EDITED BY THE REV.
W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.,
Editor of "The Expositor."
THE GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW.
BY
JOHN MONRO GIBSON, M.A., D.D.
London.
TORONTO:
WILLARD TRACT DEPOSITORY AND BIBLE DEPÔT,
Corner of Yonge and Temperance Streets.
1890.
THE GOSPEL
OF
ST. MATTHEW.
BY
JOHN MONRO GIBSON, M.A., D.D.,
London,
AUTHOR OF "THE AGES BEFORE MOSES," "THE MOSAIC ERA," ETC.
TORONTO:
WILLARD TRACT DEPOSITORY AND BIBLE DEPÔT,
Corner of Yonge and Temperance Streets.
1890.
THE New Testament opens appropriately with the four Gospels; for, though in their present form they are all later in date than some of the Epistles, their substance was the basis of all apostolic preaching and writing. As the Pentateuch to the Old Testament, so is the fourfold Evangel to the New.
That there should be a manifold presentation of the great facts which
lie at the foundation of our faith and hope, was both to be expected
and desired. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, as proclaimed by the first
preachers of it, while in substance always the same, would be varied
in form, and in number and variety of details, according to the
individuality of the speaker, the kind of audience before him, and the
special object he might have in view at the time. Before any form of
presentation had been crystallized, there would therefore be an
indefinite number of Gospels, each "according to" the individual
preacher of "Christ and Him crucified." It is, therefore, a marvellous
proof of the guidance and control of the Divine Spirit that out of
these numerous oral Gospels there should emerge four, each perfect in
itself, and together affording, as with the all-round completeness of
sculpture, a life-like representation of
The inscription over the cross was in three languages: Hebrew, Latin,
and Greek. These languages represented the three great civilizations
which were the final outcome of ancient history—the Jewish, the
Roman, the Greek. These three were not like so many nations selected
at random, but stood for three leading types of humanity. The Jew was
the man of the past. He could claim Moses and the prophets; he had
Abraham for his father; his records went back to the Genesis of all
things. He represented ancient prerogative and privilege, the
conservatism of the East. The Roman was the man of the present. He was
master of the world.
It is manifest that for every reason the Gospel of St. Matthew should
occupy the foremost place. "To the Jew first" is the natural order,
whether we consider the claims of "the fathers," or the necessity of
making it clear that the new covenant was closely linked to the old.
"Salvation is of the Jews;" the Christ of God, though the Saviour of
the world, had
The opening words of this Gospel suggest that we are at the Genesis of
the New Testament, the genesis not of the heavens and the earth, but
of Him who was to make for us "new heavens and a new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness." The Old Testament opens with the thought,
"Behold I make all things;" the New Testament with that which amounts
to the promise, "Behold I make all things new." It begins with the
advent of "the Second Man, the Lord from Heaven." That He was indeed a
"Second Man," and not merely one of the many that have sprung from the
first man, will presently appear; but first it must be made clear that
He is man indeed, "bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh;" and
therefore the inspired historian begins with His historic genealogy.
True to his object, however, he does not trace back our Lord's
descent, as does St. Luke, to the first man, but contents himself with
that which is especially interesting to the Jew, setting Him forth as
"the son of David, the son of Abraham." There is another difference
between the genealogies, of a more serious kind, which has been the
occasion of much difficulty; but which also seems
St. Matthew gives the genealogy in three great epochs or stages, which, veiled in the Authorized Version by the verse division, are clearly exhibited to the eye in the paragraphs of the Revised Version, and which are summed up and made emphatic at the close of the genealogical tree (ver. 17). The first is from Abraham to David; the second from David to the captivity in Babylon; the third from the captivity to Christ. If we glance at these, we shall find that they represent three great stages in the development of the Old Testament promises which find their fulfilment in the Messiah.
"To Abraham and to his seed were the promises made." As given to
Abraham himself, the promise ran thus: "In thy seed shall all the
nations of the earth be blessed." As made to David, it indicated that
the blessing to the nations should come through a king of his line.
These were the two great promises to Israel. There were many others;
but these stand out from the rest as constituting the mission and the
hope of Israel. Now, after long waiting, both are to be fulfilled in
Christ. He is the chosen Seed in Whom all nations shall be blessed. He
is the Son of David, who is to sit upon His throne for ever, and
reign, not over Israel alone, but over men, as "Prince of Peace" and
The captivity in Babylon, as is well known, was followed by two great
results: (1) it cured the people of idolatry for ever, so that, while
politically the kingdom had passed away, in reality, and according to
the spirit, it was then for the first time constituted as a kingdom of
God. Till then, though politically separate from the Gentile nations,
spiritually Israel had become as one of them; for what else than a
heathen nation was the northern kingdom in the days of Ahab or the
southern kingdom in the time of Ahaz? But after the captivity, though
as a nation shattered into fragments, spiritually Israel became and
continued to be one. (2) The other great result of the captivity was
the Dispersion. Only a small remnant of the people came back to
Palestine. Ten of the tribes passed out of sight, and but a fraction
of the other two returned. The rest remained in Babylon, or were
scattered abroad among the nations of the earth. Thus the Jews in
their dispersion formed, as it were, a Church throughout the ancient
world,—their eyes ever turned in love and longing to the Temple
at Jerusalem, while their homes and their business were among the
Gentiles—in the world, but not of it; the prototype of the
future Church of Christ, and the soil out of which it should
afterwards spring. Thus out of the captivity in Babylon sprang, first,
the spiritual as distinguished from the political kingdom, and, next,
the world-wide as distinguished from the merely national Church.
Clearly then the Babylonish captivity was not only a most important
historical event, but also a stage in the grand preparation for
To some minds it may present itself as a
difficulty that the great name of Moses should not find a place in the
series; was not he as much of an epoch-maker as David? The answer is
that, from the point of view of prophecy and promise, he was not.
This, which lies implicitly in St. Matthew's summary, is set forth
explicitly by St. Paul in his epistle to the Galatians, where he shows
that the Law, as a stage in the dealings of God with the nation, did
not belong to the main course of development, but came in as an
episode, was "added because of transgressions" (
So much for the earthly origin of the Man Christ Jesus; but His
heavenly descent must also be told; and with what exquisite simplicity
and delicacy is this done. There is no attempt to make the words
correspond with the greatness of the facts. As simple and
The story of the Incarnation is often represented as incredible; but
if those who so regard it would only reflect on that doctrine of
heredity which the science of recent years has brought into such
prominence, if they would only consider what is involved in the
obvious truth that, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh," they
would see that it was not only natural but necessary that the birth of
Jesus Christ should be "on this wise." Inasmuch as "the first man is
of the earth, earthy," "the Second Man" must be "of heaven," or He
will be no Second Man at all; He will be sinful and earthy like all
the others. But all that is needful is met in the manner so chastely
and beautifully set forth by our Evangelist, in words which, angelic
in their tone and
Some wonder that nothing is said here of Nazareth and what took place there, and of the journey to Bethlehem; and there are those who are fain even to find some inconsistency with the third Gospel in this omission, as if there were any need to wonder at omissions in a story which tells of the first year on one page and the thirtieth on the next! These Gospels are not biographies. They are memorials, put together for a special purpose, to set forth this Jesus as the Son of God and Saviour of the world. And the special object, as we have seen, of St. Matthew is to set Him forth as the Messiah of Israel. In accordance with this object we have His birth told in such a way as to bring into prominence those facts only in which the Evangelist specially recognised a fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. Here again the names give us the main thoughts. Just as Abraham, David, Babylon, suggest the main object of the genealogy, so the names Emmanuel, Jesus, suggest the main object of the record of His birth. "All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet."
The first name mentioned is "Jesus." To understand it as St. Matthew
did, we must bear in mind that it is the old historic name Joshua, and
that the first thought of the Hebrew mind would be, Here is One who
shall fulfil all that was typified in the life and work of the two Old
Testament heroes who bore that name, so full of hopeful significance. The Hebrew name Joshua, of which Jesus is simply
the Greek transliteration, combines the two words Jehovah and
Salvation (cf.
Joseph, though a poor carpenter of Nazareth, was a true son of David, one of those who waited for the salvation of Israel, who had welcomed the truth set forth by Daniel, that the coming kingdom was to be a kingdom of the saints of the Most High,—not of political adventurers, as was the idea of the corrupt Judaism of the time; so he was prepared to welcome the truth that the coming Saviour was One who should deliver, not from the rule of Rome, but from the guilt and power and death of Sin.
As the name Joshua, or Jesus, came from the earliest times of Israel's
national history, the name Emmanuel came from its latest, even out of
the dark days of King Ahaz, when the hope of the people was directed
to the birth of a Child who should bear this name. Some have thought
it enough to show that there was a fulfilment of this hope in the time
of Ahaz, to make
If, now, we look at these two names, we shall see that they not only
point to a fulfilment, in the largest sense, of Old Testament
prophecy, but to the fulfilment of that which we all need
most—the satisfaction of our deepest wants and longings. "God is
light;" sin is darkness. With God is the fountain of life; "sin when
it is finished bringeth forth death." Here shines the star of hope;
there lies the abyss of
THIS one chapter contains all that St. Matthew records of the Infancy.
St. Mark and St. John tell us nothing, and St. Luke very little. This
singular reticence has often been remarked upon, and it certainly is
most noteworthy, and a manifest sign of genuineness and truthfulness:
a token that what these men wrote was in the deepest sense not their
own. For if they had been left to themselves in the performance of the
task assigned them, they could not have restrained themselves as they
have done. The Jews of the time attached the greatest importance to
child-life, as is evident from the single fact that they had no less
than eight different words to mark the successive stages of
development from the new-born babe up to the young man; and to omit
all reference to these stages, except the slight notice of the Infancy
in this chapter, was certainly not "according to Matthew" the
Jew,—not what would have been expected of him had he been left
to himself. It can only be explained by the fact that he spoke or was
silent according as he was moved or restrained by the Holy Ghost. This
view is strikingly confirmed by comparison with the spurious Gospels
afterwards published, by men who
Much space might be occupied in setting forth the advantages of this reticence, but a single illustration may suggest the main thought. Recall for a moment the well-known picture entitled, "The Shadow of the Cross," designed and executed by a master, one who might surely be considered qualified to illustrate in detail the life at Nazareth. We have nothing to say as to the merit of the picture as a work of art; let those specially qualified to judge speak of this; but is it not generally felt that the realism of the carpenter's shop is most painful? The eye is instinctively averted from the too obtrusive details; while the mind gladly returns from the startling vividness of the picture to the vague impressions made on us by the mere hints in the sacred Scriptures. Was it not well that our blessed Saviour should grow in retirement and seclusion; and if so, why should that seclusion be invaded? If His family life was withdrawn from the eyes of the men of that time, there remains the same reason why it should be withdrawn from the eyes of the men of all time; and the more we think of it, the more we realize that it is better in every way that the veil should have been dropped just where it has been, and that all should remain just as it was, when with unconscious skill the sacred artists finished their perfect sketches of the child Jesus.
According to the plan of these expositions, we must disregard details, and many interesting questions, for the consideration of which it is surely enough to refer to the many well-known and widely-read books on the Life of Christ; and confine ourselves to those general thoughts and suggestions which seem best fitted to bring out the spirit of the passage as a whole.
Let us, then, look first at the manner of His reception by Jerusalem, the city which as Son of David He could claim as peculiarly His own. It was the very centre of the circle of Old Testament illumination. It had all possible advantages, over every other place in the world, for knowing when and how the Christ should come. Yet, when He did come, the people of Jerusalem knew nothing about it, but had their first intimation of the fact from strangers who had come from the far East to seek Him. And not only did they know nothing about it till they were told, but, when told, they were troubled (ver. 3). Indifference where we should have expected eagerness, trouble where we should have looked for joy.
We have only to examine the contemporary accounts of the state of
society in Jerusalem to understand it thoroughly, and to see how
exceedingly natural it was. Those unacquainted with these records can
Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol.
i., p. 130.
If things of that kind represented the dignity of the people of Jerusalem, we need not ask why they were troubled when they heard that to them had been born in Bethlehem a Saviour who was Christ the Lord. A Saviour who would save them from their sins was the very last thing people of that kind wanted. A Herod suited them better, for it was he and his court that set the example of the luxury and profligacy which characterised the capital. Do not all these revelations as to the state of things in the capital of Israel set off more vividly than ever the pure lustre of the quiet, simple, humble, peaceful surroundings of the Babe of Bethlehem and Boy of Nazareth? Put the "dignity" and trouble of Jerusalem over against the humility and peace of Bethlehem, and say which is the more truly dignified and desirable. When we look at the contrast we cease to wonder that, with the exception of a very few devout Simeons and Annas, waiting for the consolation of Israel, Jerusalem, as a whole, was troubled to hear the rumour of the advent of her Saviour-King.
Herod's trouble we can so readily understand that we need not spend time over it, or over what he did to get rid of it, so thoroughly in keeping as it was with all that history tells us of his character and conduct. No wonder that the one thought in his mind was "Away with Him!"
But who are these truly dignified men, who are now turning their backs
on rich and gay Jerusalem, and setting their faces to the obscurity
and poverty of the village of Bethlehem? They are men of rank and
wealth and learning from the far East—representatives
What a beautiful picture; how striking the contrast to the
magnificence of Herod the Great in Jerusalem, surrounded by his
wealthy and luxurious court. Verily, these were wise men from the
East, wise with a wisdom not of this world—wise to recognise the
hope of the future, not in a monarch called "the Great," surrounded
by the world's pomp and luxury, but in the fresh young
All honour to these wise men for bending low in presence of the Holy Child; and thanks be to God for allowing His servant Matthew to give us a glimpse of a scene so beautiful, so touching, so suggestive of pure and high and holy thought and feeling.
The gifts of the East no doubt provided the means of securing a refuge
in the South and West. That Egypt gave the fugitives a friendly
welcome, and a safe retreat so long as the danger remained, is obvious; but
Other points of agreement with the prophetic word are mentioned. It is worthy of note that they are all connected with the dark side of prophecy concerning the Messiah. The reason for this will readily appear on reflection. The Scribes and Pharisees were insistent enough on the bright side, the side that favoured their ideas of a great king, who should rescue the people from the Roman yoke, and found a great world-kingdom, after the manner of Herod the Great or of Cæsar the mighty. So there was no need to bring strongly out that side of prophecy which foretold of the glories of the coming King. But the sad side had been entirely neglected. It is this, accordingly, which the Evangelist is prompted to illustrate.
It was, indeed, in itself an occasion of stumbling that the King of
Israel should have to flee to Egypt. But
THIRTY years have gone since all Jerusalem was in trouble at the rumour of Messiah's birth. But as nothing has been heard of Him since, the excitement has passed away. Those who were troubled about it are ageing or old or dead; so no one thinks or speaks of it now. There have been several political changes since, mostly for the worse. Judæa is now a province of Rome, governed by procurators, of whom the sixth, called Pontius Pilate, has just entered on his office. Society is much the same as before—the same worldliness and luxurious living after the manner of the Greek, the same formalism and bigotry after the manner of the Scribe. There is no sign, in Jerusalem at least, of any change for the better.
The only new thing stirring is a rumour in the street. People are
telling one another that a new prophet has arisen. "In the
Palace?"—"No." "In the Temple?"—"No." "Surely somewhere in
the city?"—"No." He is in the wilderness, clad in roughest garb,
subsisting on poorest fare—a living protest against the luxury
of the time. He makes no pretence to learning, draws no fine
distinctions, gives no curious interpretations, and yet, with only a
simple message,—which, however, he delivers as coming
So they go out in multitudes to the wilderness; and what do they see?
"A man clothed in fine raiment," like the Roman officials in the
palace, which in those degenerate days were Jerusalem's pride? "A reed
shaken by the wind," like the time-serving politicians of the hour?
Nay, verily; but a true prophet of the Lord, one reminding them of
what they have read in the Scriptures of the great Elijah, who
suddenly appeared in the wild mountain region of Gilead, at a time
when Phœnician manners were making the same havoc in Israel that Greek
manners are now making in Jerusalem. Who can he be? He seems to be
more than a prophet. Can he be the Christ? But this he entirely
disclaims. Is he Elijah then? John probably knew that he was sent "in
the spirit and power of Elijah," for so his father had learned from
the angel on the occasion of the announcement of his birth; but that
was not the point of their question. When they asked, "Art thou
Elijah?" they meant "Art thou Elijah risen from the dead?" To this he
John wishes it to be distinctly understood that he is not that Light which the prophets of old have told them should arise, but is sent to bear witness to that Light. He has come as a herald to announce the approach of the King, and to call upon the people to prepare for His coming. Think not of me, he cries, ask not who I am; think of the coming King, and make ready for Him,—"Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight."
How is the way of the Lord to be prepared? Is it by summoning the
people to arms all over the land, that they may repel the Roman
invader and restore the ancient kingdom? Such a proclamation would no
doubt have struck a chord that would have vibrated through all the
land. That would have been after the manner of men; it was not the way
of the Lord. The summons must be, not to arms, but to repentance:
"Wash you, make you clean: put away the evil of your doings." So,
instead of marching up, a host of warriors, to the Roman citadel, the
people troop down, band after band of penitents, to the Jordan,
confessing their sins. After all it is the old, old prophetic message
over again,—the same which had been sent generation after
generation to a backsliding
Like many of the old prophets, John taught by symbol as well as by
word. The preparation needed was an inward cleansing, and what more
fitting symbol of it than the water baptism to which he called the
nation? "In that day," it was written in the prophets, "there shall be
a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness." The prophecy was about to be
fulfilled, and the baptism of John was the appropriate sign of it.
Again, in another of the prophets the promise ran, "Then will I
sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your
filthiness and from all your idols will I cleanse you ... and I will
put my spirit within you." John knew well that it was not given to him
to fulfil this promise. He could not grant the real baptism, the
baptism of the Holy Ghost; but he could baptise with water; he could
give the sign and assurance to the truly penitent heart that there was
forgiveness and cleansing in the coming One; and thus, by his baptism
with water, as well as by the message he delivered, he was preparing
the way of the Lord. All this, we cannot but observe, was in perfect
accord with the wonderful prophetic utterance of his father Zacharias,
as recorded by St. Luke: "Thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of
the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare
His ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the
remission of their sins,"—not to give salvation, which only
Christ can give, but the knowledge of it. This he did not only by
telling of the coming Saviour, and, when He came,
The summons of the prophet of the wilderness is not in vain. The
people come. The throngs increase. The nation is moved. Even the great
ones of the nation condescend to follow the multitude. Pharisees and
Sadducees, the leaders of the two great parties in Church and State,
are coming; many of them are coming. What a comfort this must be to
the prophet's soul. How gladly he will welcome them, and let it be
known that he has among his converts many of the great ones of the
land! But the stern Baptist is a man of no such mould. What cares he
for rank or position or worldly influence? What he wants is reality,
simplicity, godly sincerity; and he knows that, scarce as these
virtues are in the community at large, they are scarcest of all among
these dignitaries. He will not allow the smallest admixture of
insincerity or hypocrisy in what is, so far, a manifest work of God.
He must test these new-comers to the uttermost, for the sin of which
they need most to repent is the very sin which they are in danger of
committing afresh in its most aggravated form in offering themselves
for baptism. He must therefore test their motives; he must at all
risks ensure that, unless their repentance is genuine, they shall not
be baptised. For their own sakes, as well as for the work's sake this
is necessary. Hence the strong, even harsh language he uses in putting
the question why they had come. Yet he would not repel or discourage
them. He does not send them away as if past redemption, but only
demands that they bring forth fruit worthy
It is as if he said, The coming kingdom of righteousness and truth will not fail, even if Pharisees and Sadducees and all the natural children of Abraham refuse to enter its only gate of repentance; if there is no response to the Divine summons where it is most to be expected, then it can be secured where it is least to be expected; if flesh become stone, then stone can be made flesh, according to the word of promise. So there will be no gathering in of mere formalists to make up numbers, no including of those who are only "Jews outwardly." And there will be no half measures, no compromise with evil, no parleying with those who are unwilling or only half willing to repent. A time of crisis has come,—"now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees." It is not lifted yet. But it is there lying ready, ready for the Lord of the vineyard, when He shall come (and He is close at hand); then, "every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire."
Yet not for judgment is He coming,—John goes on to
say,—but to fulfil the promise of the Father. He is coming to
baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire—to purify you
through and through and to animate you with a new life, glowing,
upward-striving, heaven-aspiring;
The work of John must still be done. It specially devolves upon the ministers of Christ; would they were all as anxious as he was to keep in the background, as little concerned about position, title, official rank, or personal consideration.
"THE baptism of John, was it from Heaven or of men?" This question
must have been asked throughout the length and breadth of the land in
the days of his mission. We know how it was answered; for even after
the excitement had died away, we are told that "all men counted John
for a prophet." This conviction would of course prevail in Nazareth as
well as everywhere else. When, therefore, the Baptist removed from the
wilderness of Judæa and the lower reaches of the Jordan to the ford of
Bethany, or Bethabara,—now identified with a point much farther
north, within a single day's journey of Nazareth,—the people of
Galilee would flock to him, as before the people of Judæa and
Jerusalem had done. Among the rest, as might naturally be expected,
Jesus came. It was enough for Him to know that the baptism of John was
of Divine appointment. He was in all things guided by His Father's
will, to whom He would day by day commit His way. Accordingly, just as
day by day He had been subject to His parents, and just as He had seen
it to be right to go up to the Temple in accordance with the Law, so
He recognised it to be His duty to present Himself, as His countrymen
in such large numbers were doing, to receive baptism from John.
John looks at Him. Does he know Him at all? Perhaps not; for though
they are cousins, their lives have been lived quite apart. Before
their birth their mothers met; but it is doubtful if they themselves
have seen each other before, and even if they have, in earlier years,
they may both be so changed that recognition is uncertain. The one has
had his home in the South; the other, in the North. Besides, the elder
of the two has spent his life mostly in the desert, so that probably
he is a stranger now even to his own townspeople, and his father and
mother, both very old when he was born, must be dead and gone long
ago. Perhaps, then, John did not know Jesus at all; certainly he did
not yet know Him as the Messiah. But he sees something in Him that
draws forth the homage of his soul. Or possibly he gathers his
impressions rather from what Jesus says. All the rest have confessed
sin; He has no sin of His own to confess. But words would no doubt be
spoken that would convey to the Baptist how this disciple looked on
sin, how the very thought of it filled Him with horror, how His whole
soul longed for the righteousness of God, how it was a sacred passion
with Him that sin should perish from the hearts of men, and
righteousness reign in its place. Whether then, it was by His
appearance, the clear eye, the calm face,—an open window for the
prophet to look through into His soul,—or whether it was by the
words He spoke as He claimed a share in the baptism, or both combined,
John was taken aback—surprised a second
Think of the majesty of this John. Remember how he bore himself in presence of the Pharisees and Sadducees; and how he faced Herod, telling him plainly, at the risk of his life, as it afterwards proved, "It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife." Remember that all Judæa, and Jerusalem, and Galilee had been bowing down in his presence; and now, when an obscure nameless One of Nazareth comes to him, only as yet distinguished from others by the holiness of His life and the purity of His soul, John would not have Him bow in his presence, but would himself bend low before Him: "I have need to be baptised of Thee, and comest Thou to me?" Oh for more of that grand combination of lofty courage and lowly reverence! Verily, "among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist."
But Jesus answering said unto him, "Suffer it now; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness" (R.V.). Though about to enter on His Messianic work, He has not yet taken its burden on Him; accordingly He comes, not as Messiah, but in the simplest and most unassuming way; content still, as He has been all along till now, to be reckoned simply as of Israel. This is what we take to be the force of the plural pronoun "us."
On the other hand, it should be remembered that Jesus must have
recognised in the summons to the
While then Jesus came simply in obedience to the will of God, He must
have come with a very heavy burden. His study of the Scriptures must
have made Him painfully familiar with the dark prospects before Him.
Well did He know that the path of the Messiah must be one of
suffering, that He must be despised and rejected, that He must be
wounded for the people's transgressions and bruised for their
iniquity; that, in a word, He must be the suffering Priest before He
can be the reigning King. This thought of His priesthood must have
been especially borne in upon Him now that He had just reached the
priestly age. In His thirteenth year—the Temple age—He had
gone to the Temple, and now at the age when the priest is consecrated
to his office, He is summoned to the Jordan, to be baptised by one
whom He knows to be sent of God to prepare the way before Him. Those
Scriptures, then, which speak of the priestly office the Messiah must
fill, must have been very much in His mind as He came to John and
offered Himself to be baptised.
At this point we can readily see the appropriateness of His baptism, and also an element in common between it and that of the people. They had come professing to be willing to do the will of God by turning from sin to righteousness. He had no need to turn from sin to do the will of God; but He had to turn from the quiet and peaceful home life at Nazareth, that He might take up the burden laid upon Him as Messiah. So He as well as they had to leave the old life and begin a new one; and in this we can see how fitting it was that He as well as they should be baptised. Then, just as by baptism—the symbol, in their case, of separation from sin and consecration to God—John made "ready a people prepared for the Lord;" so by baptism—the symbol, in His case, of separation from private life and consecration to God in the office of Messiah,—the Lord was made ready for the people. By baptism John opened the door of the new Kingdom. From the wilderness of sin the people entered it as subjects; from the seclusion of private life Jesus entered it as King and Priest. They came under a vow of obedience unto Him; He came under a vow of obedience unto death, even the death of the Cross.
This, then, is the moment of His taking up the Cross. It is indeed the
assumption of His royalty as Messiah-King; but then He knew that He
must suffer and die before He could enter on His glory; therefore, as
the first great duty before Him, He takes up the
The act of solemn consecration is over. He comes up out of the water. And lo, the heavens are opened, and the Spirit of God descends upon Him, and a voice from heaven calls, "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased."
"The heavens were opened." What was the precise natural phenomenon witnessed we can only conjecture, but whatever it was, it was but a symbol of the spiritual opening of the heavens. The heaven of God's love and of all holy Angels, shut from man by sin, was opened again by the Christ of God. Nothing could be more appropriate, therefore, than that just at the moment when the Holy One of Israel had bowed Himself to take up His heavy burden, when for the first time it was possible to say, "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!" the heavens should open to welcome Him, and in welcoming Him, the Sin-bearer, to welcome all whose sins He came to take away.
"And He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting
upon Him." This was His anointing for the work He had come to do. The
priests of
Last of all there is the voice, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am
well pleased," spoken not merely to Himself individually,—all
along, in the personal sense, He was God's beloved Son, in whom He was
well pleased,—but to the Messiah, as the Representative and Head
of a new redeemed humanity, as the First-born among many brethren, as
One who at the very
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual and heavenly blessings in Him: with an open heaven, a present Spirit, a reconciled Father's voice. Blessed be our loving Lord and Saviour, that He came so humbly to the Jordan, stooped so bravely to the yoke, took up our heavy Cross, and carried it through these sorrowful years to the bitter, bitter end. And blessed be the Holy Spirit of all grace, that He abode on Him, and abides with us. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with us all!
MUCH has been written on the possibility of temptation in the experience of a sinless Being. The difficulties which have been raised in this region are chiefly of a metaphysical kind, such as it is possible—for some minds, we might say inevitable—to raise at every point in that mysterious complexity which we call life. Without attempting to enter profoundly into the question, may not an appeal be made to our own experience? Do we not all know what it is to be "tempted without sin,"—without sin, that is, in reference to the particular thing to which we are tempted? Are there not desires in our nature, not only thoroughly innocent, but a necessary part of our humanity, which, nevertheless, give occasion to temptation? But on its being recognised that to follow the impulse, however natural, would lead to wrongdoing, the temptation is instantly repelled and integrity perfectly preserved. In such a case there is temptation, conflict, victory—all without sin. Surely then what is possible to us on occasion was also possible to our Lord on all occasions, all through His pure and spotless life. His taking our nature indeed involved not only the possibility, but the necessity, of temptation.
The passage before us records what is known as
The greater portion, indeed, is still veiled. A dark cloud of mystery hangs over the forty days. Nothing else is told of them in this Gospel than that Jesus fasted for that time—an indication of sustained intensity in the life of His spirit. From St. Mark and St. Luke we learn that the temptation lasted throughout the entire period—a fact not at all inconsistent with sustained spiritual elevation, for it is just at such periods that man is most exposed to the assaults of the enemy. We may not penetrate the darkness of these forty days. Like the darkness in Gethsemane, and again, from the sixth to the ninth hour on Calvary, it forbids entrance. These were times when even "the disciple whom Jesus loved" could not be with Him. These are solitudes that can never be disturbed. Only this we know: that it was necessary that our Saviour should pass through these dark "cloud-gates" as He entered on and as He finished His priestly work on earth.
But though we cannot comprehend what our Lord did for us during these forty days, when He "recovered Paradise to all mankind," we may, remembering that He was tempted, not only as our Representative but as our Exemplar, endeavour with all humility and reverence to enter into this soul-experience of our Lord, so far as the vivid representation of its main features in the inspired record warrants.
It is always difficult to tell the story of soul-experience in such a
way as to come home to the common mind and heart of humanity. It will
not do to tell it in the language of philosophy or psychology, which
none but those familiar with such discussions could
It is above all things necessary to hold firmly to the reality of the temptation. It was no mere sham fight; it was just as real as any we have ever had when most fiercely assailed by the tempter. This will, of course, dispose of the vulgar idea that the devil appeared in recognisable shape, like one of Doré's fiends. Some people cannot rise above the folly of imagining that there is nothing real that is not material, and therefore that our Saviour could have had no conflict with Satan, if Satan had not assumed some material shape. The power of temptation consists in its appearance of being suggested without sinister intent. Our Lord was tempted "like as we are," and therefore had not the advantage of seeing the tempter in his proper person. He may have appeared "as an angel of light," or it may have been only as an invisible spirit that he came. However that may be, it was unquestionably a spiritual experience; and in that consists its reality and value.
In order firmly to grasp the reality of the conflict, we
Observe first the close connection with the baptism. This is made
prominent and emphatic in all the three accounts. Evidently, then, it
supplies the key to it. The baptism of Christ was His consecration to
the work of His Messiahship. And let us not imagine that He had any
ready-made plan for the accomplishment of it. His was no stereotyped
life-work, such as that which most of us take up, in which we can
learn from those who have gone before how they set about it,
Accordingly, no sooner is He baptised, than He withdraws by Himself alone, as Moses and others had done when about to enter on their work, to commune with God and to take counsel with His own thoughts. Was He free from all misgiving? Let us not imagine that it was impossible for Him to doubt. Tempted in all points like as we are, He must have known this sore temptation. One may well suppose, then, that He was visited again and again with misgivings during these forty days, so that it was not at all unnatural that temptation should take the form: "If Thou be the Son of God——"
Look now at the first temptation, and mark the double human weakness
to which it was addressed. On the one hand doubt—"If Thou
art the Son of God;" on the other, hunger—for He had fasted
long and had as strong a craving for bread as any of us would have had
in the circumstances. See now the force of the temptation. He is
suffering from hunger; He is tempted to doubt. How can He have relief?
"If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made
bread." Special powers are entrusted to Him for His work as Messiah.
Should He not use them now? Why not? So in his subtlety suggests
The thought of the doubt that must exist in other minds if not in His
own, gives occasion for a second assault. To have proved His power by
commanding the stones to be made bread would only have gratified a
personal craving. But would it not advance His work to make some
signal display of the powers by which He shall be accredited—do
something that would attract universal attention; not in the desert,
but in Jerusalem;—why not show to all the people that God is
with Him by casting Himself from the pinnacle of the Temple? "If Thou
be the Son of God, cast Thyself down; for it is written, He shall give
His angels charge concerning Thee; and in their hands they shall bear
Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash Thy foot against a stone." One
sees at once the added force of this temptation. The hunger remains,
together with the weakness of body and faintness of spirit which
always accompany it. And the very weapon He used to repel the first
assault is turned against Him now, for His adversary has found a
passage of Scripture, which he uses with great effect. Moreover, the
appeal seems to be to that very spirit of trustfulness which
If it is not right to begin His work by any such display as that which
the tempter has just suggested, how shall it be begun? A question
surely of unexampled difficulty. The air was full of expectancy in
regard to the coming of King Messiah. The whole nation was ready to
hail him. Not only so, but even the heathen nations were more or less
prepared for His coming. Why not take advantage of this favourable
state of things at home and abroad? Why not proclaim a kingdom that
will satisfy these widespread expectations, and gather round itself
all those enthusiasms; and, after having thus won the people, then
proceed to
The crisis is passed. The path of duty and of sorrow lies plain and clear before Him. He has refused to turn aside to the right hand or to the left. The tempter has been foiled at every point, and so must withdraw, for the time, at least. "Then the devil leaveth Him; and, behold, angels came and ministered unto Him."
DID our Lord's ministry begin in Galilee? If so, why did He not Himself set the example of "beginning at Jerusalem"? As a matter of fact we learn from the fourth Gospel that He did begin at Jerusalem; and that it was only after He was rejected there that He changed the scene of His labours to the North. Why then do the three Evangelists not mention this earlier ministry in the South? The answer to this question seems suggested by the stress laid by each of the three on the fact of John's imprisonment, as giving the date after which Christ commenced His work in the North. Here, for example (ver. 12), it is put thus: "Now when He heard that John was delivered up, He withdrew into Galilee." Their idea, then, seems to be that the Judæan ministry of Christ belonged rather to the closing months of John's career; and that only after John's mission, the sphere of which had been mainly in the South, had closed, could the special work of Christ be regarded as having begun.
If we review the facts we shall see how natural and accurate was this
view of the case. John was sent to prepare the way of the Lord, to
open the door of Jerusalem and Judæa for His coming. At first the
herald meets with great success. Jerusalem and Judæa flock
The early Judæan ministry of Christ, then, as related by St. John may be regarded as the opportunity which Christ gave to the nation, as represented by the capital and the Temple, to follow out the mission of John to its intended issue—an opportunity which the leaders of the nation wasted and threw away, and which therefore came to nothing. Hence it is that the three Evangelists, without giving any of the details which were afterwards supplied by St. John, sum up the closing months of the forerunner's ministry in the one fact which suggests all, that John was silenced, and shut up in prison. We see, then, that though Jesus did in a sense commence His work in Galilee, He did not do so until He had first given the authorities of the city and the Temple the opportunity of having it begin, as it would seem most natural that it should have begun, in the centre of the old kingdom.
But though it was His treatment in the South which was the immediate cause of this withdrawal to the North and the beginning of the establishment of the new kingdom there, yet this was no unforeseen contingency—this too was anticipated in the prophetic page, for herein was fulfilled the word of Isaiah the prophet, spoken long ago of this same northern land: "The land of Zabulon and the land of Nepthalim, 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."
It is the old story over again. No room in the inn, so He must be born
in a manger; no safety in Judæa, so He must be carried to Egypt; no
room for Him
Here, then, our Lord begins the work of setting up His kingdom. He takes up the same message which had seemed to return void to its preacher in the South. John had come saying, "Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The people of the South had seemed to repent; and the kingdom seemed about to come in the ancient capital. But the repentance was only superficial; and though it still remained true that the kingdom was at hand, it was not to begin in Jerusalem.
So, in the new; and, to human appearance, far less promising field in the North, the work must be begun afresh; and now the same stirring words are ringing in Galilee, as rang a few months before in Judæa: "Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
It is now in fact close at hand. It is interesting to note its first
beginnings. "And Jesus walking by the Sea of Galilee, It is worthy of notice that He has had the same
experience even in Galilee as before, for He is cast out of His own
place Nazareth, so that He cannot really begin there. He gave them the
first opportunity in Galilee as He had given Jerusalem first of all,
but they too had rejected it, had driven Him out, and hence it is that
the beginning was not in the village up in the hills, but down by the
lakeside in the midst of the busy life that thronged its shores.
Observe in the first place that, though John is in prison, and to all
human appearance failure has been written on the work of his life, the
failure is only seeming. The multitudes that had been stirred by his
preaching have relapsed into their old indifference, but there are a
few whose souls have been permanently touched to finer issues. They
are not of the lordly Pharisees or of the brilliant Sadducees; they
cannot even claim to be metropolitans; they are poor Galilean
fishermen: but they gave heed when the prophet pointed them to the
Lamb of God, the Messiah that was to come; and though they had only
spent a short time in His company, yet golden links had been forged
between them; they had heard the Shepherd's voice; had fully
recognised His Kingly claims; and so were ready, waiting for the word
of command. Now it comes. The same Holy One of Nazareth is walking by
the shores of their lake. He has been proclaiming His Kingdom, as now
at last beginning; and, though the manner of its establishment is so
entirely different from anything to which their thoughts have been accustomed
Such was the first exercise of the royal authority of the new King.
Such was the constitution of His—Cabinet shall we call
it?—or of His Kingdom itself, shall we not rather say? for so
far as we can see, His cabinet at this moment was all the kingdom that
He had. Let us here pause a moment and try to realise the picture
painted for us in that grey morning time of what we now call the
Christian Era. Suppose some of our artists could reproduce the scene
for us: in the background the lake with the deserted boats upon the
shore, old Zebedee with a half sad, half bewildered look upon his
face, wondering what was happening, trying to imagine what he would do
without his sons, and what his sons would do without him and the boat
and the nets; and, in the foreground, the five men walking along, four
of them without the least idea of where they were going or of what
they had to do. Or suppose that, instead of having a picture of it
now, with all the light that eighteen centuries have shed upon it, we
could transport ourselves back to the very time and stand there on the
very spot and see the
It is worth while for us to try to realise what happened in its veriest simplicity; for we have read the story so often, and are so thoroughly familiar with it, that we are apt to miss its marvel, to fail to recognise that it is perhaps the most striking illustration in all history of the apostle's statement, "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty, ... that no flesh should glory in His presence."
Where was ever a weaker thing in this world than
Now follow them: where will they go, and what will they do? Will they
take arms and call to arms the country-side? Then march on Jerusalem
and take the throne of David, and thence to Rome and snatch from Cæsar
the sceptre of the world? "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 among the
people." Teaching—preaching—healing: these were the
methods for setting up the kingdom. "Teaching"—this was the
new light; "preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom"—this was the
new power, power not of the sword but of the Word, the power of
persuasion, so that the people will yield themselves willingly or not
at all, for there is to be not a shadow of constraint, not the
smallest use of force or compulsion, not the slightest interference
with human freedom
It is Daybreak on the shores of Galilee. The Sun of Righteousness has risen with healing in His wings.
IT may seem almost heresy to object to the time-honoured title "Sermon on the Mount;" yet, so small has the word "sermon" become, on account of its application to those productions of which there is material for a dozen in single sentences of this great discourse, that there is danger of belittling it by the use of a title which suggests even the remotest relationship to these ephemeral efforts. No mere sermon is this, only distinguished from others of its class by its reach and sweep and power: it stands alone as the grand charter of the commonwealth of heaven; or, to keep the simple title the evangelist himself suggests (iv. 23), it is "The Gospel (or good news) of the Kingdom." To understand it aright we must keep this in mind, avoiding the easy method of treating it as a mere series of lessons on different subjects, and endeavouring to grasp the unity of thought and purpose which binds its different parts into one grand whole.
It may help us to do this if we first ask ourselves what questions
would naturally arise in the minds of the more thoughtful of the
people, when they heard the announcement, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand."
The answer to the questions in the people's hearts is given in no cold didactic way. The truth about the heavenly kingdom comes warm from a loving heart yearning over the woes of a weary and heavy-laden humanity. Its first word is "Blessed"; its first paragraph, Beatitudes. Plainly the King of heaven has come to bless. There is no thunder nor lightning nor tempest on this mount; all is calm and peaceful as a summer's day.
How high the key-note struck in this first word of the King! The
advantages usually associated with the
As He proceeds to show wherein this blessedness is to be found, we are
struck by the originality of the conception, and its opposition to
vulgar ideas. What the ordinary way of thinking on the subject is to
this day can be readily seen in that very word "wealth," which in its
original significance means welfare, but from the mistaken idea that a
man's life consists in the abundance of the things which he possesses
has come to mean what it means now. Who can tell the woes that result
from the prevalence of this grand mistake—how men are led off in
pursuit of happiness in a wrong direction altogether, away from its
true source, and set to contending and competing with one another, so
that there is constant danger—a danger averted only by the
degree in which the truth enshrined in the Beatitudes
prevails—that "the common wealth" will become the common woe?
