.'• .,/ V.-;::-': ■■-•;;^- :'V.,-}k'''!':'i-i.^'V'I-«'~^-''-t'i :;*;;.^'J|J OGICAIS^^ . \'"\ \'r. ^'ff ili^ THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW CHAPTERS XVIII. TO XXVIII. BY ALEXANDER MACLAREN D.D., LiTT.D. ^^•:#jn.it ^^S^ NEW YORK A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 3 & 5 WEST EIGHTEENTH STREET LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON MCMVI CONTENTS PAOB The Law of Precedence in the Kingdom (Matt, xviii. 1-14) ....... 1 Self-Mutilation fob Self-Pbeservation (Matt, xviii. 8, R. v,^ •««*• ••" The Lost Sheep and the Seeking Shephebd (Matt. xviii. 12) . . . . • .19 The Pebsistence op Thwabted Love (Matt, xviii. 13; Luke XV. 4) . . . . . .29 FoBQivEN AND Unfobgiving (Matt, xviii. 22) . . , 37 The Requibements of the King (Matt. xix. 16-26) . 46 Neabest to Chbist (Matt. xx. 23) . . . .56 ■The Sebvant-Lobd and His Servants (Matt. xx. 28) . 71 What the Historic Chbist taught about His Death (Matt. XX. 28) . . . , .80 » vi GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW The Coming op the King to His Palace (Matt. xxi. 1-16) 89 A New Kind op King (Matt. xxi. 4, 5) . • .97 The Vineyard and its Keepers (Matt. xxi. 33-46) The Stone op Stumbling (Matt. xxi. 44) . • Two Ways op Despising God's Feast (Matt. xxii. 1-14) The Tables Turned : The Questioners Questioned (Matt, xxii. 34 46) .... The King's Farewell (Matt, xxiii. 27-39) . Two Forms of One Saying (Matt. xxiv. 13, R.V. ; Luke xxi. 19) . « . . . . The Carrion and the Vultures (Matt. xxiv. 28) Watching pob the King (Matt. xxiv. 42-51) • The Waiting Maidens (Matt. xxv. 1-13) . Dying Lamps (Matt. xxv. 8) . . . ' They that were Ready ' (Matt. xxv. 10) . Traders por the Master (Matt. xxv. 14-30) , Why the Talent was Buried (Matt. xxv. 24, 25) 107 116 126 135 139 148 157 166 175 181 189 195 205 CONTENTS vii PAGB The King on His Judgment Throne (Matt. xxv. 31-46) . 213 The Defence of Uncalculatinq Love (Matt. xxvi. 6-16) 221 The New Passover (Matt. xxvi. 17-30) . . . 225 'Is it I?' (Matt. xxvi. 22, 25; John xiii. 25) . . 232 'This Ctjp' (Matt. xxvi. 27, 28) . . . .243 * 'Until that Day' (Matt. xxvi. 29) . . .252 Gethsemane, the Oil-Press (Matt. xxvi. 36-46) . . 261 The Last Pleading of Love (Matt. xxvi. 50) . . 270 The Real High Priest and His Counterfeit (Matt. xxvi. 57-68) . . . . . .286 Jesus Charged with Blasphemy (Matt. xxvi. 65) . 290 ' See Thou to That ! ' (Matt, xxvii. 4, 24) . . .299 The Sentence which Condemned the Judges (Matt. xxvii. 11-26) , . , . . .310 The Crucifixion (Matt, xxvii. 33-50) , ; , 317 The Blind Watchers at the Cross (Matt, xxvii. 36) . 325 viii GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW PAOB Taunts Turning to Testimonies (Matt, xxvii. 41-43) , 332 The Veil Rent (Matt, xxvii. 51) . . . .341 The Prince of Life (Matt, xxviii. 1-15) . . . 350 The Risen Lord's Greetings and Gifts (Matt, xxviii. 9; John XX. 19) . . . . . .360 On the Mountain (Matt, xxviii. 16, 17 ; 1 Cor. xv. 6) , 369 THE LAW OF PRECEDENCE IN THE KINGDOM ' At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven ? 2. And Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the midst of them, 3. And said, Verily I say unto you. Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 4. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5. And whoso shall receive one such little child in My name receiveth Me. 6. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he'were drowned in the depth of the sea. 7. Woe unto the world because of offences ! for it must needs be that offences come ; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh ! 8. Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee ; it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. 9. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee : it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. 10. Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones ; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven. 11. For the Son of Man is come to save that which was lost. 12. How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray ? 13. And if so be that ho find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray, 14. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.'— Matt, xviii. 