prominent as the speaker. L. A. Stood. The difficulty as to the position of the angels (Mark, sitting) vanishes when we take this word of Luke in its appropriate and acknowledged usage: they suddenly appeared, were suddenly present. R.—A young man. The angel of the Lord described just as he appeared to the eye, in the bloom of a life that knows no decay. 7. Remarkable it is to hear angels quoting a whole sentence of Christ's to the disciples, mentioning where it was uttered, and wondering it was not fresh on their memory, as doubtless it was in theirs. B. M. 7. Tell his disciples. The disciples, after their Lord's crucifixion, appear to have entertained no hopes of his resurrection. Shocked and confounded, dismayed at finding him condemned to the ignominious death of the cross, they forgot everything he had said to them respecting his rising again. Most of them seem to have given themselves up to sorrow and despair. They had not even the courage or the curiosity to go to the sepulchre on the third day to see whether the promised event had taken place or not. Thus it is perfectly clear that nothing but the most irresistible evidence would convince them of a fact which they seemed to think in the highest degree improbable. P. There is in the apostles no impassioned enthusiasm, no exaggeration in their trustfulness and devotedness. Even with them Jesus sees himself confronted by all the vacillations and weaknesses of humanity. He persuades them, he wins them, he preserves them only by great exertion. They only really believe in him after having witnessed the accomplishment of his sacrifice and his last miracle, when they had seen his crucifixion and his resurrection. Only then they believed; but from that moment their faith became absolutely superior to all perils and all trials; full of the Holy Spirit, and associated in a certain measure to their divine Master, they pursue his work with unshaken confidence and firmness, without pretending to any merit, without any impulse of personal pride. F. G. And Peter. Mark's Gospel being drawn up (as all the earliest tradition states) under the eye of Peter, or from materials chiefly furnished by him, there is something deeply affecting in the preservation of this little clause by Mark alone, as well as in the clause itself, which it is impossible not to connect with the cloud under which Peter lay in the eyes of the eleven, not to say in his own also. B. —Was it not most wonderful that there should be such a remembrance of Peter by that Master whom he had so lately denied? Peter had his rising hopes confirmed, his doubts and fears all quenched, when, some time in the course of that forenoon, waiting till John and he had parted—waiting till he could meet him alone, and speak to him with all the greater freedom and fulness—Jesus showed himself to Peter. Before he met the others to speak peace, he hastened to meet Peter to speak pardon. One of the first offices of the risen Saviour was to wipe away the tears of the penitent. J. 6, 7. Linen clothes. . . . napkin by itself. Who had arranged them thus? Was it the hand of the great Sleeper himself, on his awakening within the tomb? or was it some angel's hand that took the death-garments as they dropped from around the risen one, and thus disposed them? Whoever did it, there had been no haste; all had been done calmly, collectedly. Neither earthly friends nor earthly foes had done it: the one would not have stripped the garments from the body; the other would have been at no pains so carefully to arrange and deposit them. H. 8. He saw, and believed.** Evidently, that the Lord had not been taken away out of the sepulchre, but that he had gone forth out of it. R. B. —It is especially to be observed, that although Christ had actually arisen and was there, these two men, Peter and John, did not see him. They went back into the city, not knowing what had taken place. And it is only then, when they have gone, that to other eyes than theirs, to another kind of nature, of finer mould and quicker sight, a woman—a soul in which the mighty wonder of another resurrection had been first achieved, weeping because they seemed to have taken away her Lord, and she knows not where they have laid him—it is to her that the Lord first appears. F. D. H. 10. The disciples went to their own home.** [To the home of John.] The love and tender charity of John's character came out beautifully in his affection for Peter, even after his denial of Christ. He clings to him, and has him under his own roof, wherever that was. All through the Gospels and Acts, Peter and John seem to have been peculiarly drawn together, and to have been close friends and companions. J. C. R. WE have all a nearer, a more special interest in this deserted tomb of Jesus Christ. For us he died, and for us he rose again. Firm and fast as the grave now seems to hold the buried generations of our race, it is doomed, as a fruit of Christ's resurrection, to relax its grasp and yield them up again. Empty as was Joseph's sepulchre when the angel spake to the women, so empty shall be every grave of earth when another angel shall sound his trumpet, and it shall ring through the regions of the dead, and stir all to life again. Blessed was that morning which dawned upon the empty tomb at Calvary, but more blessed to us shall that other morning be which shall dawn upon the empty graves of earth, if only now we live in Christ; if at death we sleep in Jesus; if at that resurrection we be numbered with those who shall share the resurrection of the just. H. Fit is it that we sing unto the Lord a new song! and with thankful hearts, on his own day and on every day, congratulate the triumph of his rising from the dead, and rejoice in this birthday of our hopes! Now is the justice of God amply satisfied, or the prisoner had never been released. Now is the reproach of the cross ceased, and turned into glory. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is now, through the death and resurrection of his dear Son, become our Father and our God. D. # Section 161.—Appears to Mary, then to the other Women. Watch bribed. Disciples disbelieve. Mk. 9 Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. J. 11 But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept she stooped down 12 and looked into the sepulchre; and seeth two angels in white, sitting, the one at the 13 head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away 14 my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. And when she had thus said, she 15 turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where 16 thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned 17 herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni, which is to say, Master. Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. Mk. 10 Mary Magdalene came to the disciples, as they mourned and wept, and told them that 11 she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her. And they, when they had heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, believed not. M. 9 And as they [the other women] went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, say- 10 ing, All hail. And they came, and held him by the feet, and worshipped him. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren, that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me. 11. Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, and shewed 12 unto the chief priests all the things that were done. And when they were assembled 13 with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, 14 Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. And if this 15 come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day. L. 9 And [the women] returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, 10 and to all the rest. It was Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women 11 that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles. And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not. BEFORE he descended to the tomb, Messiah had finished transgression and made an end of sin. There was nothing to take him thither, except the Scripture which must be fulfilled, and the last enemy which must be destroyed; and except the great stone and the pontifical seals, there was nothing to keep him there. Vainly did the King of Terrors watch over his strange captive, and vainly did the grave boast of its mysterious and mighty inmate. He opened his eyes, and death was abolished; he stood up, and the grave had lost its victory; and yielding to the touch of heaven's herald, the seals and the great stone gave way, and Jesus was "declared the Son of God, with power in his resurrection from the dead." Delivered for our offences, he was raised again for our justification: and along with him rose all his ransomed—that glorious Church of countless members which left the grave of Jesus acquitted, accepted, legally justified, virtually saved. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." Because he lives, they shall live also. From the great life-fournain, the Mediator's person, their souls have imbibed immortality, and their union with Christ secures them an eventual share in Christ's own resurrection. Hamilton. Two of the most unqualified declarations of Christ's essential deity were made to him, and sanctioned by him, after his resurrection: this one of the actual paying of divine honors to him, which was repeated by the disciples just before the ascension, and Thomas's hearty confession, "My Lord and my God!" We see in this just that steady development of gospel truth which is most natural. Up to the time of his death on the cross, marvellous as the tokens of the Lord's superhuman character were, both in his words and in his acts, it was the human side of his nature that was kept constantly in view. A being having all the visible attributes of a man, subject in the body to mortal limitations—to weakness, pain, fatigue, sleep, hunger, tears—moving and feeling as other men move and feel, must leave on all about him the impression of a human nature; nor would it be very strange if the daily sight of these external qualities should partly obscure, for the time, the marks of a loftier origin, and make a belief in his divinity difficult. But the sepulchre had now put a different aspect on all these mortal signs; the resurrection had transfigured them and, as it were, divinized them. It had never been heard before that a man lifted himself, by his own will, out of the grave and asserted his superiority to all the forces of destruction. Surely