What a different world this would be if only the teaching of Christ on
this one subject were heartily accepted—not by a few here and
there, but by
For observe wherein our new King finds the universal weal. We cannot follow the beatitudes one by one; but glancing over them we see, running through them all, this great truth—that blessedness is essentially spiritual, that it depends not so much on a man's condition as on his character, not so much on what he has as on what he is. It needs no great effort of imagination to see that if men in general were to make it their main object and endeavour in life to be what they ought to be, rather than to scramble for what they can get, this earth would speedily become a moral paradise.
In expounding the blessedness of the kingdom the Master has unfolded
the character of its members, thus not only explaining the nature of
the kingdom and the advantages to be enjoyed under it, but also
showing who those are that belong to it. That this was intended seems
evident from the first and the last of the beatitudes both ending with
the emphatic words "theirs is the kingdom of heaven." It is as if on
the two gates at the hither and farther end of this beautiful garden
were inscribed the words, "The truly blessed ones, the citizens of the
commonwealth of heaven, are those who are at home here." Originality
of conception is again apparent. A kingdom so constituted was an
entirely new thing in the world. Previously it had been a matter of
race or of place or of forced subjection. The forefathers of these
people had belonged to the kingdom of Israel, because they belonged to
Israel's race; themselves belonged to the empire of Rome, because
their country had been conquered and they were obliged to acknowledge Rome's
Yet it is no mere aristocracy of natural virtue. It is not a Royal
Academy of the spiritually noble and great. Its line seems rather to
stretch down to the lowest, for who else are the poor in spirit? And
the mourners and the meek are no elect classes of nature's nobility.
On the other hand, however, it runs up to heights even quite out of
sight of the easy-going virtue of the day; for those who belong to
this kingdom are men full of eager aspirations, bent on heart purity,
given to efforts for the good of others, ready even to suffer the loss
of all things for truth and righteousness' sake. The line is stretched
so far down that even the lowest may enter; yet it runs up so high
that those have no place in it who are satisfied with mere average
morality, who count it enough to be free from vices that degrade the
man, and innocent of crimes that offend the state. Most respectable
citizens of an earthly commonwealth such honest men may be; but no
kingdom of heaven is open to such as they. The foundations of common
morality are of course assumed, as is made specially evident in the
next division of the great discourse; but it would have been quite
misleading had the Herald of heaven's kingdom said "Blessed are the
honest," or "Blessed is the man who tells no lies." The common virtues
are quite indispensable; but there must be something beyond
these—first a sense of need of something far higher and better,
then a hungering and thirsting after
The last beatitude breaks forth into a song of joy. No light-hearted joy, as of those who shut their eyes to the dark things in life, but joy in facing the very worst the world can do: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad." O wonderful alchemy of heaven, which can change earth's dust and ashes into purest gold! Think, too, what riches and royalty of spirit in place of the poverty with which the series began.
These eight beatitudes are the diatonic scale of heaven's music. Its key-note is blessing; its upper octave, joy. Those who heard it first with quickened souls could no longer doubt that the kingdom of heaven was at hand; indeed, was there on the mountain that day!
The original promise to Abraham was twofold: "I will bless thee,"
"Thou shalt be a blessing" (
The relations of the members of the kingdom to "those that are
without" is a complex and difficult
"Salt" suggests the conservative, "light" the liberal, side of the politics of the kingdom; but the two are not in opposition, they are in fullest harmony, the one being the complement of the other. Christian people, if they are what they profess to be, are all conservatives and all liberals: conservators of all that is good, and diffusers of all that is of the nature of light. Each of these sides of Christian influence is presented in succession.
"Ye are the salt of the earth." The metaphor suggests the sad fact
that, whatever tendency to upward development there may be in the
world of nature, there is a contrary tendency in the world of men, so
far as character is concerned. The world has often made great advances
in civilisation; but these, unless counter-acted by forces from above,
have always been accompanied by a degeneracy in morals, which in
course of time has brought about the ruin of mighty states. All
The only possible counteractive is the introduction of an element into society which will hold in check the forces that make for unrighteousness, and be itself an elevating and purifying influence. Such an element Christians were to be in the world.
Such, to a large extent, they have been. That they were the salt of
the Roman empire during the evil days of its decline, no student of
history can fail to see. Again, in the "dark ages" that followed, we
can still trace the sweetening influence of those holy lives which
were scattered like shining grains of salt through the ferment and
seething of the times. So it has been throughout, and is still. It is
true that there is no longer the sharp distinction between Christians
and the world which there was in days when it cost something to
confess Christ. There are now so many Christians in name who are not
so in reality, and, on the other hand, so many in reality who are not
so in name, and moreover so many who are Christians neither in name
nor in reality, but who are nevertheless unconsciously guided by
Christian principles as the result of the wide diffusion of Christian
thought and sentiment—that the conservative influence of
distinctive Christianity is very difficult to estimate and is far less
appreciated than it should be. But it is as real and efficient as
ever. If Christianity, as a conservative force in society, were to be
suddenly eliminated, the social fabric would fall in ruins; but if
only the salt were all genuine, if Christian people everywhere had the
savour of the eight beatitudes about them, their conservative power as
to all that is
If the salt would only keep its savour—there is the weak point. We know and feel it after the experience of all these centuries. And did not our omniscient Lord lay His finger on it at the very outset? He needed not that any one should tell Him what was in man. He knew that there was that in His truth which would be genuinely and efficiently conservative; but He knew equally well that there was that in man which would to a large extent neutralise that conservative power, that the salt would be in constant danger of losing its savour. Hence, after the encouraging words "Ye are the salt of the earth," He gives an earnest warning which necessarily moderates the too sanguine anticipations that would otherwise have been excited.
Alas! with what sad certainty has history proved the need of this
warning! The salt lost its savour in the churches of the East, or it
would never have been cast out and trodden underfoot of the Mohammedan
invaders. It lost its savour in the West, or there would have been no
papal corruption, growing worse and worse till it seemed as if Western
Christendom must in turn be dissolved—a fate which was only
averted by the fresh salt of the Reformation revival. In modern times
there is ever the same danger, sometimes affecting all the churches,
as in the dark days preceding the revival under Whitefield and Wesley,
always affecting some of them or some portions of them, as is too
apparent on every hand in these days in which we live. There is as
much need as ever to lay to heart the solemn warning of the King. It
is as pungent as salt itself. "Of what use," He asks, "is
"Ye are the light of the world." We need not stay to show the liberality of light. Its peculiar characteristic is giving, spending; for this purpose wholly it exists, losing its own life in order to find it again in brightness diffused on all around.
Observe, it is not "Ye carry the light," but "Ye are the light." We
are apt to think of light in the abstract—as truth, as doctrine,
as something to be believed and held and expounded. We quote the
familiar words, "Great is the Truth, and it shall prevail," and we
imagine they are true. They are true indeed, in the long run, but not
as often understood, certainly not in the region of the moral and
spiritual. Of course truth in the abstract, especially moral and
spiritual truth, ought to prevail; but it never does when men's
interests lie, or seem to lie, in the contrary direction. Such truth,
to be mighty, must be vitalised; it must glow in human hearts, burn on
human tongues, shine in human lives. The King of truth knew this well; and
In the strictest and highest sense, of course, Christ Himself is the
Light of the world. This is beautifully set forth in discourses
reported by another Evangelist (
This responsibility it was impossible to avoid. As a matter of course,
the kingdom of heaven must be a prominent object in the sight of men.
The mountain of the Lord's house must be established on the top of the
mountains (
Indeed, it is their duty to see to it that they are not artificially hid: "Neither do men light a lamp, and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house" (R.V.). How beautifully does the illustration lend itself to the needed caution against timidity, without giving the least encouragement to the opposite vice of ostentation! Why does light shine? Simply because it cannot help it; it is its nature; without effort or even consciousness, and making no noise, it quietly does its duty; and in the doing of it does not encourage but even forbids any looking at itself—and the brighter it is, the more severely does it forbid it. But while there is no ostentatious obtrusiveness on the one hand, there is no ignoble shirking on the other. Who would ever think of kindling a light and then putting it under a bed? Yet how many Christians do that very thing when they are called to work for Christ, to let the light He has given them shine in some of the dark places where it is most needed!
Here, again, our Lord lays His finger on a weak spot. The Church
suffers sorely, not only from quantities of savourless
salt,—people calling themselves Christians who have little or
nothing distinctively Christian about them,—but also from
bushel-covered lights, those who are genuinely Christian, but who do
all they can to hide it, refusing to speak on the subject, afraid
So closes the first great division of the Manifesto of the King. It had begun with "goodwill to men"; it has shown the way of "peace on earth"; it closes with "glory to God in the highest." It is a prolonged echo of the angels' song. The Gospel of the Kingdom, not only as set forth here in these beautiful paragraphs, but in all its length and breadth and depth and height, in all its range and scope and application, is but an expansion of its very first proclamation: "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, goodwill to men."
After blessing comes obligation—after beatitude, law. It is the
same order as of old. The old covenant
It was therefore most appropriate that, in entering on
While in the widest sense He came not to destroy but to fulfil, so
that He could with fullest liberality acknowledge what was good and
true in the work of all former teachers, whoever and wherever they had
been, thus accepting and incorporating their "broken lights" as part
of His "Light of the world" (compare
Not only does He Himself do homage to the law, but takes order that
His followers shall do the same. It is no parting compliment that He
pays the old covenant. It is to be kept up both in the doing and in
the teaching, from generation to generation, even in its least
commandments. Not that there is to be such insistence on very small
matters as to exclude altogether from the kingdom of heaven those who
do not press every jot and tittle; but that these will be reckoned of
such importance, that those who are lax in doctrine and practice in
regard to them must be counted among the least in the kingdom; while
those who destroy nothing, but seek to fulfil everything, will be the
great ones. What a foundation is laid here for reverence of all that
is contained in the law and the prophets! And has it not been found
that even in the very smallest features of the old covenant, even in
the details of the tabernacle worship, for example, there is for the
devout and intelligent Christian a treasury of
The selection of illustrative instances is made with consummate skill. Our Lord, avoiding that which is specially Jewish in its interest, treats of matters that are of world-wide importance. He deals with the broadest principles of righteousness as adapted to the universal conscience of mankind, starting at the lowest point of mere earthly morality and rising to the very highest development of Christian character, thus leading up to the magnificent conclusion: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
He begins with the crime which the natural conscience most strongly
and instinctively condemns, the crime of murder; and shows that the
scribes and Pharisees,
The two practical applications which follow press the searching subject home. The one has reference to the Throne of Grace, and teaches that all offences against a brother must be put away before approaching it. The other has reference to the Throne of Judgment, and teaches by a familiar illustration drawn from common experience in the courts of Palestine that it is an awful thing to think of standing there with the memory of a single angry feeling that had not been forgiven and utterly removed (v. 26).
The crime of adultery furnishes the next illustration;
Next comes the crime of perjury—a compound sin, which breaks at
the same time two commandments of the Decalogue, the third and the
ninth. Here, again, our Lord shows that, if only due homage is paid in
the heart to reverence and to truth, all swearing is superseded. Let a
man habitually live in the fear of the Lord all the day long, and "his
word is as good as his oath"—he will always speak the truth, and
will be incapable of taking the name of the Lord in vain. It is of
course to be remembered that these are the laws of the kingdom of
Christ; not laws meant for the kingdoms of this world, which have to
do with men of all sorts, but for a kingdom made up of those who
hunger and thirst after righteousness, who seek and find purity of
heart. This passage accordingly has no bearing on the procedure of
secular courts of justice. But, though the use of oaths may still be a
necessity in the world, in the kingdom of heaven they have no place.
The simple "Yea, yea," "Nay, nay," is quite enough where there is
truth in the
The sin of revenge furnishes the next illustration. The Pharisaic perversion of the old law actually sanctioned private revenge, on the ground of a statute intended for the guidance of the courts of justice, and given for the sake of curbing the revengeful spirit which without it would lead a prosecutor to demand that his enemy should suffer more than he had inflicted. In this way they really destroyed that part of the Mosaic legislation, whereas He fulfilled it by developing still further,—bringing, in fact, to perfection,—that spirit of humanity which had dictated the law at the first. The true spirit of the Mosaic legislation was to discourage private revenge by assigning such cases to the courts, and curbing it still further by the limitation of the penalty imposed. Was not this spirit most nobly fulfilled, carried to its highest development, when the Saviour laid it down as the law of His kingdom that our revenge is to be the returning of good for evil?
The four practical illustrations (vv. 39-42) have been a source of
difficulty, but only to those who forget that our Saviour is all the
while warning against "the letter that killeth," and showing the need
of catching "the spirit" of a commandment which "giveth life" to it.
To deal with these illustrations according to the letter, as telling
us exactly what to do in particular cases, is not to fulfil but to
destroy the Saviour's words. The great thing, therefore, is to catch
their spirit; then they will be found of use, not for so many
specified cases, but for all cases whatever.
The last illustration cuts at the root of all sin and crime, the tap-root of selfishness. The scribes and Pharisees had made use of those regulations, most needful at the time, which separated Israel from other nations, as an excuse for restricting the range of love to those prepared to render an equivalent. Thus that wonderful statute of the old legislation, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," was actually made a minister to selfishness; so that, instead of leading them to a life above the world, it left them not a whit better than the lowest and most selfish of the people. "If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same?" Thus was the noble "royal law according to the Scripture" destroyed by the petty quibbling use of the word "neighbour." Our Lord fulfilled it by giving to the word neighbour its proper meaning, its widest extent, including even those who have wronged us in thought or word or deed, "I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."
How lofty, how far beyond the reach of the natural
How beautiful and expressive are these symbols from nature, and how encouraging the interpretation of nature His use of them suggests! And what shall we say of their suggestiveness in the higher sphere of the spirit? Already the Sun of Righteousness is rising with healing in His wings; and in due time the rain of the Spirit will fall in fulness of blessing; so shall His disciples receive all that is needful to raise them to the very highest in character and conduct, in beatitude and righteousness; and accordingly their Master may well finish His whole exposition of the morals of the kingdom with the stirring, stimulating call, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."
The righteousness of the kingdom is still the great subject; for the reading of the Revised Version in the first verse of the chapter is evidently the correct one. The illustrations of the preceding passage have all come under the head of what we call morality as distinguished from religion, but it is important to observe that our Lord gives no sanction to the separation of the two.
Morality divorced from religion is a flower without root, which may bloom for a while, but in the end must wither away; religion without morality is—nothing at all; worse than nothing, for it is a sham. It is evident, of course, that this great word "righteousness," as used by our Lord, has a far wider scope than is given to it by those who take it merely as the equivalent of truth and honesty, as if a man could in any proper sense of the word be righteous, who was ungenerous to his neighbours, unfilial to God, or not master of himself.
Again, we have a principle laid down: "Take heed that ye do not your
righteousness before men, to be seen of them" (R.V.). It is the same
great principle as before, though the caution in which it is embodied
is different. For if we compare ver. 20 of the preceding chapter, and
remember its subsequent development in the verses which follow, we
find that it agrees with the warning before us in insisting on
righteousness of the heart as distinguished from that which is merely
outward. The difference lies in this, that whereas, in the cases
already dealt with, external conformity with the law is good so far as
it goes, but does not go nearly far enough ("except your righteousness
shall exceed," exceed, i.e., by reaching back and down to the
deepest
It is not, however, the being seen which is condemned, otherwise the caution would be at variance with the earnest counsel in chap. v. 16, and would, in fact, amount to a total prohibition of public worship. As before, it is a matter of the heart. It is the hidden motive which is condemned: "Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them."
The principle is applied in succession to Almsgiving, to Prayer, to Fasting.
Almsgiving is no longer regarded as distinctively a religious duty.
Nor can it be put under the head of morality according to the common
idea attached to that word. It rather occupies a kind of borderland
between them, coming under the head of philanthropy. But whence came
the spirit of philanthropy? Its foundation is in the holy mountains.
Modern philanthropy is like a great fresh-water lake, on the shores of
which one may wander with admiration and delight for great distances
without discovering any connection with the heaven-piercing mountains.
But such connection it has. The explorer is sure to find somewhere an
inlet showing whence its waters come, a bright sparkling stream which
has filled it and keeps it full; or springs below it, which, though
they may flow far underground, bring the precious supplies from the
higher regions, perhaps quite out of sight. If these connections with
the upper springs were to be cut off, the beautiful lake would
speedily dry up and disappear. Almsgiving, therefore, is in its right
place
The general object our Lord has in view, moreover, leads Him to treat the subject, not in relation to those who receive, but to those who give. There may be good done through the gifts of men who have no higher object in view than the sounding of their own trumpet; but, so far as they themselves are concerned, their giving has no value in the sight of God. Everything depends on the motive: hence the injunction of secrecy. There may indeed be circumstances which suggest or even require a certain measure of publicity, for the sake of the object or cause to which gifts are devoted; but so far as the giver is concerned, the more absolute the secrecy the better. For though it is possible to give in the most open and public way without at all indulging the petty motive of ostentation, yet so weak is human nature on that side of it, that our Lord puts His caution in the very strongest terms, counselling us not only to avoid courting the attention of others, but to refrain from even thinking of what we have done; for that seems to be the point of the striking and memorable words "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth."
The trumpet-blowing may be a great success. What the Master thinks of
that success is seen in the caustic irony of the words "Verily I say
unto you, they have their reward." There it is—and you can see
just how paltry and pitiful it is; for there is nothing a man is more
ashamed of than to be caught in even the slightest attempt to parade
himself. But if the praise of men is never thought of, it cannot be
said "they
Under the head of Prayer two cautions are given. The one may be dismissed in a few words, not only because it exactly corresponds with the preceding case, but because among us there is scarcely any temptation to that against which it is directed. The danger now is all the other way. The temptation for true children of the kingdom is not to parade their devotion for show, but to conceal it for shame. Still there are some directions in which even yet the caution against ostentation in prayer is needed—as, for instance, by those who in public or social prayer assume affected tones, or try in any way to give an impression of earnestness beyond what is really felt. Of the sanctimonious tone we may say that it has its reward in the almost universal contempt it provokes.
The other caution is directed, not against pretence, but against
superstition. It will be seen, however, that the two belong to the
same category, and therefore are most appropriately dealt with
together. What is the sin of the formalist? It is that his heart is
not in his worship. What is the folly of the vain repetitionist? It is
the same—that his heart is not in his words. For there is no
discouragement of repetition, if it be prompted by genuine
earnestness. Our Lord again and again encouraged even importunate
prayer, and Himself in the Garden offered the same petition three
times in close succession. It is not, then, repetition, but "vain
repetition,"—empty of heart, of desire, of hope—that is
here rebuked; not much prayer, but "much speaking," the folly of
supposing that the mere "saying" of prayers is of any use apart from
the
To guide us in a matter so important, our Lord not only cautions against what prayer ought not to be, but shows what it ought to be. Thus, incidentally as it were, He hands to us this pearl of great price, this purest crystal of devotion, to be a possession of His people for ever, never to lose its lustre through millenniums of daily use, its beauty and preciousness becoming rather more and more manifest to each successive generation.
It is given especially as a model of form, to show that, instead of the vain repetitions condemned, there should be simplicity, directness, brevity, order—above all, the plain, unadorned expression of the heart's desire. This main object is accomplished perfectly; a whole volume on the form of prayer could not have done it better, or so well. But, besides this, there is instruction as to the substance of prayer. We are taught to rise high above all selfish considerations in our desires, seeking the things of God first; and when we come to our own wants, asking nothing more than our Father in heaven judges to be sufficient for the day, while all the stress of earnestness is laid on deliverance from the guilt and power of sin. Then as to the spirit of prayer, mark the filial reverence implied in the invocation,—the fraternal spirit called for by the very first word of it, and the spirit of forgiveness we are taught to cherish by the very terms in which we ask it for ourselves. All this and more is superadded to the lesson for the sake of which the model prayer has been given.
The third application is to Fasting. In another place (ix. 14) will
be found the principle to be followed
This principle plainly condemns that kind of fasting which is done
only before men, as when in the name of religion people will abstain
from certain kinds of food and recreation on particular days or at
appointed times, without any corresponding humbling of the heart. The
fasting must be before God, or it is a piece of acting, "as the
hypocrites," who play a part before men, and when they go home put off
the mask and resume their proper life. "Be ye not as the hypocrites;"
therefore see that your fasting is before God; and then, if the inward
feeling naturally leads to restriction of the pleasures of the table
or of society, or to any other temporary self-denial, let it by all
means be followed out, but so as to attract just as little attention
as possible; and not only so, but if any traces of the secret exercise
still remain when the penitential hour with God alone is over, these
are to be carefully removed before returning to the ordinary
intercourse of life. Our "penitence and prayer" are for ourselves
only, and for God. Before men our light should shine.
The three illustrations cover by suggestion the whole ground; for
prayer may well be understood in that large scriptural sense in which
praise is included, and fasting is suggestive of all mortification of
the flesh and humbling of the spirit. The first shows true religion in
its outgoing, the second in its upgoing, while the
All depends on truth in the inward parts, on the secret life of the soul with God. How impressively is this stated throughout the whole passage! Observe the almost rhythmical repetitions: "Be ye not as the hypocrites," three times repeated; "Verily I say unto you, they have their reward," the very words three times repeated; "Let thine alms be in secret," "Pray to thy Father which is in secret," "That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret"; and once more, three times repeated, "Thy Father which seeth in secret Himself shall reward thee." No vain repetitions these. They press the great lesson home with a threefold force.
From this point onwards the plan of the discourse is not so apparent,
and some have given up the idea of finding orderly sequence in it; yet
there seems to be no insuperable difficulty, when the right point of
view is taken. The perplexity seems to have arisen from supposing that
at this point an entirely new subject begins, whereas all that follows
on to chapter vii. 12, arranges itself easily under the same general
head—the Righteousness of the Kingdom. According to this
arrangement of the discourse there is an introduction of fourteen
verses (v. 3-16), and a concluding passage of almost exactly the same
length (vii. 13-27); while the main discussion occupies nearly three
chapters, the subject throughout being the Righteousness of the
Kingdom, dealt with, first as morality (v. 17-48),
It is true that under the head of oaths comes the
duty of reverence, which scarcely seems to fall under this head; but
it will be remembered that this point comes in by way of a very
natural suggestion in dealing with falsehood and the regulation of
conversation, which evidently belongs to righteousness as between man
and man.
The subject before us now, therefore, is the relations of the children of the kingdom to the world; and it is dealt with—
(1) As regards the good things of the world. From the Beatitudes we
have already learned that the blessedness of the children of the
kingdom is to consist not in the abundance of the things they possess,
but in qualities of soul, possessions in the realm of the unseen. Yet
the children of the kingdom cannot do without the good things of this world;
It is not, however, a question of quantity. As before, it is a question of the heart. On the one hand, it is not the danger of having too much, but of seeking too much; on the other, it is not the danger of having too little, but of fearing that there will not be enough. It is a mistake, therefore, to say that the one caution is for the rich and the other for the poor. True, indeed, the rich are in greater danger of Scylla than of Charybdis, and the poor in more peril from the pool than from the rock; still a rich man may be, often is, a victim of care, while a poor man may readily have his heart far too much set on the yearly or weekly increase of his little store. It seems better, then, to make no distinction of classes, but to look at each caution as needed by all.
(a) Against seeking the good things of the world too earnestly (vv.
19-24). It is important to notice the strong emphasis on the word
"treasure." This is evident not only from the reduplication of
it—for the literal translation would be, "Treasure not for
yourselves treasures upon the earth"—but also from the reason
(b) Against anxiety about the things of the world. The Revised
Version has, by its correct translation, now removed the difficulty
which seemed to lie in the words "Take no thought." To modern ears
these words seemed to encourage thoughtlessness and to bless
improvidence. Our translators of the seventeenth
This complete change of meaning, amounting in
fact to the destruction and almost to the inversion of the sense, is
one of many illustrations of the absolute need of revision from time
to time of translations, not only to make them more correct, but even
to keep them as correct as they were at first.
Although this evil seems to lie in the opposite direction from that of avarice, it is really the same both in its root and its fruit, for it is due to the estrangement of the heart from our Father in heaven, and amounts, in so far as it prevails, to enslavement to the world. The covetous man is enslaved in one way, the anxious man in another; for does not our common language betray it every time we think or speak of "freedom from care"? We need not wonder, then, that our Lord should connect what He is about to say on this evil so closely with what He has said on the other, as He does by use of the word therefore: "Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life."
But though, like the other, it is slavery, the sin of it is not nearly
so great, and hence the difference of tone, which cannot but be
observed as this new caution is given. It is no longer strong
condemnation, but gentle
But these are wayside pearls; no special attention is called to them. These glimpses of nature come so naturally from the Lord of nature that nothing is made of them—they "flash along the chords and go"; and we return to the great lesson which, now that the cautions have been given, can be put in its positive form: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (vi. 33.). Seek ye first His kingdom, and His righteousness. Already, as we have seen, this lesson has been implied in the Lord's Prayer; but it is well that it should be expressly set down—this will insure that the treasure is above, that the eye is clear, that the life is one: "and all these things shall be added," so that to-morrow need not trouble you. Trouble there must be in the world, but no one need have more than each day brings: "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
(2) As regards the evil in the world. The transition from the good
things of the world to the evil that is in it comes quite naturally
from the turn the Master's thought has taken in the close of the
preceding paragraph. It is important to observe, however, that the
whole subject of the evil in the world is not in view at this point.
Has not the evil in the world in the large sense been in view from the
beginning throughout; and has not the great subject of righteousness
had all along as its background the dark subject of sin? The one point
here is this: the attitude of the children of the kingdom to the evil
which they cannot but
Here, as before, there are two warnings, each against a danger lying in opposite directions: the one, the danger of making too much of the evil we see, or think we see, in others; the other, that of making too little of it.
(a) As against making too much of it—the danger of
censoriousness (vii. 1-5). Here, again, the language is very strong,
and the warning given is solemn and earnest—a sure sign that the
danger is real and great. Again, too, considerations are urged, one
after another, why we should beware. First, there is so much evil in
ourselves, that we should be most careful how we condemn it in others,
for "with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged; and with what
measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." Moreover,
severity is a sign not of purity but of the reverse: "Why beholdest
thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the
beam that is in thine own eye?" Our severity should be applied to
ourselves, our charity to others; especially if we would have any
success in the correcting of our neighbour's faults: "How wilt thou
say to thy brother, Let me cast out the mote out of thine eye; and lo,
the beam is in thine own eye?" (R.V.) Otherwise we are hypocrites, and
we must thoroughly reform ourselves before we have any idea even how
to begin to improve others: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam
out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the
mote out of thy brother's eye." Of what exceeding value is this
teaching just where it stands! The Saviour has been summoning His
people not only to pure morality and true godliness, but to lofty
spirituality of mind and
But there is another side to the subject; so we have another warning, in relation to the evil we see in the men of the world. It is—
(b) Against making too little of it (ver. 6). Though we may not
judge, we must discriminate. It may be wrong to condemn; but it may be
necessary to withdraw, otherwise sacred things may be profaned and
angry passions stirred, and thus much harm may be done though only
good was intended. Such is the manifest purport of the striking
caution: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye
your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and
turn again and rend you."
The Saviour is now about to close what He has to say on the
Righteousness of the Kingdom in its relation to the Law and the
Prophets; and He does it by setting forth in most memorable words a
great privilege and a compact, comprehensive, portable rule—a
privilege
Here, again, of what priceless value are these few words of our blessed Lord! Just where they are needed most they come, bringing "strength to the fainting heart" in view of the seemingly inaccessible heights of God's holy hill, on which the city of His kingdom is set. Why need we faint or fear, now that we can ask and be sure of receiving, can seek and be sure of finding, can knock at door after door of these halls of Sion, and have them, one after another, opened at our touch?
Again as before, prayer to God is closely connected with our behaviour
to men. In the model prayer we
The Master has now said everything necessary in order to clear away
popular misapprehensions, and place the truth about His kingdom fairly
before the minds of His hearers. He has explained its nature as inward
and spiritual, setting forth the character of those who belong to it,
the blessedness they will enjoy, and the influence they will exert on
the world around them. He has set forth clearly and fully the
obligations that will rest upon them, as summed up in the
comprehensive requirement of righteousness understood in a larger and
deeper sense than ever before—obligations of such stringency as
to make it apparent that to seek the kingdom of God and His
righteousness is no holiday undertaking, that it is no easy thing to
be a Christian, but that it requires self-restraint, self-humbling,
self-denial; and that therefore His kingdom cannot be attractive to
the many, but must appeal to
Now that all has been fully and faithfully set forth—now that there is no danger of obtaining disciples under misapprehension—the great invitation is issued: Enter ye in. It is the free universal invitation of the Gospel, as large and liberal as that later one, "Whosoever will, let him come," though given in such a way as to keep still prominently before the minds of all comers what they may expect, and what is expected of them: "Enter ye in by the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many be they that enter in thereby. For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few be they that find it" (R.V.).
The terms of this first invitation are very significant. The motives
of fear and hope are appealed to; but not directly or specially. In
the background lies, on the one hand, the dark doom of "destruction,"
and on the other the glorious hope of "life"; but neither the one nor
the other is made emphatic. The demand for "righteousness" has been
elaborated in full, and warnings against sin have been multiplied and
pressed with intensest earnestness; but Christ does not now, as on
account of the hardness of men's hearts He felt it needful later on to
do, set forth in language that appeals vividly to the imagination the
fate of those who take the broad way of easy self-indulgence; nor does
He endeavour to picture the things which eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, nor heart conceived, which God hath prepared for them that love
Him; He simply suggests in the briefest manner, by the use of a single
word in each case—and that word characterised not so much by
strength as by suggestiveness
Throughout the whole discourse He has been leading up to this point. He has been setting forth no prospect of happiness "to draw the carnal eye," but an ideal of blessedness to win the spiritual heart. He has been unfolding a righteousness, which, while it cannot but be repulsive to man's natural selfishness, profoundly stirs and satisfies his conscience; and now, in strict keeping with all that has gone before, the appeal is made in such a way as shall commend it, not to the thoughtless, selfish crowd, but to those whose hearts have been drawn and whose consciences have been touched by His presentation of the blessedness they may expect and the righteousness expected of them. From all this there is surely to be learned a most important lesson, as to the manner in which the Gospel should usually be presented—not by sensational descriptions of the glories of heaven or the horrors of hell, nor by the mere reiteration of exhortations to "come to Jesus," but by such information of the mind, awakening of the heart, and stirring of the conscience as are found in perfection in this great discourse of the Master.
It is characteristic of the large view our Lord takes
Duty of course in its largest sense—to God
and man and self—including all "righteousness" in the Master's
sense of the word.
It is worthy of remark that there is not a trace of asceticism in our Lord's representation. The straitness referred to is not outward, any more than the righteousness is; so that there is no encouragement given to self-imposed restrictions and limitations, as in the monastic vows of "poverty, chastity, and obedience." The way is strait enough in itself without any effort of ours to make it straiter. It is enough that we set ourselves to keep all the commandments; so shall we have a sufficiency of exercise to toughen our spiritual fibre, to strengthen our moral energies, to make us men and women instead of slaves of lust or tools of mammon. For, be it ever remembered, the way we take leads on naturally and unavoidably to its end. Destruction is no arbitrary punishment for self-indulgence; nor is life an arbitrary reward for self-discipline and surrender to the will of God. The path of self-indulgence "leadeth to destruction," by a law which cannot be annulled or set aside. But the path of self-restraint and self-surrender (for these are what make of us men, and not "blind mouths," as Milton expressively puts it), the path which is entered by the strait gate, and is continued along the narrow way, is one which in the course of natural development "leadeth unto life."
The test our Lord gives for "discerning the spirits" is one which requires time for its application, but it is the only sure one; and when we remember that the Master is now looking forward into the future history of His kingdom, we can see why He should lay stress on a test whose operation, though slow, was sure. It is of course assumed that the first criterion is the Word of the Lord Himself. This is the law of the kingdom; but, knowing well what was in man, the Lord could not but foresee that there would be those who could so twist any words that might be spoken on those great subjects as to lay snares for the unwary; and therefore, besides the obvious appeal "to the law and to the testimony," He supplied a practical test which, though less speedy in its application, was perfectly sure in its results.
The announcement of so important a test leads to the development of
the general principle on which its validity depends—viz., the
vital connection between essential doctrine and life. In the long run
the one is
In the development of the principle the Master's thought has been
enlarged so as to include not teachers only, but all His disciples;
and His range of view has been extended so as to embrace the last
things. The great day of Judgment is before him. He sees the
multitudes gathered around the throne. He foresees that there will be
many on that great day who will discover, when it is too late, that
they have allowed themselves to be deceived, that they have not been
careful enough to test their spiritual guides, that they have not been
careful enough to try themselves and make sure that their fruits were
such that the Lord of the vineyard could recognise them as His own. He
is filled with sympathy and sorrow at the prospect; so He lifts up His
voice in earnest warning, that, if possible, none of those to whom the
words will ever
How naturally, and as it were unconsciously and inevitably, He has passed from the Teacher to the Judge! Not as a personal claim. In His earliest teaching He kept personal claims as much in the background as possible. But now it is impossible to avoid some disclosure of His divine authority. He must speak of the Judgment; and He cannot speak of it without making it appear that He is Judge. The force of this is all the greater that He is, as it were, surprised into it; for He is evidently not thinking of Himself at all, but only of those who then were or would afterwards be in danger of making a most fatal mistake, leading to consequences awful and irreparable. We can well imagine that from this point on to the end there must have been a light on His face, a fire in His eye, a solemnity in His tone, a grandeur in His very attitude, which struck the multitude with amazement, especially at the authority (ver. 29) with which He spoke: "Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by Thy name, and by Thy name cast out devils, and by Thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity" (R.V.).
Again, observe the form the warning takes, revealing the consciousness that to depart from Him was doom—one of the many tokens throughout this discourse that none else than the Lord of life and glory could possibly have spoken it. Yet how many vainly think that they can accept it without acknowledging Him!
It may almost go without saying that, after what our Lord has just
been teaching as to the vital connection between the faith of the
heart and the "fruits" of the life (vv. 15-23), there is no "legalism"
here. In fact, the doing is not outward; it is a doing of the heart.
The righteousness He has been expounding has, as we have seen, been a
righteousness of the heart, and the doing of it, as a matter of
course, is a heart-work, having its root in faith, which is the
The illustration with which He presses home the warning is in the highest degree appropriate and forcible. The man who not only hears, but does, makes thorough work, digs deep (as St. Luke puts it in his record), and founds the house he is building for time and eternity upon solid rock; while the man who hears but does not, is one who takes no care as to his foundation, but erects his house just where he happens to be, on loose sand or earth, which the first storm will dislodge and sweep away. Meanwhile testing times are coming—rains, floods, winds—the searching trials of life culminating in the final judgment in the life to come. These all test the work of the builder, and render apparent the wisdom of the man who provided against the coming storm by choosing the rock foundation, for his house abides through all; and the folly of the other, who without a foundation carelessly risked all, for his house gives way before the storm, and great is the fall of it.
Alas for many hearers of the Word! Alas for many admirers of the "Sermon on the Mount"! Where will they be when everything turns on the question "Wert thou a doer of it?"
REFERRING to chapter iv. 23, we find the work of Christ at the beginning of His ministry summarised as teaching and preaching and healing all manner of diseases. Of the teaching and preaching we have had a signal illustration in what is called the Sermon on the Mount; now the other great branch of the work is set before us in a group of miracles, filling up almost the whole of the eighth and ninth chapters.
The naturalness of the sequence will be at once apparent. If men had
needed nothing more than counsel, guidance, rules of life, then might
the Gospel have ended when the Sermon on the Mount was concluded.
There are those who think they need nothing more; but if they knew
themselves they would feel their need not only of the Teacher's word,
but of the Healer's touch, and would hail with gladness the chapters
which tell how the Saviour dealt with the poor leper, the man with the
palsy, the woman with the fever, those poor creatures that were vexed
with evil spirits, that dead damsel in the ruler's house. We may well
rejoice that the great Teacher came down from the mountain, and made
Himself known on the plain and among the city crowds as the
The group in chapters viii. and ix. is well fitted to give a
comprehensive view of Christ's power and willingness to save. If only
they were looked at in this intelligent way, how the paltry prejudices
against "miracles" (a word, let it be observed, not once to be found
in this Gospel) would vanish. Miracles, wonders, prodigies—how
incredible in an age of enlightenment! Yes; if they were introduced as
miracles, wonders, prodigies; but they are not. They are signs of the
kingdom of heaven—just such signs of it as the intelligent
reason demands; for how otherwise is it possible for One Who comes to
save to show that He is able to do it? How could the people have been
expected to welcome Him as a Saviour, unless He had taken some means
to make it evident that He had the power as well as the will to save?
Accordingly, in consonance with what enlightened reason imperatively
demands of such an One as He claims to be, we have a series of "mighty
deeds" of love, showing forth, not
Let us look first at that which occupies the foremost place,—power to heal disease. The diseases of the body are the outward symptoms of the deep-seated malady of the spirit; hence it is fitting that He should begin by showing in this region His will and power to save. Yet it is not a formal showing of it. It is no mere demonstration. He does not seek out the leper, set him up before them, and say, "Now you will see what I can do." All comes about in a most simple and natural way, as became Him Who was no wonder-worker, no worker of miracles in the vulgar use of that word, but a mighty Saviour from heaven with a heart of love and a hand of power.
"And when He was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. And behold, there came to Him a leper." What will He do with him? Should He say to him, "Poor man, you are too late—the sermon is done"? or should He give him some of the best bits over again? No, there is not a sentence in the whole of it that would be any answer to that cry, "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean." What does He do, then? "Jesus put forth His hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed."
Is it, then, a great stumbling-block in your way, O nineteenth-century
critic, that you are expected to
There could have been no better introduction to the saving work of the
Christ of God. Leprosy was of all diseases the most striking symbol of
sin. This is so familiar a thought that it need not be set forth in
detail. One point, however, must be mentioned, as it opens up a vein
of tender beauty in the exquisite simplicity of the story—the
rigorous separation of the leprous from the healthy, enforced by the
ceremonial law, which made it defilement to touch a leper. Yet "Jesus
stretched forth His hand, and touched him." "He was holy, harmless,
undefiled, separate from sinners;" therefore He could mingle with
them, contracting no stain Himself, but diffusing health around Him.
He could take no defilement from the leper's touch; the current was
all the other way: "virtue" went out of Him, and flowed in healing
streams through the poor leper's veins. O lovely symbol of the
Saviour's relation to us sinners! He has in His
That our Saviour was totally averse to anything at all sensational, and determined rather to repress than encourage the mere thirst for marvels, is evident from the directions given to the leper to say nothing about what had happened to him, but to take the appointed method of giving thanks to God for his recovery, at the same time registering the fact, so that while his cure should not be used to gather a crowd, it might be on record with the proper authorities as a witness to the truth of which it was a sign.
This case, while affording another valuable illustration of the
Master's willingness and power to save, differs in several important
points from the first, so that the lesson is widened. First and
chiefly, the application was from a Gentile; next, it was not on his
own behalf that the centurion made it, but on behalf of another, and
that other his servant; and, further, it was a request to heal a
patient out of sight, out of knowledge even, as it would seem. Each of
these particulars might suggest a doubt. He has healed
The thought of this immediately suggests to Him the multitudes that shall exercise a similar faith in ages to come, and in lands far off; and, as on the mount, when He looked forward to the great future, His heart yearned over the mere hearers of the word shut out at last; so here He yearns with a great yearning over His unbelieving countrymen, whose exclusion at last from the heavenly kingdom would be felt with all the sharper pain that such multitudes from far less favoured lands were safe within—at home with the patriarchs of the chosen nation—while they, the natural heirs of the kingdom, were exiles from it for evermore. Hence the wail and warning which follow His hearty appreciation of the centurion's faith: "And I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
How fared it with the centurion's appeal? Was it any hindrance that he was a foreigner, that he made it not for himself but for a servant, and that the patient was so far away? None whatever. As he rightly judged, the King of heaven had resources in abundance to meet the case. Without the least hesitation, Jesus said to the centurion, "Go thy way: and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour."
The leprosy and palsy were symbols of sin wholly possessing its
victims: the one suggestive of the state
The three specific cases which have been so appropriately selected and given in detail are followed by a general enumeration of a number of similar ones dealt with in like manner, "when the even was come"—the whole experience of that eventful day leading to the joyful recognition of the fulfilment of a grand prophetic word spoken long ago of the Messiah that was to come: "Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses."