1-14. Mark tells us that the disciples, as they journeyed, had been squabbling about pre-eminence in the king- dom, and that this conversation was brought on by our Lord's question as to the subject of their dispute. It seems at first sight to argue singular insensibility that the first effect of His reiterated announcement of His sufferings should have been their quarrelling for the lead ; but their behaviour is intelligible if we suppose that they regarded the half-understood prophecies of His passion as indicating the commencement of the short conflict which was to end in His Messianic reign. So it was time for them to be getting ready and settling precedence. The form of their question, in VOL. III. A 2 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xviii. Matthew, connects it with the miracle of the coin in the fish's mouth, in which there was a very plain asser- tion of Christ's royal dignity, and a distinguishing honour given to Peter. Probably the 'then' of the question means, Since Peter is thus selected, are we to look to him as foremost? Their conception of the kingdom and of rank in it is frankly and entirely earthly. There are to be graded dignities, and these are to depend on His mere will. Our Lord not only answers the letter of their question, but cuts at the root of the temper which inspired it. I. He shows the conditions of entrance into and eminence in His kingdom by a living example. There were always children at hand round Him, when He wanted them. Their quick instinct for pure and loving souls drew them to Him ; and this little one was not afraid to be taken by the hand, and to be afterwards caught up in His arms, and pressed to His heart. One does not wonder that the legend that he was Ignatius the martyr should have been current ; for surely the remembrance of that tender clasping arm and gentle breast would not fade nor be fruitless. The disciples had made very sure that they were to be in the king- dom, and that the only question concerning them was how high up in it they were each to be. Christ's answer is like a dash of cold water to that confidence. It is, in effect, ' Greatest in the kingdom ! Make sure that you go in at all, first ; which you will never do, so long as you keep your present ambitious minds.' Verse 3 lays down the condition of entrance into the kingdom, from which necessarily follows the condition of supremacy in it. What a child is naturally, and without effort or merit, by reason of age and position, we must become, if we are to pass the narrow portal vs. l-U] THE LAW OF PRECEDENCE 3 which admits into the large room. That * becoming ' is impossible without a revolution in us. • Be converted ' is corrected, in the Revised Version, into 'turn,' and rightly ; for there is in the word a distinct reference to the temper of the disciples as displayed by their ques- tion. As long as they cherished it they could not even get inside, to say nothing of winning promotion to dignities in the kingdom. Their very question con- demned them as incapable of entrance. So there must be a radical change, not unaccompanied, of course, with repentance, but mainly consisting in the sub- stitution of the child's temper for theirs. What is the temper thus enjoined? We are to see here neither the entirely modern and shallow sentimental way of looking at childhood, in which popular writers indulge, nor the doctrine of its innocence. It is not Christ's teaching, either that children are innocent, or that men enter the kingdom by making themselves so. But the child is, by its very position, lowly and modest, and makes no claims, and lives by instinctive con- • fidence, and does not care about honours, and has these qualities which in us are virtues, and is not puffed up by possessing them. That is the ideal which is realised more generally in the child than analogous ideals are in mature manhood. Such simplicity, modesty, humility, must be ours. We must be made small ere we can enter that door. And as is the requirement for entrance, so is it for eminence. The child does not humble himself, but is humble by nature ; but we must humble ourselves if we would be great. Christ implies that there are degrees in the kingdom. It has a nobility, but of such a kind that there may be many greatest ; for the principle of rank there is lowli- ness. We rise by sinking. The deeper our conscious- 4 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xviii. ness of our own unworthiness and weakness, the more capable are we of receiving the divine gifts, and there- fore the more fully shall we receive them. Rivers run in the hollows ; the mountain-tops are dry. God works with broken reeds, and the princes in His realm are beggars taken from the dunghill. A lowliness which made itself lowly for the sake of eminence would miss its aim, for it would not be lowliness. The desire to be foremost must be cast out, in order that it may be fulfilled. II. The question has been answered, and our Lord passes to other thoughts rising out of His answer. Verses 5 and 6 set forth antithetically our duties to His little ones. He is not now speaking of the child who served as a living parable to answer the question, but of men who have made themselves like the child, as is plain from the emphatic ' one such child,' and from verse 6 (' which believe on Me '). The subject, then, of these verses