here must be nothing less than the Creator's majesty. The divinity broke through the mortal investiture. In the glorified form the "Son of God" stood revealed not less than the "Son of man." They worshipped him, and he received their worship. F. D. H. Is not the fragmentary character of each of these four separate accounts just what we might have expected, considering the time and manner of the events narrated—the obscure light, the women coming, it may have been singly, or in different groups by different routes, the surprise, the terror, the running in and out, to and from the city—all this within the compass of an hour or two? Which one of the spectators or actors in these busy and broken movements, if asked afterward to detail what occurred, but might have given an account of it differing from that of all the others? H. The confusion which confessedly exists in this part of the narrative, and the consequent difficulty of reducing it to one continuous account, is not the fault of the historians, but the natural effect of the events themselves, as impressed upon the senses and the memory of different witnesses. If it had pleased God to inspire a single writer as the historian of the resurrection, he would no doubt have furnished as coherent and perspicuous a narrative as any other in the sacred volume. But since it entered into the divine plan, as a necessary element, to set before us not a single but a fourfold picture of our Saviour's life and death, we must purchase the advantage of this varied exhibition by submitting to its incidental inconveniences. Among them is the difficulty, just referred to, of combining all these views, taken from different points of observation, into one complete view to be seen at the same moment. The historical problem is as hard to solve as the pictorial, not more so; and the seeming inconsistencies, resulting from the effort to amalgamate the narratives, ought no more to destroy our faith in their eventual harmony, than similar points of disagreement in four photographic views of the same edifice or landscape ought to make us question either the identity of the object or the absolute truth of the delineation. J. A. A. Mk. 9. First to Mary Magdalene. She had gone with the other women to the sepulchre; parting from them before their interview with the angel, and finding Peter and John, she had followed them back to the spot; and it was then that Jesus appeared to this Mary. To a woman was this honor given to be the first that saw the risen Redeemer; and that woman was not his mother. B. A great injustice has been done to Mary Magdalene, in identifying her with the woman who was a sinner, who anointed the Lord's feet with ointment, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. The name of that woman is not mentioned in the record of the incident in which she took so prominent a part. The incident occurred not in Magdala but at Nain. It was after Christ had left Nain that the first mention of this Mary meets us in the gospel narrative: "And the twelve were with him, and certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance." Named thus along with one whose husband held an important office in Herod's household, named as one of those who ministered to our Lord of their substance, Mary Magdalene does not appear to have been a woman of a low or poor condition. (Section 46, page 185.) J. 11. Mary stood weeping. The Master had been to her the kindest and best of friends. Her grateful love, living in her sorrow, makes her cling, even when John has left it, to the spot where in death he had reposed. Mary Magdalene, standing alone weeping thus before the empty sepulchre, presents herself to our eye as the saddest and most inconsolable of all the mourners for the Crucified. H. 12,13. Seeth two angels.** The whole character of this representation seems to show clearly, that Mary had not before seen the angels; and also that she had not before been told that Jesus was risen. R. 14. She turns away even from an interview with angels, from converse with those who may have had as their purpose, in putting to her that question, to tell her about her risen Lord. She turns away even from them, to weep out, without further interruption, her most bitter grief. But now, from other lips, the same question, "Woman, why weepest thou?" salutes her ear. She sees, but scarcely notices, the person who thus speaks to her. He is not directly before her, and she cares not to turn, or make any scrutiny of his person. Even had she done so, seeing him through the veil of dropping tears, she might have failed to recognize him. She cares as little, in fact, about who this speaker is, as she had cared about who those angels were. H.—So absorbed in her sorrow, and so utterly without hope or expectancy of such a blessing, that she speaks to the supposed stranger without recognizing him. E. Her heart was covered by so thick a cloud of sorrow, that she could not recognize him whom she yet was so earnestly seeking. And believers are often as near to Jesus as their soul is to their body; their tears and sighs, their love and longing, testify to the faith that is in their heart; and yet at times they cannot perceive him whom their soul loves and seeks. Scriver. 15,16. Woman, why weepest thou?