The quotation is most suggestive. It raises the question of our Lord's
personal relation to disease. We have seen reason to believe that
disease could not
The two incidents which follow, though at first sight apparently
different in character from the great majority
This case is one of the opposite description. Judging from the way in
which the scribe had been dealt with, it might have been expected that
when this disciple asked to be excused for a time, in order to
discharge a duty which seemed so urgent, the answer would have been
one not only allowing but even enforcing the delay. But no. Why the
difference? Again, because the Master saw "what was in man." This was
no impulsive, impetuous nature which needed a word of caution;
Thus are we guarded against the two opposite dangers—the one besetting the eager and impulsive, the other the halting and irresolute. In neither case are we told what the result was. We may surmise that the scribe disappeared from view, and that the other joined the party in the boat; but "something sealed the lips of that Evangelist"; from which we may perhaps infer that his main object in relating the two incidents was, not to give information of them, but to show forth the glory of the Master as the Searcher of hearts, to signalise the fact that He was no less Master of the minds than of the bodies of men.
It was not enough that the Saviour of mankind should have power to
grapple with disease and skill to search the hearts of men: He must be
Master not only of life, but of its environment too. That He is
becomes apparent before the boat which carries the little company
reaches the other side of the lake. One of those tempests which often
lash the Sea of Galilee into sudden fury has burst upon them, and the
little boat is almost covered with the waves. Here is a
Must He not be? He has come to reveal the unseen God of nature; must He not then make it manifest, now that the occasion calls for it, that winds and waves are "ministers of His, that do His pleasure"? Again, it is no mere "miracle," no mere marvel which He works in the salvation of His terrified disciples—it is a sign, an indispensable sign of the kingdom of heaven.
The story is told with exquisite simplicity, and with all the reality of manifest and transparent truthfulness. "He was asleep"—naturally enough after the fatigues of the day, notwithstanding the howling of the storm; for why should He fear wind or wave? Is there not a promise here for all His followers when tempest-tossed: "So He giveth His beloved sleep"?
His disciples let Him sleep as long as they dare; but the peril is too
imminent now. So they come to Him and awake Him, saying, "Save, Lord;
we perish!" Though no concern for Himself would ever have disturbed
His slumber, the first cry of His disciples rouses Him at once to
action. The resources of His human nature, beyond which He never went
for the purpose of meeting His own personal needs, had been completely
exhausted; but there is no diminution of His power to save those who
call upon Him. Without any trace remaining of weariness or weakness,
He hastens to relieve them. First, The order is different in the second and third
Gospels; but here only is the order of events noted: "And He saith
unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then He
arose."
Visible nature is not man's sole environment. There is an unseen universe besides; and He Who would be Saviour of mankind must be Master there as well. That this also is sure is now proved beyond a doubt. For it is important to observe that this is not an ordinary case of healing, otherwise its true place would have been with the group of bodily diseases at the beginning of this series. When we consider its salient features, we see that it is just in its right place, closely following, as it does, the stilling of the storm. There are storms in the spiritual world, more terrible by far than any in the realm of nature; and it is necessary that these darker storms be also subject to the control of the Saviour of mankind. "The prince of the power of the air" and all his legions must be subject to the "Son of man." And this subjection, rather than the cure of the individual sufferers, is the salient feature of the passage. It is not the men, but the demons possessing them, who cry out, "What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God? art Thou come hither to torment us before the time?" Well did these evil spirits know who He was; and well, also, did they know that He was mightier than they, and that the time was coming when they would be put entirely under His feet: "Art Thou come to torment us before the time?"
Master of disease—Searcher of hearts—Master of the forces
of nature—Master of the powers of the Unseen: is not this
enough? Not yet; He must make it evident that "the Son of man hath
power on earth to forgive sins." To heal the diseases of the body was
a great and blessed thing to do, but it was not thorough work; for
what are all these varied diseases—leprosy, fever,
palsy—but symptoms of one great disorder which has its roots,
not in the flesh,
As a case of palsy, it is not new. The centurion's servant was a palsy case; and though from His treatment of it, as of the leprosy and fever, it might fairly have been inferred that He could deal also with that which was deeper, it was not enough to leave it to inference—it must be made manifest. It may have been that the disease of this man had been in some special manner connected with previous sins, so that his conscience may have been the more exercised as he looked back over his past life; but whether this was so or not, it is obvious that his conscience was at work,—that much as his palsy may have troubled him, his guilt troubled him much more. Why, otherwise, should the Saviour have addressed him as He did, making no reference to the disease, but dealing directly with his spiritual condition? Moreover, the special affection shown in the Saviour's mode of address seems to indicate His recognition of that broken and contrite spirit with which the Lord is well pleased. It would scarcely be too strong to translate it thus: "My dear child, be of good cheer; thy sins are forgiven."
The Saviour is coming closer and closer to human need, dealing more
and more thoroughly with the world's want and woe. If we look at it
aright, we cannot but recognise it as really a greater thing to heal
the deep disease of the soul, than to heal any or all of
How could He prove to them His power actually to forgive the man's sins? A demonstration of this is quite impossible; but He will come as near to it as may be. He has already recognised the faith of the bearers, and the penitence of the man himself; just as quickly He discerns the thoughts of the scribes, and gives them proof that He does so by asking them, "Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?" Then, answering their thought (which was, "He is only saying it"), He replies in effect, "It is indeed as easy to say one thing as another, if saying is all; but that you may be sure that the saying of it is not all, I shall not repeat what I said before, the result of which from the nature of the case you cannot see, but something else, the result of which you shall see presently"; whereupon, turning to the sick of the palsy, He said: "Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his house." With characteristic reticence, the sacred historian says nothing of the feelings of the happy man as he hied him home with a double blessing beyond the power of words to tell.
The purpose was accomplished, so far at least as the people were
concerned. Whether the scribes found some way of evading the
conclusion, the Evangelist does not say; but he does say that "when
the multitudes saw it, they marvelled," or, as the probably more
correct version of the Revisers gives it, "they were afraid." This is
true to nature, for now they knew that they stood in the presence of
One Who could look them through and through, and touch them in their
sorest spot; so it was natural that their first feeling should be one
of awe. Still, they could not but be thankful at the same time that
there was forgiveness within their reach; so quite consistently the
narrative proceeds—And they "glorified God, which had given such
power unto men."
Now that His power to deal with sin is made so apparent, it is time to
let it be known that all sinners are welcome. Hence most appropriately
there follows the call of one from among the most despised class to
take a place among His closest followers. We can well understand how
the modest Matthew, who never mentions anything else about himself,
was glad to signalise the grace of the Master in seeking out the hated
and despised publican. Not only does Christ welcome
The focal point of the passage is the chamber of death in the house of
Jairus. There we learn that He Who had shown Himself to be Lord of
nature and of human nature, Master of the spirits of evil, and Saviour
from sin, is also Conqueror of Death. He needs no preparation for the
encounter. The summons comes to Him in the midst of a discourse, yet
He asks not a moment's delay, but sets out at once; on the other hand,
He is in no haste, for He has time to attend to another sufferer by
the way; and there is no exhaustion afterwards, for He deals with
another case, and still another, on His way back.
The question with which He was engaged when the summons came was one
raised by the disciples of John, who, as we learn from the other
accounts, were prompted by the Pharisees in the hope of exciting
antagonism between the followers of John and of Jesus. Perhaps also
they had the hope of setting Him at variance with Himself, for had he
not declared that one jot or one tittle should not pass from the law
till all was fulfilled? Why, then, did not His disciples fast? To this
it might have been answered that the frequent fasts observed by
Pharisees, and also by the disciples of
The first of these illustrations sets the true principle of fasting in
full, clear light by a simple question—"Can the children of the
bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the
days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and
then shall they fast." There is here much more to think of besides the
answering of the question. There is a treasury of valuable suggestion
in His calling Himself the Bridegroom, thus applying to Himself the
rich imagery of the Old Testament on this theme; while at the same
time He adopts the very figure which John himself had used in order to
mark his relation to Jesus as the Bridegroom's friend (cf.
The two companion illustrations which follow set in the clearest light the large subject of the relation of the new dispensation to the old in respect of forms. As to substance, He had already made it plain that the old was not to be destroyed, nor even superseded, but fulfilled, to its last jot and tittle, as harvest fulfils seed-time. But as to form, the case was entirely different. The new life, while losing nothing which was in the old, was to be larger and freer, and therefore must have new garments to match. To try to piece out and patch the old would be no improvement, but much the reverse, for a worse rent would be the only result. The second illustration, suggested like the first by the associations of the marriage feast (the Saviour's illustrations are never far-fetched—He always finds exactly what He needs close at hand, thus proving Himself Master of the imagination as of all else), is to the same purpose. The new wine of the kingdom of heaven, though it retains all the excellence of the old vintage, yet having fresh properties of its own, must have fresh skins to hold it, that its natural expansion be not hindered; for to attempt to confine it in the old vessels would be to expose them to destruction and to lose the wine.
What a striking illustration of these suggestive words of warning has
been the history of doctrine and of form in those churches which cling
to the worn-out
It was in the midst of these important teachings that the message came
from the chamber of death, to which we must now again direct our
thoughts: "While He spake these things unto them, behold, there came a
ruler, and worshipped Him, saying, My daughter is even now dead: but
come and lay Thy hand upon her, and she shall live. And Jesus arose,
and followed him, and so did His disciples." This promptness is a most
precious revelation of the Divine readiness to help at any moment. No
need of waiting
The same lesson is still more strikingly taught by His manner of dealing with the case which met Him on the way to the ruler's house. So hastily had He set out, in response to the ruler's appeal, that one would have thought this of all times the most inconvenient—especially for a chronic invalid—to gain a hearing. Here is a woman who has had a disease for twelve years, and who therefore might surely be asked to wait a few hours at least, till the Physician should be at leisure! And the case is not at all forced on His attention; she does not stand in front of Him, so that He cannot pass without noticing her,—she only "came behind Him"; nor does she take any means that seem likely to arrest His attention,—she only "touched the hem of His garment." But it is enough. Slight as the indication is that some one needs His help, He at once observes it; nor does He exhibit the least sign of impatience or of haste; He turns round, and speaks in the kindest manner, assuring her, as it were, of her right to enjoy the great blessing of health, which had just come to her, for as soon as she had touched Him He had cured her of her long and weary ailment. What encouragement to the most timid soul! and what a revelation of the large sympathy and ever-ready helpfulness of our Saviour Christ, and of our heavenly Father Whom He so gloriously reveals!
The scene is now changed to the chamber of death. There are most
interesting details given in the fuller account by the Evangelist
Mark, but our scope is large enough here without endeavouring to bring
them all
The raising of the dead may be regarded as the culminating point of
the series; yet there is a special value in the two that follow in
close succession before the series is complete. We have seen already
that, occurring, as they do, immediately after, they show that His
power is not at all exhausted—a token this of the exhaustlessness of
the Divine love and helpfulness. But, besides this, are they not
resurrections too—the raising again of faculties that had long been
dead? Vision is a large part of our natural life; and to lose it is to
descend, so far, into the darkness of death. And as the eye is to
impression, so is the tongue to expression. The one is the crown of
life on its receptive side, the other on its communicative side (cf.
Had the series ended with the raising of the daughter
It seems more than likely that it was because He wished to subordinate
the physical to the spiritual that He strictly charged them, saying,
"See that no man know it." If the main thing had been the restoration
of bodily sight, the more who heard of it the better. But His great
purpose was far higher,—even to put an end to spiritual
blindness and death; therefore He must limit His dealings with natural
blindness to those who were prepared to receive the lower blessing
without injuring them in their higher nature; and to make known such a
case in the way of advertisement through the country-side would have
been to descend from His lofty position as Saviour of men and Herald
of the kingdom of heaven to that of oculist for the neighbourhood.
But, though we can readily see why the Saviour should forbid the
publication of the cure,
The other case—the cure of the dumb demoniac—comes, if possible, still closer to the spiritual condition with which it was the work of the Saviour especially to deal. Like the former, it was the loss of a faculty; but, unlike it, it was not the natural loss of it, but the eclipsing of it by the malign presence of a spirit of evil. How closely parallel is this to the case of the spiritually dead. What is it that has destroyed the great faculty by which God is known and worshipped? Is it not sin? Let that demon be cast out, and not only will the eye see, but the tongue will speak; there will be a new song in the mouth, even praise to the Most High.
Furthermore, as the cure of the blind men brought into prominence the power of faith, this brings into prominence the power of Christ to save to the uttermost. For what more helpless case could there be? He could not cry, for he was dumb. He could not follow Christ as the blind men had done, for he had not control of himself; so he must be brought by others. Yet for him, as well as for them, there is full salvation, as soon as he comes into the presence of the Lord of life. No wonder the multitudes marvelled, and said, "It was never so seen in Israel"! and no wonder that the Pharisees, unable in any other way to evade the force of such a succession of manifest signs of the kingdom of heaven, should be driven to the contradictory and blasphemous suggestion, "He casteth out devils through the prince of the devils" (ver. 34).
SO far the King Himself has done all the work of the kingdom. But it has grown upon Him, so that He can no longer do it without assistance; He must therefore provide Himself with deputies. His doing so will be the first step in the organisation of His world-wide kingdom. He reveals, however, no plan laid down to meet all possible emergencies. It is enough to provide for necessities as they develop themselves. He constructs no mechanism beforehand into the different parts of which life may be afterwards guided or forced; His only care is about the life, knowing well that if only this be full and strong, the appropriate organisation will be ready when it is needed.
In conformity with this principle He does not make His arrangements,
necessary as they manifestly are, without first providing that they
shall not be mechanical but vital, that they shall originate, not as a
contrivance of mind but as an outflow of soul. First, we are informed
by the Evangelist that the soul of the Master Himself was stirred with
compassion as He looked upon the multitude, and thought how much
The result of their thought and prayer presently appears; for we read in the next sentence of the setting apart of the twelve disciples to the work. It does not follow, because the narrative is continuous, that the events recorded were; it is probable that an interval elapsed which would be largely spent in prayer according to the word of the Master.
This is the first mention of the Twelve in this Gospel; but it is
evident that the number had been already made up, for they are spoken
of as "His twelve disciples." It would appear from the second and
third Gospels that, immediately before the delivery of the Sermon on
the Mount, the Twelve were chosen from the whole number of disciples
to be constantly
As the apostles have not been mentioned before, their names are
appropriately given here. The number "twelve" was no doubt
significant, as suggestive of the twelve tribes of Israel; but there
was plainly no attempt to have the tribes represented separately. It
would seem as if all were Galileans, except one, and that one was
Judas Iscariot (i.e., the man of Kerioth, supposed to be a town in
Judæa). The reason of this almost exclusive choice of Galileans is in
all probability to be found in the simple fact that there were none
other available. There had been those, in the course of His Judæan
ministry, who had after a certain fashion believed on Him; but there
was not one of them whom He could trust with such work as this (
Not only was the apostolate Galilean,—it was plebeian, and that without a solitary exception. It seems to include not a single person of recognised rank or position. Again, we believe that this is to be accounted for by the simple fact that there were none of these available. We cannot suppose that if there had been a disciple like Paul in the ranks, the Master would have hesitated to give him a place in the sacred college; but, seeing there was none, He would not go out of His way to secure a representative of the learned or the great. Had Nicodemus been bold enough to come out decidedly on the Lord's side, or had Joseph of Arimathæa developed earlier that splendid courage which he showed when the Master's work on earth was done, we can scarcely doubt that their names might have been included in the roll. But there is no such name; and now, as we look back, was it not better so? Otherwise there could not have been such a wonderful illustration of the great fact that "God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty"; there could not otherwise have been the same invincible evidence that the work these men did was not the work of men, but was indeed and in truth the doing of God.
Though they were all from the lower ranks of life, they were
characterised by great varieties of gifts and
It is interesting to notice that, though Matthew
here calls himself Matthew the publican, no one else does. To others
the publican is lost in the apostle—it is only himself who will
not forget the hole of the pit whence he was digged.
So it has come to pass that, though these twelve men had nothing at all to recommend them to the favour of the world, and though there was very much from every worldly point of view to create the strongest prejudices against them and to militate against their influence, yet they have, by the grace of their Divine Master, so triumphed over all, that when we think of them now, it is not as fishermen, nor as publican or Zealot—even the traitor has simply dropped out of sight—we see before us only "the glorious company of the apostles"!
"These twelve Jesus sent forth" (in pairs, as we learn elsewhere, and
as is indicated here, perhaps, by the grouping in the list), "and
charged them." This leads us to look at their commission. It begins
with a limitation, which, however, was only to be temporary. The time
had not yet come for the opening of the door to the Gentiles. Besides
this, we must remember that the Saviour's heart was yearning over His
own people. This appears in the tender way He speaks of them as "the
lost sheep of the house of Israel." Moreover, the apostles were by no
means ready, with all their national prejudices still rank in them, to
be entrusted with so delicate and difficult a duty as getting into
There seems to have been a limitation also in their message. They had themselves been to some extent instructed in regard to the nature of the kingdom, its blessedness, its righteousness, its leading principles and features; but, though they may have begun to get some glimpse of the truth in regard to these great matters, they certainly had not yet made it their own; accordingly they are given, as the substance of their preaching, only the simple announcement, with which the Baptist had begun his ministry, and with which Christ also commenced His: "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." Though there seems to have been a limitation on the teaching side, there was none on the side of healing, for their Lord empowers them to do the very same things for the relief of their suffering fellow-countrymen as they had seen Himself doing. We have already seen how much teaching there was in these signs of the kingdom; and we can well believe that it was far better, considering the stage of advancement the apostles had reached, that reliance should be placed on the light such deeds of mercy would necessarily throw on the nature of the kingdom, than on any exposition which, apart from their Master, they could at that time have been able to give. Above all it is to be clear that the privileges of the kingdom are free to all; its blessings are to be dispensed without money and without price: "Freely ye have received, freely give."
How, then, were they to be supported? About this they were to give
themselves no concern. They were now to put in practice the great
command, "Seek
The part of the charge which follows, and which the limitation of our
plan will not allow us to illustrate point by point, bears not so much
on the work more immediately before them as on the whole work of their
apostolate. It may have been spoken, as some suppose, later on, and
only put here as germane to the occasion; for, as we have seen, the
arrangement of this gospel is not chronological, but is largely
topical. Still there seems no very strong reason for supposing that
the entire discourse was not spoken
The leading thoughts are these: They must expect to be exposed to trial and suffering in the prosecution of their mission. The Master Himself was sorely tried, and the servant must not expect exemption. He is not indeed to court trials, or to submit to persecutions which are not inevitable: "When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another." On the other hand, when the path of duty lies evidently through trial or danger, he must not shirk it, but face it boldly; and in all emergencies he is to place implicit confidence in Him Whose servant he is: "When they deliver you up, be not anxious how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak" (R.V.). "The very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not, therefore." There is no way of avoiding the cross; and they would be quite unworthy of their Master should they seek to avoid it. Yet there is a great reward for those who bravely take it up and patiently bear it to the end. It is the way to higher honour (ver. 32), and to the only life that is worthy of the name (ver. 39); while to turn away from it is to choose a path which leads to shame (ver. 33) and death (ver. 39).
The passage, taken up, as so much of it has been, with the
anticipations of ill-treatment which the apostles will receive in
setting out as sheep in the midst of wolves, closes most appropriately
and beautifully with a series of blessings on those who will treat
them well, ending with the encouraging assurance that even a
The lessons on Christian work with which this passage abounds are so numerous that it would be vain to attempt to unfold them. It is not merely a record of facts; it is an embodiment of great principles which are to govern the disciples of Christ in their service to the end of the world. If only the Church as a whole were to think and pray as Christ taught His disciples to think and pray before this great event; and then if the labourers whom God has sent, or would, in answer to the prayers of the Church, immediately send, into His harvest were to act—not necessarily according to the letter, but in every part according to the spirit of these instructions,—using their own faculties with all the wisdom of the serpent, and trusting to Divine grace and power with all the simplicity of the dove—it would not be long before all the scattered sheep were gathered into the fold, all the ripe sheaves garnered for the Lord of the harvest!
HITHERTO almost everything has been hopeful and encouraging in our Evangelist's record of the Saviour's ministry. It began like daybreak on the shores of the sea of Galilee. Great multitudes followed Him wherever He went; and those whom He called to be with Him cheerfully responded to the summons. When He preached the Gospel of the kingdom, the people were astonished at His doctrine, and recognised that He "taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." His works of healing were warmly welcomed, and to a large extent appreciated by the people generally, though already it was apparent that those whose selfish interests were touched by the progress of the truth were ready to cavil and complain. Notwithstanding this, the work has grown upon Him so, that He has found it necessary to arm His twelve disciples with powers like His own, and send them forth as heralds of His kingdom through the land.
But the path of the King is not to be a triumphal progress. It is to
be a via dolorosa, leading to a cross and a grave. Many prophecies
had been already
It was, indeed, not at all unnatural that John should be in doubt. Think of his character: stern, uncompromising, severe, and bold to rashness. Think of his circumstances: languishing in prison for the truth's sake, without any prospect of rescue;—after all, was Jesus King, or Herod? Remember, too, in what terms he had predicted the coming One: "Now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees;" ... "He that cometh after me is mightier than I;" ... "Whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." Did not this betoken a work which would be swift, severe, thorough,—very different from anything of which he could hear in his prison cell? The coming of the kingdom was too gentle and too slow for the stern, impatient Baptist. Accordingly, "offended" (see ver. 6, R.V.: "finding occasion of stumbling") in his Master, he sends this message, in the hope possibly that it may constrain Him to avow Himself and to bring matters to a crisis: "Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another?"
The message must have been a very disturbing and disconcerting one, and fitted, if widely known, to neutralise to a large degree in the minds of the people the witness John had borne to Jesus. It is the last thing the Evangelist would have thought of mentioning, if he had been actuated in the selection of his material by motives of policy; and the fact that this incident is published in two of the Gospels is a striking illustration of what is manifest throughout—the perfect simplicity and candour of the sacred historians.
Have we not reason to be most thankful that they did record it? To the truly thoughtful mind it is no weakening of the testimony of John; while it is full of comfort for the honest doubter, giving him the assurance that even when the most serious questions trouble him—even though the very foundations of his faith seem to be shaken—"there hath no temptation taken" him "but such as is common to man," such as even a brave and true soul like John had to face; full of encouragement also to do just as he did,—go straight to the Master Himself with the doubts, and let Him deal with them—wisely, faithfully, tenderly—as He does here.
Those are in some respects to be envied who in childlike simplicity
believe without doubt or question; but there is a special blessing for
those who by the very force of their nature must wrestle with doubt,
yet in the trying hour find no occasion of stumbling
The answer sent to John was kind; but there was no flattery in it—not even a word of commendation of his heroic endurance. The Master knew the strength of His disciple, and He dealt with him accordingly. But as soon as the messengers are gone He tells the people what He thinks of him. He in effect deprecates the thought of judging John by a message sent in an hour of weakness and despondency. "Do not imagine for a moment," He seems to say, "that the man you went out into the wilderness to see is feeble as a reed, or soft as a courtier. He is all, and more than all, you took him to be. He is a prophet indeed; and much more, for he is a herald of the heavenly King. Among them that are born of woman there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist; and though he has not the advantages of even the little ones in the kingdom of heaven, inasmuch as he belongs to the old dispensation, yet, as herald of the new, he occupies a peculiarly honoured place—he stands between the old and the new; for all the prophets and the law prophesied until John; while from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven is preached, and men are pressing into it. He is, in fact, if only you had ears to hear, if only your minds were open to read the Scriptures according to the spirit of them, that very Elijah whose coming your prophet has taught you to expect" (vv. 7-14).
So far we have followed what seems to be the drift of our Saviour's
words in regard to John; but there is more than this in them. He is
contrasting the
It is to the presence of this underlying thought that some forms of
expression are due which otherwise are difficult to understand. This
applies in particular to ver. 12, which has been a terrible
stumbling-block to expositors. So far as the position of John was
concerned, it was enough to say that from his time the kingdom of God
was preached (the form found in St. Luke); but in view of the levity
and thoughtlessness of the multitudes it is put in such a way as to
suggest that it is not your thoughtless, fickle, reed-hunting,
sight-seeing people, that get the kingdom, but eager, earnest,
"violent" men. The same thought accounts for the manner in which the
paragraph closes, indicating that that which had been spoken ought to
lead to more serious thought, more intelligent appreciation both of
the herald and of the kingdom which
But would they hear? Alas! no; and this accordingly must be put down as a second and most serious discouragement.
Unable to recognise the true significance of the events of the time,
with deaf ears to the heavenly message which first the herald and then
the King had brought them, they fastened their attention on that which
was merely incidental: the asceticism of John, the social friendliness
of Jesus. Of the first they complained, because it was not like the
second; of the second they complained, because it was not like the
first. Any excuse for a complaint; no ear to hear nor soul to
appreciate the message of either. To what can He liken them? To a set
of children, sitting in the market-place indeed, but with no thought
of business in their heads: they are there only to amuse themselves;
and even in their games they are as unreasonable as they can be. One
set proposes to play a wedding, and the rest say, "No, we want a
funeral"; then, when the others take it up and start the game of
funeral, they change their tune, and say, "No, we prefer a wedding."
Nothing will please those who have no intention to be satisfied.
Caring nothing for the kingdom which John heralded, the multitude only
noticed the peculiarity of his garb, and the stern solitariness of his
life, and said he must be a lunatic. When the King Himself comes with
no such peculiarity, but mingling on familiar and friendly terms with
the people, still caring nothing for the kingdom which He preached,
they find fault with Him for the very qualities the absence of which
they deprecated in John. If
Though the multitudes which had flocked to hear John might be fickle
and thoughtless, surely better things might be expected of those
favoured towns by the lake of Galilee, where the signs of the kingdom
had been so abundantly exhibited and the truth of the kingdom so
earnestly and frequently preached. But no: even they "repented not."
They would bring their sick in crowds to get them healed; but they hid
as it were their faces from Him. They had not indeed treated Him as
the people of Nazareth had done; for Nazareth had cast Him out, and
Capernaum had taken Him in. Yet His lamentation is not over Nazareth,
but over Capernaum. We can readily see why. What He suffered at
Nazareth was a personal indignity. He was so summarily ejected that He
had not time or opportunity to set before them the signs of the
kingdom. But in Capernaum the time and opportunity had been ample. The
truth had been fully told; the signs had been fully wrought. The
people had seemed to listen; and all betokened a happy issue. We can
imagine the Saviour waiting and hoping and longing (for again, let
For a long time He continues silent, bearing the heavy burden in His
heart, till the fountain of grief could be pent up no longer: "Then
began He to upbraid the cities wherein most of His mighty works were
done, because they repented not." The words He speaks are very awful;
but it is in the last resort. Love and mercy have been His theme from
day to day; and it is only because these are obstinately rejected that
wrath and judgment must now find a voice. It is not a wrathful voice:
there are tears in it. What must it have cost Him to speak these awful
words about Capernaum's impending doom! To think that those who were
nearest His heart of all, to whom He devoted the freshness of His
first days of service, the dew of His youth, so to speak—that they
would have none of Him, but preferred to remain in sin with all the
woe it necessarily entailed,—oh! it must have been torture to that
loving heart. And we may be sure there was no less pathos in this last
appeal to Bethsaida, Chorazin and Capernaum, than there was in the
later lamentation over the city of the South.
How does the Saviour bear Himself under these repeated
discouragements? The passage which follows will show (vv. 25-30). Some
have found a difficulty in the word "answered," because there appears
no question with which it is connected. But did not these
discouragements require an answer? As we read, first of the doubts of
John, then of the thoughtlessness of the multitudes, and then of the
impenitence of the
Surely we have here the living original of that grand apostolic word, "In everything give thanks"; for if "at that season" (R.V.) the Saviour of men found occasion for thanksgiving, we may well believe that at any season, however dark, we may find something to stir our hearts to gratitude; and the very exercise of thanksgiving will bring a deep spiritual joy to set against the bitterest sorrow, even as it was with our Lord, Who, as St. Luke informs us, "rejoiced in spirit" as He lifted up His soul in thanks to God that day.
What, then, does He find to be thankful for? First, He discovers a
cause for gratitude in the very limitation which occasions His sorest
disappointments: "I thank Thee, ... because Thou hast hid these things from
Indeed, is it not to the meek and lowly heart that even the truths of science are disclosed? A man who approaches nature with a preconceived theory, about which his mind is already made up, is sure to miss the mark. To enter into its secrets, prejudices and prepossessions must be laid aside, and things observed with open mind and simple receptiveness. In this connection one sees the special appropriateness of the reference to "the Lord of heaven and earth." The principle is one which is not restricted in its range: it runs all through nature. Still more appropriate is the appeal to the fatherhood of God. It is not for the Father to be partial to his clever children, and leave the less favoured ones to shift for themselves. To Him they are all "babes"; and to them He must be not examiner, nor prize-giver, but above all Father, if they would understand and feel His love. So the more one thinks of it, the more in every point of view does it seem good and necessary that these things should not be made known to the "wise and understanding" (R.V.) as such, but should be revealed to "babes," to those of childlike spirit. It is well. The wisest and most learned may join in the thanksgiving, for it is far better for them to take their places with the rest, as many happily do, and receive the same loving welcome; and those of us who cannot call ourselves wise and learned should surely be most devoutly thankful that, however impossible it may be to compete with these highly favoured ones in obtaining the prizes of earth, we are at no disadvantage in striving for "the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."
Then follows such an outpouring of heart as there never has been before. He knows that only in the Father can the children of men find rest, and so He says "Come unto Me," and I will lead you to the Father, Who alone knows Me, as I alone know Him; and you, finding Him in Me, shall know Him too, and your hearts shall be at rest.
It is beautiful and most touching to observe how our Lord is, as it
were, compelled to make His appeal more personal than He has ever done
before. We look in vain through His previous utterances as reported in
this Gospel for such reduplication of the personal pronouns as there
is here. What is the reason of it? We can see it when we read between
the lines.
This is the literal translation, which means
more than "give you rest." It is not as if rest were a blessing He
could bestow, as a friend would make a present which might be retained
after the giver had gone. Rest is not so much what He gives to us as
what He is to us; and so He says, not "I will give you rest," but "I
will rest you" (i.e., I will be your rest).
We shall not, however, dwell on the precious words with which this
chapter ends. They are as rich and suggestive as they are simple and
heart-thrilling; but for this very reason we must not attempt to do
more than place them in their setting, which is often missed,
The darkness deepens on the Saviour's path. He has now to encounter
direct antagonism. There have been, indeed, signs of opposition
before. When the man sick of the palsy was forgiven, "certain of the
scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth" (ix. 3); but it
was only "within themselves," they did not venture to speak out.
Again, after the feast in the house of Levi, the Pharisees complained,
but not to Christ Himself; "they said unto His disciples, Why eateth
your Master
1. Observe, first, the spirit in which our Lord meets the repeated
attacks of which the record is given in this chapter. There are four
in close succession. The first is the charge of Sabbath-breaking made
against the disciples, because they rubbed a few ears of corn in their
hands as they passed through the fields on the Sabbath day; and
following it, the entangling question put to the Master in the
synagogue. Then there is the accusation founded on the healing of the
blind and dumb demoniac: "This man doth not cast out devils, but by
Beelzebub the prince of the devils" (ver. 24). The third attack is the
hypocritical application, "Master, we would see a sign from Thee"
(ver. 38), the word "Master" being evidently used in mockery, and the
request for "a sign" a scornful way of suggesting that all the signs
He was giving were worth nothing. These three attacks were made by the
Pharisees, and were most irritating and vexatious, each in its own way.
Now "consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against
Himself" (
2. It would have been a great thing if our Lord had only borne in dignified silence these repeated provocations; but He is too good and kind to leave these misguided people to their own devices without an effort to enlighten their dark minds and arouse their sleeping consciences. How patiently He reasons with them! We may glance at each attack in succession as an illustration of this.
On the charge of Sabbath-breaking He endeavours to set them right by
citing appropriate scriptures (vv. 3, 4); appealing to the law itself
(ver. 5); furnishing them with a great principle laid down by one of
the prophets, the key of the whole position (ver. 7); and concludes by
an illustrative act, accompanied by a simple and telling argument,
which appeals to the universal conscience and heart (vv. 9-13). Again,
how patiently He answers the malicious charge of collusion with Satan,
showing them in the clearest manner, and with amazing power, how far
they are astray, and what a dangerous path they are treading (vv.
25-37). So, too, in meeting the third
3. Observe, further, that in all His dealings with His bitterest foes He never in the least degree lowers His dignity, but rather asserts it in the boldest and strongest terms. It may be questioned, indeed, if there is any chapter in all the history in which this is more marked. This, again, may be illustrated from all the four occasions.
In the argument on the Sabbath question hear Him
4. We have seen how kindly and patiently the Saviour deals with these
cavillers, so as to give them every opportunity of seeing their folly
and wickedness and the beauty and excellence of the truth they are
The first attack gave Him the opportunity of speaking on the Sabbath
law. As we have seen, He began to treat the subject from the strictly
Jewish standpoint, using the example of David and the ritual of the
Temple to correct the misapprehensions and misrepresentations of those
with whom in the first instance He had to do. But He does not leave it
as a mere Jewish question; He broadens His view, and shows that the
day of rest is for humanity at large—not, however, as a burden,
but as a blessing, the principle which underlies it being "mercy, and
not sacrifice." Thus, out of this conflict there has come to us the
Magna Charta of the people's Sabbath, the full text of which is given
in the corresponding passage of the second gospel: "The Sabbath was
made for man, and not man for the Sabbath: therefore the Son of man is
Lord also of the Sabbath." Here we have, on the one hand, the
vindication of our rights against those who would deprive us of the
day of rest, as if the privilege had been intended only for the Jews,
and was abolished when the dispensation closed; and, on the other, the
assertion of our liberty against those who, by their petty regulations
and restrictions, would make God's precious gift a burden instead of a
blessing. And how wisely and beautifully does He confirm to us our
The second attack gave Him the opportunity of bringing out with great
distinctness and vividness the witness of the Spirit of God to His
work as Saviour of mankind. These Pharisees regarded His miracles as
mere displays of power, apart altogether from the spirit of purity,
mercy and grace so manifest in them all. It was only this narrowness
of view that made it possible for them to imagine that the Spirit of
evil, to whom of course no one could deny a certain measure of mere
power, was behind them. How completely He answers their blasphemous
suggestion by showing that the works He did, judged, not by the mere
power they displayed, but by their whole spirit and tendency, were at
the very opposite pole from the works of Satan, we plainly see; but
the point now is the permanent value of His reasoning. At first sight
it may seem to be quite out of date. Whoever dreams now of disposing
of the works of Christ by attributing them to Satan? Let us not be
over-hasty, however, in concluding that old objections are out of
date. If we look closely at those regarded as the newest, we may find
that they are but old ones in a new dress. What of the position taken
by some intelligent men in our day,
As an illustration of this, we cannot do better than refer to a recent
production "The Service of Man," by J. Cotter Morrison.
It does not always follow, of course, that that which is good in its
effects in particular cases, is thereby proved to be true. Truth and
falsehood are to be determined fundamentally on other grounds than
those of proved utility—this applies alike to truth and duty;
there is an absolute truth and falsehood quite irrespective of
utility, and there is an absolute right and wrong quite irrespective
of utility,—but though we cannot in particular cases prove that
to be true which appears to be beneficial, yet we cannot but believe
that in the end, the true, the good, and the beautiful will be found
to coincide; and we maintain that, seeing the effects of genuine
Christianity on human character have been tested for nearly two
Herein we see a sufficient explanation of the widespread unbelief of
the age in which we live. It is because the heart of this generation
is so far estranged from God, so wedded to the earthly and material,
so taken up with selfish aggrandisement and the multiplication of the
luxuries of life. In many cases of unbelief the individual is not so
much to blame as the spirit of the age of which he is the
representative. Observe that the Lord does not say, "Ye evil
Pharisees," but, "An evil and adulterous generation"; thus making it
evident that the spirit of scepticism was not peculiar to themselves,
but a something diffused throughout society. Hence it comes that many
men, of blameless lives—of whom it would be a breach of
Such persons not only cannot recognise the signs of the kingdom of
heaven, but are in a state of heart and mind to which no sign can
possibly be given. We are indebted to the fine candour of the late Mr.
Darwin for a striking illustration of this. In his Life there is an
interesting correspondence with Professor Asa Gray, the great
botanist, who, wondering how Darwin could remain unconvinced by the
innumerable evidences of design in nature, took the liberty of asking
him if he could think of any possible proof which he would consider
sufficient. To this Mr. Darwin replied: "Your question, 'What would
convince me?' is a poser. If I saw an angel come down to teach us so,
and I was convinced, from others seeing him, that I was not mad, I
should believe." If he had left it there, it might have been pertinent
to ask him whether Christ is not just such an angel come down from
heaven to teach us, and whether a sufficient number of persons did not
see Him in the flesh, to say nothing of the multitudes who know Him in
the spirit, to convince us that we are not mad in believing it. He did
not, however, leave it there, but went on to say: "If man was made of
brass and iron, and in no way connected
What will He make of the distressing interruption caused by the interference of His mother and brethren? Knowing their motives and intentions as He did, He could not for a moment yield; and how was it possible to deal with them without a public rebuke, from which, seeing that His mother was involved in it, His heart would instinctively shrink? It was a most painful position; and the more we think of it, and try to imagine possible ways of extrication, the more we must admire the wisdom and kindness shown in the way in which He confronted the difficulty. He makes use of the opportunity for giving a new and most winning view of the kingdom of heaven as a happy family, united each to Himself, and all to the Father by the holiest bonds; thus opening out the paradise of a perfect home to all who choose to enter it, taking the sacred ties involved in the sweet words "brother" and "sister" and "mother," and giving them a range, a dignity, and a permanence they never had before.
The course of events in later times has proved that the gentle rebuke
involved in our Lord's reception of the message from His mother was
not only necessary at the time and for her, but for the ages to come
as well. We have seen that, in each of the attacks recorded before,
our Saviour replies in such a way that His words not only meet the
objection of the moment, but continue of permanent value to meet
similar objections and gainsayings in ages to come. So is it here. It
certainly is no fault of Mary herself, whose name should ever be held
in the highest respect by all who
After all, however, it is not the setting aside of the claims of Mary and the lowering of the earthly relationship in comparison with the heavenly, which is the great thing in the passage; but the Gospel of the Family of God. We have had the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, and glad tidings it has been indeed; but have we not here something even better? It is much to be permitted to hail the Son of God as our King; is it not better still to be encouraged to hail Him as a Brother, to know that all that is sweetest and tenderest in the dear words "brother," "sister," "mother," can be imported into our relation to Him? How it endears the heavenly relationship, and hallows the earthly!
Again, how it rebukes all sectarianism! He "stretches out His hand
towards His disciples," and then to all the world by that word
"whosoever." And it is not the mere promise of salvation with which
this "whosoever" is connected. There are Christians in the present day
who can scarcely allow themselves to be sectarian enough to deny that
there is salvation out of the Church
Observe, moreover, the emphasis on doing, with which we are already
familiar. In setting forth the Gospel of the Kingdom, our Lord was
careful to warn His hearers: "Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord,
Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the
will of My Father" (vii. 21); and now that He is setting forth the
Gospel of the Family the emphasis is still in the same place. It is
not "Whosoever shall connect himself with this church or that church;"
it is not "Whosoever shall be baptised, and take the sacrament;" it is
"Whosoever shall do the will of My Father in heaven." This emphasis on
doing, in connection with these endearing relations, is most
significant. There must be love among the members of the family; and
what else than love is the characteristic of the family ties? But how
is love to be shown? How are we to distinguish it from mere sentiment?
Our Saviour is careful to teach us; and never is He more careful than
in those passages where tender feeling is most prominent—as, for
example, in His parting words in the upper room, where again and again
He reminds His disciples that obedience is the only sure test of love:
"If ye love Me, keep My commandments;" "He that hath My commandments, and
"THE same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side."