is the blessedness of recognising and welcoming Christlike lowly be- lievers, and the fatal effect of the opposite conduct. To • receive one such little child in My name ' is just to have a sympathetic appreciation of, and to be ready to welcome to heart and home, those who are lowly in their own and in the world's estimate, but princes of Christ's court and kingdom. Such welcome and furtherance will only be given by one who himself has the same type of character in some degree. He who honours and admires a certain kind of excellence has the roots of it in himself. A possible artist lies in him who thrills at the sight or hearing of fair things painted or sung. Our admiration is an index of our aspiration, and our aspiration is a prophecy of our attainment. So it will be a little one's heart which vs. l-U] THE LAW OF PRECEDENCE 5 will welcome the little ones, and a lover of Christ who receives them in His name. The reception includes all forms of sympathy and aid. ' In My name ' is equiva- lent to 'for the sake of My revealed character,' and refers both to the receiver and to the received. The blessedness of such reception, so far as the receiver is concerned, is not merely that he thereby comes into happy relations with Christ's foremost servants, but that he gets Christ Himself into his heart. If with true appreciation of the beauty of such a childlike disposition, I open my heart or my hand to its pos- sessor, I do thereby enlarge my capacity for my own possession of Christ, who dwells in His child, and who comes with him where He is welcomed. There is no surer way of securing Him for our own than the loving reception of His children. Whoso lodges the King's favourites will not be left unvisited by the King. To recognise and reverence the greatest in the kingdom is to be oneself a member of their company, and a sharer in their prerogatives. On the other hand, the antithesis of 'receiving' is * causing to stumble,' by which is meant giving occasion for moral fall. That would be done by contests about pre-eminence, by arrogance, by non-recognition. The atmosphere of carnality and selfishness in which the disciples were moving, as their question showed, would stifle the tender life of any lowly believer who found himself in it; and they were not only injuring them- selves, but becoming stumbling-blocks to others, by their ambition. How much of the present life of average Christians is condemned on the same ground ! It is a good test of our Christian character to ask — would it help or hinder a lowly believer to live beside us? How many professing Christians are really, 6 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xviii. though unconsciously, doing their utmost to pull down their more Christlike brethren to their own low level ! The worldliness and selfish ambitions of the Church are responsible for the stumbling of many who would else have been of Christ's 'little ones.' But perhaps we are rather to think of deliberate and consciously laid stumbling-blocks. Knowingly to try to make a good man fall, or to stain a more than usually pure Christian character, is surely the very height of malice, and pre- supposes such a deadly hatred of goodness and of Christ that no fate can be worse than the possession of such a temper. To be flung into the sea, like a dog, with a stone round his neck, would be better for a man than to live to do such a thing. The deed itself, apart from any other future retribution, is its own punish- ment ; yet our Lord's solemn words not only point to such a future retribution, which is infinitely more terrible than the miserable fate described would be for the body, but to the consequences of the act, as so bad in its blind hatred of the highest type of character, and in its conscious preference of evil, as well as so fatal in its consequences, that it were better to die drowned than to live so. III. Verses 10-14 set forth the honour and dignity of Christ's 'little ones.' Clearly the application of the designation in these closing verses is exclusively to His lowly followers. The warning not to despise them is needed at all times, and, perhaps, seldom more, even by Christians, than now, when so many causes induce a far too high estimate of the world's great ones, and modest, humble godliness looks as dull and sober as some russet-coated little bird among gorgeous cocka- toos and birds of paradise. The world's standard is only too current in the Church ; and it needs a spirit Ys.1-14] THE LAW OF PRECEDENCE 7 kept in harmony with Christ's spirit, and some degree of the child-nature in ourselves, to preserve us from overlooking the delicate hidden beauties and unworldly- greatness of His truest disciples. The exhortation is enforced by two considerations, — a glimpse into heaven, and a parable. Fair