** The first word from the mouth of the risen Lord! This is what Christ's resurrection exclaims to every troubled sinner; for therefore is he risen, that our sorrow might be turned into joy. R. B. Mary. With one word, and that word her name, the Lord awakens all the consciousness of his presence: calling her in that tone doubtless in which her soul had been so often summoned to receive divine knowledge and precious comfort. (That she turned herself seems to imply that she had not been looking full at him before.) A. Since that day when the Lord had healed her and received her among his own, she had with blessed joy often heard her name from his lips. Who but He could it be, whose cry of Mary now struck upon her heart? Who could it be but he, the Good Shepherd, who knows his sheep and is known of his—who calleth his own sheep by name and they know his voice? R. B. They that were spiritually best prepared, by affection, by earnestness, by sympathy with the spirit of his life and cross, and by love for him, had the clearest and earliest disclosures of his glorified presence. It is just so now. They that are least occupied with themselves, least engrossed with a business that is all of this world, or with a social life and its fashions that are all afar off from the simplicity of his beatitudes, they that are trying to do and bear his will in their houses, they that are busy looking after his lost sheep, they that are ready to believe more because they use the faith they have, they that repent most sorrowfully and put not their boast in anything that they do—these are the souls to which he will unveil the glory of his face, whose eyes he will touch and open that they may see more and more of his truth, and in whose hearts he will dwell, as he dwells in no temple that is made with hands. F. D. H. 17. In the very difficult words, "Touch me not," two things seem clearly implied: a solemn declaration of changed relations of intercourse with the risen Lord, and a consolatory assurance that what is prohibited now shall (in another form) be vouchsafed hereafter. E.—It meant that the day for personal, physical presence, for merely human affection, for the grasp of human tenderness, was over now. Henceforth he was to be with his people more nearly, more intimately, because in spirit. F. He allowed a physical touch to the fear of the other women and to the unbelief of Thomas; but he taught the higher spiritual truth to the unfearing, believing Mary, when he gently disallowed a similar touch to her ardent love. J. G. B.—The "Touch me not" was a prophetic protest against all the miserable forms which mistaken devotion has invented in the course of ages. De P. She would have touched him, as if he had been the same as he was before; but he was not the same, and the season for such touching was over. Another kind of touching must begin; and when his disciples shall apprehend him as he is—when they shall fully realize the spiritual glory of him who has as yet been little more than a loved companion and friend—when they shall “see” that he has gone to his Father, they shall behold him, hear him, touch him, as those who are indeed his “brethren.” W. M. “I am not risen from the dead that I may again in body walk the earth, but in order that I may ascend up to the Father. Therefore, believe that I am going to the Father, where I shall rule and reign with him forever, and bring you also out of your death and out of every sorrow. Then will ye have me with you to be truly seen and touched by you; then will ye forever enjoy an everlasting communion with me and with my Father.” Luther. Brethren. Indirectly to assure the disciples that the Lord was still truly man, and in this respect still stood on the same relations with them as before. E. —“My brethren.” Blessed Jesus, who are these? Were they not thy followers? yea, thy forsakers? How dost raise these titles with thyself? At first they were thy servants; then disciples; a little before thy death they were thy friends; now, after thy resurrection, they were thy brethren. Bp. H. A name of yet closer fellowship, a glorious, a precious name, is here given to believers—brethren of Jesus Christ. How must this brother’s greeting have comforted and refreshed the scattered disciples, so wholly unworthy of it, they who had forsaken and denied the Lord! And to all of us poor sinners also belongs this tender name of brethren, and not to the first disciples alone; for the apostle tells us we are predestinated to be conformed to the likeness of the Son of God, “that he might be the first-born among many brethren.” R. B. I ascend. His stay in his then form was to be but transient; only after his ascension could he remain permanently, and that in another form. Therefore he did not commission Mary to announce his sensible coming, but his ascension to the Father, and his subsequent revelation to them; making no mention of the intermediate and brief manifestation that was only to prepare the way for the higher and permanent one. N. The Lord does not here send word to his disciples respecting his already accomplished resurrection, but proclaims to them his speedy ascension. The disciples were to turn their thoughts toward those heavenly blessings which Christ dispenses in his kingdom; they were