We can well imagine that, after such a series of discouragements and
mortifications, the weary and heavy-laden Saviour would long to be
alone, to get away from the abodes of men, to some lonely place where
silent nature around Him would calm His spirit and furnish a temple in
which He might lift up His soul to God. How long He was allowed to be
alone we cannot tell; but possibly He may have contrived for a time to
remain unobserved. How burdened His spirit must have been! What
strength of faith it must have needed to look forward with any hope to
the future of His work at such a time of crushing disappointment! We
must remember that He was true man, and therefore His heart must have
been very sore as He dwelt on the painful experiences through which He
had just been passing. The obstacles which lay right in His path must
have seemed well-nigh insuperable; and it would have been no wonder if
at such a time He had despaired of the prospects of the kingdom of
righteousness and peace and joy He had come to set up on the earth. He
did not despair; but He did most deeply ponder; and the result of His thinking
If He was permitted to enjoy His seclusion, it was only for a short time. "He could not be hid," His quiet retreat was discovered; and presently there came to Him great multitudes, so many that the only convenient way to address them all was to get into a boat, and speak to the people gathered on the shore. It is a lovely picture: the multitudes on the shore with the green fields around and the hills behind, and the Master speaking from the little boat. Viewed apart from the sorrowful experience of the past, it would have been full of cheer and hope. What more encouraging sight than such a throng gathered to hear the words of light and hope He had for them? But how can He view it apart from the sorrowful experience of the past? Have not these crowds been around Him day after day, week after week; and what has come of it all?
It is one thing to sow the seed of the kingdom; it is quite another to
gather the harvest. The result depends on the soil. Some of it may be
hard, so that the seed cannot enter; some of it, though receptive on
the surface, yet so rocky underneath, that the fairest shoots will
wither in a day; some of it so filled with seeds of thorns and weeds,
that plants of grace are choked as they attempt to grow; while only a
portion, and it may be a small proportion of the whole, can yield a
fair or full return. Such were His thoughts as He looked on the field
of men before Him, and glanced from
There is something very touching in that word. It thrills with the pathos of these preceding chapters of disappointment. He had such a message for them—good tidings of great joy, rest for the weary and heavy laden, words of life and light and hope eternal—if only there were ears to hear. But that sad passage of Isaiah is running in His mind: "By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: for this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them." That is the great obstacle, the one hindrance. Oh! if only men would hear; if only they would not close the ears of their souls! "Who hath ears to hear, let him hear."
The parable is a new style of teaching as compared with that of which
the "Sermon on the Mount" was so notable an example. That discourse
was not by any means lacking in illustration; still its main lines of
thought were of the nature of direct spiritual instruction.
The whole thing turns on the distinction between earnest inquirers and careless hearers. There must have been many of the latter in His audience, for this was no selected company, like that which listened to the Sermon on the Mount. The earnest inquirer has ears to hear; the other has not. The difference this makes is most strikingly set forth in the strong declaration: "Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath,"—that is, instead of being the better for what he has heard, he is the worse; not apprehending the truth, he is only perplexed and confused by it, and instead of going away enriched, he is poorer than ever.
What, then, is to be done? If, instead of doing the people good, it
only does them harm, why try to teach them at all? Why not let them
alone, till they come with ears to hear, ready to receive? Happily
this sad alternative is not the only resource. The truth may be put in
such a way that it has both a shell and kernel of meaning; and the
kernel may be so
Take this parable of "The Sower" as an illustration. The disciples,
having ears to hear, were ready to get the good of it at once, so to
them He expounds it (vv. 18-23) on the spot. The rest were not ready
to receive and apply it. Having ears (but not ears to hear), they
heard not; but did it follow from this that it was useless, even worse
than useless, to give it them? Had the teaching been direct, it would
have been so; for they would have heard and rejected, and that would
have been the last of it. But put as it was in parabolic form, while
they were not prepared to understand and apply it then, they could not
but carry it away with them; and, as they walked the fields, and
observed the birds picking the seeds from the trodden field-paths, or
the tiny plants withering on the rocky ledges, or the springing wheat
strangled with rank growths of thorns, or the healthy growing wheat
plant, or later in the season the rich golden grain on the good soil,
they would have opportunity
In this we can see the harmony of the passage before us, with its
parallels in the second and third Gospels, where the object of
speaking in parables is represented as being "that seeing, they might
not see, and hearing they might not understand" (see
How many difficulties might have been avoided if expositors had used less of the mere "dry light" of the understanding, and tried more to lay their hearts alongside the beating heart of Christ! "Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord." Had this been remembered, and the fire of love in such a passage as this brought to bear upon the heart, before it was used "like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces," how different in many cases would have been the result! It is sad to think that this very passage as to the object of the parables has been used as if it simply taught predestination in its hardest sense, dooming the poor misguided soul to hopelessness for ever; whereas, if we enter at all into sympathy with the Saviour's heart in the sad and trying circumstances in which the words were spoken, we find in it no harshness at all, but the yearning of a patient love, seeking if by any means He may reach and gain the lost.
We have, indeed, the evidence on every side that the Saviour's heart
was greatly moved at this time. We have already recognised the pathos
of the cry, "Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." We have seen the
sorrow of His heart in the sad quotation from the prophet Isaiah. On
the other hand, what joy He has in those who do see and
hear!—"But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears,
for they hear. For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and
righteous men 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." The same satisfaction appears later
But the dark and discouraging side is never long out of sight.
Returning to His own country, and teaching in their synagogue, He so
impressed the people that they could not but ask certain questions,
which, if they had only pondered them, would have led them to the
truth: "Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?" But
the mere outside things that met their eyes so engrossed their
attention, that their heads and hearts remained as empty as ever. Instead
So far we have dealt with the parabolic method of teaching, and in doing so have glanced at only one of the seven parables the chapter contains, every one of which invites special study; but inasmuch as our plan will not admit of this, we shall attempt nothing more than a general view of the entire group; and to this we restrict ourselves the more willingly that there is a unity in the cluster which is apt to escape notice when they are considered apart, and because by letting go the details we get the prominent features more vividly before our minds.
The arrangement seems to be in three pairs, with a single concluding
parable. The first pair—"The Sower" and "The Tares"—set
forth the manner of the establishment of the kingdom of heaven, and
the obstacles it must encounter. The sphere from which both parables
are taken is admirably suited to bring out the radical distinction in
regard to the manner of its establishment
The first parable sets forth the obstacles encountered in the soil itself. Sometimes the seed falls on hard soil, where it cannot penetrate the surface, and presently birds come and carry it away—representing those hearers of the word, who, though they remember it for a short time, have their hearts hardened against it, so that it does not enter, but is presently snatched away by trifling worldly thoughts which come fluttering into the mind. Then there is the shallow soil, a little loose earth on the surface, and close under it the hard rock, harder even than the trodden wayside—a kind of soil in which the seed will rapidly take root and spring up, and as rapidly wither away in the noonday heat, and which therefore fitly represents those who are easily impressed, but whose impressions do not last; who make many resolutions indeed, but in so half-hearted and impulsive a way that they are destined to be blighted by the first blast of temptation. Finally, there is the preoccupied soil, where thorns and thistles hold the ground and choke the springing plants of grace, representing those who "are choked with cares, and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to maturity."
The good soil is marked by characteristics which are
There are, however, other obstacles than those found in the nature of the soil. There is the diligence of the enemy, and the impossibility of getting rid of those who have come under his influence, as set forth in the second parable, that of "The Tares of the Field." In this parable the good seed is no longer the word, but "the children of the kingdom"; as if to suggest that Christians themselves are to be to the world what the word has been to them; while the bad seed—sown when men sleep, sown when Christians are asleep—does not remain as mere seed, but embodies itself in "children of the wicked one," who take their places side by side with the true children of the kingdom, and whom it is so difficult to distinguish from them, that the separation may not be attempted till the time of the harvest, when it shall be complete and final, and "the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father."
The second pair—"The Mustard Seed" and "The Leaven"—set
forth the growth of the kingdom notwithstanding the many obstacles it
must encounter, the one indicating its growth as recognisable to the
observant eye, the other its pervasive power as permeating society.
This twofold view of the development of the kingdom is in the same
line of thought as the illustrations of the light and the salt in the
Sermon on the Mount. The prophecy these parables infold is most
marvellous, spoken as it was in a time of so deep discouragement.
There is true pathos in the thought of the grain of mustard seed,
"the least of all seeds," and in the little word "hid,"
The parables of "The Hid Treasure" and "The Pearl" form a third pair, shadowing forth the unsearchable riches of Christ. The reduplication of the thought adds greatly to its impressiveness, and moreover affords the opportunity of suggested variation in the experience of those who find the treasure. The merchantman we naturally think of as representing the rich, and the man finding the treasure in the field as one of the poor in this world's goods. Both alike, however, "buy" their prize at the price of all that they possess, on the principle which underlies all our Lord's teaching as to the way of life: "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be My disciple." The one comes upon his treasure unexpectedly; the other finds it in the course of diligent search. Both alike, however, recognise its exceeding value as soon as it is seen; and it is under no constraint, but willingly and gladly—"for joy thereof," as it is put in the case of the man who from his not seeking it might have been thought indifferent to it—that each one sells all that he has and buys it.
The last parable, according to the arrangement we have suggested,
stands alone. It is the parable of "The Net," and its subject is the
consummation of the Kingdom. Its teaching is indeed to a great extent
anticipated in the parable of the tares of the field; but in that
parable, though "the end of the world" is pictured in the most
impressive imagery, it is not the main thought,
THE lives of John and of Jesus, lived so far apart, and with so little intercommunication, have yet been interwoven in a remarkable way, the connection only appearing at the most critical times in the life of our Lord. This interweaving, strikingly anticipated in the incidents of the nativity as recorded by St. Luke, appears, not only at the time of our Saviour's baptism and first introduction to His Messianic work, but again at the beginning of His Galilean ministry, which dates from the time when John was cast into prison, and once again as the stern prophet of the desert finishes his course; for his martyrdom precipitates a crisis, to which events for some time have been tending.
The period of crisis, embracing the facts recorded in the two chapters following and in part of the sixteenth, is marked by events of thrilling interest. The shadow of the cross falls so very darkly now upon the Saviour's path, that we may look for some more striking effects of light and shade,—Rembrandt-like touches, if with reverence we may so put it,—in the Evangelist's picture. Many impressive contrasts will arrest our attention as we proceed to touch briefly on the story of the time.
"Among them that are born of woman there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist." Such was the Saviour's testimony to His forerunner in the hour of his weakness; and the sequel fully justified it. The answer which came to John's inquiry brought him no outward relief. His prison bolts were as firmly fastened as before, Herod was as inexorable, the prospect before Him as dark as ever; but he had the assurance that Jesus was the Christ, and that His blessed work of healing the sick and preaching the gospel to the poor was going on; and that was enough for him. So he was quite content to languish on, resting in the Lord and waiting patiently for Him. We learn from St. Mark that Herod was in the habit of sending for him at times, evidently interested in the strange man, probably to some extent fascinated by him, and possibly not without some lingering hope that there might be some way of reconciling the preacher of righteousness and securing the blessing of so well-accredited a messenger of Heaven. There is little doubt that at these times the way was open for John to be restored to liberty, if only he had been willing to lower his testimony against Herod's sin, or consent to say no more about it; but no such thought ever crossed his noble soul. He had said, "It is not lawful for thee to have her;" and not even in the hour of deepest depression and darkest doubt did he for a moment relax the rigour of his requirements as a preacher of righteousness.
As he had lived, so he died. We shall not dwell on the details of the
revolting story. It is quite realistic
The time of Herod's merciful visitation is over. So long as he kept
the Baptist safe (
The disciples of John withdrew in sorrow, but not in despair. They had evidently caught the spirit of their master; for as soon as they had reverently and lovingly taken up the mortal remains and buried them, they came and told Jesus.
It must have been a terrible blow to Him,—perhaps even more than it was to them, for they had Him to go to, while He had none on earth to take counsel with: He must carry the heavy burden of responsibility all alone; for even the most advanced of the Twelve could not enter into any of His thoughts and purposes; and certainly not one of them, we might indeed say not all of them together, had at this time anything like the strength and steadfastness of the great man who had just been taken away. We learn from the other accounts that at the same time the Twelve returned from their first missionary journey; so that the question would immediately come up, What was to be done? It was a critical time. Should they stir up the people to avenge the death of their prophet? This would have been after the manner of men, but not according to the counsel of God. Long ago the Saviour had set aside, as quite apart from His way of working, all appeals to force; His kingdom must be a kingdom of the truth, and on the truth He will rely, with nothing else to trust to than the power of patient love. So He takes His disciples away to the other side of the lake, outside the jurisdiction of Herod, with the thoughtful invitation: "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile."
What are the prospects of the kingdom now? Sin and righteousness have
long been at strife in the
The multitudes will not believe on Him; yet they will not let Him
rest. They have rejected the kingdom; but they would fain get as much
as they can of those earthly blessings which have been scattered so
freely as its signs. So the people, noticing the direction the
He continued His loving work, lavishing His sympathy on those who had no sympathy with Him, till evening fell, and the disciples suggested that it was time to send the people away, especially as they were beginning to suffer from want of food. "But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart: give ye them to eat. And they say unto Him, We have here but five loaves, and two fishes. He said, Bring them hither to Me."
The miracle which follows is of very special significance. Many things
point to this. (1) It is the one miracle which all the four
Evangelists record. (2) It occurs at a critical time in our Lord's
history. There has been discouragement after discouragement, repulse
after repulse, despite and rejection by the leaders, obstinate
unbelief and impenitence on the part of the people, the good seed
finding almost everywhere hard or shallow or thorny soil, with little
or no promise of the longed-for harvest. And now a crowning disaster
has come in the death of John. Can we wonder that Christ received the
tidings of it as a premonition of His own? Can we wonder that
henceforth He should give less attention to public preaching, and more
to the training of the little band of faithful disciples who must be
prepared for days of darkness coming on apace—prepared for the
cross, manifestly
The feeding of the five thousand is indeed a sign of the kingdom, like
those grouped together in the earlier part of the Gospel (viii., ix).
It showed the compassion of the Lord upon the hungry multitude, and
His readiness to supply their wants. It showed the Lordship of Christ
over nature, and served as a representation in miniature of what the
God of nature is doing every year, when, by agencies as far beyond our
ken as those by which His Son multiplied the loaves that day, He
transmutes the handful of seed-corn into the rich harvests of grain
which feed the multitudes of men. It taught also, by implication, that
the same God Who feeds the bodies of men with the rich abundance of
the year is able and willing to satisfy all their spiritual wants. But
there is something more than all this, as we might gather from the
very way it is told: "And He commanded the multitude to sit down on
the grass, and took the five loaves, ... and looking up to heaven, He
blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the
disciples to the multitude." Can
We have, then, here, not a sign of the kingdom only, but a parable of
life eternal, life to be bestowed in no other way than by the death to
be accomplished at Jerusalem at the next passover, life for thousands,
life ministered through the disciples to the multitudes, and not
diminished in the ministering, but growing and multiplying in their
hands, so that after all are fed there remain "twelve baskets
full,"—far more than at the first: a beautiful hint of the abundance
that will remain for the Gentile nations of the earth. That passover
parable comes out of the anguish of the great Redeemer's heart.
Already, as He breaks that bread and gives it to the people, He is
enduring the cross and despising the shame of it, for the joy set
before Him of giving the bread of life to a hungry world.
One can scarcely fail at this point to contrast the feast in honour of
Herod's birthday with the feast which symbolised the Saviour's death.
"When a convenient day was come, Herod on his birthday made a supper
We learn from the fourth Gospel that the immediate result of the
impression made by our Lord's miraculous feeding of the five thousand
was an attempt on the part of the people to take Him by force and make
Him a king. Thus, as always, their minds would run on political
change, and the hope of bettering their circumstances thereby; while
they refused to allow themselves to think of that spiritual change
which must begin with themselves, and show itself in that repentance
and hunger and thirst after righteousness, which He so longed to see
in them. Even His disciples, as we know, were not now, nor for a long
time subsequent to this,
May we not also with reverence suppose that this was one of the occasions on which Satan renewed those assaults which he began in the wilderness of Judæa? A little later, when Peter was trying to turn Him aside from the path of the Cross, Jesus recognised it, not merely as a suggestion of the disciple, but as a renewed temptation of the great adversary. We may well suppose, then, that at this crisis the old temptation to bestow on Him the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them—not for their own sake, of course (there could have been no temptation in that direction), but for the sake of the advancement of the interests of the heavenly kingdom by the use of worldly methods of policy and force—was presented to Him with peculiar strength.
However this may have been, the circumstances required prompt action
of some kind. It was necessary that the disciples should be got out of
reach of temptation as soon as possible; so He constrained them to
It is interesting to remember that it was after this night spent in
prayer that He delivered the remarkable discourse recorded in the
sixth chapter of St. John, in which He speaks so plainly about giving
His flesh for the life of the world. It is evident, then, that, if any
question had arisen in His mind as to the path of duty, when He was
suddenly confronted with the enthusiastic desire of the multitudes to
crown Him at once, it was speedily set at rest: He now plainly saw
that it was not the will of His Father in heaven that He should take
advantage of any such stirring of worldly desire, that He must give no
encouragement to any, except those who were hungering and thirsting
after righteousness, to range themselves upon His side. Hence, no
doubt, the sifting nature of the discourse He delivered the following
day. He is eager to gather the multitudes to Himself; but He cannot
allow them to come under any false assumption;—He must have
spiritually-minded disciples, or none at all: accordingly He makes His
Meantime a storm has arisen on the lake—one of those sudden and often terrible squalls to which inland waters everywhere are subject, but which are greatly aggravated here by the contrast between the tropical climate of the lake, 620 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and the cool air on the heights which surround it. The storm becomes fiercer as the night advances. The Saviour has been much absorbed, but He cannot fail to notice how angry the lake is becoming, and to what peril His loved disciples are exposed. As the Passover was nigh, the moon would be nearly full, and there would be frequent opportunities, between the passing of the clouds, to watch the little boat. As long as there seems any prospect of their weathering the storm by their own exertions He leaves them to themselves; but when it appears that they are making no progress, though it is evident that they are "toiling in rowing," He sets out at once to their relief.
There seems, in fact, a strange prophetic element running all through
the scenes of that wondrous time. We have already referred to the
disposition on the part even of the Twelve, as manifested next day at
the close of the discourse on the "bread of life," to desert
Him—to show the same spirit which afterward, when the crisis
reached its height, so demoralised them that "they all forsook Him,
and fled"; and have we not, in the closing incident, in which Peter
figures so conspicuously, a mild foreshadowing of his terrible fall,
There are many other important lessons which might be learnt from this
incident, but we may not dwell on them; a mere enumeration of some of
them may, however, be attempted. It was faith, in part, at least,
which led the apostle to make this venture; and this is, no doubt, the
reason why the Lord did not forbid it. Faith is too precious to be
repressed; but the faith of Peter on this occasion is anything but
simple, clear and strong: there is a large measure of self-will in it,
of impulsiveness, of self-confidence, perhaps of love of display. A
confused and encumbered faith of this kind is sure to lead into
mischief,—to set
Nothing could be imagined better suited than this incident to discriminate between self-confidence and faith. Peter enters on this experience with the two well mixed together,—so well mixed, that neither he himself nor his fellow-disciples could distinguish them; but the testing process precipitates one and clarifies the other,—lets the self-confidence all go, and brings out the faith pure and strong. Immediately, therefore, his Lord is at his side, and he is safe;—a great lesson this on faith, especially in revealing its simplicity. Peter tried to make a grand thing of it: he had to come back to the simple, humble cry, and the grasping of his Saviour's outstretched hand.
The same lesson is taught on a larger scale in the brief account of
the cures the Master wrought when they reached the other side, where
all that was asked was
Issue is now joined with the ecclesiastical leaders at Jerusalem, who send a deputation to make a formal complaint. When Jerusalem was last mentioned in our Gospel, it was in connection with a movement of quite a different character. The fame of the Saviour's deeds of mercy in Galilee had then just reached the capital, the result being that many set out at once to find out what new thing this might be: "There followed Him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judæa, and from beyond Jordan" (iv. 25). That wave of interest in the south had now died down; and instead of eager multitudes there is a small sinister band of cold, keen-witted, hard-hearted critics. It was a sad change, and must have brought new distress to the Saviour's troubled heart; but He is none the less ready to face the trial with His wonted courage and unfailing readiness of resource.
Their complaint is trivial enough. It is to be remembered, of course,
that it was not a question of cleanliness, but of ritual; not even of
ritual appointed by Moses, but only of that prescribed by certain
traditions of their fathers which they held in superstitious
veneration. These traditions, by a multitude of minute regulations and
restrictions, imposed an intolerable burden on those
The question with which He opens His attack is most incisive. It is as
if He said, "I am accused of transgressing your tradition. What is
your tradition? It is itself transgression of the law of God." Then
follows the striking illustration, showing how by their rules of
tradition they put it within the power of any heartless son to escape
entirely the obligation of providing even for his aged father or
mother—an illustration, be it remembered, which brought out more
than a breach of the fifth commandment; for by what means was it that
the ungrateful son escaped his obligation? By taking the name of the
Lord in vain; for surely there could be no greater dishonour to the
name of God than meanly to mark as dedicated to Him (Corban) what
ought to have been devoted to the discharge of an imperative filial
duty. Besides, it was not at all necessary that the money or property
should be actually dedicated to sacred uses; it was only necessary to
say that it was, only necessary to pronounce over it that magic word
Corban, and then the mean hypocrite could use it for the most selfish
purposes—for any purpose, in fact, he chose, except that purpose
for which it was his duty to use it. It is really difficult to
conceive such iniquity wrapped up in a cloak of so-called religion. No
wonder our Lord was moved to indignation,
There seems, however, to have been more of sorrow than of anger in His tone and manner. How else could the disciples have asked Him such a question as that which follows: "Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying?" Of course the Pharisees were offended. They had most excellent reason. And the disciples would have known that He had no intention of sparing them in the least, and no concern whether they took offence or not, if His tone had been such as an ordinary person would naturally have put into such an invective. It is probable that he said it all calmly, earnestly, tenderly, without the slightest trace of passion; from which it would not be at all unnatural for the disciples to infer that He had not fully realised how strong His language had been, and into what serious collision He had brought Himself with the leaders in Jerusalem. Hence their gentle remonstrance, the expression of those feelings of dismay with which they saw their Master break with one party after another, as if determined to wreck His mission altogether. Was it not bad policy to give serious offence to persons of such importance at so critical a time?
The Saviour's answer is just what was to be expected. Policy had no
place in His plan. His kingdom was of
Having thus condemned the ritualistic teaching of the day, He disposes next of the false teachers. This He does in a way which ought to have been a warning to those persecutors and heresy-hunters who, by their unwise use of force and law, have given only larger currency to the evil doctrines they have tried to suppress. He simply says "Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." Expose their error by all means; root it out, if possible; but as for the men themselves, "let them alone."
The principle He sets forth as underlying the whole subject is the
same as that which underlies His teaching in the Sermon on the
Mount—viz., that "out of the heart are the issues of life." The
ritualist lays stress on that which enters into the man—the kind
of food which enters his mouth, the objects which meet his eye, the
incense which enters his nostril; Christ sets all this aside as of no
consequence in comparison with the state of the heart (vv. 16-20).
Such teaching as
Was it on this account that after this interview Jesus withdrew as far as possible from Jerusalem? He is limited, indeed, in His range to the Holy Land, as He indicates in His conversation with the woman of Canaan; but just as after the death of John He had withdrawn out of the jurisdiction of Herod to the east, so now, after this collision with the deputation from Jerusalem, He withdraws to the far north, to the borders of Tyre and Sidon. And was it only a coincidence that, just as Jerusalem had furnished such sorry specimens of dead formalism, the distant borders of heathen Tyre and Sidon should immediately thereafter furnish one of the very noblest examples of living faith? The coincidence is certainly very striking and most instructive. The leaders from Jerusalem had been dismissed with the condemnation of their own prophet: "This people honoureth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me;" while out of far-away heathendom there comes one whose whole heart is poured out to Him in earnest, persevering, prevailing prayer. It is one of those contrasts with which this portion of our Lord's history abounds, the force of which will appear more clearly as we proceed.
The suppliant was "a woman of Canaan," or, as she is described more
definitely elsewhere, a Syro-Phœnician woman. Yet she has learned of
Jesus—knows Him as the Christ, for she calls Him "Son of
David"—knows Him as a Saviour, for she comes to ask that her
daughter may be healed. Her application must have been a great solace
to His wounded heart. He always
How, then, can we explain His treatment of her? First, He answered her
not a word. Then He reminded her that she did not belong to Israel, as
if she therefore could have no claim on Him. And when she still urged
her suit, in a manner that might have appealed to the hardest heart,
He gave her an answer which seems so incredibly harsh, that it is with
a feeling of pain one hears it repeated after eighteen hundred years.
What does all this mean? It means "praise and honour and glory" for
the poor woman; for the disciples, and for all disciples, a lesson
never to be forgotten. He Who knew what was in man, knew what was in
this noble woman's heart, and He wished to bring it out—to bring
it out so that the disciples should see it, so that other disciples
should see it, so that
The lessons which shine out in the simple story of this woman can only
be touched in the slightest manner. We have already referred to the
contrast between the great men of Jerusalem and this poor woman of
Canaan; observe now how strikingly is suggested the distinction
between Israel according to the flesh and Israel according to the
spirit. The current idea of the time was that lineal descent from
Abraham determined who belonged to the house of Israel and who did
not. The Saviour strikes at the root of this error. He does not indeed
attack it directly. For this the time has not yet come: the veil of
the Temple has not yet been rent in twain. But He draws aside the veil
a little, so as to give a glimpse of the truth and prepare the way for
its full revealing when the time
The house of Israel?—what does Israel mean? Learn at Peniel. See Jacob in sore distress at the brook Jabbok. A man is wrestling with him,—wrestling with him all the night, until the break of day. It is no mere man, for Jacob finds before all is over that he has been face to face with God. The man who wrestled with him indeed was the same as He Who wrestled with this woman of Canaan. The Divine Man struggles to get away without blessing the patriarch. Jacob cries, in the very desperation of his faith, "I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me!" The victory is won. The blessing is granted, and these words are added: "What is thy name?" "Jacob." "Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel" (i.e. prince with God): "for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed."
Was this woman, then, or was she not, "a prince" with God? Did she, or
did she not, belong to the true house of Israel? Let us now look back
to vv. 8 and 9: "This people" (i.e. the children of Israel according
to the flesh) ... "honoureth Me with their lips; but their heart is
far from Me. But in vain they do worship Me." In vain do they
worship: are they, then, princes with God? Nay, verily; they are only
actors before Him, as the Saviour plainly says. Truly they are not all
Israel who are of Israel; and just as truly they are not the only Israel
Another instructive contrast is inevitably suggested between the foremost of the apostles and this nameless woman of Canaan. The last illustration of faith was Peter's venture on the water. What a difference between the strong man and the weak woman! To the strong, brave man the Master had to say "O thou of little faith! wherefore didst thou doubt?" To the weak woman, "O woman, great is thy faith." What an encouragement here to the little ones, the obscure, unnoticed disciples! "Many that are first shall be last, and the last first."
The encouragement to persevering prayer, especially to parents anxious
for their children, is so obvious that it need only be named. That
silence first, and then these apparent refusals, are trials of faith,
to which many earnest hearts have not been strangers. To all such the
example of this woman of Canaan is of great value. Her earnestness in
making the case of her daughter her own (she does not say, "Have mercy
on my daughter;" but, "Have mercy on me;" and again, "Lord,
help me"), and her unconquerable perseverance till the answer
came, have been an inspiration ever since, and will be to the end of
the world.
The lesson taught by our Lord's dealing with the woman of Canaan is conveyed again on a larger scale by what happened in the region of Decapolis, east of the Sea of Galilee; for it was in that region, as we learn from the more detailed account in the second Gospel, that the events which follow came to pass.
We need not dwell on these incidents, as they are a repetition, with
variations, of what He had done at
Sick and hungry—these words suggest the two great needs of humanity. Christ comes to heal disease, to satisfy hunger; in particular, to heal the root disease of sin, and satisfy the deep hunger of the soul for God and life in Him. And when we read how He healed all manner of disease among the multitudes in Decapolis, and thereafter fed them abundantly when they were ready to faint with hunger, we see how He is set forth as a Saviour from sin and Revealer of God beyond the borders of the land of Israel.
All this time Jesus has been keeping as much out of the way of His ungrateful countrymen as the limits of His commission would permit, hovering, as it were, around the northern outskirts of the land. But when in the course of this largest circuit of all His northern journeys, He reaches Decapolis, He is so near home that He cannot but cross the lake and revisit the familiar scenes. How is He received? Do the people flock around Him as they did before? If it had been so, we should no doubt have been told. There seems to have been not a single word of welcome. Of all the multitudes He had healed and blessed, there is no one to cry, "Hosanna to the Son of David!"
His friends, if He has any, have gone back, and walk no more with Him;
but His old enemies the Pharisees
This is the first time the Sadducees are mentioned in this Gospel as
coming in contact with Jesus. Some of them had come to the baptism of
John, to his great astonishment; but, beyond this, they have as yet
put in no appearance. They were the aristocracy of the land, and held
the most important offices of Church and State in the capital. It is
therefore the less to be wondered at that up to this time the
Carpenter of Nazareth should have been beneath their notice. Now,
however, the news of His great doings in the north has at last
compelled attention; the result is this combination with the
Pharisees, who have already been for some time engaged in the attempt
to put Him down. There is indication elsewhere (
The Pharisees and Sadducees, as is well known, were at opposite poles
of thought; the one being the traditionalists, the other the sceptics,
of the time, so that it was quite remarkable that they should unite in
anything. They did, however, unite in this demand for a sign from
heaven. Neither of them could deny that signs had been
given,—that the blind had received sight, lepers had been
cleansed, the lame healed, and deeds of mercy done on every side. But
neither party was satisfied with this. Each was wedded to a system
The words are stern and strong; but here again it is "more in sorrow than in anger" that He speaks. We learn from St. Mark that, as He gave His answers, "He sighed deeply in His spirit." There had been so many signs, and they were so plain and clear—signs which spoke for themselves, signs which so plainly spelt out the words, "The kingdom of heaven is among you"—that it was unspeakably sad to think that they should be blind to them all, and find it in their heart to ask for something else, which in its nature would be no sign at all, but only a portent, a barren miracle.
We can see in this how determined our Lord was not to minister to the
craving for the merely miraculous. He would work no miracle for the
mere purpose of exciting astonishment or even of producing conviction,
when there was quite enough for all who were at
"And He left them, and departed." How sad for Him; how awful for them!
Had there been in their hearts one single aspiration for the true and good,
"He left them, and again entering into the boat departed to the other
side" (
The disciples with Him in the boat had no share in these sad thoughts.
Their minds, as it would seem, were occupied for the most part with
the mistake they had made in provisioning the boat. Accordingly, when
at last He broke silence, He found them quite out of touch with Him.
He had been thinking of the sad unbelief of these Pharisees and
Sadducees, and of the awful danger of allowing the spirit which was in
them to dominate the life; hence the solemn caution: "Take heed, and
beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees." The
disciples meantime had been counting their loaves, or
But these hearts were not shut against Him; theirs was not the blindness of those that will not see; accordingly, the result is very different. He did not leave them and depart; nor, on the other hand, did He explain in so many words what He meant. It was far better that they should find out for themselves. The riddles of nature and of life are not furnished with keys. They must be discerned by thoughtful attention; so, instead of providing them a key to His little parable, He puts them in the way of finding it for themselves by asking them a series of questions which convinced them of their thoughtlessness and faithlessness, and led them to recognise His true meaning (vv. 8-12).
THIS conversation at Cæsarea Philippi is universally regarded as
marking a new era in the life of Christ. His rejection by "His own" is
now complete. Jerusalem, troubled at His birth, had been troubled once
again when He suddenly came to His Temple, and began to cleanse it in
His Father's name; and though many at the feast were attracted by His
deeds of mercy, He could not commit Himself to any of them ( A touching fulfilment of the Messianic spirit of
these prophetic words: "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I
deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set
thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are
kindled together." Compare chap. xi. 21-24.
Thus it comes to pass that, with the very small band He has gathered around Him—called in the land indeed, but now of necessity called to come out of it—He withdraws to the neighbourhood of the Gentile town of Cæsarea Philippi; not for seclusion only, but, as the event shows, to found an Ecclesia—His Church. The scenery in this region is exceptionally beautiful, and the place was in every way suited for a season of quiet communion with nature and with nature's God. It was, moreover, just outside the land; and in the place and surroundings there was much that must have been suggestive and inspiring. Is not this great mountain, on one of the southern flanks of which they are now resting, the mighty Hermon, the great landmark of the north, rearing its snowy head on high to catch the precious clouds of heaven, and enrich with them the winds that shall blow southward over Palestine? And are not these springs which issue from the rock beside them the sources of the Jordan, the sacred river? As the dew of Hermon, and as the flowing of the water-springs, shall be that Church of the living God, which, as the sequel will unfold, had its first foundation on this rocky hillside and by these river sources.
The faith test is a strictly personal one. We have seen how the Master
has, so to speak, focussed His gospel in Himself. He had begun by
preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and calling men to repentance;
but as time passed on He found it necessary to make a more personal
appeal, pressing His invitations in the winning form, "Come unto Me."
When things came to a crisis in Galilee, He first in symbol and then
in word set Himself before the people as the bread of life, which each
one must receive and eat if he would live. Thus He has been making it
more and more evident that the only way to receive the kingdom of God
is to welcome Himself as the Son of the living God come
It would be beyond belief, were it not so sadly familiar a fact, that
some, professing honestly to interpret this passage, resolve the
answer of the apostle into little or nothing more than the popular
idea, as if the Sonship here referred to were only what any prophet or
righteous man might claim. He surely must be wilfully blind who does
not see that the apostolic answer which the Lord accepts is wide as
the poles from the popular notions He so decisively rejects; and
Now at last, therefore, the foundation is laid, and the building of
the spiritual temple is begun. The words which follow (ver. 18) are
quite natural and free from most, if not from all, the difficulties in
which perverse human ingenuity has entangled them, if only we bear in
mind the circumstances and surroundings. The little group is standing
on one of the huge rocky flanks of mighty Hermon, great boulders here
and there around them; and in all probability, well in sight, some
great stones cut out of the rock and made ready for use in building,
like those still to be seen in the neighbourhood of Baalbec, to the
north of Hermon; for this region was famous for its great temples.
Now, when we remember that the two words our Lord uses
(πέτρος and
πέτρα) for "rock"
in our version have not precisely the same meaning—the one
(Petros, Peter) signifying a piece of rock, a stone, the other (Petra)
suggesting rather
If the surroundings suggest the use of the words Petros and Petra, stone and rock, the circumstances suggest the use of the word Ecclesia, or Church, which is here employed by our Lord for the first time. Up to this time He has spoken always of the kingdom, never of the church. How is this to be explained? Of course the kingdom is the larger term; and now it is necessary that that portion of the kingdom which is to be organised on earth should be distinguished by a specific designation; and the use of the word "church" in preference to the more familiar "synagogue" may be accounted for by the desire to avoid confusion. Besides this, however, the word itself is specially significant. It means an assembly "called out," and suggests the idea of separateness, so appropriate to the circumstances of the little band of outcasts.
When we think of the place and the scene and the circumstances, the
sad memories of the past and the gloomy forebodings for the future,
what sublimity of faith must we recognise in the words which
immediately follow: "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it"!
Oh! shame on us who grow faint-hearted with each discouragement, when
the Master, with rejection behind Him and death before Him, found it
encouragement enough after so much toil to make a bare beginning
But that day of victory is still far off; and before it can even begin to come, there must be a descent into the valley of the shadow of death. He is about to tell His disciples that He must go up to Jerusalem and die, and leave them to be the builders of the Church. He cannot continue long to be the Keeper of the keys; so He must prepare them for taking them from His hand when the time shall come for Him to go. Hence the words which follow, appropriately addressed in the first place to the disciple who had first confessed Him: "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." "Honour to whom honour is due:" the first member of the Church is to be its prime minister as well. When the Master's voice shall be silent, the voice of the rock-disciple (and of the other disciples as well, for the same commission was afterwards extended to them all) shall have the same authority to bind, to loose, to regulate the administration of Church affairs as if He Himself were with them. It was not yet time to tell them how it would be—viz., by the coming and indwelling of His Spirit; it is enough now to give them the assurance that the infant Church shall not be left without authority from above, without power from on high.
The Church is founded; but for a time it must remain in obscurity. The
people are not ready; and the gospel, which is to be the power of God
unto salvation, is not yet complete, until He shall go up to Jerusalem
and suffer many things and die. Till then all that has passed in this
sacred northern retreat must
A still more searching test must now be applied. It is not enough to discover what they have learned from their intercourse with Him in the past; He must find out whether they have courage enough to face what is now impending in the future. Their faith in God as revealed in Christ His Son has been well approved. It remains to be seen whether it is strong enough to bear the ordeal of the cross, to which it must soon be subjected: "From that time forth began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed."
Already from time to time He had darkly hinted what manner of death He
should die; but it was only from this time that He began to show it
unto them, to put it before them so that they could not fail to see
it. Herein see the wisdom and tender considerateness of "the Son of
man." So dark and difficult a lesson would have been too much for them
before. The ordeal would have been too severe. Not until their faith
has begun with some firmness to grasp His true and proper divinity,
can their hope live with such a prospect. There must be some basis for
a faith in His rising again, before He can ask them even to look into
the dark abyss of death into which He must descend. That basis is
found in the confession of the rock-apostle; and relying on it He can
trust them by-and-by, if not at once, to look through the darkness of
the suffering and death to the rising again, the prospect of which He
sets before them at the very same time:
As yet, however, the mystery is too deep and the prospect too dark even for them, as becomes painfully evident from the conduct of the bravest of them all, who "took Him, and began to rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord: this shall not be unto Thee."
We naturally and properly blame the presumption of the apostle, who, when he did not understand, might at least have been silent, or have contented himself with some modest question, instead of this unbecoming remonstrance with One Whose Messiahship and Divine Sonship he had just confessed. But, though we may blame him for what he said, we cannot wonder at what he thought and felt. The lesson of the cross is just beginning. The disciples are just entering a higher form in the Master's school; and it does not follow, because they have undergone so well their examination on the great lesson of the past, that they are prepared all at once to take in what must be the great lesson of the future. They have had time for the first: may they not be allowed time for the second? Why, then, is Peter reproved so very severely?
We may say, indeed, that faithfulness to Peter himself required it.
The strong commendation with
"Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." We may be sure, therefore, that so soon as the energetic words were spoken he was gone: the stumbling-block was out of the way. The words which follow may therefore be regarded as spoken to Peter himself, to bring to his own consciousness the difference between the heavenly faith which had come by revelation from above, and the earthly doubt and denial, which was evidently not of God, though so natural to flesh and blood: "Thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men" (R.V.).
Thus once more the Christ of God takes up the cross of man. In doing
so He not only sets aside the protest, uttered or unexpressed, of His
disciples' hearts; but He tells them plainly that they too must take
the same dark path if they would follow Him: "Then said Jesus unto His
disciples, If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross, and follow Me." So He tests them to the uttermost.
He withdraws nothing He has said about the blessedness of those who
welcome the kingdom of heaven; but the
Be it observed that this is not "self-denial" as currently understood,
a term applied to the denial to self of something or other which
perhaps self cares very little about, but something much more radical.
It is the denial of self involving as its correlative the giving of
the life to God. It is the death of self-will, and the birth of
God-will,
"Let him deny himself, and take up his cross." Each one has "his" cross, some point in which the will of God and self-will come into direct opposition. To the Captain of our salvation the conflict came in its very darkest and most dreadful form. Its climax was in the Garden, when after the great agony He cried: "Not My will, but Thine be done." Our conflict will not be nearly so severe: it may even be on a point that may seem small,—whether or not we will give up some besetting sin, whether or not we will do some disagreeable duty, whether or not we will surrender something which stands between us and Christ,—but whatever that be in which the will of God and our own will are set in opposition, there is our cross, and it must be taken up, and self must be denied that we may follow Christ. "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh."
We have seen that all may hinge on some point that may seem quite small, in which case the sacrifice is plainly not to be compared with the compensation; but even when the very greatest sacrifice is demanded, it is folly not to make it: "For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life?" (R.V.). And, if life is forfeited, how can it be bought back again: "What shall a man give in exchange for his life" (R.V.)? "In Him was life," and in Him is life still; therefore He is more to us than all the world. It is better to suffer the loss of all things for Christ, than to have all that flesh and blood could desire without Him.