interpreta- tion can scarcely deny that Christ here teaches that His children are under angel-guardianship. We should neither busy ourselves in curious inferences from His reticent words, nor try to blink their plain meaning, but rather mark their connection and purpose here. He has been teaching that pre-eminence belongs to the childlike spirit. He here opens a door into the court of the heavenly King, and shows us that, as the little ones are foremost in the kingdom of heaven, so the angels who watch over them are nearest the throne in heaven itself. The representation is moulded on the usages of Eastern courts, and similar language in the Old Testament describes the principal courtiers as ' the men who see the King's face continually.' So high is the honour in which the little ones are held, that the highest angels are set to guard them, and whatever may be thought of them on earth, the loftiest of creatures are glad to serve and keep them. Following the Revised Version we omit verse 11. If it were genuine, the connection would be that such despising contradicted the purpose of Christ's mission ; and the ' for ' would refer back to the injunction, not to the glimpse into heaven which enforced it. The exhortation is further confirmed by the parable of the ninety and nine, which is found, slightly modified in form and in another connection, in Luke xv. Its point here is to show the importance of the little ones as the objects of the seeking love of God, and as so 8 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xviii. precious to Him that their recovery rejoices His heart. Of course, if verse 11 be genuine, the Shepherd is Christ ; but, if we omit it, the application of the parable in verse 14 as illustrating the loving will of God be- comes more direct. In that case God is the owner of the sheep. Christ does not emphasise His own love or share in the work, reference to which was not relevant to His purpose, but, leaving that in shadow, casts all the light on the loving divine will, which counts the little ones as so precious that, if even one of them wanders, all heaven's powers are sent forth to find and recover it. The reference does not seem to be so much to the one great act by which, in Christ's incarnation and sacrifice, a sinful world has been sought and redeemed, as to the numberless acts by which God, in His providence and grace, restores the souls of those humble ones if ever they go astray. For the connection requires that the wandering sheep here should, when it wanders, be * one of these little ones ' ; and the parable is introduced to illustrate the truth that, because they belong to that number, the least of them is too precious to God to be allowed to wander away and be lost. They have for their keepers the angels of the presence ; they have God Himself, in His yearning love and manifold methods of restoration, to look for them, if ever they are lost, and to bring them back to the fold. There- fore, ' see that ye despise not one of these little ones,' each of whom is held by the divine will in the grasp of an individualising love which nothing can loosen. SELF-MUTILATION FOR SELF-PRESERVATION 'If thy hand or thy foot causeth thee to stumhle, cut it off, and cast it from ^ee.'— Matt, xviii. 8, R.V. No person or thing can do our characters as much harm as we ourselves can do. Indeed, none can do them any harm but ourselves. For men may put stumbling-blocks in our way, but it is we who make them stumbling-blocks. The obstacle in the path would do us no hurt if it were not for the erring foot, nor the attractive prize if it were not for the hand that itched to lay hold of it, nor the glittering bauble if it were not for the eye that kindled at the sight of it. So our Lord here, having been speaking of the men that put stumbling-blocks in the way of His little ones, draws the net closer and bids us look at home. A solemn woe of divine judgment is denounced on those who cause His followers to stumble ; let us leave God to execute that, and be sure that we have no share in their guilt, but let us ourselves be the executioners of the judgment upon the things in ourselves which alone give the stumbling- blocks, which others put before us, their fatal power. There is extraordinary energy in these words. Solemnly they are repeated twice here, verbatim; solemnly they are repeated verbatim three times in Mark's edition. The urgent stringency of the com- mand, the terrible plainness of the alternative put forth by the lips that could say nothing harsh, and the fact that the very same injunction appears in a wholly different connection in the Sermon on the Mount, show us how profoundly important our Lord 10 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xviii. felt the principle to be which He was here laying