to see in their risen Lord the only-begotten Son of the Father and his glory. His resurrection was to be followed by no fresh dying; the risen one ascends to heaven, and lives and reigns forever. R. B. My Father and your Father: my God and your God. All the deepest of the Church fathers were wont to call attention to this, as expressly designed to distinguish between what God is to him and to us—his Father essentially, ours not so; our God essentially, his not so; his God only in connection with us; our God only in connection with him. B. Christ desires to “proclaim to his brethren,” that his passion and his rising again have obtained this for us, that his Father has also become our Father, his God also our God. The Lord himself brings into view this fruit of his resurrection, that we may now venture, as Christ’s brethren, to call God our Father with a good conscience, as Peter speaks. The other fruit of the Lord’s resurrection, namely, our resurrection, is bound up in this comforting discourse. Since God calls himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob live before him; for God is not a God of the dead, but of the living. So Christ teaches the resurrection of the dead. Here he calls God our God. Even, then, as it was impossible that Christ should be holden of death because God is his God, just so is it also impossible that we should be holden of death because God is our God—a God, not of the dead, but of the living. R. B. • Paul answers the question, “Who is he that condemneth?” by saying, “Christ hath died—yea, rather hath risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” The death, the resurrection, the ascension, the intercession of Christ, are four great facts that should never be separated. J. C. R. M. 9. Jesus met them. The second appearance of Jesus was to the other party of women, as they returned to the city, and, perhaps, separated to find out the different apostles, to whom when assembled they related the whole of their adventure. H. M. Saying, All hail! Words of exulting congratulation to mourners weeping for the dead. His work was done, a new era had begun; death was conquered in his person; life and immortality were brought to light for the world. But what will be his joy when he returns in glory to utter a last “All hail!” to sea and land, to the graveyard of the world, to the dust of every one which has been marked by his eye, and precious to his heart! N. M. Worshipped him. By a variety of persons, and on a variety of occasions, was he worshipped upon earth, nor do we once read of his rejecting these honors; he received them without a single mark of disapprobation: on the contrary, when worship was offered to Peter, Paul, and Barnabas, they rejected it in the most pointed terms of abhorrence; nor would an angel suffer John the Divine to fall down at his feet to worship him: “See thou do it not,” says he, “for I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets: worship God!” Nares. Those institutions and movements in the world, however moral or religious their object, and however brisk their activity, seem to have no deep or strong or permanent life in them which are without this living and conscious connection with the presence and person of Christ, so as to draw their constant supplies of power from him. Those, on the other hand, however few their numbers, or scanty their treasuries, or apparently insignificant their results, which are rooted and grounded in him, animated by the daily breath of prayers to him, in their members and leaders consecrated to him personally, holding him by the feet and worshipping him—these seem to have in them a certain tranquil and immortal power for good, and to be the salt of the earth. So too with the souls of men. With whatever good intentions, honorable aims, charitable feelings, and abundant energy, they that are without this conscious connection with the living and personal Head seem like streams, however full, which run from a cistern and not from the fountain in the hills. They have all that human goodness and zeal can have without that one secret and ineffable element of Christian love, eternal and inexhaustible; and therefore, while they are never to be judged uncharitably, they are not to be trusted as we trust what Christ holds in his almighty hand and stamps with his cross. He does not say to them, “All hail!” and they do not hold him by the feet and worship him. F. D. H. The Messages by Mary and by the Women.—Christ had said to the eleven, “I leave the world and go to the Father.” To inform them that, though now risen, he had not yet ascended—gone to the Father—but that he would soon ascend, was the object of the word to Mary, “Go, say to them, I ascend.” Besides this information, it was essential that they should understand, before he showed himself, that with him this was a brief transitional period, a passage-time from the earthly and natural to the heavenly and spiritual; and that during this brief interval until his ascension, the terms of their intercourse with him, especially the old familiar personal relations, were to be changed, to accord with his own changed relations to nature and humanity. The communication of this fact was made directly to Mary Magdalene in the gentle prohibition “Touch me not,” and