The world is very large; and the Son of man must have seemed very
small and weak that day, as He told them of the coming days when He
should suffer so many things at His enemies' hands, and die; but this
is only while the time of testing lasts: things will be seen in their
true proportion by-and-by, when "the Son of man shall come" (what a
golden background this to the dark prospect immediately before them!
He must
"After six days"—the interval is manifestly of importance, for
the three Evangelists who record the event all lay stress on it. St.
Luke says "about an eight days," which indicates that the six days
referred to by the others were days of interval between that on which
the conversation at Cæsarea Philippi took place and the morning of the
transfiguration. It follows that we may regard this important epoch in
the life of our Lord as covering a week; and may we not speak of it as
His passion week in the north? The shadow of the cross was on Him all
His life through; but it must have been much darker during this week
than ever before. At the beginning of it He had been obliged for the
first time to let that shadow fall upon His loved disciples, and the
days which followed seem to have been given to thought and prayer, and
quiet, unrecorded conversation. Beyond all question their thoughts
would be fixed on the new subject of contemplation which had just been
brought before them, and whatever conversation they
No wonder that at the end of it He has a great longing heavenward, and
that He should ask the three most advanced of His disciples, who had
been with Him in the chamber of death and were afterwards to be
witnesses of His agony in the Garden, to go with Him to a high
mountain apart. The wisdom of His taking only these three was
afterwards fully apparent, when it proved that the experience awaiting
them on the mountain-top was almost too much for even them to bear. It
is of no importance to identify the mountain; probably it was one of
the spurs of the Hermon range, at the base of which they had spent the
intervening week. We can perfectly understand the sacred instinct
which led the Saviour to seek the highest point which could be readily
reached, so as to
We are told by St. Luke that they went up "to pray." It seems most natural to accept this statement as not only correct, but as a sufficient statement of the object our Saviour had in view. The thought of transfiguration may not have been in His mind at all. Here, as always, He was guided by the will of His Father in heaven; and it is not necessary to suppose that to His human mind that will was made known earlier than the occasion required. We are not told that He went up to be transfigured: we are told that He went up to pray.
It seems probable that the idea was to spend the night in prayer. We
know that this was a not infrequent custom with Him; and if ever there
seemed a call for it, it must have been now, when about to begin that
sorrowful journey which led to Calvary. With this thought agree all
the indications which suggest that it was evening when they ascended,
night while they remained on the top, and morning when they came down.
This, too, will account in the most natural manner for the drowsiness
of the apostles; and the fact that their Lord felt none of it only
proved how much more vivid was his realisation of the awfulness of the
crisis than theirs was. We are to think of the four, then, as slowly
and thoughtfully climbing the hill at eventide, carrying their
abbas, or rugs, on which they would kneel for prayer, and which, if
they needed rest, they would wrap around them, as is the Oriental
custom. By the time they reached the
A careful reading of all the records leads us to think of the
following as the order of events. Having gone up to pray, they would
doubtless all kneel down together. As the night wore on, the three
disciples, being exhausted, would wrap themselves in their cloaks and
go to sleep; while the Master, to whom sleep at such a time was
unnatural, if not impossible, would continue in prayer. Can we suppose
that that time of pleading was free from agony? His soul had been
stirred within Him when Peter had tempted Him to turn aside from the
path of the Cross; and may we not with reverence suppose that on that
lonely hilltop, as later in the Garden, there might be in His heart
the cry, "Father, if it be possible"? If only the way upward were open
now! Has not the kingdom of God been preached in Judæa, in Samaria, in
Galilee, away to the very borderlands? and has not the Church been
founded? and has not authority been given to the apostles? Is it,
then, absolutely necessary to go back, back to Jerusalem, not to gain
a triumph, but to accept the last humiliation and defeat? There cannot
but have been a great conflict of feeling; and with all the
determination to be obedient even unto death, there must have been a
shrinking from the way of the cross, and a great longing for heaven
and home and the Father's welcome. The longing cannot be gratified: it
is not possible for the cup to pass from Him; but just as later in
Gethsemane there came an angel from
The disciples could not sleep through all this. "When they were fully
awake, they saw His glory, and the two men that stood with Him" (
That the conversation was intended for their benefit as well, seems indicated by the way in which Peter's intervention is recorded: "Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus." What he said is quite characteristic of the impulsive disciple, so ready to speak without thinking. On this occasion he blunders in a very natural and pardonable way. He feels as if he ought to say something; and, as nothing more to the purpose occurs to him, he blurts out his thoughtless proposal to make three tabernacles for their abode. Besides the thoughtlessness of this speech, which is manifest enough, there seems to lurk in it a sign of his falling back into the very error which a week ago he had renounced—the error of putting his Master in the same class as Moses and Elias, reckoning Him thus, as the people of Galilee had done, simply as "one of the prophets." If so, his mistake is at once corrected; for behold a bright luminous cloud—fit symbol of the Divine presence: the cloud suggesting mystery, and the brightness, glory—wraps all from sight, and out of the cloud there comes a voice: "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him."
We now see how appropriate it was that just these two should be the
heavenly messengers to wait upon the Son of man on this occasion. The
one represented the law, the other the prophets. "The law and the
prophets were until John;" but both are now merged in the gospel of
Jesus, Who is all and in all. Moses and Elijah have long had audience
of the people of God;
Why were their lips sealed? The more we think of it, the more we shall see the wisdom of this seal of secrecy, even from the other nine; for had they been prepared to receive the revelation, they would have been privileged to witness it. The transfiguration was no mere wonder; it was no sign granted to incredulity: it was one of those sacred experiences for rare spirits in rare hours, which nature itself forbids men to parade, or even so much as mention, unless constrained to it by duty.
It is one of the innumerable notes of truth found, wherever aught that
is marvellous is recorded in these Gospels, that the glory on the
mount is not appealed to, to confirm the faith of any but the three who
How fitly the transfiguration closes this memorable week! As we linger
with the Lord and His disciples at the sources of the Jordan, we
realise that we have reached what we may call the water-shed of
doctrine in His training of the Twelve. Slowly have they been rising
in their thoughts of Christ, until at last they recognise His true
divinity, and make a clear and full confession of it. But no sooner
have they reached that height of truth than they are constrained to
look down into the dark valley before them, at the bottom of which
they dimly see the dreadful cross; and then, to comfort and reassure,
there is this vision of the glory that shall follow. Thus we have, in
succession, the three great doctrines of the faith: Incarnation,
Atonement, Resurrection. There is first the glory of Christ as the Son
of God; then His shame as Bearer of our sin; then the vision of the
glory that shall follow, the glory given to Him as His reward. For may
we not regard that company upon the mount as a miniature of the Church
in heaven and on earth? There was the great and glorified Head of the
Church, and round Him five representative members: two from the family
in heaven, three from the family on earth—those from the Church
triumphant, these from the Church still militant—those from
among the saints of the old covenant, these the firstfruits of the
new. Could there have been a better representation of "the whole
family in heaven and on earth"? How appropriate that the passion week
of the north, which began with the founding of the Church in the
laying of its first stone,
Observe, too, in quick succession, the great key-words of the new age: The Christ (xvi. 16), The Church (ver. 18), The Cross (ver. 24), The Glory (ver. 27): the latter, as still in the future, made real by the glory on the holy mount. The mediæval interpreters, always on the watch for the symbolism of numbers, especially the number three, regarded Peter as the apostle of faith, James of hope, and John of love. And though we may set this aside as a touch of fancy, we cannot fail to observe that just as the mind, in its grasp of truth, is led from the incarnation to the atonement, and thence to the resurrection and the glory that shall follow; so the cardinal graces of the Christian life are called out in quick succession: first faith with its rock-foundation; then love with its self-sacrificing devotion; and finally hope with its vision of heavenly glory. The whole gospel of Christ, the whole life of the Christian, is found in this brief passage of the first Evangelist, ending with the suggestive words, "Jesus only."
Who can tell what each step downward cost the Son of man? If it seemed
good to the disciples to be on the mountain-top, what must it have
been to the Master! and what utter denial of self and conscious taking
up of the cross it must have been to leave that hallowed spot! We have
already seen a reason, as regards the disciples, why the vision should
be sealed till the time of the end; but was there not also a
This view of the case is confirmed by the manner in which He deals
with their question respecting Elijah. It was a very natural question.
It was no doubt perplexing in many ways to be absolutely forbidden to
tell what they had seen; but it seemed especially mysterious in view
of Elijah's appearance, which they not unnaturally regarded as a
fulfilment of the prophecy for which the scribes were waiting. Hence
their question, "Why, then, say the Scribes that Elias must first
come?" Our Lord's answer turned their thoughts to the true fulfilment
of the prophecy which was no shadowy appearance on a lonely hill, but
the real presence among the men of the time of a genuine reformer who
had come in the spirit and power of Elijah, and who would certainly
have restored all things, had not these very scribes and Pharisees,
failing to recognise him, left him to the will of the tyrant who had
done away with him. Then most significantly He adds, that as it had
been with the Elijah, so would it be with the Messiah of the time:
"Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them." Thus, in showing
them where to look for the true fulfilment of the prophecy, He turns
their attention as well as His own away from the glory on the mount,
which must now be a thing of the past, to that dark scene in the
prison cell, which was so painfully impressed upon their minds, and
those still
At the foot of the mountain there is presented one of those striking contrasts with which, as we have seen, this Gospel abounds. It is very familiar to us through Raphael's great painting; and we shall certainly not make the mistake of attempting to translate into our feeble words what is there seen, and may now be regarded as "known and read of all men." Leaving, therefore, to the imagination the contrast between the glory on the mount and the misery on the plain, let us briefly look at the scene itself. Briefly; for though it well deserves detailed treatment, the proper place for this would be the full record of it in the second Gospel; while the more general way in which it is presented here suggests the propriety of dealing with it in outline only. Without, then, attempting to enter on the striking and most instructive details to be found in St. Mark's Gospel, and without even dealing with it as we have endeavoured to deal with similar cures under the head of the Signs of the Kingdom, it may be well to glance at it in the light of the words used by our Lord when He was confronted with the sorrowful scene: "O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?"
It seems evident from these words that He is looking at the scene, not
so much as presenting a case of individual suffering, appealing to His
compassion, as a representation in miniature of the helplessness and
perverseness of the race of men He has come to save. Remember how well
He knew what was in man, and therefore what it must have been to Him,
immediately after such a season of pure and peaceful communion on the
holy mount, to have to enter into sympathy with
"Bring him hither to Me." Here is the solvent of all. "From that very hour" the boy is cured, the father's heart is calmed and filled with gladness, the cavillers are silenced, the multitudes are satisfied and the worn-out faith of the disciples is renewed. Out of chaos, order, out of tumult, peace, by a word from Christ. It was a wilder sea than Galilee at its stormiest; but at His rebuke the winds and waves were stilled, and there was a great calm.
So would it be still, if this generation were not perverse and
faithless in its turn—the world perverse, the Church faithless.
Above the stormy sea of human sin and woe and helplessness, there
still is heard the lamentation "How long shall I be with you? how long
shall I suffer you?" Here are we groaning and travailing in this late
age of the world and of the Church, the worst kind of demons still
working their will in their poor victims, the cry of anxious parents
"Bring him hither"—this is a work of faith as well as a labour of love. The Church on earth is in the same position now as were the nine when the Master was absent from them on the mountain-top. He has ascended up on high, and the work must be carried on by the members of His body on the earth; and it is only in proportion to their faith that any success can attend them in their work.
Is faith, then, all that is necessary? It is: provided it be genuine
living faith. This seems to be the point of the reference to the grain
of mustard seed. The little seed, small as it is, is set in true
relation to the great life-force of Mother Nature, and therefore out
of it by-and-by there comes a mighty tree; and in the same way even
feeble faith, if it be genuine, and therefore set in true relation to
the power of the Father of our spirits, becomes receptive of a force
which in the end nothing can resist. But genuine living faith it must
be: there must be the real opening up of the soul to the Spirit of the
living God, so that the man's nature becomes a channel through which
unobstructed the grace and power of God shall flow. It need scarcely
be remarked that the notion which mistakes faith for mere belief of
certain doctrines is utterly misleading. In nothing is the perversity
of a faithless generation more conspicuous than in the persistency
with which this absurd and unscriptural notion of faith holds its
ground, even with those who are supposed to be leaders of thought in
certain directions. If only that mountain of folly could be cleared
away, there would be a decided brightening of the spiritual outlook;
for then men everywhere would see that the faith which
The last words of the paragraph They are relegated to the margin in R.V.; but
the parallel passage in St. Mark's Gospel is acknowledged to be
genuine.
THE way southward lies through Galilee; but the time of Galilee's visitation is now over, so Jesus avoids public attention as much as possible, and gives Himself up to the instruction of His disciples, especially to impressing upon their minds the new lesson of the Cross, which they find it so very hard to realise, or even to understand. A brief stay in Capernaum was to be expected; and there above all places He could not hope to escape notice; but the manner of it is sadly significant—no friendly greeting, no loving welcome, not even any personal recognition, only a more or less entangling question as to the Temple tax, addressed, not to Christ Himself, but to Peter: "Doth not your Master pay the half-shekel?" (R.V.). The impulsive disciple showed his usual readiness by answering at once in the affirmative. He perhaps thought it was becoming his Master's dignity to show not a moment's hesitation in such a matter; but if so, he must have seen his mistake when he heard what his Lord had to say on the subject, reminding him as it did that, as Son of God, He was Lord of the Temple, and not tributary to it.
Some have felt a difficulty in reconciling the position
The brief stay at Capernaum was signalised by some other lessons of the greatest importance. First, as to the great and the small in the kingdom of heaven. We learn from the other Evangelists that by the way the disciples had disputed with one another who should be the greatest. Alas for human frailty, even in the true disciple! It is most humiliating to think that, after that week, with its high and holy lessons, the first thing we hear of the disciples should be their failure in the very particulars which had been special features of the week's instruction. Recall the two points: the first was faith in the Christ, the Son of the living God, and over against it we have from lack of faith the signal failure with the lunatic child; the second was self-denial, and over against it we have this unseemly strife as to who should be greatest in the kingdom.
It is startling and most sad; but is it not true to nature? Is it not
after the most solemn impressions that we need to be most watchful?
And how natural it is, out of what is taught us, to choose and
appropriate what is welcome, and, without expressly rejecting, simply
to leave unassimilated and unapplied what is unwelcome. The great
burden of the instruction for the last eight or ten days had been the
Cross. There had been reference to the rising again, and the coming in
the glory of the kingdom; but these had been kept strictly in the
background, mentioned chiefly to save the disciples from undue
discouragement, and even the three who had the vision of glory on the
mount were forbidden to mention the subject in the meantime. Yet they
let it fill the whole field of view; and though when the Master is
with them He still speaks to them
How patiently and tenderly their Master deals with them! No doubt the same thought was in His heart again: "O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?" But He does not even express it now. He takes an opportunity, when they are quietly together in the house, of teaching them the lesson they most need in a manner so simple and beautiful, so touching and impressive, as to commend it to all true-hearted ones to the end of time. Jesus called a little child to Him, "and set him in the midst of them." Can we doubt that they felt the force of that striking object-lesson before He said a word? Then, as we learn from St. Mark, to whom we always look for minute details, after having set him in the midst of them for them to look at and think about for a while, He took him in His arms, as if to show them where to look for those who were nearest to the heart of the King of heaven.
Nothing could have been more suggestive. It perfectly suited the
purpose He had in view; but the meaning and the value of that simple
act were by no means limited to that purpose. It most effectually
rebuked their pride and selfish ambition; but it was far more than a
rebuke—it was a revelation which taught men to appreciate
child-nature as they had never done before. It was a new thought the
Lord Jesus so quietly introduced into the minds of men that day, a
seed-thought which had in it the promise, not only of all that
appreciation of child-life which is characteristic of Christendom
to-day, and which has rendered possible such poems as Vaughan's "Retreat,"
The words spoken are in the highest degree worthy of the act they illustrate. The first lesson is, None but the lowly are in the kingdom: "Except ye be converted (from the selfish pride of your hearts), and become (lowly and self-forgetful) as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." A most heart-searching lesson! What grave doubts and questions it must have suggested to the disciples! They had faith to follow Christ in an external way; but were they really following Him? Had He not said, "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself"? Were they denying self? On the other hand, however, we need not suppose that this selfish rivalry was habitual with them. It was probably one of those surprises which overtake the best of Christians; so that it was not really a proof that they did not belong to the kingdom, but only that for the time they were acting inconsistently with it; and therefore, before they could think of occupying any place, even the very lowest in the kingdom, they must repent, and become as little children.
The next lesson is, The lowliest in the kingdom are the greatest:
"Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the
same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." Again a most wonderful
utterance, now so familiar to us, that we are apt to regard it as a
thing of course; but what a startling paradox it must have been to the
astonished disciples that day! Yet, as they looked
So far we have what may be called the Saviour's direct answer to the
question as to the greatest; but He cannot leave the subject without
also setting before them the claims of the least in the kingdom of
heaven. He has shown them how to be great: He now teaches them how to
treat the small. The two things lie very
It is manifest, from the whole strain of the passage which follows, that the reference is not exclusively to children in years, but quite as much to children in spiritual stature, or in position and influence in the Church. The little ones are those who are small in the sense corresponding to that of the word "great" in the disciples' question. They are those, therefore, that are small and weak, and (as it is sometimes expressed) of no account in the Church, whether this be due to tender years or to slender abilities or to scanty means or to little faith.
What our Lord says on this subject comes evidently from the very depths of His heart. He is not content with making sure that the little ones shall receive as good a welcome as the greatest: they must have a special welcome, just because they are small. He identifies Himself with them—with each separate little one: "Whoso shall receive one such little child in My name receiveth Me." What a grand security for the rights and privileges of the small! what a word for parents and teachers, for men of influence and wealth in the Church in their relations to the weak and poor!
Then follow two solemn warnings, wrought out with great fulness and
energy. The first is against putting a stumbling-block in the way of
even one of these little ones—an offence which may be committed
without any thought of the consequences. Perhaps this is the very
reason why the Master feels it necessary to use language
From the corresponding passage in St. Mark, it would appear that
Christ had in view, not only such differences of age and ability and
social position as are found in every community of disciples, but also
such differences as are found between one company and another of
professing Christians (see
The transition is natural from those solemn words in which our Lord
has warned His disciples against offending "one of these little ones,"
to the instructions which follow as to how they should treat those of
their brethren who might trespass against them. These
The trespasses referred to are of course real. Much heartburning and much needless trouble often come of "offences" which exist only in imagination. A "sensitive" disposition (often only another name for one that is uncharitable and suspicious) leads to the imputing of bad motives where none exist, and the finding of sinister meanings in the most innocent acts. Such offences are not worthy of consideration at all. It is further to be observed that our Lord is not dealing with ordinary quarrels, where there are faults on both sides, in which case the first step would be not to tell the brother his fault, but to acknowledge our own. The trespass, then, being real, and the fault all on the other side, how is the disciple of Christ to act? The paragraphs which follow make it clear.
"The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable;"
accordingly we are first shown how to proceed in order to preserve the
purity of the Church. Then instructions are given with a view to
preserve the peace of the Church. The first paragraph shows how to
exercise discipline; the second lays down the Christian rule of
forgiveness.
"If thy brother shall trespass against thee,"—what? Pay no heed
to it? Since it takes two to make a quarrel, is it best simply to let
him alone? That might be the best way to deal with offences on the
part of those that are without; but it would be a sad want of true
brotherly love to take this easy way with a fellow-disciple. It is
certainly better to overlook an injury than to resent it; yet our Lord
shows a more
There are four steps: (1) "Go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone." Do not wait till he comes to apologise, as is the rule laid down by the rabbis, but go to him at once. Do not think of your own dignity. Think only of your Master's honour and your brother's welfare. How many troubles, how many scandals might be prevented in the Christian Church, if this simple direction were faithfully and lovingly carried out! In some cases, however, this may fail; and then the next step is: (2) "Take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established." The process here passes from private dealing; still there must be no undue publicity. If the reference to two or at most three (see R.V.) fail, it becomes a duty to (3) "tell it unto the church," in the hope that he may submit to its decision. If he decline, there is nothing left but (4) excommunication: "Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican."
The mention of church censure naturally leads to a declaration of the
power vested in the church in the
These questions are answered in vv. 19 and 20. It is made very plain
that it is no question of numbers, but of union with one another and
the Lord. Let it be remembered that the whole discourse has grown out
of the strife with one another which should be the greatest. Our Lord
has already shown that, instead of ambition to be the greatest, there
must be readiness to be the least. He now makes it plain that instead
of strife and division there must be agreement, unity in heart and
desire. But if only there be this unity, this blending of hearts in
prayer, there is found the true idea of the Church. Two disciples in
full spiritual agreement, with hearts uplifted to the Father in
heaven, and Christ present with them,—there is what may be
called the primitive cell of the Church, the body of Christ complete
in itself, but in its rudimentary or germinal form. It comes to this,
that the presence of Christ with His people and of His spirit in them,
uniting them with one another and with Him, is that which constitutes
the true and living church; and it is only when thus
These words were spoken in the day of small things, when the members of the Church were reckoned by units; therefore it is a mistake to use them as if very small gatherings for prayer were especially pleasing to the great Head of the Church. It does indeed remain true, for the encouragement of the faithful few, that wherever two or three are met in the name of Jesus He is there; but that makes it no less disappointing when the numbers might be reasonably expected to be very much larger. Because our Lord said, "Better two of you agreed than the whole twelve at strife," does it follow that two or three will have the power in their united prayers which two or three hundred would have? The stress is not on the figure, but on the agreement.
The words "There am I in the midst of them" are very striking as a manifestation of that strange consciousness of freedom from limitations of time and place, which the Lord Jesus felt and often expressed even in the days of His flesh. It is the same consciousness which appears in the answer to the cavil of the Jews as to the intimacy with Abraham He seemed to them to claim,—"Before Abraham was, I am." As a practical matter also it suggests that we do not need to ask and wait for the presence of the Master, when we are truly met in His name. It is not He that needs to be entreated to draw near to us: "There am I."
It will be observed, indeed, that our Lord, in His discourse up to the
point we have reached, has said nothing directly about forgiveness. It
is fairly implied, however, in the manner of process, in the very
first act of it indeed; for no one will go to an offending brother
with the object of gaining him, unless he have first forgiven him in
his heart. Peter appears to have been revolving this in his mind, and
in doing so he cannot get over a difficulty as to the limit of
forgiveness. He was familiar, of course, with the rabbinical limit of
the third offence, after which the obligation to forgiveness ceased;
and, impressed with the spirit of his Master's teaching, he no doubt
thought he was showing great liberality in more than doubling the
number of times the offence might be repeated and still be considered
pardonable: "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I
forgive him? till seven times?" It has been thought that some of his
brethren had been treating Peter badly, so that his patience was
sorely tried. Be that as it may, the question was not at all
unnatural. But it was founded on a fallacy, which our Lord cleared
away by His answer, and thoroughly exposed by means of the striking
parable which follows. The fallacy was this: that we have a right to
resent an injury, that in refraining from this we are forbearing to
exercise our right, and consequently that there is a limit beyond
The parable shows the reason why there should be no limit—viz., that all believers, or members of the Church, by accepting from God the unlimited forgiveness He has extended to them, are thereby implicitly pledged to extend a like unlimited forgiveness to others. There is no duty on which our Lord insists more strenuously than this duty of forgiving those who trespass against us, always connecting closely together our forgiving and our being forgiven; and in this parable it is set in the strongest light.
The greatest offence of which our fellow-man can be guilty is as
nothing to the sins we have committed against God. The proportion
suggested is very startling. The larger sum is more than two millions
sterling on the lowest computation; the smaller is not much more than
four guineas. This is no exaggeration. Seven times altogether for a
brother's offences seems almost unpardonable: do we never offend
against God as many times in a single hour? Then think of the days,
and the years! This is a startling thought on the one side; but how
cheering on the other! For the immensity of the debt does not
interfere in the slightest with the freeness and fulness and
absoluteness of the forgiveness. Verily there is no more satisfying or
reassuring presentation of the gospel than this parable, especially
these very words, which rang like a knell of doom in the unmerciful
servant's ear: "I forgave thee all that debt." But just in
proportion to the grandeur of the gospel here unfolded is the rigour
of the requirement, that as we have been
Is that tender name of Father out of place? By no means; for is it not
the outraged love of God that cries out against the unforgiving soul?
And the words "from your hearts,"—are they not too hard on poor frail
human nature? It is easy enough to grant forgiveness with the
lips,—but from the heart? Yet so it stands written; and it only shows
the need we have, not only of unmeasured mercy, but of unmeasured
grace. Nothing but the love of Christ can constrain to such
forgiveness. The warning was a solemn one, but it need have no terror
for those who have truly learned the lesson of the Cross, and welcomed
the Spirit of Christ to reign in their hearts. "I can do all things
through Christ Who strengtheneth me."
There is an admirable fulness and harmony in Christ's teaching on this
subject, as on every other. The duty of unlimited forgiveness is most
plainly enjoined; but not that weak forgiveness which consists simply
in permitting a man to trespass as he chooses. Forgiveness and
faithfulness go hand in
THERE were two main roads from Galilee to Jerusalem. One passed
through Samaria, on the west of the Jordan, the other through Peræa,
east of it. It was by the former that our Lord went northward from
Judæa to begin His work in Galilee; it is by the other that He now
goes southward to complete His sacrifice in Jerusalem. As "He must
needs go through Samaria" then, so He must needs go through Peræa now.
The main thought in His mind is the journey; but He cannot pass
through the large and important district beyond the Jordan without
bringing the kingdom of heaven near to the people, and accordingly we
read that "great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them there."
We learn from St. Luke's Gospel that "He went through the cities and
villages teaching, and journeying towards Jerusalem"; and from the
details there recorded, especially the mission of the seventy which
belongs to that period, it is evident that these circuits in Peræa
must have occupied several months. Concerning the work of these months
our Evangelist is silent, just as he was silent concerning the earlier
work in Judæa and Samaria, as recorded by St. John. We are reminded by
this of the fragmentariness of these memorials of our Lord;
There is, however, no difficulty here; for by comparison with the
third Gospel we find that our Evangelist omits all the circuits in
Peræa, and takes up the story again when our Lord is just about to
leave that region for Jerusalem. When we take his point of view, we
can see how natural this was. It was his special calling to give a
full account of the work in Galilee. Hence the haste with which he
passes from what it was necessary for him to tell of the early years
in the south till the work in Galilee began; and in the same way, now
that the work in Galilee is done, he hastens to the great crisis in
Jerusalem. In following the journey southward he lingers only in two
places, each of them associated with special memories. The one is
Capernaum, where Jesus, as we have seen, tarried for a few days before
taking final leave of Galilee; the other is the place beyond Jordan,
in the region where in baptism He had solemnly entered on His work
(cf.
There it was, and then, that the Pharisees came to Him with their
entangling question concerning divorce. To know how entangling it was
it is necessary to remember that there was a dispute at the time
between two rival schools of Jewish theology—the school of
Hillel and that of Shammai—in regard to the interpretation of
The Pharisees must have felt that He spoke with authority; but they
are anxious not to lose their opportunity of getting Him into a
difficulty, so they press Him with the disputed passage in
Deuteronomy: "Why did Moses, then, command to give a writing of
divorcement, and to put her away?" Our Lord's answer exposes the
double fallacy lurking in the question. "Why did Moses command?" He
did not command; he only suffered it—it was not to further
divorce, but to check it, that he made the regulation about the
"writing of divorcement." And then, not only was it a mere matter of
sufferance,—it was a sufferance granted "because of the hardness
of your hearts." Since things
The wide prevalence of lax views on this subject is made evident by
the perplexity of the disciples. They were not at all prepared for
such stringency, so they venture to suggest that if that is to be the
law, better not marry at all. The answer our Lord gives, while it does
admit that there are circumstances in which celibacy is preferable,
plainly intimates that it is only in quite exceptional cases. Only one
of the three cases he mentions is voluntary; and while it is certainly
granted that circumstances might arise in which for the kingdom of
heaven's sake celibacy might be chosen (cf.
"Then were there brought unto Him little children"—a happy
interruption! The Master has just been laying the solid foundations of
the Christian home; and now the group of men by whom He is surrounded is
The porch is on earth, the palace is in heaven; and we may be very sure that all whom the King acknowledges in the porch shall be welcome in the palace.
What a rebuke in these words of our Lord to those who deal with
children indiscriminately, as if they were all dead in trespasses and
sins. How it must grieve the Saviour's heart when lambs of His own
fold who may have been His from their earliest infancy are taught that
they are utterly lost, and must be lost for ever, unless they pass
through some extraordinary change, which is to them only a nameless
mystery. It is a mistake to think that children as a rule need to
Another inference from these precious words of Christ is the importance of seeking to win the children for Christ while yet they are children, ere the evil days come, or the years draw nigh, when they will be apt to say they have no pleasure in Him. It is a sad thing to think how soon the susceptibility of the child-nature may harden into the impenetrability which is sometimes found even in youth. Is there not a suggestion of this in the story of the young man which immediately follows?
There was everything that seemed hopeful about him. He was young, so his heart could not be very hard; of good moral character, amiable in disposition, and stirred with noble aspirations; moreover, he did the very best thing in coming to Christ for guidance. Yet nothing came of it, because of one obstacle, which would have been no hindrance in his childhood, but which proved insurmountable now. Young as he was, his affections had had time to get so intertwined with his worldly possessions, that he could not disengage them, so that instead of following Christ "he went away sorrowful."
The manner of our Lord's dealing with this young man is exceedingly
instructive. Some have found a difficulty in what seems to them the
strange answer to
The Lord's answer to his question was well fitted to take down his spiritual pride, pointing him as it did to the commonplace Decalogue, and to that part of it which seemed the easiest; for the first table of the law is passed over, and only those commandments mentioned which bear upon duty to man. And is there not special skill shown in the way in which they are marshalled, so as to lead up to the one which covered his weak point? The sixth, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, the fifth are rapidly passed in review; then the mind is allowed to rest on the tenth, not, however, in its mere negative form, "Thou shalt not covet," but as involved in that positive requirement which sums up the whole of the second table of the Law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." We can imagine how the Saviour would mark the young man's countenance, as one after another the commandments were pressed upon his conscience, ending with that one which should have pierced him as with a two-edged sword. But he is too strongly encased in his mail of self-righteousness; and he only replies, "All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?" Clearly it is a surgical case; the medicine of the Commandments will not do; there must be the insertion of the knife: "Go, and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor."
So striking an incident must not be allowed to pass without seizing and pressing the great lesson it teaches. No lesson was more needful at the time. Covetousness was in the air; it was already setting its mark on the Hebrew people, who, as they ceased to serve God in spirit and in truth, were giving themselves over more and more to the worship of mammon; and, as the Master well knew, there was one of the twelve in whom the fatal poison was even then at work. We can understand, therefore, the deep feeling which Christ throws into His warning against this danger, and His special anxiety to guard all His disciples against an over-estimate of this world's riches.
We shall not, however, fully enter into the mind of our Lord, if we
fail to notice the tone of compassion and charity which marks His
first utterance. He is still thinking kindly of the poor rich young
man, and is anxious to make all allowance for him. It is as if He
The disciples' alarm expressed in the question "Who, then, can be
saved?" does them much credit. It shows that they had penetration
enough to see that the danger against which their Master was guarding
them did not beset the rich alone; that they had sufficient knowledge
of themselves to perceive that even such as they, who had always been
poor, and who had given up what little they had for their Master's
sake, might nevertheless not be free enough from the well-nigh
universal sin to be themselves quite safe. One cannot help thinking
that the searching look, which St. Mark tells us their Lord bent on
them as He spoke, had something to do with this unusual quickness of
conscience. It reminds us of that later scene, when each one asked,
"Lord, is it I?" Is there any one of us, who, when that all-seeing Eye
is fixed upon us, with its pure and holy gaze into the depths of our
being, can fail to ask,
The answer He gives does not at all lighten the pressure on the conscience. There is no recalling of the strong words which suggest the idea of utter impossibility. He does not say, "You are judging yourselves too strictly"; on the contrary, He confirms their judgment, and tells them that there they are right: "With men this is impossible"; but is there not another alternative? "Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain;" "With God all things are possible." A most significant utterance this for those to ponder who, instead of following our Lord's dealing with this case to its close, treat it as if the final word had been "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." This favourite passage of the legalist is the one of all others which most completely overthrows his hopes, and shows that so deep are the roots of sin in the heart of man, even of the most amiable and most exemplary, that none can be saved except by the power of divine grace overcoming that which is to men an impossibility. "Behold, God is my salvation."
It is worthy of note that it is as a hindrance to entering the
kingdom that riches are here stigmatised,—which suggests the
thought that the danger is not nearly so great when riches increase to
those who have already entered. Not that there is even for them no
serious danger, nor need of watching and of prayer that as they
increase, the heart be not set upon them; but where there is true
consecration of heart the consecration of wealth follows as a natural
and easy consequence. Riches are a responsibility to those
As on the question of marriage or celibacy, so on that of property or poverty, the Romanist has pushed our Lord's words to an extreme which is evidently not intended. It was plain even to the disciples that it was not the mere possession of riches, but the setting the heart on them, which He condemned. If our Lord had intended to set forth the absolute renunciation of property as a counsel of perfection to His disciples, this would have been the time to do it; but we look in vain for any such counsel. He saw it to be necessary for that young man; but when He applies the case to disciples in general, He does not say "If any man will come after Me, let him sell all that he has, and give to the poor," but contents Himself with giving a very strong warning against the danger of riches coming between man and the kingdom of God. But while the ascetic interpretation of our Lord's words is manifestly wrong, the other extreme of reducing them to nothing is far worse, which is the danger now.
The latter part of ver. 16—"Many be called, but few chosen"—does not properly belong to this passage (see R.V.); its consideration will therefore be postponed till its proper place is reached (see chap. xxii. 14).
The thought of sacrifice very naturally suggests as its correlative
that of compensation; so it is not at all to be wondered at that,
before this conversation ended, the impulsive disciple, so much given
to think aloud, should blurt out the honest question: "Behold, we have
forsaken all and followed Thee; what shall we
Here, again, we see how thoroughly natural is our Saviour's teaching.
"Not to destroy, but to fulfil," was His motto. This is as true of His
relation to man's nature as of His relation to the law and the
prophets. "What shall we have?" is a question not to be set aside as
wholly unworthy. The desire for property is an original element in
human nature. It was of God at the first; and though it has swelled
out into most unseemly proportions, and has usurped a place which does
by no means belong to it, that is no reason why it should be dealt
with as if it had no right to exist. It is vain to attempt to root it
out; what it needs is moderating, regulating, subordinating. The
tendency of perverted human nature is to make "What shall we have?"
the first question. The way to meet that is not to abolish the
question altogether, but to put it last, where it ought to be. To be,
to do, to suffer, to enjoy—that is the order our Lord marks out
for His disciples. If only they have it as their first anxiety to be
what they ought to be, and to do what they are called to do, and are
willing, in order to this, to take
Observe the difference between the young man and the disciples. He was coming to Christ for the first time; and if our Lord had set before him what he would gain by following Him, He would have directly encouraged a mercenary spirit. He therefore says not a word to him about prospects of reward either here or hereafter. Those who choose Christ must choose Him for His own sake. Our Saviour dealt in no other way with Peter, James and John. When first He called them to follow Him, He said not a word about thrones or rewards; He spoke of work: "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men"; and it was not till they had fully committed themselves to Him that He went so far as to suggest even in the most general way the thought of compensation. It would have spoiled them to have put such motives prominently before them at an earlier stage. But it is different now. They have followed Him for months, even years. They have been tested in innumerable ways. They are not certainly out of danger from the old selfishness; but with the exception of one of them, who is fast developing into a hypocrite, all they need is a solemn word of caution now and then. The time had come when their Master might safely give them some idea of the prospects which lay before them, when their cross-bearing days should be over.
The promise looks forward to an entirely altered state of things
spoken of as "the regeneration"—a remarkable term, reminding us
of the vast scope of our Saviour's mission as ever present to His
consciousness even in these days of smallest things.
The Lord is speaking, however, not for the apostles
The supplementary caution—"But many that are first shall be
last; and the last shall be first"—is administered in apparent
reference to the spirit of the apostle's question, which exhibits
still some trace of mercenary motive, with something also of a
disposition to self-congratulation. This general statement is
illustrated by the parable immediately following it, a connection
which the unfortunate division into chapters here obscures; and not
only is an important saying of our Lord deprived in this way of its
illustration, but the parable is deprived of its key, the result of
which has been that many have been led astray in its interpretation.
We cannot attempt to enter fully into the parable, but shall only make
such reference to it as is necessary to bring out its appropriateness
for the purpose
Besides the lesson of caution to the great ones, there is a lesson of
encouragement to the little ones in the kingdom—those who can do
little and seem to themselves to sacrifice little for Christ. Let such
remember that their labour and self-denial are measured not by
quantity but by quality, by the spirit in which the
Neither in the general statement of our Lord, nor in the parable which illustrates it, is there the slightest encouragement to idlers in the vineyard—to those who do nothing and sacrifice nothing for Christ, but who think that, when the eleventh hour comes, they will turn in with the rest, and perhaps come off best after all. When the Master of the vineyard asks of those who are standing in the market-place at the eleventh hour, "Why stand ye here all the day idle?" their answer is ready, "Because no man hath hired us." The invitation came to them, then, for the first time, and they accepted it as soon as it was given them. Suppose the Master of the vineyard had asked them in the morning, and at the first hour and the second and the third, and so on all the day, and only at the eleventh hour did they deign to notice His invitation, how would they have fared?
WE have now reached the last stage of the long and sorrowful journey to Jerusalem. From the corresponding passage in the second Gospel we learn that the disciples were greatly moved by something in their Master's manner: "they were amazed; and as they followed, they were afraid." It would appear, indeed, that they had considerable hesitation in following at all, for it is pointedly mentioned that "Jesus went before them," a hesitation which was no doubt due to the same feeling which prompted Peter, on the first announcement of the journey to Jerusalem and what it would involve, to say "Be it far from Thee, Lord"; and as then, so now, the Saviour felt it as an obstacle in His onward path which He must resolutely put out of the way; and it was doubtless the new and severe effort required of that heroic will to set it aside, and in doing so to face the gathering storm alone, which explained His unwonted agitation as He addressed Himself to the last stage of the fatal journey.
Still, He longs to have His disciples in sympathy with Him. He knows
well that not yet have they fully appreciated what He has said to
them; accordingly, at
This failure of theirs to comprehend the real situation, which one
Evangelist mentions, is well illustrated by an incident which happened
on the road as recorded by the others—one of those evidently
undesigned coincidences which continually meet us, and which, in a
higher degree than mere circumstantial agreements, confirm our faith
in the accuracy of the sacred writers. "Then came to Him the mother of
Zebedee's children with her sons, worshipping Him, and desiring a
certain thing of Him,"—the "certain thing," as it turned out,
being that the two sons should have the chief places of honour in the
kingdom. From the form in which the request was presented it would
seem as if it had been founded on a misapprehension of one of His own
sayings. In St. Mark's Gospel, where the part which the two sons
themselves had in it is related, the very
This makes it easier for us to understand the possibility of their coming with such a request at such a time. We all know how easy it is to justify a selfish proceeding when there is something to offset it. We ourselves know how natural it is to think of those scriptures which suit our purpose, while we conveniently forget for the moment those that do not. Was it, then, unnatural that James and John, forgetting for the moment what their Lord had taught them as to the way to true greatness in His kingdom, should satisfy themselves with the thought that they were at all events taking up their cross in the first place, and as to the ulterior object were certainly acting up to the very plain and emphatic word of the Master Himself: "I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them."
This view of their state of mind is confirmed by our Lord's way of
dealing with them. He first asks them
The ten were not much better than the two. It was natural, indeed,
that, when they heard it, they should be "moved with indignation";
but, though natural, it was not Christian. Had they remembered the
lesson of the little child, or even thought deeply enough of that very
recent one about the last and the first, they would have been moved
with something else than indignation. But need any one wonder that
selfishness should be so
The words of Christ not only meet the case most fully, but reach far
beyond the immediate occasion of their utterance. Thus He brings good
out of evil, and secures that even the strife of His disciples shall
make for "peace on earth." He begins by showing how absolutely in
contrast to the kingdoms of the world is the kingdom He has come to
establish. In them the great ones "lord it over" (R.V.) others; in it
the great ones are those who serve. What a revolution of thought is
involved in this simple contrast! of how much that is great and noble
has it been the seed! The dignity of labour, the royalty of service,
the pettiness of selfish ambition, the majesty of self-sacrificing
love; the utter condemnation of the miserable maxim "Every man for
himself"; the world's first question "What shall we have?" made the
last, and its last question "What shall we give?" made the very
first,—such are some of the fruits which have grown from the
seed our Lord planted in so ungenial soil that day. We are, alas,
still very far from realising that great ideal; but ever since that
day, as an ideal,
The knight was originally a Knecht = a
servant or slave.