down. We mark these three points. First, the case sup- posed, ' If thy hand or thy foot cause thee to stumble.' Then the sharp, prompt remedy enjoined, ' Cut them off and cast them from thee.' Then the solemn motive by which it is enforced, ' It is better for thee to enter into life maimed than, being a whole man, to be cast into hell-fire.' I. First, then, as to the case supposed. Hand and foot and eye are, of course, regarded as organs of the inward self, and symbols of its tastes and capacities. We may perhaps see in them the familiar distinction between the practical and the theoretical : — hand and foot being instruments of action, and the eye the organ of perception. Our Lord takes an extreme case. If members of the body are to be amputated and plucked out should they cause us to stumble, much more are associations to be abandoned and occupations to be relinquished and pleasures to be forsaken, if these draw us away. But it is to be noticed that the whole stringency of the commandment rests upon that if. 'If they cause thee to stumble,' then, and not else, amputate. The powers are natural, the operation of them is perfectly innocent, but a man may be ruined by innocent things. And, says Christ, if that process is begun, then, and only then, does My exhortation come into force. Now, all that solemn thought of a possible injurious issue of innocent occupations, rests upon the principles that our nature has an ideal order, so as that some parts of it are to be suppressed and some are to rule, and that there are degrees of importance in men's pursuits, and that where the lower interfere and clog the opera- V. 8] SELF-MUTILATION 11 tions of the higher, there they are harmful. And so the only wisdom is to excise and cut them off. We see illustrations in abundance every day. There are many people who are being ruined in regard to the highest purposes of their lives, simply by an over- indulgence in lower occupations which in themselves may be perfectly right. Here is a young woman that spends so much of her day in reading novels that she has no time to look after the house and help her mother. Here is a young man so given to athletics that his studies are neglected — and so you may go all round the circle, and find instances of the way in which innocent things, and the excessive or unwise exercise of natural faculties, are destroying men. And much more is that the case in regard to religion, which is the highest object of pursuit, and in regard to those capacities and powers by which we lay hold of God. These are to be ministered to by the rest, and if there be in my nature or in the order of my life something which is drawing away to itself the energy that ought to go in that other direction, then, howsoever innocent it may be, per se, it is harming me. It is a wfen that is sucking all the vital force into itself, and turning it into poison. And there is only one cure for it, and that is the knife. Then there is another point to be observed in this case supposed, and that is that the whole matter is left to the determination of personal experience. No one else has the right to decide for you what it is safe and wise for you to do in regard to things which are not in themselves wrong. If they are wrong in themselves, of course the consideration of consequences is out of place altogether ; but if they be not wrong in them- selves, then it is you that must settle whether they are 12 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xviii. legitimate for you or not. Do not let your Christian liberty be interfered with by other people's dictation in regard to this matter. How often you hear people say, '/ could not do it'; meaning thereby, 'therefore he ought not to do it!' But that inference is alto- gether illegitimate. True, there are limitations of our Christian liberty in regard to things indifferent and innocent. Paul lays down the most important of these in three sentences. ' All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient.' ' All things are law- ful for me, but all things edify not ' ; — you must think of your brethren as well as of yourself. ' All things are lawful for me, yet will I not be brought under the power of any'; keep master of them, and rather abstain altogether than become their slave. But these three limitations being observed, then, in regard to all such matters, nobody else can prescribe for you or me. ' To his own Master he standeth or falleth.' But, on the other hand, do not you be led away into things that damage you, because some other man does them, as he supposes, without injury. 'Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.' There are some Christian people who are simply very unscrupulous and think themselves very strong; and whose consciences are not more enlight- ened, but