in the reason assigned, “For I am not yet ascended;” and it was conveyed through her indirectly to the disciples. This double message to Mary was the first, because the most important. And it was conveyed through Mary, who had neither fear of the angels, nor fear or question of the risen Saviour; through Mary, because her spiritual susceptibility and perception were signally deep and clear, as her faith was exceptionally simple and strong, and her devotion true and pure. And without demur this unfearing, discerning, trusting Mary of Magdala received and conveyed the word, and the enacted instruction, to the disciples. But these dull-minded, disheartened men needed a positive, strong assurance of the Lord’s actual resurrection; to know directly, by unquestionable testimony, fortified by sight and hearing and touch, that he was indeed risen in the same body. Hence the double message to the fearing, half-believing women. First they had a direct assurance from the angel: “Fear not—go, tell his disciples that he is risen, and goeth into Galilee!” Then, a little after, Jesus presented himself to their vision, allowed their touch, and with his own voice repeated the angel’s word, “Fear not; go tell my brethren.” And so, with their feebler faith strengthened, and fear allayed, they could, as they did, convey this double assurance of the fact of his actual resurrection in the body. Thus the significance of those two appearances of our Lord may be interpreted. Through Mary the disciples were instructed, first, that the ascension was yet to come; and second, that during the brief transition interval there would be no recurrence to the former familiarity of intercourse. Through the women they were directly and positively assured that the Master had risen from death and the grave, and lived again in the body. J. G. B. 11. Thus these heathen soldiers became the first preachers of Christ’s resurrection, and witnesses of the truth of it to the most inveterate of his enemies. But neither soldiers nor priests were affected by what the one saw or the other heard. 13. Stole him away.** It was absurd to pretend to say with any certainty what passed while they were asleep; so that this was in effect only hiring them to say that they knew nothing of the matter. D. L. 11. As idle tales, they believed them not. Nothing appears more clearly on the face of every narrative than the total want of expectation, the incredulity, the unwillingness to be convinced, which marked the disciples. Yet how often the Saviour intimated not only his death but his resurrection to his followers! But it is their doubts that make their after-faith so valuable and so satisfying to us. They were not too anxious, they were only too unready to believe. On the other hand, the enemies of Jesus attached more meaning to what he said of his approaching resurrection than his friends. W. M. How could those who were so slow to believe in the resurrection have been its inventors? And yet they did believe, and this faith in the resurrection became their lever to move the world. De P.—Within six weeks of the resurrection, that great event was the unshaken faith of every Christian; within a few years of the event the palpable historic proofs of it and the numerous testimonies of its reality—strengthened by a memorable vision vouchsafed to himself—had won assent from the acute and noble intellect of a young Pharisaic zealot and persecutor whose name was Saul. F. THE ascension itself began in the resurrection. It is in the tomb that we find the great dividing line between humiliation and exaltation; and when, on the third morning, Jesus burst the bands of death, his glorification had begun. He was, indeed, still to appear from time to time on the earth, but that was in itself no humiliation. The labor, the suffering, the sorrow, had ceased forever. W. M. That resurrection light illumines all things. It reveals to us the righteous love of God, the all-sufficiency of Christ's atonement, the certainty and glory of eternal life, and the redemption of the body new and transfigured. The day has dawned that shall never end; and in the heaven of heavens, on the right hand of God, we behold him, the God-man, as our Intercessor, Advocate, sympathizing Friend, and glorious Head. A. S. ## Section 162.—Walk to Emmaus with Two Disciples. M. 16 THEN the eleven disciples went away into Galilee. J. 1 After these things Jesus shewed himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias: 2 and on this wise shewed he himself. There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two 3 other of his disciples. Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing. 4 But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore; but the disciples 5 knew not that it was Jesus. Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? 6 They answered him, No. And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for 7 the multitude of fishes. Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher's 8 coat unto him (for he was naked), and did cast himself into the sea. And the other disciples came in a little ship (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hun- dred cubits) dragging the net with fishes. 9 As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid 10 thereon, and bread. Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught. 11 Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty 12 and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken. Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? 13 knowing that it was the Lord. Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, 14 and fish likewise. This is now the third time that Jesus shewed himself to his disciples, after that he was risen from the dead. 15 So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord: thou knowest that I love thee. 16 He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith to him again the second time, Simon son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord: thou knowest that I love 17 thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep. He saith unto him the third time, Simon son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou 18 knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another 19 shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him, Follow me. 20 Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved, following (which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee?). 21, 22 Peter seeing him, saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto 23 him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that 24 to thee? This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true. PRAISED be God, he stands ready with his help close to the sea where his servants are fishing; his voice reaches across to them from the shore, forwarding the work of their hands. But when, at the end of the world, the great draught of fishes, taken in the unbroken net of the one gospel, shall be gathered in the harbor of peace, then, at the sight of the redeemed around the throne of the Lamb, they will clearly perceive that the Lord had indeed no need of their labor; and will adore the graciousness of his free love, which has so ordered it, that lost sinners are to be turned to righteousness by means of pardoned sinners. The personal love which exists between the believing soul and the Saviour is the deep working of the Holy Spirit, of which no one knows anything save the soul which experiences it; and he who is favored with the blessed assurance of loving with true actual love him who is God's and Mary's Son, who though in heaven is yet infinitely near to faith; he who embraces him and lays himself on his breast, crying, "My Lord Jesus!"—such a one rejoices with trembling, and rests his sure comfort on this, that the Lord knows what is the mind of the Spirit, when the Spirit's unutterable "groanings" are the only language we can employ. R. B. Lovest thou me? All down through time, the question, in various ways, is presented to living souls. The human race is, and will be, divided by that one test. It will be uttered again from the throne of judgment, that throne high and white, before which a departed world shall pass to his right hand and his left. That throne will be occupied by the resplendent form of incarnate Love, and the destiny of every man will be—must be—as are his affinities in regard to Him. He that loveth is of God; and they who are like God shall be gathered to his bosom. W. A. THE gospels have been brought to a fit and, it seems, an intended conclusion, at the end of the twentieth chapter of John; but yet another chapter is added, as if dictated by some after-thought, which in its effect links the whole gospel record to the book of Acts which succeeds it. The miracle which had already foreshadowed the work of the fishers of men is repeated, but with altered circumstances, typical of the change which was at hand. For now the Lord is no longer with them in the ship, but stands dimly seen upon the shore; yet from thence issues his directions, and shows the presence of his power working with them in their seemingly lonely toil. Then the charge is left to feed his sheep, and lastly the future destinies of the two chief apostles are suffered to be faintly seen. T. D. B. Third appearance of Jesus to the apostles (seven of them) by the Lake of Galilee—the seventh in all. Their meeting with Jesus in the mountain he had appointed them must have been subsequent to that morning by the Lake of Galilee, of which John has given us so full and touching an account. S.  Sea of Tiberias. Bethsaida beach recalled bright pictures of our Saviour's life. Here was the cradle of Christianity, and years afterward here again was "the third time that Jesus showed himself to his disciples after that he was risen from the dead." Almost the same persons are this time on the shore again: Peter, and Thomas, and Nathanael, and James, and John; but only "that disciple whom Jesus loved" could at first recognize his Lord. Peter, who had before cast himself into the same sea to go to Jesus, now did so again; but the Lord now thrice called him "Simon," as if the unstable one had by his three-fold denial lost his better title. J. M. He would recall to the memory of his disciples all that they had witnessed in the early days of his ministry. Above all he would stir the hearts of Peter and James and John, by saying some of his last things to them, at the place where he had first called them to leave their boats and nets, to follow him, and to