Of this great principle of the heavenly kingdom the King Himself is
the highest illustration: "even as the Son of man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for
many." There are those who write about "the service of man" as if the
thought of it were a development of nineteenth-century enlightenment;
but there it is in all its truth and grandeur in the life, and above
all in the death, of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! His entire
life was devoted to the service of man; and His death was
These closing words of the great lesson are memorable, not only as
setting before us the highest exemplification of the law of service,
which as "Son of Man" Christ gave to the world; but as presenting the
first intimation of the purpose of the great sacrifice He was about to
offer at Jerusalem. Again and again He had told the disciples that it
was necessary; but now for the first time does He give them an idea
why it was necessary. It is too soon, indeed, to give a full
explanation; it will be time enough to unfold the doctrine of
atonement after the atonement has been actually made. Meantime He
makes it plain that, while His whole life was a life of ministering as
distinguished from being ministered unto, the supreme service He had
come to render was the giving of His life as a ransom, something to be
rendered up as a price which must be paid to redeem His people. It is
plain from this way of putting it, that He viewed the giving up of His
life as the means by which alone He could save the "many" who should,
as His redeemed or ransomed ones, constitute His kingdom.
On the way to Jerusalem lay the beautiful city of Jericho. The place
now called by that name is such a wretched assemblage of miserable
hovels that it is difficult for the traveller to realise that the
Jericho of the days of our Lord was not only the most luxurious place
of resort in Palestine, but one that might vie with its fashionable
rivals throughout the Roman Empire. Since the days of Herod the Great
it had been the winter residence of the Court. Jerusalem being on
As a rule, we regard it as waste of time to deal with the
"discrepancies" between the different Evangelists; but as one of the
most serious of them all has been found here, it may be well to look
at it, to see how much, or how little, it amounts to. First, the other
Gospels speak of the cure of a blind man, and tell his name,
Bartimæus; this one says that two blind men were cured, and does not
mention any name. If the other Evangelists had said that only one was
healed, there would have been a real discrepancy; but they do not.
Another "discrepancy" which has been noticed is that St. Matthew says
Christ "touched their eyes,"
These differences are not discrepancies at all; but there remains one which may fairly enough be so characterised. The first and second Gospels represent the cure as taking place on the way into Jericho; the third puts it on the way out.
Various suppositions, more or less plausible, especially less, have
been made to "reconcile" these two representations: such as the fact
that there were really two Jerichos, the old and the new, the cure
being wrought as the Saviour passed from the one to the other, so that
both accounts would be strictly accurate; or again, that cures may
have been wrought both in entering and in leaving Jericho. But why
should we trouble ourselves to reconcile so small a difference? It is
not of the slightest consequence whether the cure took place on the
way in or on the way out. If it had been a point on which strict
accuracy was essential, care would doubtless have been taken to note
the very moment and the very spot where it took place—as, for
example, in the case of the cure of the nobleman's son at Capernaum
(
It so happens, too, that there is no story in all the Gospels which shines more lustrously in its own light. It is full of beauty and pathos in all the versions of it which have come down to us; but most of all in the graphic story of St. Mark, to whose Gospel therefore its illustration may be regarded as belonging by special right.
Travelling from Jericho, it is probable that our Lord reached Bethany on the evening of Friday, a week before His crucifixion. The next day, being the Jewish Sabbath, He would spend in retirement, probably in the house of Lazarus, whom a short time before He had raised from the dead. The following day, the first day of the week, would therefore be the date of His entry into Jerusalem as the Royal Son of David, come to claim His kingdom.
That this entrance into the capital is a most important event in the
history of Jesus is evident not only from its nature and consequences,
but also from the fact that it is one which all the four Evangelists
record. Indeed, it is just at this point that the four narratives
converge. The river of the water of life, which "was parted and became
four heads" diverging at times in their course, now unites its waters
in one channel broad
This was the first occasion on which our Lord distinctly put forth His
claim to royalty. From the beginning of His ministry He had shown
Himself to be a "prophet mighty in word and in deed," and to those who
followed Him it became manifest that He was the Prophet foretold by
Moses, for whose coming they had been taught to look with eager eyes
(see
Now it has come. He has been steadily advancing to Jerusalem for the very purpose of accomplishing that decease which is to be the portal of His royalty. Already fully revealed as Prophet, He is about to be made "perfect through suffering" as our great High Priest. It is time, therefore, that He reveal Himself as King, so that no one may have it afterwards to say that He never really claimed the throne of His father David.
How, then, shall He assert His right? Shall a herald be sent to proclaim with the sound of a trumpet that Jesus of Nazareth is King over Israel in Jerusalem? To take such a course would be to court misunderstanding. It would be to raise the standard of revolt against the Romans. It would stir the city in a very different fashion from that in which the Prince of Peace would have it stirred. It would be the signal for tumult, bloodshed, and disastrous war. The ordinary method is evidently not to be thought of. How, then, shall it be done?
Our Lord is never at a loss for means to accomplish His designs in His
own way, which is always the best. He sends to a neighbouring village
for a young ass, mounts it, and rides into the city. That is all He
The excellence of the method adopted by our Saviour to set forth His
royal claims will still further appear when we consider that it arose
quite naturally out of the circumstances in which He was placed. So
much was this the case that some have thought He was taken by
surprise, that He had no intention of calling forth the testimony of
the people to His royal claims, that in fact He was only giving way to
a movement He could not well resist; but this shallow view is plainly
set aside, not only by what has been already advanced, but also by the
answer He gives to the Pharisees who ask him to rebuke and silence His
disciples: "I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the
stones would immediately cry out" (
Not only did the means adopted by our Lord rise naturally out of the circumstances in which He and His followers were placed, but they were specially suited to suggest important truths concerning the kingdom He claimed as His own. We have already seen that, if He had entered the city in regal pomp and splendour, it would have conveyed an entirely false idea of the kingdom. The method He did adopt was such as to give a true idea of it.
Not less than lowliness, is peace suggested as characteristic of His
kingdom. First by the manner of His entrance; for while the horse and
the chariot were suggestive of war, the ass was the symbol of peace.
And then, the prophecy is one of peace. Immediately after the words
quoted by the Evangelist there follows this remarkable promise: "I
will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem,
and the
As Jerusalem was the city of the great King, the Temple was His house,
His royal palace, and accordingly He enters it and takes possession in
His Father's name. We are told by St. Mark that "when He had looked
round about upon all things, it being now eventide, He went out unto
Bethany with the twelve." But St. Matthew, who is accustomed to pay
more attention to the logical than to the exact chronological sequence
of events, proceeds at once to relate the purging of the Temple, which
really took place the following day, but which was so plainly the
natural sequel of His royal entrance that he very properly gives it in
close connection therewith. Besides, what the King did on entering the
Temple the next day
This coming of the King to His capital has been familiarly spoken of
as "the triumphal entry." The term seems unfortunate and misleading.
The waving of palms, the strewing of branches and leaves, the
spreading of garments on the way—all this gave it something of
the aspect of a triumph; but that it was no triumph none knew better
than the Man of Sorrows, Who was the centre of it all. There was
certainly no triumph in His heart that day. If you wish to look into
His heart, watch Him as He comes to the turn of the road where first
the great city bursts upon His sight. How it glitters in the sun, its
palaces and towers gleaming in the splendour of the day, its
magnificent Temple, which had taken nearly half a century to build,
rearing its stately head high above all, into the glorious
heaven—a city and a temple for a king to be proud of, especially
when seen through waving palm branches held in the hands of a
rejoicing throng who shout "Hosanna to
Ah! but look at Him: look at Him closely. Go up to Him, near enough to see His face and hear what He is saying. Is He jubilant? His eyes are wet with tears; and with tears in His voice He is speaking "the saddest words of tongue or pen": O Jerusalem, "if thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy 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 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 knewest not the time of thy visitation." Ah! well the Man of Sorrows knew what all that shouting and rejoicing were worth; not even for a moment was He misled by it; no less certainly now, when the plaudits of the multitudes were ringing around Him, than when He had been on the way going up to Jerusalem, did He know that, though He was the rightful King, He should receive no king's welcome, but should suffer many things and die. He knew that it was to no royal palace, but to the bitter cross, He was advancing, as He rode down Olivet, across the Kedron, and up to the city of David. Yet it is not the thought of His own cross that draws the tears from His eyes; it is the thought of the woes impending over those whom He has come to save, but who will have none of Him. O the depth of divine love in these self-forgetful tears!
One thrill of joy the day had for the King of sorrows. It was His
welcome from the children. The plaudits of the multitude He seems to
have received in silence.
"And He left them, and went out of the city into Bethany, and He lodged there,"—not in the house of Lazarus, we may be sure, or He would not have "hungered" when in the morning He returned to the city (ver. 18); no doubt under the open canopy of heaven, or at best under some booth erected as a temporary shelter. What were His thoughts, what His feelings, as He looked back on the day and forward to the week?
IT had been written that the Lord should suddenly come to His Temple
(
The day opens with the sight on the way to the city of the withered
fig tree, a sad symbol of the impending fate of Israel, to be decided
ere the day closed by their final rejection of their Saviour-King.
This was our Lord's single miracle of judgment; many a stern word of
warning did He speak, but there is no severity in His deeds: they are
all mercy and love. The single
As soon as on the third day He enters the Temple the conflict begins.
It would seem that the interval our Lord had in mercy allowed for calm
reflection had been used for no other purpose than to organise a
conspiracy for the purpose of entangling Him in His words and so
discrediting His authority. We gather this from the carefully framed
questions with which He is plied by one party after another. Four
successive attacks are recorded in the passage before us: the first by
the chief priests and elders of the people demanding His authority;
the next by the Pharisees, assisted by the Herodians, who endeavoured
by means of the difficulty of the tribute money to embroil Him with
the Roman power; this was again immediately followed by a
We may not discuss the long sad history of these successive attacks with any fulness, but only glance first at the challenge of our Lord's authority and how He meets it, and next at the ordeal of questions with which it was followed.
"By what authority doest Thou these things? And who gave Thee this authority?" The question was fair enough; and if it had been asked in an earnest spirit, Jesus would have given then, as always to the honest inquirer, a kind and satisfying answer. It is not, however, as inquirers, but as cavillers, they approach Him. Again and again, at times and in ways innumerable, by fulfilment of prophecy, by His mighty deeds and by His wondrous words, He had given proof of His Divine authority and established His claim to be the true Messiah. It was not therefore because they lacked evidence of His authority, but because they hated it, because they would not have this man to reign over them, that now they question Him. It was obvious that their only object was to entangle Him; accordingly our Lord showed how in the net they were spreading for Him their own feet were caught.
He meets their question with a counter question, "The baptism of John,
whence was it? from heaven, or of men?" The more we examine this
question,
The propounders of the question were not true men, but hypocrites. A negative answer they could not give. An affirmative they would not give. So when they refused to answer, our Lord replied, "Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things."
The Lord of the Temple now assumes the offensive, and directs against
His opponents a series of parables which He holds up to them as a
triple mirror in which from different points of view they may see
themselves in their true character, and as a set of danger signals to
warn them of their impending doom. He presents them with such
marvellous skill that He makes the Pharisees their own judges, and
constrains them to
We have said that in these parables Christ assumes the offensive; but
this is true only in a very superficial sense. In the deepest sense He
spoke them not against the Pharisees, but for them. His object was to
carry home to their hearts the conviction of sin, and to impress them
with a sense of their danger before it was too late. This was what
above all they needed. It was their only hope of salvation. And how
admirably suited for His purpose were these three parables! Their
application to themselves was plain enough after it was stated, but
not beforehand; the effect of which was that they were put in a
position to give an impartial verdict on their own conduct. It was the
same method so effectively employed by Nathan in bringing conviction
to the conscience of David. Had Christ charged the sin of the
Pharisees directly home upon them, they would have been at once thrown
on the defensive, and it would have been impossible to reach their
conscience through the entanglements of prejudice and personal
interest. Christ wishes to disentangle them from all that was
darkening their moral vision; and He uses the parable as the most
effective means. It is a great mistake, then, to suppose that Jesus
contented Himself with turning the tables on them, and carrying the
war, so to speak, into the enemy's country. It was with them a war of
words, but not with Him. He was seeking to save these poor lost ones.
He wished to give them His best for their worst. They had come to
entangle Him in His talk. He does His
The parable of the two sons is exceedingly simple; and the question founded upon it, "Whether of them twain did the will of his father?" admitted of but one answer—an answer which seemed, as it was spoken, to involve only the simplest of all moral judgments; yet how keen the edge of it when once it was disclosed! Observe the emphatic word did, suggesting without saying it, that it made comparatively little difference what they said (see xxiii. 3). So far as profession went, the Pharisees were all that could be desired. They were the representatives of religion in the land; their whole attitude corresponded to the answer of the second son: "I go, sir." Yet when John—whom they themselves admitted to be a prophet of the Lord—came to them in the way of righteousness, they set his word aside and refused to obey him. On the other hand, many of those whose lives seemed to say "I will not," when they heard the word of John, repented and began to work the works of God. Thus it came to pass that many of these had entered the kingdom, while the self-complacent Pharisee still remained without.
The words with which the parable is pressed home are severe and
trenchant; but they are nevertheless full of gospel grace. They set in
the strongest light the welcome fact that the salvation of God is for
the chief of sinners, for those who have been rudest and most
rebellious in their first answers to the divine appeal; and then,
while they condemn so very strongly the self-deceiver, it is not for
the purpose of covering
The second parable follows hard on the first, and presses the chief
priests and Pharisees so closely that they cannot fail to see in the
end that it is themselves they have been constrained to judge and
condemn (ver. 45). It is indeed difficult to suppose that they had not
even from the beginning some glimpse of the intended application of
this parable. The vineyard was a familiar symbol, with a definite and
well understood meaning, from which our Lord in His use of it does not
depart. The vineyard being the nation, the owner is evidently God; the
fruit expected, righteousness; the particulars mentioned (the fence,
the press, the tower) implying the completeness of the arrangements
made by the owner for securing the expected fruit. The husbandmen are
the leaders of the people, those who are responsible for their
direction and control. The going to a far country represents the
removal of God from their sight; so that they are, as it were, put
upon their honour, left to act in the matter of the vineyard according
to the prompting of their own hearts. All
It is a terrible indictment, showing in the strongest light the guilt of their fathers, and pointing out to them that they are on the verge of a crime far greater still. Again and again have prophets of righteousness come in the name of the Lord, and demanded the fruits of righteousness which were due. How have they been received? "The husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another." So have their fathers acted time after time, and still the patience of the owner is not exhausted, nor does He even yet give up all hope of fruit from His favoured vineyard; so, as a last resort, He sends His son, saying, "They will reverence my son."
We can imagine the tone in which the Son of God would speak these
words. What a sublime consciousness is implied in His use of them! and
how touchingly does He in this incidental way give the best of all
answers to the question with which His enemies began! Surely the son,
the only and well beloved son, See the accounts in the second and third Gospels.
If there was in the heart of Christ an exalted consciousness of His
filial relation to God as He spoke of the sending of the Son, what a
pang must have shot through it as He proceeded to depict in such vivid
colours the crime they are now all ready to commit, referring
successively as He does to the arrest, the handing over to Pilate, and
the crucifixion without the gate: "They caught him, and cast him out
of the vineyard, and slew him." How appalling it must have been to Him
to speak these words! how appalling it ought to have been to them to
hear them! That they did feel the force of the parable is evident from
the answer they gave to the question, "What will he do to those
husbandmen?" and, as we have said, they must surely have had some
glimpses of its application to themselves; but it did not disturb
their self-complacency, until our Lord spoke the plain words with
which He followed up the parable, referring to that very psalm from
which the children's cry of "Hosanna" was taken. From it He selects
the symbol of the stone rejected by the builders, but by God made the
head of the corner, applying it to Himself (the rejected stone) and
them (the builders). The reference was most appropriate in itself; and
it had the further advantage of being followed by the very word which
it would be their salvation now to speak. "Hosanna" is the word which
immediately follows the quotation He
Seeing they will not take the warning of the parable, and that they refuse the opportunity given them while yet under its awe-inspiring influence, to repent and return, He must give sentence against them: "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." This sentence He follows up by setting before them the dark side of the other symbol: "Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder." They were stumbling on the stone now, and about to be broken upon it; but the danger that lay before them if they persisted in their present unbelief and sin, would be far greater still, when He Whom they now despised and rejected should be at the head of all authority and power.
But all is vain. Steeling their hearts against His faithful words,
they are only the more maddened against Him, and fear alone restrains
them from beginning now the very crime against which they have just
had so terrible a warning: "When they sought to lay
The manner in which this third parable is introduced leaves room for
doubt whether it was spoken in immediate connection with the two
preceding. The use of the word "answered" (ver. 1) would rather
suggest the idea that some conversation not reported had intervened.
But though it does not form part of a continuous discourse with the
others, it is so closely connected with them in scope and bearing that
it may appropriately be dealt with, as concluding the warning called
forth by the first attack of the chief priests and elders. The
relation between the three parables will be best seen by observing
that the first has to do with their treatment of John; the second and
third with their treatment of Himself and His apostles. The second and
third differ from each other in this: that, while the King's Son, Who
is prominent in both, is regarded in the former as the last and
greatest of a long series of heavenly messengers sent to demand of the
chosen people the fruits of righteousness, in the latter He is
presented, not as demanding righteousness, but as bringing joy. Duty
is the leading thought of the second parable, privilege of the third;
in the one sin is brought home to Israel's leaders by setting before
them their treatment of the messengers of righteousness, in the other
the sin lies in their rejection of the message of grace. Out of this
distinction rises another—viz., that while the second parable
runs back into the past, upwards along the line of the Old Testament
prophets, the third runs down into the future, into the history of the
apostolic times. The two together make
A word may be necessary as to the relation of this parable to the
similar one recorded in the fourteenth chapter of St. Luke, known as
"The parable of the Great Supper." The two have many features in
common, but the differences are so great that it is plainly wrong to
suppose them to be different versions of the same. It is astonishing
to see what needless difficulties some people make for themselves by
the utterly groundless assumption that our Lord would never use the
same illustration a second time. Why should He not have spoken of the
gospel as a feast, not twice merely, but fifty times? There would, no
doubt, be many variations in His manner of unfolding the thought,
according to the circumstances, the audience, the particular object in
view at the time; but to suppose that because He had used that
illustration in Galilee, He must be forbidden from reverting to it in
Judæa is a specimen of what we may call the insanity of those who are
ever on the watch for their favourite "discrepancies." In this case
there is not only much variation in detail, but the scope of the two
parables is quite different, the former having more the character of a
pressing invitation, with only a suggestion of warning at the close;
whereas the one before us, while preserving all the grace of the
gospel as suggested by the figure of a feast to which men are freely
invited, and even heightening its attractiveness inasmuch as it is a
wedding feast—the most joyful of all festivities—and a
royal one too, yet has throughout the same sad tone of judgment which
has been characteristic
As essentially a New Testament parable, it begins with the familiar
formula "The kingdom of heaven is like." The two previous parables had
led up to the new dispensation; but this one begins with it, and is
wholly concerned with it. The King's Son appears now, not as a
messenger, but as a bridegroom. It was not the first time that Jesus
had spoken of Himself as a bridegroom, or rather as the
Bridegroom. Another example of the use of the same
illustration more than once. See ix. 15.
But the love of the King and of His Son is not yet exhausted. A second
invitation is sent, with greater urgency than before, and with fuller
representations of the great preparations which had been made for the
entertainment of the guests: "Again, he sent forth other servants,
saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner:
my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come
unto the marriage." As the first invitation was that which
In the account which follows, therefore, there is a foreshadowing of
the treatment the apostles would afterwards receive. Many, indeed,
were converted by their word, and took their places at the feast; but
the people as a whole "made light of it, and went their ways, one to
his farm, another to his merchandise: and the remnant took his
servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them." What was the
consequence? Jerusalem, rejecting the gospel of the kingdom, even when
it was "preached with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven," must be
destroyed; and new guests must be sought among the nations that up
till now had no especial invitation to the feast. This prophetic
warning was conveyed in terms of the parable; yet there is a touch in
it which shows how strongly the Saviour's mind was running on the sad
future of which the parable was but a picture: "When the king heard
thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed
those murderers, and burned up their city." Why "city"? There had been
no mention of a city in the parable. True; but Jerusalem was in the
Saviour's heart, and all the pathos of His lament over it is in that
little word. "Their city" too, observe,—reminding us of
"your house" at the close of this sad day (xxiii. 38). In the same
way the calling of the Gentiles is most skilfully brought within the
scope of the parable, by the use of the peculiar word translated in
the Revised Version—"the partings of the highways," which seems
to suggest the thought of the
The parable, as we have seen, is one of grace; but righteousness too must find a place in it. The demand for fruits of righteousness is no less rigid in the new dispensation than it had been in the old. To make this clear and strong the parable of the Feast is followed by the pendant of the Wedding Garment.
There are two ways in which the heavenly marriage feast may be
despised: first, by those who will not come at all; next, and no less,
by those who try to snatch the wedding joy without the bridal purity.
The same leading thought or motive is recognisable here as in the
parable of the two sons. The man without the wedding garment
corresponds to the son who said "I go, sir," and went not, while those
who refuse altogether correspond to the son who answered "I will not."
By bearing this in mind we can understand, what to many has been a
serious difficulty—how it is that the punishment meted out to
the offender in this second parable is so terribly severe. If we
simply think of the parable itself, it does seem an extraordinary
thing that so slight an offence as coming to a wedding feast without
the regulation dress should meet with such an awful doom; but when we
consider whom this man represents, we can see the very best of reasons
for it. Hypocrisy was his crime, than which there is nothing more
utterly hateful in the sight of Him Who desireth truth in the
Even to him, indeed, the king has a kindly feeling. He calls him "Friend," and gives him yet the opportunity to repent and cry for mercy. But he is speechless. False to the core, he has no rallying point within to fall back upon. All is confusion and despair. He cannot even pray. Nothing remains but to pronounce his final doom (ver. 13).
The words with which the parable closes (ver. 14) are sad and solemn.
They have occasioned difficulty to some, who have supposed they were
meant to teach that the number of the saved will be small. Their
difficulty, like so many others, has been due to forgetfulness of the
circumstances under which the words were spoken, and the strong
emotion of which they were the expression. Jesus is looking back over
the time since He began to spread the gospel feast, and
The open challenge has failed; but more subtle weapons may succeed. The Pharisees have found it of no avail to confront their enemy; but they may still be able to entangle Him. They will at all events try. They will spring upon Him some hard questions, of such a kind that, answering on the spur of the moment, He will be sure to compromise Himself.
1. The first shall be one of those semi-political semi-religious
questions on which feeling is running high—the lawfulness or
unlawfulness of paying tribute to Cæsar. The old Pharisees who had
challenged His
But they cannot impose upon Him: "Jesus perceived their wickedness,
and said, Why tempt ye Me, ye hypocrites?" Having thus unmasked them,
without a moment's hesitation He answers them. They had expected a
"yes" or a "no"—a "yes" which would have set the people against
Him, or better still a "no" which would have put Him at the mercy of
the government. But, avoiding Scylla on the one hand, and Charybdis on
the other, He makes straight for His goal by asking for a piece of
coin and calling attention to Cæsar's stamp upon it. Those who use
Cæsar's coin should not refuse to pay Cæsar's tribute; but, while the
relation which with their own acquiescence they sustain to the Roman
emperor implied corresponding obligations in the sphere it covered,
this did not at all interfere with what is due to the King of kings
and Lord of lords, in Whose image
2. Next come forward certain Sadducees. That the Pharisees had an understanding with them also seems likely from what is said both in verse 15, which seems a general introduction to the series of questions, and in verse 34, from which it would appear that they were somewhere out of sight waiting to hear the result of this new attack. Though the alliance seems a strange one, it is not the first time that common hostility to the Christ of God has drawn together the two great rival parties (see chap. xvi. 1). If we are right in supposing them to be in combination now, it is a remarkable illustration of the deep hostility of the Pharisees that they should not only combine with the Sadducees against Him, as they had done before, but that they should look with complacency on their using against Him a weapon which threatened one of their own doctrines. For the object of the attack was to cast ridicule on the doctrine of the resurrection, which assuredly the Pharisees did not deny.
The difficulty they raise is of the same kind as those which are
painfully familiar in these days, when men of coarse minds and fleshly
imaginations show by
It is worthy of note that our Lord's answer is much less stern than in the former case. These men were not hypocrites. They were scornful, perhaps flippant; but they were not intentionally dishonest. The difficulty they felt was due to the coarseness of their minds, but it was a real difficulty to them. Our Lord accordingly gives them a kindly answer, not denouncing them, but calmly showing them where they are wrong: "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God."
Ye know not the power of God, or ye would not suppose that the life to
come would be a mere repetition of the life that now is, with all its
fleshly conditions the same as now. That there is continuity of life
is of course implied in the very idea of resurrection; but true life
resides not in the flesh but in the spirit, and therefore the
continuity will be a spiritual continuity; and the power of God will
effect such changes on the body itself that it will rise out of its
fleshly condition into a state of being like that of the angels of
God. The thought is the same as that which was afterwards expanded by
the apostle Paul in such passages as
Ye know not the Scriptures, or you would find in the writings of Moses
from which you quote, and to
Compare the same thought in
Our Lord's answer suggests the best way of assuring
3. The next attempt of the Pharisees is on an entirely new line. They have found that they cannot impose upon Him by sending pretended inquirers to question Him. But they have managed to lay their hands on a real inquirer now—one of themselves, a student of the law, who is exercised on a question much discussed, and to which very different answers are given; they will suggest to him to carry his question to Jesus, and see what He will say to it. That this was the real state of the case appears from the fuller account in St. Mark's Gospel. When, then, St. Matthew speaks of him as asking Jesus a question, "tempting Him," we are not to impute the same sinister motives as actuated those who sent him. He also was in a certain sense tempting Jesus—i.e., putting Him to the test, but with no sinister motive, with a real desire to find out the truth, and probably also to find out if this Jesus was one who could really help an inquirer after truth. In this spirit, then, he asks the question, "Which is the great commandment in the law?"
The answer our Lord immediately gives is now so familiar that it is
difficult to realise how great a thing it was to give it for the first
time. True, He takes it from the Scriptures; but think what command of
the Scriptures is involved in this prompt reply. The passages quoted
lie far apart—the one in the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, the
other in the nineteenth of Leviticus, in quite an obscure corner; and
nowhere are they spoken of as the first and second commandments,
It is now time to question the questioners. The opportunity is most favourable. They are gathered together to hear what He will say to their last attempt to entangle Him. Once more He has not only met the difficulty, but has done so in such a way as to make the truth on the subject in dispute shine with the very light of heaven. There could not, then, be a better opportunity of turning their thoughts in a direction which might lead them, if possible in spite of themselves, into the light of God.
The question Jesus asks (vv. 41-45) is undoubtedly a puzzling one for
them; but it is no mere Scripture conundrum. The difficulty in which
it lands them is one which, if only they would honestly face it, would
be the means of removing the veil from their eyes, and leading them,
ere it is too late, to welcome the Son of David come in the name of
the Lord to save them.
The day of grace is over for the leaders of the people; but for the
people themselves there may still be hope; so the Lord of the Temple
turns to "the multitude," the general throng of worshippers, mingled
with whom were several of His own disciples, and solemnly warns them
against their spiritual guides. There is every reason to suppose that
many of the scribes and Pharisees were within hearing; for when
His warning is couched in such a way as not in the least degree to
weaken their respect for Moses, or for the sacred Scriptures, the
exposition of which was the duty of their spiritual guides. He
separates sharply between the office and the men who hold it. Had they
been true to the position they occupied and the high duties they had
been called to discharge, they would have been worthy of all honour;
but they are false men: "they say, and do not." Not only so, but they
do positive evil, making that grievous for the people which ought to
be a delight; and when they do or seem to do the right thing, it is
some petty observance, which they exaggerate for the sake of vain
display, while their hearts are set on personal pre-eminence. Such are
the leading thoughts set forth with great vigour of language and force
of illustration, and not without a touch of keen and delicate irony in
our Lord's remarkable indictment of the scribes and Pharisees recorded
by our Evangelist (vv. 2-7).
Then follows one of those passages of profound significance and
far-reaching application which, while admirably suiting the immediate
occasions on which they were spoken, prove to be a treasury of truth
for the ages to come. At first sight it strikes us as simply an
exhortation to cultivate a disposition the reverse of that of the
scribes and Pharisees. He has been drawing their portrait; now He
says, Be ye not like unto them, but unlike in every respect. But in
saying this He succeeds in laying down great principles for the
We must remember, too, that He was speaking to His disciples as well
as to the multitude, and to them these words would be full of meaning.
When He said, "One is your Teacher," of whom could they possibly think
but of Himself? When He said, "One is your Father," they would recall
such utterances as "I and My Father are One," and have suggested to
them the truth which was so very soon to be plainly stated: "He that
hath seen Me, hath seen the Father." It is probable, then, that even
before He reached the end, and added the words "even the Christ," the
minds of His disciples at least had anticipated Him. Thus we find in
these remarkable words an implicit claim on the part of
If only the Christian Church had been true to all this, how different
would her history have been! Then the Word of God would have been,
throughout, the only and sufficient rule of faith, and the Holy Spirit
dealing directly with the spirits of men its sole authoritative
interpreter. Then would there have been no usurping priesthood to
stand between the souls of men and their Father in heaven, to bind
heavy burdens and grievous to be borne and lay them upon men's
shoulders, to multiply forms and observances and complicate what
should have been simplest of all—the direct way to the Father in
heaven, through Christ the great Priest of humanity. Then would there
have been no lordship over men's consciences, no ecclesiastical
usurpation, no spiritual tyranny, no inquisition, no persecution for
conscience' sake. How inexcusable has it all been! It would seem as if
pains had been taken deliberately to violate not only the spirit, but
the very letter of the Saviour's words, as e.g. in the one fact
that, while it is expressly written "Call no man your father upon the
earth," the Church of Rome has actually succeeded age after age in
getting the millions under its usurped spiritual control, to give a
man that very title; for the word "pope" is the very word "Papa," pope, is the Latin translation of
the Hebrew word for Father.
"And all ye are brethren." This is the second commandment of the true
canon law, like unto the first, and springing naturally out of it, as
naturally as the love of neighbour springs out of love to God. As soon
as the time shall come when all Christians shall own allegiance alike,
full and undivided, to the one Lord of mind and heart and conscience,
then will there be an end to all ecclesiastical exclusiveness, then
shall we see realised and manifested to the world the brotherhood in
Christ of all believers.
Turning once again to the scribes and Pharisees, the Lord of the Temple denounces them in words perhaps the most terrible in the whole Bible. It is a very thunderstorm of indignation, with flash after flash of scorn, peal after peal of woe. It is "the burden of the Lord," "the wrath of the Lamb." Is this at all inconsistent with the meekness and lowliness of His heart, the love and tenderness of His character? Certainly not. Love is no love at all, unless it be capable of indignation against wrong. Besides, it is no personal wrongs which stir the heart of Jesus, "Who when He was reviled, reviled not again, when He suffered, He threatened not"; but the wrong these hypocrites are doing to the poor sheep they are leading all astray. The occasion absolutely demanded a tempest of indignation. There is this further to be considered, that the Lord Jesus, as Revealer of God, must display His justice as well as His mercy, His wrath as well as His love.
This passage, terrible as it is, commends itself to all
The sin branded, sentence follows: "Fill ye up then the measure of
your fathers." Since you will not be
As in the Sermon on the Mount (see page 102) so here, when He speaks
as Judge He cannot conceal His personal majesty. All throughout He has
been speaking with authority, but has, as usual, avoided the obtrusion
of His personal prerogative. Even in saying "One is your Master, even
the Christ," it is not at all the same as if He had said, even Myself.
All it necessarily conveyed was, "One is your master, even the
Messiah," whoever he may be. But now He speaks as from His judgment
throne. He is no longer thinking of Himself as one of the prophets, or
even as the King's Son, but as Lord of all; so He says: "Wherefore,
behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some
of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge
in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: that upon
you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth," from Abel to
Zacharias. The reason why these two are named is
sufficiently obvious, when we remember that the second Book of
Chronicles, in which the martyrdom of Zachariah is recorded, was the
last book of the Hebrew Scriptures, just as we might say, All
the promises from Genesis to Revelation. The difficulty which has been
made so much of (Barachias v. Jehoiada) is of no importance
except to those who will not remember that the letter killeth and the
spirit giveth life.
But judgment is His strange work. He has been compelled by the fire of
His holiness to break forth into this tempest of indignation against
the hypocrites, and to pronounce upon them the long-deferred sentence
Our Saviour's public ministry is closed. He has yet many things to say
to His disciples—a private ministry of love to fulfil ere He
leave the world and go to the Father; but His public ministry is ended
now. Commenced with beatitudes, it ends with woes, because the
blessings offered in the beatitudes have been rudely rejected and
trampled underfoot. And now the Lord of the Temple is about to leave
it—to leave it to its fate, to leave it as He counselled His
disciples to leave any
Why did they not say it then? Why did they not entreat Him to remain?
But they did not. So "Jesus went out, and departed from the Temple"
(xxiv. 1); and though eighteen hundred years have rolled away since
then, the time has not yet come
WE have seen that though the Saviour's public ministry is now closed, He still has a private ministry to discharge—a ministry of counsel and comfort to His beloved disciples, whom He soon must leave in a world where tribulation awaits them on every side. Of this private ministry the chief remains are the beautiful words of consolation left on record by St. John (xiii.-xvii.), and the valuable words of prophetic warning recorded by the other Evangelists, occupying in this Gospel two long chapters (xxiv., xxv.).
This remarkable discourse, nearly equal in length to the Sermon on the Mount, may be called the Prophecy on the Mount; for it is prophetic throughout, and it was delivered on the Mount of Olives. From the way in which it is introduced (vv. 1-3) we see that it is closely connected with the abandonment of the Temple, and that it was suggested by the disciples calling His attention to the buildings of the Temple, which were in full view of the little group as they sat on the Mount of Olives that memorable day—buildings which seemed stately and stable enough in their eyes, but which were already tottering to their fall before
In secular history the destruction of Jerusalem is nothing more than
the destruction of any other city of equal size and importance. It is
indeed marked out from similar events in history by the peculiarly
terrible sufferings to which the inhabitants were subjected before the
final overthrow. But apart from this, it is to the general historian
an event precisely similar to the destruction of Babylon, of Tyre, of
Carthage, or of any other ancient city once the seat of a dominion
which now has passed away. In sacred history it stands alone. It was
not merely the destruction of a city, but the close of a
dispensation—the end of
But though the destruction of Jerusalem is the primary subject of the
prophecy, in its full sweep it takes a far wider range. The Saviour
sees before Him with prophetic eye, not only that great event which
was to be the end of the world which then was—the close of the
dispensation of grace which had lasted two thousand years; but also
the end of all things, when the last dispensation of grace—not
for Israel alone, but for the whole world—shall have come to a
close. Though these two events were to be separated from each other by
a long interval of time, yet were they so closely related in their
nature and issues that our Lord, having in view the needs of those who
were to live in the new dispensation, could not speak of the one
without also speaking of the other. What He was then saying was
intended for the guidance, not only of the disciples then around Him,
and of any other Jews who might from them receive the message, but
also for the guidance of the whole Christian Church throughout the
world to the end of time,—another marvellous illustration of
that sublime consciousness of life and
As might be expected from the nature of its subject, the interpretation of the prophecy in matters of detail is beset with difficulties. The sources of difficulty are sufficiently obvious. One is in the elimination of time. The time of both events is studiously concealed, according to the principle distinctly announced by our Saviour just before His ascension: "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power." There are in each case signs given, by which the approach of the event may be recognised by those who will give heed to them; but anything in the shape of a date is studiously avoided. It is perhaps not too much to say that nine-tenths of the difficulties which have been encountered in the interpretation of this passage have arisen from the unwarrantable attempts to introduce dates into it.
Still another source of difficulty is that, while our Saviour's object
in giving the prophecy was practical, the object of many who study the
prophecy is merely speculative. They come to it to satisfy curiosity,
and as a matter of course they are disappointed, for our Lord did not
intend when He spoke these words to satisfy so unworthy a desire; and,
though His word never returns to Him void, it accomplishes that which
He pleases, and nothing else; it prospers in the thing to which He has
sent it, but not in the thing to which He has not sent it. He has sent
us this, not to satisfy our curiosity, but to influence our conduct;
and if we use it not for speculative but for practical
purposes—not to find support for any favourite theory, which
parcels out the future, giving days and hours, which neither the
angels in heaven nor the Son of man
Before we pass from the difficulties of this prophecy, observe how strong an argument they furnish for its genuineness. Those who deny the divinity of Christ are greatly troubled with this prophecy, so much so that the only way in which they can get rid of its witness to Him is by suggesting that it was really composed after the destruction of Jerusalem, and therefore never spoken by Christ at all. There are difficulties enough of other kinds in the way of such a disposal of the prophecy; but there is one consideration which absolutely forbids it—viz., that any one writing after the event would have avoided all that vagueness of language which gives trouble to expositors. To those who can judge of internal evidence, its obscurity is clear proof that this discourse could not have been produced in the full light of the subsequent history, but must have been what it professes to be, a foreshadowing of coming events.
We may not, with the limits imposed by the plan of these expositions,
attempt a detailed explanation of this difficult prophecy, but must
content ourselves with giving only a general view. Our Lord first
warns His disciples against expecting the crisis too early (vv. 4-14).
In this passage He prepares the minds of His disciples for the times
of trouble and trial through which they must pass before the coming of
"the great and notable day of the Lord" which was at hand: there shall
be false Christs and false prophets—there shall be wars and
rumours of wars, and shaking of the nations, and famines, and
pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places; yet will all these be
only "the beginning of
He then gives them a certain sign by which they shall know that the
event is imminent, when it does approach. This is not equivalent to
fixing a date. He gives them no idea how long the period of trial
shall last, no idea how long time they shall have for the great work
before them—He simply gives them a sign, by observing which they
shall not be taken completely by surprise, but have at least a brief
space to make their escape from the condemned city. And so very little
time will elapse between the sign and the event to which it points,
that He warns them against any delay, and tells them, as soon as it
shall appear, to flee at once to the mountains and escape for their
lives. It is sufficiently evident, by comparing this passage with the
corresponding place in Luke, where our Lord speaks of Jerusalem being
compassed with armies, that the "abomination of desolation standing in
the holy place" refers to some particular act of sacrilegious impiety
committed in the Temple just at the time the Romans were beginning to
invest the city. Attempts have been made historically to identify this
profanation, but it is doubtful if these have been successful. It is
sufficient to know that whether or not the fact has found a place in
history, it served its purpose as a sign to the Christians in the city who had
Having told them what the sign would be, and counselled His disciples to lose no time in making their escape as soon as they should see it, He further warns them, in a few impressive words, of the terrors of those days of tribulation (vv. 19-22), and then concludes this portion of the prophecy by warning them against the supposition—a very natural one in the circumstances—that even then the Son of man should come.
So far we have found the leading ideas to be simple and practical, and
all connected with the destruction of Jerusalem. (1) Do not expect
that event too early; for you must pass through many trials and do
much work before it. (2) As soon as you shall see the sign I give you,
expect it immediately, and lose no time in making your escape from the
horrors of these awful days. (3) Even then, however, do not expect the
personal advent of the Son of man; for though it is a day of judgment,
it is only one of those partial judgments which are necessary on the
principle that "wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be
gathered together." The personal advent of Christ and the day of final
judgment are only foreshadowed by, not realised in, the destruction of
Jerusalem and the close of the old dispensation.
The three closing verses of this portion of the prophecy refer
pre-eminently to the great Day of the coming of the Son of man (vv.
29-31). The word "immediately" has given rise to much difficulty, on
account of the hasty conclusion to which some have come that
"immediately after the tribulation of those days" must mean
immediately after the destruction of
Appended to the main prophecy are some additional warnings as to time
(vv. 32-44) setting forth in the most impressive manner the certainty,
the suddenness, and, to those who are not looking for it, the
unexpectedness of the coming of the Day of the Lord. Here again, in
the first portion the destruction of Jerusalem, and in the latter
portion the Day of the Son of man, is prominent. If we bear this in
mind it will remove a difficulty many have found in ver. 34, which
seems to say that the events specially referred to in vv. 29-31 would
be fulfilled before that generation passed away. But when we remember
that the prophecy proper closes with the thirty-first verse, and that
the warning as to the imminency of the events referred to commences
The passage from ver. 36 onwards is still quite applicable to the near
event, the destruction of Jerusalem; but the language used is
evidently such as to carry the mind onward to the more distant event
which had been brought prominently forward in the latter part of the
prophecy (vv. 36-44). In these verses, again, not only is no date
given, but we are expressly told that it is deliberately withheld.
What then? Are we to dismiss the subject from our minds? Quite the
reverse; for though the time is uncertain, the event itself is most
certain, and it will come suddenly and unexpectedly. No time will be
given for preparation to those who are not already prepared. True,
there will be the sign of the Son of man in heaven, whatever that may
be; but, like the other sign which was the precursor of Jerusalem's
destruction, it will appear immediately before the event, barely
giving time for those who have their lamps trimmed and oil in their
vessels with their lamps to arise and meet the Bridegroom; but for
those who are not watching, it will be too late—it will be with
them as with those who lived at the close of the very first
dispensation, who were "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in
marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not
until the flood came, and took them all away.... Watch therefore: for
ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. But know
The remainder of this great prophecy is taken up with four pictures of judgment, very striking and impressive, having for their special object the enforcement of the great practical lesson with which the first part has closed: "Watch therefore" (vv. 42, 43); "Be ye also ready" (ver. 44). In the former portion of the prophecy the destruction of Jerusalem was in the foreground, and in the background the coming of the Son of man to judgment in the end of the world. In this portion the Great Day of the Son of man is prominent throughout.
The four pictures, though similar in their scope and object, are different in their subjects. The first represents those who occupy positions of trust in the kingdom; the second and third, all professing Christians,—the one setting forth inward grace, the other outward activity; the fourth is a picture of judgment on the whole world.
As in the case of the man without the wedding garment, a single
servant is taken as representing a class; and who constitute this
class is made quite clear, not only by the fact that the servant is
set over the household, but also by the nature of the service: "to
give them their food in due season" (R.V.). The
But there is more to be thought of than the missing of the blessing.
There is a fearful doom awaiting the unfaithful servant, of which the
picture following gives a terrible presentation. Both offence and
punishment are painted in the very darkest colours. As to the former,
the servant not only neglects his duty but beats his fellow-servants,
and eats and drinks with the drunken. Here a question arises, What was
there to suggest such a representation to the Saviour's mind? Surely
it could not be intended specially for those who were sitting with Him
on the mount that day. If Judas was among the rest, his sin was not of
the nature that would have suggested the parable in this particular
form, and certainly there is no reason to suppose that any of the rest
were in the slightest danger of being guilty of such cruelties and
excesses as are here spoken of. Is it not plain then, that the judge
of all had in
This is still further confirmed by the reason given for such recklessness,—the evil servant saying in his heart, "My Lord delayeth His coming." There is reason to suppose that the early Christians expected the return of the Lord almost immediately. In so far as they made this mistake, it cannot be charged against their Master; for, as we have seen, He warns them against this error throughout the whole of the prophecy. It is plain, however, that those who made this mistake were in no danger of saying in their hearts, "My Lord delayeth His coming." But as time passed on, and the expectation of the Lord's speedy return grew fainter, then there would come in all its force the temptation to those who did not watch against it of counting on the Lord's delay. When we think of this, we see how necessary it was that the danger should be set forth in language which may have seemed unnecessarily strong at the time, but which the future history of the Church only too sadly justified.
The punishment is correspondingly severe. The word used to picture it
("shall cut him asunder") is one to make us shudder; and some have
felt surprised that our Lord did not shrink from the horror of the
word. Ah! but it was the horror of the thing which He dreaded, and
wished to avert. It was the infinite pity of His heart that led Him to
use a word which might prove the very strongest deterrent. Besides,
how significant it is! Think, again, of whom He is
speaking,—servants set over His household to give
The second and third pictures, presented in the form of two parables of the kingdom of heaven, set before us the judgment of Christ at His coming on His professed disciples, distinguishing between real and merely nominal Christians, between the pretended and the true members of the kingdom of heaven. In the former parable this distinction is set before us in the contrast between the wise and the foolish virgins; in the latter it appears in the form of the one faithful and the two unfaithful servants. No special significance need be attached to the respective numbers, which are evidently chosen with a view to the consistency of the parables, not to set forth anything in regard to the actual proportion between hypocrites and true disciples in the visible Church.
The relation between the two parables has been already indicated. The
first represents the Church as waiting, the second as working, for her
Lord; the first shows the necessity of a constant supply of inward
grace, the second the need of unremitting outward
The Parable of the Virgins (vv. 1-13), with its marriage feast, recalls the parable of the marriage of the King's Son, so recently spoken in the Temple. The difference between the two is very clearly indicated by the way in which each parable is introduced: there, "the kingdom of heaven is likened"; here, "then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened." The gospel feast which was the subject of the parable spoken in the Temple was already spread; it was a thing of the present; its word was, "All things are ready: come to the marriage"; its preparation had been the object of the heavenly Bridegroom's first coming. The wedding feast of this parable is yet to be prepared; it is "the marriage supper of the Lamb" to which the Lord will call His people at His second coming.
An interval, therefore, of unknown length must pass meantime; and
herein, as the sequel will unfold, lies the test which distinguishes
the wise from the foolish virgins. This interval is represented by a
night, with great appropriateness, seeing that the heavenly Bridegroom
It is not, then, by the temptation to sleep that the interval tests
the virgins, but by bringing out a difference which has existed all
the while, though at the first it did not appear. All seemed alike at
the beginning of the night. Had not every one of them a lamp, with oil
in it, and were not the lights of all the ten brightly burning? Yes;
and if the Bridegroom had come at that hour, all would have seemed
equally ready. But the Bridegroom tarries, and while He tarries the
business of the night must go on. In this way time passes, till at an
unexpected moment in the very middle of the night as it were, the cry
is heard "Behold
What, then, are we to understand in the spiritual sphere by this distinction? That the wise and the foolish represent the watchful and the unwatchful is plain enough; but is there not something here to let us deeper into the secret of the great difference between the one and the other? In order to get this, it is not at all necessary to ask for the significance of each separate detail—the lamp, the wick, the oil, the oil vessel. The details belong to the drapery of the parable; the essentials are manifestly the light and the source whence it comes. The light is the very familiar symbol of the Christian life; the source whence it comes is divine grace, abiding unseen in the heart. Now, there is a certain superficial goodness which shines for the moment much as the true light of grace shines, but is connected with no perennial supply; there is no oil vessel from which the lamp can be constantly replenished. There may be a flaring up for a moment; but there is no steady enduring light.
All which points to the conclusion that the foolish virgins represent
those professing Christians who have religious emotion enough to
kindle their lamp of life and make it glow with a flame which looks
marvellously like true devotion, but which is little else than the
blazing up of natural feeling; while the wise virgins represent those
whose constant habit is devotion, whose grace
This explains why the wise virgins cannot help the foolish. It is not
that they are selfish, and will not do it; but that it cannot be done.
Some commentators, men of the letter, have puzzled themselves as to
the advice to go to them that sell and buy. That, again, belongs to
the framework of the parable. The thought conveyed is plain enough to
those who think not of the letter but of the spirit. It is simply
this, that grace is not transferable. A man may belong to the warmest,
devoutest, most gracious community of disciples in all Christendom;
but if he himself has been foolish, if he has not lived in communion
with Christ, if he has not kept himself in communication with the
Fountain of grace, not all the saints in whose company he has passed
the night of the Lord's personal absence, however
The same principles are applicable to the solemn close of the parable.
The question has been asked, Why did not the Bridegroom open the door?
Late though the foolish virgins were, they wished to enter, and why
should they not be allowed? Again let us look beyond the letter of the
parable to the spirit of it—to the great spiritual facts it pictures
for us. If it were the mere opening of a door that would remedy the
lateness, assuredly it would be done; but the real fact is, that the
lateness is now beyond remedy. The door cannot be opened.
Ponder the solemn words: "I know you not." It is a question of the
union of the life with Christ. The wise virgins had lived a life that
was always, even in sleep, hid with Christ in God; the foolish virgins
had not: they had lived a life which had transient shows of devotion
in it, but no reality—a mistake too fatal to be in any wise remedied
by the spasms of a few minutes at the close. It is the old familiar
lesson, that cannot be taught too often or taken to heart too
earnestly: that the only way to die the death of the righteous is to
live the life of the righteous.
The Parable of the Talents deals with the same subjects—viz.,
the professed disciples of Christ; only instead of searching the
reality of their inner life, it tests the faithfulness of their
service. As in the former parable so in this, stress is laid on the
time that must elapse before the Lord's return. The employer of the
servants travels "into a far country"; and it is "after a long time"
(ver. 19) that "He cometh, and reckoneth with them." Similarly, in the
cognate parable of "the pounds," reported by St. Luke, we are told that it was
There is evidence that within a short time some Christians in
Thessalonica fell into this very temptation,—so much so as to render
it necessary that the apostle Paul should write them a letter, his
second epistle, for the express purpose of reproving them and setting
them right. His first Epistle to the Thessalonians had laid stress on
the suddenness of the Lord's coming, as Christ Himself does again and
again throughout this discourse; but the result was that some of them,
confounding suddenness with imminence, gave themselves up to idle
waiting or feverish expectancy, to the neglect even of the most
ordinary duties. To meet this he had to call attention to the divine
ordinance, that "if any would not work, neither should he eat," and to
enforce it with all the authority of Christ Himself: "Now them that
are such (viz., those excited "busybodies" "working not at all") we
command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they
work, and eat their own bread" (
All this helps us to see how necessary it was that the parable of
waiting should be followed by a summons to work, and to admire the
marvellous insight of our Lord into human nature in recognising
beforehand where hidden dangers would lurk in His people's path.
The parable assumes that all disciples are servants of Christ, and that all of them have work for Christ to do. There is no reason, however, for narrowing the field of service to what is in current phrase distinctively spoken of as "Christian work." All the work of Christian people should be Christian work, and is Christian work, if it be done as it ought to be done, "as to the Lord." There must evidently, however, be the desire and purpose to "serve the Lord Christ," whatever the nature of the service be.
The talents signify ability and opportunity. We must beware of using
the word in any limited or conventional sense. In ordinary
conversation the word is generally applied to abilities above the
average, as, for example, when a man of more than ordinary ability is
spoken of as "a man of talent," or "a talented man." The word ability,
indeed, is used in the same way. "A man of ability," "an able man,"
means a man able to do more than most people can; whereas, properly
speaking, and in the sense of the parable, a man who is
The gradations of five, two, one, appropriately correspond to what we
speak of as superior, ordinary and inferior ability. At this point
occurs the main distinction between this parable and the similar one
of the pounds, spoken at a different time and with a different
purpose. Here the servants all differ at first, but the faithful ones
are alike in the end, inasmuch as they have done equally well in
proportion to their ability. There the servants are all alike at the
beginning, but the faithful ones receive different awards, inasmuch as
they have differed in the degree of their diligence and faithfulness.
The two together bring out with striking clearness and force the great
thought that not success but faithfulness is what the Lord insists on.
The weakest is at no disadvantage; he may not only do as well as the
strongest, but if the
It is in keeping with the difference in the scope of the two parables that in the one the sums entrusted should be large (talents), in the other, small (pounds). In the parable which has for its main lesson, "Make the most of the little you have," the amounts entrusted are small; while the large sums are fitly found in the parable which emphasizes what may be called the other side of the great lesson, "To whom much is given, of them much shall be required."
Confining our attention now to the parable before us, we have first
the encouraging side in the cases of two of the servants. The number
is evidently chosen as the very smallest that would bring out the
truth that where abilities differ the reward will be the same, if only
the diligence and faithfulness be equal. It is quite probable, indeed,
that the number of servants thought of was more than three, perhaps
ten, In the parable of the pounds the number of
servants is ten, and there, too, only three are selected as
examples.
These two faithful servants lost no time in setting to work. This
appears in the Revised Version, where the word "straightway" is
restored to its right place, indicating that immediately on receiving
the five talents the servant began diligently to use them (ver. 16,
R.V.). The servant with the two talents acted "in like manner" (ver.
17). The result was that each doubled his capital, and each received
the same gracious welcome and high promotion when their lord returned
(vv. 20-23). They had been unequally successful; but inasmuch as this
Whereupon Dante himself says:
It is not suggested, however, in the parable that
As in the parable of the Virgins, so here, the force increases as we pass from encouragement to warning. The closing scene is solemn and fearful. That the man with one talent should be selected as an illustration of unfaithfulness is very significant—not certainly in the way of suggesting that unfaithfulness is more likely to be found among those whose abilities are slender and opportunities small; but so as to make it plain that, though all due allowance is made for this, it can in no case be accepted as an excuse for want of faithfulness. It is just as imperative on the man with one talent, as on him with five, to do what he can. Had the illustration been taken from one with higher endowments, it might have been thought that the greatness of the loss had something to do with the severity of the sentence; but, as the parable is constructed, no such thought is admissible: it is perfectly clear that it is no question of gain or loss, but simply of faithfulness or unfaithfulness: Hast thou done what thou couldst?
The offence here is not, as in the first of the four pictures of
judgment, painted in dark colours. There
At this point there is an instructive contrast between the parable of
the Virgins and the one before us. There the foolish virgins failed
because they took their duties too easily; here the servant fails
because he thinks his duties too hard. Bearing this in mind, we
recognise the appropriateness of the Lord's answer. He might have
found fault with his excuse, showing him how easily he might have
known that his ideas of his Master were entirely wrong, and how if he
had only addressed himself to the work to which he was called, his
difficulties would have disappeared and He would have found the
service easily within his powers; but the Master waives all this,
accepts the hard verdict
Then follows doom. Instead of promotion, degradation: "take the talent from him." And in this there is no arbitrary punishment, no penalty needing to be inflicted—it comes as the result of a great law of the universe, according to which unused powers fall into atrophy, paralysis, and death; while on the other hand faithful and diligent use of power enlarges it more and more: "Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." As the necessary and natural sequel to promotion in service was the joy of the Lord, so the natural and necessary sequel of degradation is the "outer darkness," where "there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."
As in the Sermon on the Mount, and again in the last discourse in the Temple, so here, the language rises into a strain of great majesty and sublimity as the prophecy draws to a close. No one can fail to recognise it. This vision of judgment is the climax of the teaching of the Lord Christ. Alike for magnificence and for pathos it is unsurpassed in literature. There is no departure from His wonted simplicity of style. As little here as everywhere else do we recognise even a trace of effort or of elaboration; yet as we read there is not a word that could be changed, not a clause that could be spared, not a thought that could be added with advantage. It bears the marks of perfection, whether we look at it from the point of view of the Speaker's divinity or from the point of view of His humanity. Divine in its sublimity, it is most human in its tenderness. "Truly this was the Son of God." Truly this was the Son of man.
The grandeur of the passage is all the more impressive by contrast with what immediately follows: "And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, He said unto His disciples, Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified." Into such an abyss was the Son of man looking when in language so calm, so confident, so majestic, so sublime, He spoke of sitting on the throne of His glory as the Judge of all mankind. Did ever man speak like this Man?
It is significant that even when speaking of the coming glory He still
retains His favourite designation, "the Son of man." In this we see
one of the many minute coincidences which show the inner harmony of
Nothing could be more impressive than the picture set before us of the
throne of glory, on which is seated the Son of man with all the angels
around Him and all nations gathered before Him. It is undoubtedly the
great assize, the general judgment of mankind. No partial judgment can
it be, nothing less than the great event referred to in that passage
already quoted from St. John's Gospel, where after speaking of
judgment being committed to the Son of man, it is added: "Marvel not
at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the graves
shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good,
unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the
resurrection of damnation." This view of the passage is supported not
only by the universality implied throughout and expressed in the term
"all the nations It is not forgotten that the word translated
"nations" is commonly applied to the Gentiles as distinguished from
the Jews; but clearly there is no such limitation here. No
commentator, at least of any note, suggests that the Jews as a nation
are not among the nations gathered around the throne.
It seems quite certain, then, that whatever subsequent unfoldings there may be in the later books of the New Testament as to the order in which judgment shall proceed, there is no intention here of anticipating them. It is true that the preceding parables have each given a partial view of the judgment,—the first as affecting those in office in the Church, the second and third as applied to the members of the Church; but just as those specially contemplated in the first parable are included in the wider scope of the second and third, so these contemplated in the second and third are included in the universal scope of the great judgment scene with which the whole discourse is fitly and grandly concluded.
In this great picture of the final judgment the prominent thought is
separation: "He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd
divideth his sheep from the goats: and He shall set the sheep on His
right hand, but the goats on the left." How easily and with what
unerring certainty the separation is made—as easily and as
surely as the shepherd divideth
The dividing line is one entirely new. All nations are there; but not as nations are they divided now. This is strikingly suggested in the original by the change from the neuter (nations, ἔθνη) to the masculine (them, αὐτοὺς), indicating as by a sudden flash of unexpected light that not as nations, but as individuals, must all be judged. The line is one which crosses all other lines that have divided men from one another, so that of all ranks and conditions of men there will be some on the right and some on the left. Even the family line will be crossed, so that husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, may be found on opposite sides of it. What, then, is this new and final line of separation? The sentence of the King will mark it out for us.
It is the first and only time that Jesus calls Himself the King. He
has displayed His royalty in His acts; He has suggested it in His
discourses and His parables; He has claimed it by the manner of His
entry into His capital and His temple; He will afterwards assent when
Pilate shall ask Him the plain question; but this is the only place
where He uses the title in speaking of Himself. How significant and
impressive is this! It is as if He would once for all before He
suffered disclose the fulness of His majesty.
We must think of Him now as all radiant with His royal glory—that visage which was "so marred more than any man" now shining with celestial light—that Form which was distorted "more than the sons of men," now seen to be the very "form of God," "the chiefest among ten thousand" of the highest angels round Him, "altogether lovely," the personal embodiment of that glorious kingdom He has been preparing through all the centuries from the foundation of the world—disclosed at last as the answer to every longing soul, the satisfaction of every pure desire,—the King.
All this we must realise before we can imagine the awful gulf which
lies between these simple words, "Depart" and "Come." That sweet word
"Come"—how He has repeated and repeated it through all these
ages, in every possible way, with endless variations! Spoken so
tenderly with His own human lips, it has been taken up and given forth
by those whom He has sent in His name: the Spirit has said "Come"; the
Bride has said "Come"; the hearers have said "Come"; whosoever would,
has been invited to come. The music of the word has never died away.
But now its course is nearly run. Once more it will ring out; but with
a difference. No longer now to all. The line of separation has been
drawn, and across "the great
In the contrast between these two words, there already is involved all that follows: all the joy of the welcome—"Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world"; all the horror of the doom—"Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
Still the great question remains unanswered, What is the dividing line? Inasmuch as this belongs to the hidden man of the heart, to the secrecy of consciousness and conscience, the only way in which it could be made to appear in a picture parable of judgment such as this, is by the introduction of such a conversation as that which follows the sentence in each case. The general distinction between the two classes had been suggested by the simile of the sheep and the goats—the one white, the other black, the one obedient, the other unruly; but it is made much more definite by this dramatic conversation. We call it dramatic, because we regard it as extreme bondage to the letter to suppose this to be a prediction of the words that will actually be used, and therefore look upon it simply as intended to represent, as nothing else could, the new light which both the righteous and the wicked will then see suddenly flashed upon their life on earth, a light so full and clear and self-interpreting that there cannot but be unquestioning acquiescence in the justice of the final award.
There are those who, looking at this conversation
In answer to such a perversion of our Lord's language it should surely
be enough to call attention to the fact that all is made to turn upon
the treatment of Christ by the one class and by the other. Kindness to
the poor comes in, not as in itself the ground of the division, but as
furnishing the evidence or manifestation of that devotion to God as
revealed in Christ, which forms the real ground of acceptance, and the
want of which is the sole ground of condemnation. True it is that
Christ identifies Himself with His people, and accepts the kindness
done to the poorest of them as done to Himself; but there is obviously
implied, what is elsewhere in a similar connection clearly expressed,
that the kindness must be done "in the name of a disciple." In other
words, love to Christ must be the motive of the deed of charity, else
it is worthless as a test of true discipleship. The more carefully the
whole passage is read, the more manifest will it be that the great
question which determines the separation is this: "How have you
treated Christ?" It is only to bring out more clearly the real answer
to this question that the other is added: How have you treated
Christ's poor? For according to each man's treatment of these will
have been his treatment of Christ Himself. It is the same principle
applied to the
While there is no encouragement here for those who hope to make up for the rejection of Christ by deeds of kindness to poor people, there is abundant room left for the acceptance at the last of those who had no means of knowing Christ, but who showed by their treatment of their fellow-men in distress that the spirit of Christ was in them. To such the King will be no stranger when they shall see Him on the throne; nor will they be strangers to Him. He will recognise them as His own; and they will recognise Him as the very King of Love for Whom their souls were longing, but Who not till now has been revealed to their delighted gaze. To all such will the gracious words be spoken "Come, ye blessed of My Father"; but they too, as well as all the rest, will be received not on the ground of works as distinguished from faith, but on the ground of a real though implicit faith which worked by love and which was only waiting for the revelation of their King and Lord to make it explicit, to bring it out to light.
Philanthropy can never take the place of faith; and yet no words ever
spoken or written on this earth have done so much for philanthropy as
these. It were vain to attempt, in so brief a sketch, to bring out
even in the way of suggestion the mingled majesty and pathos of the
words of the King to the righteous, culminating in that great
utterance which touches the very deepest springs of feeling and
thrills every fibre of the pure and loving heart: "Inasmuch as ye have
done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done
The scroll of this grand prophecy is finished with the awful words:
"These shall go away into eternal punishment; but the righteous into
eternal life" (R.V.). Eternal punishment, eternal life—such are
the issues which hang upon the coming of the Son of man to judgment;
such are the issues which hang upon the treatment of the Son of man in
these years of our mortal life that are passing over us now. There are
those who flatter themselves with the idea that, because the question
has been raised by honest and candid interpreters of Scripture whether
absolute endlessness is necessarily involved in the word eternal,
therefore these words of doom are shorn of much of their terror; but
surely this is a pitiful delusion. There is no possible way of
reducing the force of the word "eternal" which will bring the
awfulness of the doom within the bounds of any finite imagination; and
whatever may be said as to what the word necessarily implies, whatever
vague surmise there may be that absolute endlessness is not in it,
this much is perfectly certain: that there is not the slightest
suggestion of hope in the words; no straining of the eyes can discern
even the straitest gate out of that eternal punishment into eternal
life. Between the
WE enter now on the story of the last day of the mortal life of our
Lord and Saviour. We have already noticed the large proportionate
space given to the Passion Week; but still more remarkable is the
concentration of interest on the Passion Day. The record of that
single day is very nearly one-ninth of the whole book; and a similar
proportion is observed by all the four Evangelists. This proportion of
space is very striking even when we bear in mind that properly
speaking the Gospels are not the record of thirty-three or thirty-four
years, but only of three or four. Of the story of the years of the
public ministry one-seventh part is given to the last day; and this,
too, without the introduction of any lengthened discourse. If the
discourse in the upper room and the intercessory prayer as recorded by
St. John were added, it would be, not one-seventh, but almost
one-fourth of the whole. Truly this must be the Day of days!
Unspeakably sacred and precious as is the entire life of our Lord and
Saviour, sacred above all and precious above all is His death of shame
and agony. The same pre-eminence was evidently given to the dying of
the Lord Jesus in the special revelation granted to St. Paul, as is
This passage does not strictly belong to the history of the one great
day, but it is the approach to it. It opens with the solemn
announcement "After two days is the feast of the Passover, and the Son
of man is betrayed to be crucified"; and without any record of the
Saviour's doings in the interval, The feast in Bethany did not take place during
this interval, but some days before (see
The incident at Bethany (vv. 6-13) seems to be introduced here in
connection with the development of treason in the soul of Judas. This
connection would
The two days of interval would extend from the evening following the abandonment of the Temple to the evening of the Passover feast. It is important always, and especially in studying the days of the Passion week, to bear in mind that, according to the Jewish mode of reckoning, each new day began, not with the morning as with us, but with the evening. In this they followed a very ancient precedent: "The evening and the morning were the first day." The two days, then, would be from Tuesday evening till Thursday evening; so that with Thursday evening began the last day of our Lord's Passion. There is no record at all of how He spent the Wednesday; in all probability it was in seclusion at Bethany. Nor have we any account of the doings of the Thursday save the directions given to prepare the Passover, the keeping of which was to be the first act of the last day.
We may think of these two days, then, as days of rest for our Lord, of
holy calm and quietude—a sacred lull before the awful storm.
What were His thoughts? what His feelings? What passages of Scripture
were His solace? Would not the ninety-fourth psalm be
The very silence of these two days is strikingly suggestive of repose.
We are presently to hear of the awful agony in the Garden; but from
the very way in which we shall hear of it we shall be strengthened in
the impression, which no doubt is the true one, that the two days of
interval were not days of agony, but
Christ knew far more about it than if there had been a spy in the palace of the high priest, reporting to Him. He was in communication with One Who doeth according to His will in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. Caiaphas and his fellow-conspirators may plot what they please, it shall be done according to the counsel of the Lord; it shall be so done that an apostle shall be able afterwards with confidence to say: "Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken."
The means by which their counsels were overruled was the treason of
Judas, into whose dark heart the
That the name of Judas is not specially
mentioned is probably to be accounted for by the consciousness on the
part of St. Matthew that Judas was not alone in the feeling he
expressed, that he and others of the disciples present sympathised
with him in what he said, so that in fairness he must lay the blame of
the objection not alone on the man who expressly made it, but on the
disciples generally (in St. Mark's Gospel it is "some had
indignation"). We may well suppose that John, the beloved disciple,
would be the least likely of all to sympathise with the objection, and
in this we may see the reason why he should feel no scruple in
singling out the traitor as the man who was audacious enough to
express the feeling of dissatisfaction.
To Judas it meant waste. And such a waste!—three hundred pence thrown away on the foolish luxury of a moment! "This ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor." Be it remembered that there was a good deal to be said for this argument. It is very easy for us, who have the limelight of our Lord's words on the whole scene, to see how paltry the objection was; but even yet, with this story now published, as our Lord said it would be, all over Christendom, how many arguments are heard of the very same description! It is not so much to be wondered at that the objection of Judas found a good deal of favour with some of the disciples. They could not see the blackness of the heart out of which the suggestion came, nor could they see the beauty of the love which shed from Mary's heart a perfume far more precious than the odour of the ointment. Probably even Mary was startled; and, if her Lord had not at once taken her part, might not have had a word to say for herself.
So R.V. The Authorised Version is peculiarly
unhappy at this point. "When Jesus understood it" seems to suggest
that it took Him some time to make out what they were grumbling about.
It is altogether likely that the murmuring was among themselves, and
the speech of Judas was probably spoken not loud enough for Jesus to
hear, but in a low tone to the knot of sympathisers around Him. But
there is no hint in the original of any time elapsing before Jesus
understood the situation. As always, He "knew their thoughts" at once.
We are led into still more sacred ground as we observe how highly the Saviour values Mary's affection for Himself. "She hath wrought a good work upon Me"—"Me ye have not always"—"she did it for My burial." Who can reach the pathos of these sacred words? There is no doubt that amid the hate by which Jesus was surrounded, with His knowledge of the treason in the dark soul of Judas, and His keen sense of the want of sympathy on the part of the other disciples, His human heart was yearning for love, for sympathetic love. Oh, how He loved! and how that love of His was going out to all around Him throughout the Passion week—without return! We may well believe, then, that this outburst of love from the heart of Mary must have greatly cheered Him.
"She hath wrought a good work upon Me." With the ointment on His head, there had come a far sweeter balm to His wounded heart; for He saw that she was not wanting in sympathy—that she had some idea, however vague it might be, of the pathos of the time. She felt, if she did not quite see, the shadow of the grave. And this presentiment (shall we call it?) not as the result of any special thought about it, but in some dim way, had prompted her to choose this touching manner of showing her love: "In that she hath poured this ointment on My body, she did it for My burial." Verily, a true human heart beats here, welcoming, oh! so gladly, this woman's loving sympathy.
But the Divine Spirit is here too, looking far beyond
From "this that this woman hath done" the record passes at once to
that which was done by the man who had dared to find fault with it. It
also is told wherever the gospel is preached as a memorial of him.
Behold, then, the two memorials side by side. Has not the Evangelist
shown himself the true historian in bringing them together? The
contrast intensifies the light that shines from the love of Mary, and
deepens the darkness of the traitor's sin. Besides, the story of the
three hundred pence is a most fitting prelude to that of the thirty
pieces of silver. At the
What was it that made so great a gulf between Judas and all the rest?
Not natural depravity; in this respect they were no doubt much alike.
When the Twelve were chosen there was in all probability as good
material, so to speak, in the man of Kerioth as in any of the men of
Galilee. What, then, made the difference? Simply this, that his heart
was never truly given to his Lord. He tried throughout to serve God
and mammon; and if he had been able to combine the two services, if
there had been any fair prospect of these thrones on which the Twelve
were to sit, and the honours and emoluments of the kingdom with which
his fancy had been dazzled, treason would never have entered his mind;
but when not a throne but a cross began to loom before him, he found,
as every one finds some time, that he must make his choice, and that
choice was what it invariably is with those who try to serve the two
masters. The god of this world had blinded him. He not only failed to
see the beauty of Mary's loving deed, as some of the other disciples
did just at the first, but he had become quite incapable of any
spiritual insight, quite incapable of seeing his Master's glory, or
recognising His claims. In a certain sense, then, even Judas himself
was like the other murderers of Christ in not knowing what he did.
Only he might have known,
As the two days draw to a close we see Judas seeking opportunity to betray his Master, and Jesus seeking opportunity to keep His last Passover with His disciples. Again what a contrast! The traitor must lurk and lie in wait; the Master does not even remain in Bethany or seek some lonely house on the Mount of Olives, but sends His disciples right over into the city, and with the same readiness with which He had found the ass's colt on which He rode into Jerusalem He finds a house in which to keep the feast.
The last day of our Lord's Passion begins at eventide on Thursday with
the Passover feast, We may not enter fully into the vexed question
whether our Lord kept the Passover on the day appointed by law, or
anticipated it by twenty-four hours, as some suppose to be the
necessary inference from the narrative of St. John. It is a long and
intricate subject; but much unnecessary difficulty has been imported
into it by those who fail to realise two important facts: (1) The word
"Passover" is frequently used for the entire Feast of Unleavened Bread
(see
The entire feast would be closely associated in His
It falls naturally into two parts, corresponding to the two great
burdens on the Saviour's heart as He looked forward to this feast—the
Betrayal and the Crucifixion (see ver. 2). The former is the burden of
vv. 21-25; the latter of vv. 26-30. There was indeed very much besides
to tell—the strife which grieved the Master's heart as they took
their places at the table, and His wise and kindly dealing with it
(
The kind intention evidently was to reach the heart of the one without
attracting the attention of the rest. For there must have been a
studied avoidance of any look or gesture that would have marked the
traitor. This is manifest from the way in which the sad announcement
is received. It comes, in fact, to all the eleven as a summons to
great searchings of heart, a
There was one who did not take up the question; but the others were all so occupied with self-scrutiny that no one seems to have observed his silence, and Jesus forbears to call attention to it. He will give him another opportunity to confess and repent, for so we understand the pathetic words which follow: "He that dippeth his hand with Me in the dish, the same shall betray Me." This was no mere outward sign for the purpose of denoting the traitor. It was a wail of sorrow, an echo of the old lament of the Psalmist: "Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me." How could the heart even of Judas resist so tender an appeal?
We shall understand the situation better if we suppose what is more
than probable, See the interesting discussion on the
arrangement of the table in Edersheim, "Life and Times of Jesus the
Messiah," vol. ii., p. 494.
The same spirit is manifest in the words which follow. The thought of consequences to Himself gives Him no concern; "the Son of man goeth, even as it is written of Him;" it is the awful abyss into which His disciple is plunging that fills His soul with horror: "but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born." O Judas! Thy treachery is indeed a link in the chain of events by which the divine purpose is fulfilled; but it was not necessary that so it should be. In some other way the counsel of the Lord would have been accomplished, if thou hadst yielded to that last appeal. It was necessary that the Son of man should suffer and die for the world's sin, but there was nothing to compel thee to have thy hand in it.
At last Judas speaks; but in no spirit of repentance. He takes up, it
is true, the question of the rest, but not in sincerity—only
driven to it as the last refuge of hypocrisy. Moreover, he asks it in
so low a tone, that neither it nor the answer to it appears to have been
2. The Passover meal is drawing to a close; but ere it is ended the
Head of the little family has quite transfigured it. When the traitor
left the company we may suppose that the look of unutterable sadness
would gradually pass from the Saviour's countenance. Up to this time
the darkness had been unrelieved. As he thought of the lost disciple's
fate, there was nothing but woe in the prospect; but when from that
dark future he turned to His own, He saw, not the horror of the Cross
alone, but "the joy set before Him"; and in view of it He was able
with a heart full of thanks and praise to appoint for remembrance of
The connection of the new feast with the old is closely maintained. It was "as they were eating" that the Saviour took bread, and from the way in which He is said to have taken "a cup" (R.V.) it is plain that it was one of the cups it was customary to take at the Paschal feast. With this in mind we can more readily see the naturalness of the words of institution. They had been feasting on the body of the lamb; it is time that they should look directly at the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world; so, taking the new symbol and handing it to them, He says, "Take, eat; this is My body."
How strange that into words so simple there should have been imported
anything so mysterious and unnatural as some of the doctrines around
which controversy in the Church has raged for weary
centuries—doctrines sadly at variance with "the simplicity that
is in Christ." The high Sacramentarian view of the Lord's
Supper is not only at variance with the simple and obvious meaning of
the central words of institution, but seems to disregard in the most
wanton manner the plainest statements of the very authority on which
the ordinance is based. According to the Gospel it was "as they were
eating" that Jesus took the bread and gave it to the disciples;
according to the Ritualist it ought to be before anything else has
touched the lips. For their mystical act of consecration on the part
of the priest, all they can find either in gospel or epistle is the
simple giving of thanks (that "blessed" of ver. 26 is the same act
precisely is obvious by comparing the corresponding passages in the
other Gospels and in the first Epistle to the Corinthians—xi.
24); while in opposition to the emphatic "Drink ye all of it"
the cup has been refused by the Church of Rome to the great majority
of her communicants!
The new symbols were evidently much more suitable to the ordinance which was to be of world-wide application. Besides, it was no longer necessary that there should be further sacrifice of life. Christ our Passover was sacrificed once for all; and therefore there must be no thought of repetition of the sacrifice; it must be represented only; and this is done both simply and impressively in the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the wine. Nothing could be more natural than the transition from the old to the new Passover feast.
Rising now above all matters of detail and questions of
interpretation, let us try humbly and reverently to enter into the
mind of Christ as He breaks the bread and pours the wine and
institutes the feast of love. As in the earlier part of the evening we
had in His
Consider first how extraordinary it was that at such a time He should take pains to concentrate the thoughts of His disciples in all time to come upon His death. Even the bravest of those who had been with Him in all His temptations could not look at it now; and to His own human soul it must have seemed in the very last degree repulsive. To the disciples, to the world, it must have seemed defeat; yet He calmly provides for its perpetual celebration as a victory!
Think of the form the celebration takes. It is no mournful solemnity,
with dirges and elegies for one about to die; but a Feast—a
strange way of celebrating a death. It may be said that the Passover
feast itself was a precedent; but in this respect there is no
parallel. The Passover feast was no memorial of a death. If Moses had
died that night, would it ever have occurred to the children of Israel
to institute a feast for the purpose of keeping in memory so
unutterable a calamity? But a greater than Moses is here, and is soon
to die a cruel and shameful death. Is not that a calamity as much more
dreadful than the other as Christ was greater than Moses? Why, then,
celebrate it by a feast? Because this death is no calamity. It is the
means of life to a great multitude that no man can number, out of
every kindred and tongue and people and nation. Therefore it is most
fitly celebrated by a feast. It is a memorial; but it is far more. It
is a feast, provided for the spiritual nourishment of the people of
God through all their generations. Think what must
How marvellously the horizon widens round Him as the feast proceeds! At first He is wholly engaged with the little circle round the table. When He says, "One of you shall betray Me," when He takes the sop and hands it, when He pours out His last lament over the false disciple, He is the Man of Sorrows in the little upper chamber; but when He takes the bread and again the cup, the horizon widens, beyond the cross He sees the glory that shall follow, sees men of all nations and climes coming to the feast He is preparing for them, and before He closes He has reached the consummation in the heavenly kingdom: "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 Father's kingdom." "Truly this was the Son of God."
Then hear Him singing at the close. How bewildered the disciples, how
rapt the Master, must have been! What a scene for the painter, what a
study of divine calm and human agitation! The "hymn" they sang was in
all probability the latter part of the Great Hallel, which closes with
As the little company have lingered in the upper room evening has
passed into night. The city is asleep, as Jesus leads the way along
the silent streets, down the steep slope of Moriah, and across the
Kedron, to the familiar place of resort on the mount of Olives. As
they proceed in silence, a word of ancient prophecy lies heavy on His
heart. It was from Zechariah, whose prophecy was often See
The silly sheep were not at all alarmed. This was altogether natural; for the danger was not yet within their sight. Nor was it really at all unnatural that the impulsive Peter should be now at the very opposite pole of feeling from where he stood an hour or two before. Then, sharing the general depression, he joined the rest in the anxious question, "Lord, is it I?" now, having been relieved from the anxiety which for the moment pressed upon him, and having been moreover raised into a glow of feeling and an assurance of faith by his Master's tender and stirring words, and the prayer of intercession which so fitly closed them, he has passed from the depths of self-distrust to the heights of self-confidence, so that he even dares to say, "Though all men shall be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended."
Ah! Peter, you were safe when you were crying "Lord, is it
I?"—you are very far from safe now, when you speak of yourself
in so different a tone. Jesus sees it all, and gives him warning in
the very plainest words. But Peter persists. He vainly imagines that
his Master cannot know how strong he is, how burning his zeal, how
warm his love, how steadfast his devotion. Of all this he is himself
distinctly conscious. There is no mistake about it. Devotion thrills
in every fibre of his being; and he knows, he feels it in his soul,
that no torture, not death itself, could move him from his
steadfastness: "Though I should die with Thee, yet will I not deny
Thee." "Likewise also said all the
And now Gethsemane is reached. The olive trees which in the daytime
give a shadow from the heat will now afford seclusion, though the moon
is at the full. Here, then, the Son of man will spend some time with
God, alone, before He is betrayed into the hands of sinners; and yet,
true Son of man as He is, He shrinks from being left alone in that
dread hour, and clings to the love and sympathy of those who have been
with Him in His temptations hitherto. So He leaves eight of the
disciples at the entering in of the olive grove, and takes with Him
into the darkness the three most in sympathy with Him—the same three
who had been sole witnesses of His power in raising from the dead the
daughter of Jairus, and had alone seen His glory on the holy mount.
But even these three cannot go with Him all the way. He will have them
as near as possible; and yet He must be alone. Did He think of the
passage, "I have trodden the winepress Gethsemane means oil-press.
That solitude may not be invaded. We can only, like the disciples of
old, look reverently at it from afar. There are probably many true
disciples who can get no nearer than the edge of the darkness; those
who are closest in sympathy may be able to obtain a nearer
While it is not possible for any of us to penetrate the deep recesses of Gethsemane, we have a key to let us in, and open to us something of its meaning. This help is found in that striking passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the experience of the Lord Jesus in the Garden is closely connected with His being "called of God an High Priest after the order of Melchisedec." It is true that at His baptism Jesus entered on His ministry in its largest sense, the Prophet, Priest, and King of men. But there is a sense in which later on, at successive stages, He was "called of God" to each of these offices in succession. At His baptism the voice from heaven was, "This is My Beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased." On the mount of Transfiguration there was this added, "Hear ye Him," and the withdrawal of Moses and Elias, leaving Jesus alone, indicated that henceforth He was called of God to be the one prophet of humanity. Similarly, though from the beginning He was King, it was not till after He had overcome the sharpness of death that He was "called of God" to be King, to take His seat on the right hand of majesty in the heavens. At what period, then, in His ministry was it that He was called of God to be an high priest? To this natural question the passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews supplies the answer; and when we take the thought with us we see that it is indeed a torch to lighten for us just a little the darkness of the Garden's gloom.