become fishers of men. J. C. R. 1. There is a significance to be found in the words, “Jesus showed,” or manifested, “himself,” that his body after the resurrection was only visible by a distinct act of his will. From that time the disciples did not, as before, see Jesus, but Jesus appeared unto or was seen by them. The language is changed, and in language of this kind all his appearances after the resurrection are related. It is the same with angels, and all heavenly manifestations: men do not see them, as though it lay in their will to do so or not; such language would be inappropriate: but they appear to men; are only visible to those for whose sakes they are vouchsafed, and to whom they are willing to show themselves. T. He appears in such a manner as to prove to them most conclusively that he is their risen Lord, yet with an air of strangeness about him which inspires them with awe, and which admonishes them that former familiar fellowship is not to be renewed. N. C. B. 3. That night they caught nothing. Three years before, in the same place, Simon Peter and his companions had also labored a whole night and taken nothing. 5. Children. He calls them by the tender name of children; they were his brethren, his friends, his dear children. He is indeed called “the Everlasting Father.” 6. This time the net did not break, but came whole to land, although they had not at hand the crew of a second ship to help them to draw. R. B. On both occasions the miraculous success was given after a night of disappointment. In the former case, there was no record of the fish; in this they were carefully counted. Then the fish were taken into the boats on the lake; now they are drawn at once to the shore. Then the net was in danger of breaking; here there was no sign of any such weakness manifested. After the first miracle they were called to be fishers of men; after the second, they are invited to eat with Christ. W. T. Multitude of fishes. The correspondence of this account with the former fishing is very remarkable, as is their entire distinctness. The disciples must have been powerfully reminded of that; and after the “fishers of men” of the former, the whole could not but bear to them a spiritual meaning in reference to their apostolic commission: their powerlessness without Christ, their success when they let down the net at his word. A. 7. That disciple whom Jesus loved. This is John’s modest way throughout his gospel: he hides himself whenever he can; and when he must refer to himself at all, he leaves out the name. The noblest spirits are the meekest. Those who have most in them that is worth showing are least anxious to show it. This best-beloved apostle is always thinking of his Saviour, not of himself. That is one reason why he is the best-beloved. And so, although he is to have all Christendom, in all ages, for his vast and admiring audience, he is altogether unconscious and natural in his narrative, as we all are when we are describing something because of the feeling and impression in ourselves, and not trying to produce an effect for ourselves. F. D. H. Girt his fisher’s coat. In this hot climate it is common to fish with nothing but a sort of shawl or napkin tied round the waist. The fisher’s coat which he girt about him was the short ‘abdyeh which they now wear, and which they very often lay aside while fishing. They can doff and don it in a moment. When worn, it is girt tight about the loins with the zunnar, and Peter did this when hastening to meet the Lord. W. M. T. Five fishermen came to my camp in their boat by invitation, and were most courteous and intelligent in their talk. All wore the same kind of dress—a cloak, or scarf (the “fisher’s coat”), and below it a short kilt. When a man had only this latter garment on, he was said to be “naked.” J. M.—In all the languages of the East a person is said to be “naked” when he is simply divested of his outer garments. Van Lennep. Both apostles come out in their proper characters: he of the eagle eye first detects the presence of the Beloved, and Peter, the foremost in act, as John is profoundest in speculation, unable to wait till the ship should be brought to land, throws himself into the sea that he may find himself the sooner at the feet of his Lord. 10. As that large capture of fish was to them the pledge and promise of a labor that should not be in vain, so the meal, when the labor was done, a meal of the Lord’s own preparing, and upon the shore, was the symbol of the great festival in heaven with which, after their earthly toil was over, he would refresh his servants, when he should cause them to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom. And as they were bidden to bring of their fish to that meal, so should the souls which they had taken for life help and contribute to their gladness then. And after the Lord has opened the eyes of his apostles to the greatness of their future work, and given to them in type a prophetic glimpse both of their successful labor and their abundant reward, he declares to them the conditions both of accomplishing this work and inheriting this reward. Love to Christ, and the unreserved yielding up of self to God—these were the sole conditions. T. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/butler/