But why the agony? The difficulty has always been to account for the sudden change from the calmness of the Paschal feast to the awful struggle of Gethsemane. What had happened meanwhile to bring about so great a change? There was light in the upper chamber—it was dark in the Garden; but surely the darkness and the light were both alike to Him; or if to His human heart there was the difference we all are conscious of, it could not be that the mere withdrawal of the light destroyed His peace. It is altogether probable that both the previous nights had been spent on this same mount of Olives, and there is no hint of agony then. It is true that the prospect before Him was full of unutterable horror; but from the time He had set His face to go up to Jerusalem it had been always in His view, and though at times the thought of it would come over Him as a cold wave that made Him shudder for the moment, there had been up to this hour no agony like this, and not a trace of pleading that the cup might pass.
May we not, then, reverently conceive of Him as in that hour taking on
Him the sin of the world, in a more intimate sense than He had ever
done before? "He bare our sins in His own body on the tree." In a
certain sense He had borne the burden all His life, for He had
throughout endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself; but
in some special sense manifestly He bore it on the tree. When did He
in that special sense take the awful burden on Him? Was it not in the
Garden of Gethsemane? If so, can we wonder that the Holy One shrank
from it, as He never shrank from simple suffering? To be identified
with sin—to be "made sin," as the apostle puts it—how His
soul revolted from it! The cup of sorrow He could take without a
murmur; but to take on Him the intolerable load of the world's
sin—from this He shrank with all the recoil of stainless purity,
with all the horror of a heart that could not bear the very thought.
It was not the weakness of His flesh, but the purity of His spirit,
that made Him shrink, that wrung from Him once and again, and yet
again, the cry, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from
Me." It was a new temptation, three times repeated, like that old one
in the wilderness. That assault, as we found, was
Observe the emphatic word, "began to be
sorrowful" (ver. 37).
It must have been a great aggravation of His agony that even the three disciples could not enter into sympathy with Him, even so much as to hold their eyes waking. True, they were very weary, and it was most natural that they should be heavy with sleep; but had they had even a faint conception of what that agony of their Master meant they could not possibly have slept; and we can well fancy that in that hour of anguish the Saviour must have called to mind from the Book of Psalms, with which He was so perfectly familiar, the sad lament: "Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none."
But though He keenly feels His loneliness, His thoughts are far less
of Himself than of them. Realising so vividly the horrors now so close
at hand, He sees, from the very possibility of their sleeping, how
utterly unprepared they are for what awaits them, so He summons them
to "watch and pray," to be on the alert against sudden surprise, and
to keep in constant
And we cannot but agree with those who see in what He said when He
returned for the last time to the three, not irony, no touch of
sarcasm, but the same tender consideration He has shown throughout.
From the Garden they could easily see the city in the moonlight across
the ravine. As yet there was no sign of life about it: all was quiet;
there was therefore no reason why they should not for the few moments
that might remain to them sleep on now and take their rest. But it can
only be for a short time, for "the hour is at hand." We may, then,
think of the three lying down to sleep, as the eight had probably been
doing throughout, while Jesus, from whose mortal eyes sleep was
banished now for ever, would watch until He saw the gleam of lanterns
and torches as of men from the city coming down the hill, and then He
would wake them and say, "Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand
that doth betray Me."
The arrest immediately follows the agony; and with it, begins the
outward shame and torture of the Passion. The time has now come when
all the indignities and cruelties of which Jesus had spoken to His
disciples "apart in the way" (see xx. 17-19) shall be heaped upon Him.
But none of these things move Him. The inward shame and torture had
almost been too much for Him. His soul had been "exceeding sorrowful,
even unto death"; so that He was in danger
When the armed men approach, He goes calmly out to meet them. Even the
traitor's kiss He does not resent; but only takes occasion to make one
more appeal to that stony heart, "Comrade," The word "friend" is too strong. It is not the
same word our Lord uses when He says: "I have not called you servants,
I have called you friends"; it is a word which indicates not
heart-friendship, but that familiar intercourse which is supposed to
take place only between friends. The selection of the word is a
striking illustration of our Lord's carefulness of the claims of
sincerity and truth, while He is anxious if possible to use a word
that will touch the traitor's heart.
At this point probably occurred an incident of the arrest recorded only in the fourth Gospel, the recoil of the mob when Jesus confronted them and acknowledged Himself to be the man whom they were seeking. Though this is not mentioned here, we recognise the effect of it upon the disciples. It would naturally embolden them when, on the second advance, they saw their Master in the hands of these men, to ask, "Lord, shall we smite with the sword?" And it was most characteristic that "one of them" (whom we should have recognised, even though St. John had not mentioned his name) should not wait for the answer, but should smite at once.
All is excitement and commotion. Jesus alone is calm. In such a sea of
trouble, behold the Man! See the heart at leisure from itself to care
for and to cure the wounded servant of the high priest (
The reference to the Scriptures was probably intended not only to
explain His non-resistance, but also to support the faith of His
disciples when they saw Him bound and carried off. Had they known the
Scriptures as under His teaching they might well have known them, not
only would they have seen that "thus it must be," but they would have
had before them the sure prospect of His rising from the dead on the
third day. But in their case the Scriptures were appealed to in vain;
they had not the faith of their Master to venture on the sure Word of
God; and so, hope failing, "all the disciples forsook Him and fled."
Not all finally, however, even for that dark night; for though faith
and hope failed, there remained love enough in the hearts of two to
make them presently stop and think, and then turn slowly and follow
from afar. Only Peter is mentioned here as doing this, because the
sequel concerns him; but that John also went to the
The night is not yet over, and therefore there can be no formal meeting of the Jewish council, according to an excellent law which enacted that all cases involving the death penalty should be tried in the daytime. This law was, quite characteristically, observed in the letter, transgressed in the spirit; for though the formal sentence was deferred till morning (xxvii. 1), the real trial was begun and ended before the dawn. The reference by St. Matthew to both sessions of the council enables us clearly to understand what would otherwise have appeared a "manifest discrepancy" between his account and that of St. Luke, the former speaking of the trial as having taken place in the night, while the latter tells us it only began "as soon as it was day."
Our Evangelist shows himself to be a true historian in that, while
disposing of the formal morning session in half a sentence, he gives a
full account of the night conclave which really settled all. They
proceed in a thoroughly characteristic manner. Having secured their
prisoner, they must first agree upon the charge: what shall it be? It
was no easy matter; for not only had his life been stainless, but He
had shown consummate skill in avoiding all the entanglements which had
been set for Him; and besides, it so happened that nothing they could
prove conclusively against Him, such as His breaking the letter of the
Sabbath law, or rather of their traditions, would suit their purpose,
for they would run the risk on the one hand of calling fresh attention
to the works of healing which had made so deep an impression on the
popular mind, and on the
We may wonder perhaps that a court so unscrupulous should have made so
much of the difficulty of getting witnesses to agree. Could they not,
for other "thirty pieces of silver," have purchased two that would
have served their purpose? But it must be remembered that men in their
position had to pay some respect to decency; and from their point of
view to pay a man for helping to arrest a criminal was an entirely
different transaction from giving money to procure false witness.
Besides, there were men of the council who did not "consent to the
counsel and deed of them" (see
When, therefore, the attempt to found a charge on the testimony of witnesses against Him failed, the only hope was to force Him, if possible, to incriminate Himself. The high priest accordingly addresses himself to the prisoner, and attempts to induce Him to say something which might tend to clear up the confusion of the witnesses' testimony. It was evident that something had been said about destroying the temple and building it in three days—would He not state exactly what it was? "But Jesus held His peace." He would not plead before such a tribunal, or acknowledge the irregular appeal by so much as a single word.
Silence is now impossible. The high priest has given Him the opportunity of proclaiming His gospel in presence of the council, and He will not lose it, though it seal His condemnation. "He cannot deny Himself." In the most emphatic manner He proclaims Himself the Christ, the Son of God, and tells them that the time is coming when their positions shall be reversed—He their Judge, they summoned to His bar: "Henceforth ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven." (R.V.). What light must have been in His eye, what majesty in His mien, as He spoke those thrilling words! And who shall limit their power? Who of us shall be surprised to find members of that very conclave among the ransomed of the Lord in the New Jerusalem? They might not heed His words that night, but three days after would they not recall them? And fifty days after that again—who can tell?
Meantime the only result is to produce real or affected horror. "The high priest rent his clothes," thereby expressing in a tragic manner how it tore his heart to hear such "blasphemy"; and with one consent, or at least with no voice raised against it, He is condemned to death.
The council have now done with Him for the night, and He is handed
over to the custody of the guard and the servants of the high priest.
Then follows that awful scene, which cannot be recalled without a shudder.
Where is Peter now? We left him following afar off. He has summoned up
courage enough to follow on into the court of the high priest's
palace, and to mingle among the people there. If he had been let
alone, he would with John have in some measure retrieved the disgrace
of all the disciples forsaking their Master in "that night on which He
was betrayed"; but it has been necessary to rally all the remnants of
his bravery to come so far, and now he has none of it to spare.
Besides, he is very tired, and shivering with cold—in no
condition, verily, for anything heroic. Who is there of us will cast
the first stone at him? There are those that speak of him in a tone of
contempt as "quailing before a servant maid," as if the meanness of
the occasion were not the very thing which made it so hard for him.
Had he been summoned to the presence of the high priest, with all the
eyes of the council fastened on him, his tired feeling would have left
him all at once, his pulse would have beat fast, the excitement would
have stirred him so that no fire of coals would have been needed to
warm him, and he might then have acquitted himself in a manner worthy
of the rock-apostle; but to be suddenly met with a woman's question
sprung upon him unawares, with nobody he cared for looking on, with
nothing to rouse his soul from the prostration into which it had been
cast by the suddenness of what
What a lesson of charity is here! Suppose for a moment that one of the
Marys had been standing near, and heard Peter denying his Master with
oaths and curses, what would her thought of him have been? What else
could it have been than a thought of sorrowful despair? She would have
felt constrained, however reluctantly, to place him, not with the
timid ten, but alongside of "Judas who betrayed Him." Yet she would
have been wrong; and many good people are quite wrong when they judge
disciples of Christ by what they see of them when at their worst.
After all Peter was true at heart; and though from such an abyss he
could never have recovered himself, he was so linked to his Master by
the true devotion of the days of old that he could not fall utterly
away. It was quite otherwise with Judas. His heart had been set on his
covetousness throughout, while Peter in his inmost soul was loyal and
true. His Master has prayed for him that his faith fail not. His
courage has failed; and if that faith which is the only sure
foundation for enduring courage had utterly failed too, his case would
have been hopeless indeed. But it has not; there is still a link to
bind him to the Lord, Whom in word he is denying for
The formal meeting of the council in the morning would not occupy many minutes. The death sentence had been already agreed upon, and it only remained to take the necessary steps to carry it into effect. Hence the form in which the Evangelist records the morning session: "All the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put Him to death." This could not have passed as a minute of the meeting; but it was none the less a true account of it. As, however, the law forbade their inflicting the death penalty, "when they had bound Him, they led Him away, and delivered Him to Pontius Pilate the governor."
This delivering up of Jesus is a fact of the Passion on which special
stress is laid in the sacred records. It seems, indeed, to have
weighed on the mind of Jesus Himself as much as the betrayal, as would
appear from the manner in which, as He was nearing Jerusalem, He told
His disciples what He should suffer there: "Behold, we go up to
Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief
priests and scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver
It may be, indeed, that it was the seeing of his own sin as mirrored
in the conduct of the council which roused at last the traitor's
sleeping conscience. As he saw his late Master led away bound, "as a
lamb to the slaughter," these very words may have come back to his
memory: "They shall deliver the Son of man to the Gentiles to mock,
and to scourge, and to crucify." It is quite possible, indeed, that
the man of Kerioth was too good a Jew to have been willing to sell his
Master to Pilate directly. But now he sees that that is just what he
has done. We have no sympathy with those who imagine that Judas only
intended to give his Master an opportunity of displaying His power and
asserting His rights in a manner that would secure at once the
allegiance of the people; but though we see
"He repented himself," so we read in our version; but that it is no true repentance the more expressive Greek makes plain, for the word is quite distinct from that which indicates "repentance after a godly sort." Had there been in his heart any spring of true repentance its waters would have been unsealed long ere this—at the Table, or when in the Garden he heard his Master's last appeal of love. Not love, but fear, not godly sorrow, but very human terror, is what moves him now; and therefore it is not to Jesus that he flies—had he even now gone up to Him, and fallen at His feet and confessed his sin, he would have been forgiven—but to his accomplices in crime. Fain would he undo what he has done; but it is impossible! What he can do, however, he will; so he tries to get the chief priests to take back the silver pieces. But they will have nothing to do with them or with him. To his piteous confession they pay no heed; let him settle his own accounts with his own conscience: "What is that to us? see thou to that."
He is now alone; shut up to himself; alone with his
The chief priests have not yet come to themselves. They will
by-and-by, whether after the manner of the prodigal or after the
manner of the traitor time will show; but meanwhile they are in the
full career of their sin, and can therefore as yet consult to very
good purpose. It was not at all a bad way of getting out of their
difficulty with the money found in the sanctuary, to buy with it a
place to bury strangers in; but little did they dream that when the
story of it should be told thereafter to the world they would be
discovered to have unconsciously fulfilled a prophecy (
From the end of the traitor Judas we return to the issue of the
nation's treason. "Now Jesus stood before the governor." The full
study of Jesus before Pilate belongs rather to the fourth Gospel, which
It is most instructive at this point to note the
extreme condensation of this report of the trial before Pilate. This
is especially noticeable at the first stage of the trial. In the
fuller reports by St. John (xviii. 29-38) we find indeed the question,
"Art thou king of the Jews?" (v. 33), and the answer, "Thou sayest"
(v. 37); but how much more besides! So is it beyond question in many
other places where there is not the same opportunity of supplying what
has been omitted. If this were always borne in mind in reading the
Gospels, we should avoid many difficulties, which have often
needlessly perplexed the best of people. There is often much to read
between the lines, and not only so, but much between the lines we
cannot read, the knowledge of which would make crooked things straight
and rough places plain. The difficulty of accurately realising a
complex scene from a report of it which, however accurate, is highly
condensed, ought to be always present to the minds of readers of the
Gospels, and ought to be a check on those who attribute to the
"mistakes" of the writers what in all probability is due to the
ignorance of the readers—ignorance, it may be, of some little
matter of detail, or some comparatively unimportant saying, the
knowledge of which would at once clear up a difficulty which to the
unaided imagination may appear insoluble.
As before the council, so before Pilate, our Lord speaks, or is
silent, according as the question affects His mission or Himself. When
asked of His Kingship, He answers in the most decided manner ("Thou
sayest" was a strong affirmation, as if to say "Certainly I am"); for
on this depends the only hope of salvation for Pilate—for His
accusers—for all. He will by no means disown or shrink from
acknowledging the mission of salvation on which His Father has sent
Him, though it may raise against Him the cry of blasphemy in the
council, and of treason in the court; but when He is asked what He has
to say for Himself, in the way of answer to the charges made against
Him, He is
Pilate had no personal grudge against Jesus, and had sense enough to recognise at once that the claims of Kinghood advanced by his prisoner did not touch the prerogatives of Cæsar—had penetration also to see through the motives of the chief priests and elders (ver. 18), and therefore was not at all disposed to acquiesce in the demand made on him for a summary condemnation. Besides, he was not without fears, which inclined him to the side of justice. He was evidently impressed with the demeanour of his prisoner. This appears even in the brief narrative of our Evangelist; but it comes out very strikingly in the fuller record of the fourth Gospel. His wife's influence, too, was used in the same direction. She evidently had heard something about Jesus, and had taken some interest in Him, enough to reach the conviction that He was a "righteous man." It was as yet quite early in the morning, and she may not have known till after her husband had gone out that it was for the trial of Jesus he was summoned. Having had uneasy dreams, in which the Man Who had impressed her so much was a leading figure, it was natural that she should send him a hasty message, so as to reach him "while he was sitting on the judgment seat" (R.V.). This message would reinforce his fears, and increase his desire to deal justly with his extraordinary prisoner.
On the other hand, Pilate could not afford to refuse
It was a most ingenious device, and affords a striking example of the
astuteness of the procurator. Barabbas may have had some following in
his "sedition"; but evidently he was no popular hero, but a vulgar
robber or bandit, whose release was not at all likely to be clamoured
for by the multitude; and it was moreover reasonably to be expected
that the chief priests, much as they hated Jesus, would be ashamed to
even hint that He was worse than this wretched criminal. But he did
not know how deep the hatred was with which he had to deal. "He knew
that for envy they had delivered Him;" but he did not know that at the
root of that envy lay the conviction that either Jesus must perish or
they must. They felt that He was "of purer eyes than to behold evil,
and could not look upon iniquity"; and inasmuch as they had made up
their minds to keep their iniquity, they must get rid of Him; they
must seal up these eyes which searched them through and through, they
must silence these tones which, silvery as they were,
The multitudes are only too easily persuaded. Not that they had the dark envy, or anything like the rooted hatred, of their leaders; but what will a careless mob not be prepared to do when excitement prevails and passions are inflamed? It is not at all unlikely that some of the same people who followed the multitude in shouting "Hosanna to the Son of David!" only five days before, would join in the cry which some of the baser sort would be the first to raise, "Crucify Him! crucify Him!" Those who know human nature best—at its basest, as in the hatred of the chief priests and elders; at its shallowest, as in the passions of the fickle crowd—will marvel least at the way in which the alternative of Pilate was received. There is no touchstone of human nature like the cross of Christ; and in the presence of the Holy One of God, sin is forced, as it were, to show itself in all its native blackness and enormity; and what sin is there, however small it seem to be, which if allowed to develop its latent possibility of vileness, would not lead on to this very choice—"Not Jesus, but Barabbas"?
And Pilate, you may wash your hands before the multitude, and say, "I
am innocent of the blood of this just Person"; but it is all in vain.
There is a
The cool of the morning was passing into the heat of the day, as the
soldiers took Jesus and led Him away to be crucified; and the sun was
at the same angle in the western sky when He bowed His head and gave
up the ghost. In the six hours between lay the crisis of the world
(see
All we can hope to do is to find some point of view which may afford a
general survey of the awful scene; and such point of observation we
may perhaps discover
From this point of view we might survey all the four records of the
Crucifixion, and find striking illustrations of our thought in each of
them. As a specimen of this we may refer in passing to the words of
Pilate recorded by St. John alone: "Behold the Man!" and again,
"Behold your King!" In these remarkable utterances the procurator
quite unconsciously furnishes the answer to his own as yet unanswered
questions (
The first is the mockery of the soldiers. A brutal set they must have
been; and their treatment of their victim, as they intended it, is too
revolting even to think of in detail. Yet, had they been inspired by
the loftiest purpose, and been able to look into the meaning of what
they did with the most penetrating insight, they could not have in a
more striking manner illustrated
The next incident is the impressing of Simon of Cyrene to bear His
cross. It was intended as an insult. The service was too degrading
even for any of the rabble of Jerusalem, so they imposed it on this
poor foreigner, coming out of the country. Little did they think that
this same man of Cyrene, who probably had provoked them by showing
some sympathy with the Sufferer, and might by no means grudge the
toil, unjustly forced upon him though it was, should with his two sons
Alexander and Rufus (see
The very name Golgotha, though derived in all probability from the natural appearance of the eminence on which the crosses were erected, has a certain dreary appropriateness, not only because of the horror of the deed, but because the thought is suggested that death's Destroyer gained His victory on death's own ground; and the offering of the potion usually given to deaden pain gave the pale sufferer an opportunity of showing by His refusal of it that not only was the death which ended all a voluntary act, but that each pang of the passion was borne in the resoluteness of a love-constrained will:
The dividing of the garments among the soldiers was a most natural
and ordinary incident; it would seem, indeed, to have been the common
practice at crucifixions; and the fulfilment of prophecy would be the
very last thing that would enter the men's minds as they did it: even
St. Matthew himself, in recording it, does not view it in this light;
for, though he evidently made a point of calling attention to all
fulfilments of prophecy that struck him, he seems to have omitted
this; The reference is inserted in our Authorised
Version, but without sufficient authority. The Revised Version
properly omits it.
The writing on the cross is called "His accusation." So indeed it was;
for it was for this he was condemned: no other charge could be made
good against Him. But it was not His accusation only,—it was His
coronation. In vain the chief priests tried to induce the governor to
change it. "What I have written, I have written," was his answer; and
there it stood, and a better inscription for the cross the apostles
themselves could not have devised. "This is Jesus," the
Saviour—the name above every name. How it must have cheered the
Saviour's heart to know that it was there! "This is Jesus, the King"
never more truly King than when
His position between the two thieves is told as simply as all the rest; yet how full of meaning, not only as fulfilling the Scripture which spoke of Him as "numbered with the transgressors," but as furnishing a most impressive picture of the Friend of Sinners, enduring their revilings, and yet as soon as one of them shows the first signs of coming to a better mind, eagerly granting him forgiveness and eternal life, and receiving him into His kingdom as the firstfruits of His redeemed ones.
Again, the mocking cries of the passers-by are exactly what was to be
expected from the coarse natures of the men; yet each one of them when
seen in the after light of faith becomes a tribute to His praise. As
an illustration of this, listen to the cry which comes out of the
deepest abyss of hatred. Hear these chief priests mocking Him, with
the scribes and elders. With bitter taunt they say, in scorn, "He
saved others; Himself He cannot save." With bitter taunt? In scorn?
Ah, "fools and blind," you little know that you are making a garland
of imperishable beauty to wreathe around His brow! It was indeed most true.
It is high noon; but there, at that place of a skull, a deed is being done, from which the sun must hide his face for shame. "From the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour." The simple-hearted Evangelist has no reflections of his own to offer; he simply records the well-remembered fact, with his usual reticence of feeling, which makes the deep, dread meaning of it only more impressive. For there is not only darkness over all the land; there is darkness in the Sufferer's soul. The agony of the Garden is on Him once again. He sees no longer the faces of the crowd, and the mocking voices are now silent, for the people cannot but feel the solemnising effect of the midday gloom. The presence of man is forgotten, and with it the shame, even the pain: the Redeemer of the world is again alone with God.
Alone with God, and the sin of the world is on Him. "He bare our sins
in His own body on the tree," therefore is it that He must enter even
into the very deepest darkness of the soul, the feeling of separation
from God, the sense of forsakenness, which is so appalling to the
awakened sinner, and which even the sinless One must taste, because of
the burden laid upon Him. To Him it was a pang beyond all others,
forcing from these silent lips the lamentable cry, "My God, My God,
why hast Thou forsaken Me?" There is no reason indeed to suppose that
the Sufferer was really
This sense of forsakenness seems to have had some mysterious connection with the pains of death. In the Garden, where the experience was similar, He said, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death," and now that death is on Him, now that His human spirit is about to sink into the unknown abyss, now that darkness is closing over Him on every side, He feels as if He were forsaken utterly: yet His faith fails not; perhaps He thinks of the words, "Yea the darkness hideth not from Thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee," and though He cannot now say "Father" even, He can at least cry as from the depths, His spirit overwhelmed within Him, "My God, My God." That 22nd Psalm which was certainly in His mind must have suggested thoughts of hope and strength, and ere His spirit leaves the tortured body He has reached the triumphant close of it; for as its opening utterance became His cry of agony, its closing word suggests His shout of victory. The shout is mentioned by St. Matthew; the words we learn from St. John: "It is finished."
From the sixth hour to the ninth the darkness lasted, and at the ninth
hour Jesus yielded up the ghost. The agony is over. The feeling of
separation, of utter loneliness, is gone, for the last word has been,
"Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit"; and as the spirit of the
Son of man returns to the Father's
How appropriate the rending of the veil, "From the top to the bottom,"—rent,
therefore, by no human hand.
The portents at the close, as was natural, impressed the centurion
most; but these are just what make the least impression now, because
we do not see them, and those for whom no veil has been rent by the
Saviour's sacrifice cannot be expected to recognise them. But think of
the other incidents—incidents to which not even the most
sceptical can attach a shadow of doubt: observe how utterly
unconscious the actors were—the soldiers in plaiting the crown
of thorns, Pilate in writing His title, the chief priests in shouting
"He saved others; Himself He cannot save"—and yet how these all,
viewed in a light that did not shine for them,
The reference to the "many women," "beholding afar off," forms a pathetic close to the story of the Great Atonement Day.
NOW that the atoning work of Christ is finished, the story proceeds with rapidity to its close. It was the work of the Evangelist to give the history of the incarnate Son of God; and now that the flesh is laid aside, it is necessary only to give such notes of subsequent events as shall preserve the continuity between the prophetic and priestly work of Christ on earth which it had been His vocation to describe, and the royal work which, as exalted Prince and Saviour, it still remained for Him to do. We need not wonder, then, that the record of the three days should be quite brief, and of the forty days briefer still.
This brevity is a note of truthfulness. The old idea of deliberate
falsehood having been quite given up, reliance is placed, by those who
wish to discredit the gospel witnesses, on the suggestion that the
records of the resurrection are the result of fancy crystallising into
so-called fact. But not only was there no time, between the death of
Christ and the latest date which can be assigned for the writing of
the first Gospel, for the process of crystallisation, but had there
been such a process, the result would have been very different. Had
fancy, and not observation, been the source, how comes it that nothing
is told but what came within the
Day was passing into evening when Jesus "yielded up His spirit"; for the early evening according to the Jewish reckoning began at the ninth hour. It was probably some time after this—perhaps towards the later evening, which began about the twelfth hour (six o'clock)—that Joseph of Arimathæa thought of claiming the body to give it honourable burial. Why should such a duty have fallen to a stranger? Where were the eleven? Had none of them so far recovered from their fear? Where was Peter? might not his penitence for the past have impelled him to come forward now? Where was John? He had taken the mother of Jesus to his own home; but why did he not come back to see what he could do for the sacred body? How can they all leave this tender office to a stranger?
It may be thought by some sufficient answer simply to say, So the Lord
willed it, and so the Scripture was fulfilled which intimated that He
Who had died with the wicked should be "with the rich in His death";
but is there not more than this to be said? Is not the
The sad duty hastily but tenderly and fitly done, a great stone is rolled to the door of the sepulchre, and they depart. But the sepulchre is not deserted yet. What are these figures in the dusk, these women that advance as the others retire? While the two men were busy they have been keeping at a discreet and respectful distance; but now that all is silent at the tomb, they draw nearer, and though night is coming on apace, they cannot leave it, and the story of the long day ends with this pathetic touch: "And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre."
It was the Jewish Sabbath. The Evangelist for some reason avoids the common designation, preferring to speak of it as "the day after the preparation"—whether it was that he shrank from mentioning the Sabbath in such a connection, or whether it was that the great event of the preparation day had such complete possession of his mind that he must date from it, we shall not attempt to decide.
This is the only record we have of that Sabbath day except that St.
Luke tells us that on it the women "rested according to the
commandment." But the enemies of Jesus could not rest. They were
uneasy and troubled now that the deed was done. They could not but
have been impressed with the bearing of their Victim, and with all the
portents which accompanied
The women, having rested on the Sabbath according to the commandment,
knew nothing of what had been done at the tomb that day, so, as they
set out before daybreak on the third morning, they only thought of the
great stone, and wondered how it could be rolled away; but when they
came, the sun just rising as they reached the spot, they found the
stone already rolled away, and an angel of the Lord at the tomb, so
lustrous in the livery of heaven that the keepers had quailed in his
presence and were powerless to interfere. The awe with which the sight
would naturally inspire the women also was mingled with joy as they
heard his kindly greeting and sympathetic words. Altogether worthy of
an angel from heaven are the words he is reported to have spoken.
There is first the tender response to their looks of dread—"Fear
not ye," as if to say, These others well may fear, for there is
nothing in common between them and me; but with you it is different:
"I know that ye seek Jesus, Which was crucified."
At this point we encounter one of the chief difficulties to be found in St. Matthew's record of the resurrection. There are indeed several particulars in this Gospel, as well as in the others, which it is difficult to fit into a connected account embracing all the facts; but as every person of even moderate intelligence knows that the same difficulty is met in comparing various truthful accounts of any great event in which details are many and complex, it is only the most unreasoning prejudice that can find in this an excuse for doubting the credibility of the writers. Rather is this feature of the records a distinct note of truthfulness; for, had it been easy to fit each fact into its exact place in all the other accounts, we should have heard from the very same doubters, and with far better reason, that there was every sign of its being a made-up story. All the four accounts are brief and fragmentary; there is evidently no attempt whatever to relate all that took place, and we should need to know all in order to form a complete picture of the entire series of events which glorified the first Easter Day. We must therefore be content with the four vivid pictures given us, without insisting on what with our imperfect knowledge is perhaps the impossible task of so combining them as to have one great canvas embracing all the details in each of the four.
Those who are anxious to make the most of this difficulty are much
disappointed to find the ninth verse in their way. Wishing to prove a
sharp contradiction, as if the one said the Lord appeared only in
Galilee, and the other that He appeared only in Jerusalem and its
neighbourhood, they are naturally vexed to find one of the Jerusalem
appearances actually mentioned here. The attempt has accordingly been
made to discredit it; but in vain. It stands there an unquestionable
part of the original text. So we must bear in mind that St. Matthew
not only does not assert that it was only in Galilee that our Lord
appeared, but he expressly mentions one appearance in Jerusalem. On
the other hand, while St. Mark mentions no appearance in Galilee, he
does mention the Lord's promise to meet His disciples there, and
leaves it distinctly to be inferred that it was fulfilled. St. Luke,
indeed, makes no mention of Galilee at all; but there is abundance of
room for it: for while he occupies almost all his space with the
record of one day, he tells us in the beginning of his second volume
(
Still the question remains, Why does St. Matthew make so little of
what the others make so much of, and so much of what the others make
so little of? In answer we might first ask whether this was not in
every way to be expected and desired. If, as evidently was the case,
there were manifestations of the risen Lord both in the south and in
the north, and if we were to have several accounts, was it not
desirable that one at least should make it his specialty to bring into
prominence the appearances in the north? And if so, who could do it
more appropriately than Matthew the publican of Galilee? The favour
shown his own northern land had most deeply impressed his mind. It
will be remembered that he passed over entirely the early Judæan
ministry recorded by St. John, and rejoiced in the Galilean ministry
as the dawning of the new Day according to the words of ancient
prophecy (
Furthermore, there is every reason to suppose that it was not till
they met in Galilee that the scattered flock of the disciples was
gathered all together. The appearances in Jerusalem were to
individuals and to little companies; whereas in Galilee it would seem
that He appeared to as many as five hundred at once
The conduct of the chief priests and scribes (vv. 11-15) is the natural sequel of their futile attempt to seal the sepulchre. It is in vain to raise the objection, as some do, that it was too clumsy a device for men so astute; for what else could they do? It was indeed a poor evasion; but, baffled as they were, no better was possible for them. Let the critic say what better expedient they could have thought of, before he assigns its poverty as a reason for discrediting the story. That St. Matthew, and he alone, records it, is sufficiently accounted for by the fact that, his being the first written Gospel, and moreover the Gospel for the Jew, it behoved him to deal with a saying "commonly reported among the Jews until this day"; while its being recorded by him was a sufficient reason why no further notice should be taken of it, when there was so much of greater importance to tell.
THIS brief concluding passage is all St. Matthew gives us of the thirty-nine days which followed the Resurrection and preceded the Ascension. It would seem as if he fully realised that the manifestations of these days belonged rather to the heavenly than to the earthly work of Jesus, and that therefore, properly speaking, they did not fall within his province. It was necessary that he should bear witness to the fact of the Resurrection, and that he should clearly set forth the authority under which the first preachers of the gospel acted. Having accomplished both, he rests from his long labour of love.
That the commission of the eleven was not restricted to this
particular time and place is evident from notices in the other Gospels
(
This consideration is one of many which render it probable that this was the occasion referred to by St. Paul when our Lord was seen by above five hundred brethren at once; for on the one hand there was nothing but a definite appointment that would bring so large a company together at any one point, and on the other hand, when such an appointment was made, it is altogether natural to suppose that the news of it would spread far and wide, and bring together, not the eleven only, but disciples from all parts of the land, and especially from Galilee, where the greater number of them would no doubt reside. That St. Matthew mentions only the eleven may be accounted for by the object he has in view—viz., to exhibit their apostolic credentials; but even in his brief narrative there is one statement which is most easily understood on the supposition that a considerable number were present. "Some doubted," he says. This would seem altogether natural on the part of those to whom this was the only appearance; whereas it is difficult to suppose that any of the eleven could doubt after what they had seen and heard at Jerusalem.
In any case, the doubts were only temporary, and were in all
probability connected with the mode of His manifestation. As on other
occasions, of which particulars are given in other Gospels, the Lord
would suddenly appear to the assembled company; and we can well
understand how, when first His form was seen, He should not be
recognised by all; so that, while all would be solemnised, and bow in
adoration, some
As Galilee was the most convenient place The number at Jerusalem at the time of the
Ascension was only a hundred and twenty (
The choice of a mountain in the north was moreover suitable as
signalising the setting aside of Mount Zion and Jerusalem as the seat
of empire. From this point of view we can see still another reason why
St. Matthew, the Evangelist for the Jew, should mention the formal
St. Matthew alone of the Evangelists uses this
designation.
The words of the Lord on this last occasion are worthy of all that has
gone before. Let all doubters ponder well the significance of this.
Suppose for a
Is there, then, such a swift descent? Are not the reported words of
the risen Lord—not in this Gospel merely, but in all the Gospels—as
noble, as impressive, as divine as any that have been preserved to us,
from the years of His life in the flesh? Search through this Gospel,
and say if there can be found anywhere an utterance that has more of
the King in it, that is more absolutely free from all Jewish
narrowness and from all human feebleness, than this Great Commission
which forms its magnificent close. It is very plain that these simple
artists have their subject still before them. Manifestly they are not
drawing from imagination, but telling what they heard and saw.
There is an unapproachable majesty in the words which makes one shrink
from touching them. They
"All authority hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth" (R.V.). What words are these to come from One Who has just been put to death for claiming to be the king of the Jews! King of kings and Lord of lords is the title now He claims. And yet it is as Son of man He speaks. He does not speak as God, and say, "All authority is Mine": He speaks as the man Christ Jesus, saying, "All authority has been given unto Me"—given as the purchase of His pain: authority in heaven, as Priest with God—authority on earth, as King of men.
Having thus laid broad and deep and strong the foundations of the new
kingdom, He sends the heralds forth: "Go ye therefore, and make
disciples of all the nations, baptising them into the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe
all things whatsoever I commanded you" (R.V.). These are simple words
and very familiar now, and a distinct effort is needed to realise how
extraordinary they are, as spoken then and there to that little
company. "All nations" are to be discipled and brought under His
sway,—such is the commission; and to whom is it given? Not to
Imperial Cæsar, with his legions at command and the civilised world at
his feet; not to a company of intellectual giants, who by the sheer
force of genius might turn the world
The hidden power lay in the conjunction: "Go ye therefore." It would have been the height of folly to have gone on such an errand in their own strength; but why should they hesitate to go in the name and at the bidding of One to Whom all authority had been given in heaven and on earth? Yet the power is not delegated to them. It remains, and must remain with Him. It is not, "All authority is given unto you." They must keep in closest touch with Him, wherever they go on this extraordinary mission. How this may be will presently appear.
The two branches into which the commission divides—"Baptising
them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost," "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded
you"—correspond to the twofold authority on which it is based.
By virtue of His authority in heaven, He authorises His ambassadors to
baptise people of all nations who shall become His disciples "into the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." Thus would
they be acknowledged as children of the great
Easily said; but how shall it be done? We can imagine the feeling of bewilderment and helplessness with which the disciples would listen to their marching orders, until all was changed by the simple and sublime assurance at the close: "And lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." This assurance is perhaps the strangest part of all, as given to a company, however small, who were to be scattered abroad in different directions, and who were commissioned to go to the very ends of the earth. How could it be fulfilled? There is nothing in St. Matthew's narrative to explain the difficulty. We know, indeed, from other sources what explains it. It is the Ascension—the return of the King to the heaven whence He came, to resume His omnipresent glory, by virtue of which alone He can fulfil the promise He has made.
This brings us to a question of considerable importance: Why is it
that St. Matthew gives no record of the Ascension, and does not even
hint what became of the risen Christ after this last recorded
interview with His disciples? It seems to us that a sufficient reason
is found in the object which St. Matthew had in view, which was to set
forth the establishment of the kingdom of Christ upon earth as
foretold by the prophets and expected by the saints of
After all, is it quite correct to say that St. Matthew omits the
Ascension? What was the Ascension? We think of it as a going up; but
that is to speak of it after the manner of men. In the kingdom of
heaven there is no geographical "up" or "down." The Ascension really
meant the laying aside of earthly limitations and the resumption of
divine glory with its omnipresence and eternity; and is not this
included in these closing words? May we not fancy one of these
doubting ones (ver. 17), who trembled in the presence
an embrace in which he remained, when the Form had vanished.
The Ascension is all in that wonderful "I am." It is not the first
time we have heard it. Among His last words in Capernaum, when the
Saviour was thinking of His Church in the ages to come, gathered
together in companies in all the lands where disciples should meet in
His name, the great thought takes Him for the moment out of the
limitations of His earthly life; it carries Him back, or rather lifts
Him up, to the eternal sphere from which He has come to earth, so that
He uses not the future of time, but the present of eternity: "There
am I in the midst of them" (xviii. 20). A still more striking example
has been preserved by St. John. When on one occasion He spoke of
Abraham as seeing His day, the Jews interrupted Him with the question,
"Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?"
Recognising in this a challenge of His relation to that timeless,
dateless sphere from which He has come, He promptly replies, "Before
Abraham was, The full significance of the original can
scarcely be given in English. The Greek language, rich in the
vocabulary of philosophy, has two verbs corresponding to our "to be,"
one indicating phenomenal, the other absolute being. It is the former
which is used of Abraham; the latter is used by our Lord in speaking
of Himself. There is, therefore, more than a difference of tense.
That was a momentary relapse, as it were, into the language of eternity; but this last "I am" marks a change in His relations to His disciples: it is the note of the new dispensation of the Spirit. These forty days were a transition time marked by special manifestations—not wholly material as in the days of the Incarnation, nor wholly spiritual as in the days after Pentecost; but on the borderland between the two, so as to prepare the minds and hearts of the disciples for the purely spiritual relation which was thenceforward to be the rule. Whichever appearance was the last to any disciple would be the Ascension to him. To very many in that large gathering this would be the Saviour's last appearance. It was in all probability the time when the great majority of the disciples bade farewell to the Form of their risen Lord. May we not, then, call this the Ascension in Galilee? And just as the parting on the Mount of Olives left as its deepest impression the withdrawal of the man Christ Jesus, with the promise of His return in like manner, so the parting on the mount in Galilee left as its deepest impression not the withdrawal of the human form, but the permanent abiding of the Divine Spirit—a portion of the truth of the Ascension quite as important as the other, and even more inspiring. No wonder that the great announcement which is to be the Christian's title-deed, for all ages to come, of God's unspeakable gift, should be introduced with a summons to adoring wonder: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."
The Gospel ends by removing from itself all limitations of time and
space extending the day of the
This last sentence of the Gospel distinguishes the life of Jesus from all other histories, biographies, or "remains." It is the one "Life" in all literature. These years were not spent "as a tale that is told." The Lord Jesus lives in His gospel, so that all who receive His final promise may catch the light of His eye, feel the touch of His hand, hear the tones of His voice, see for themselves, and become acquainted with Him Whom to know is Life Eternal. Fresh and new, and rich and strong, for "all the days," this Gospel is not the record of a past, but the revelation of a present Saviour, of One Whose voice sounds deep and clear across all storms of life: "Fear not: I am the First and the Last: I am He that liveth and was dead; and behold I am alive for evermore."
Matthew
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