less sensitive, than those of the 'narrow- minded brethren' upon whom they look askance. And so, dear friend, you ought to take the world — to inhale it, if I may so say, as patients do chloroform ; only you must be your own doctor and keep your own fingers on your pulse, and watch the first sign of failure there, and take no more. When the safety lamps begin to burn blue you may be quite sure there is choke-damp about ; and when Christian men and women begin to V. 8] SELF-MUTILATION 13 find prayer wearisome, and religious thoughts dull, and the remembrance of God an effort or a pain, then, whatever anybody else may do, it is time for them to pull up. ' If thy hand offend thee,' never mind though your brother's hand is not offending him, do the necessary thing for your health, * cut it off and cast it from you.' But of course there must be caution and common- sense in the application of such a principle. It does not mean that we are to abandon all things that are susceptible of abuse, for everything is so; and if we are to regulate our conduct by such a rule, it is not the amputation of a hand that will be sufficient. We may as well cut off our heads at once, and go out of the world altogether; for everything is capable of being thus abused. Nor does the injunction mean that unconditionally we are to abandon all occupations in which there is danger. It can never be a duty to shirk a duty because it is dangerous. And sometimes it is as much a Chris- tian man's duty to go into, and to stand in, positions that are full of temptation and danger, as it is a fire- man's business to go into a burning house at the risk of suffocation. There were saints in Caesar's house- hold, flowers that grew on a dunghill, and they were not bidden to abandon their place because it was full of possible danger to their souls. Sometimes Christ sets His sentinels in places where the bullets fly very thick ; and if we are posted in such a place — and we all are so some time or other in our lives — the only course for us is to stand our ground until the relieving guard comes, and to trust that He said a truth that was always to be true, when He sent out His servants to their dangerous work, with the assurance that if they drank any deadly thing it should not hurt them. 14 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xviii. II. So much, then, for the first of the points here. Now a word, in the second place, as to the sharp remedy enjoined. * Cut it off and cast it from thee.' Entire excision is the only safety. I myself am to be the operator in that surgery. I am to lay my hand upon the block, and with the other hand to grasp the axe and strike. That is to say, we are to suppress capacities, to abandon pursuits, to break with associates, when we find that they are damaging our spiritual life and hindering our likeness to Jesus Christ. That is plain common-sense. In regard to physical intoxication, it is a great deal easier to abstain altogether than to take a very little and then stop. The very fumes of alcohol will sometimes drive a re- claimed drunkard into a bout of dissipation that will last for weeks ; therefore, the only safety is in entire abstinence. The rule holds in regard to everyday life. Every man has to give up a great many things if he means to succeed in one, and has to be a man of one pursuit if anything worth doing is to be done. Chris- tian men especially have to adopt that principle, and shear off a great deal that is perfectly legitimate, in order that they may keep a reserve of strength for the highest things. True, all forms of life are capable of being made Christian service and Christian discipline, but in prac- tice we shall find that if we are earnestly seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness, not only shall we lose our taste for a great deal that is innocent, but we shall have, whether we lose our taste for them or not — and more imperatively if we have not lost our taste for them than if we have — to give up allowable things in order that with all our heart, and soul, and strength, V. 8] SELF-MUTILATION 15 and mind, we may love and serve our Master. There are no half-measures to be kept ; the only thing to do with the viper is to shake it off into the fire and let it burn there. We have to empty our hands of earth's trivialities if we would grasp Christ with them. We have to turn away our eyes from earth if we would behold the Master, and rigidly to apply this principle of excision in order that we may advance in the divine life. It is the only way to ensure progress. There is no such certain method of securing an adequate flow of sap up the trunk as to cut off all the suckers. If you wish to have a current going down the main bed of the stream, sufficient to keep it clear, you must dam up all the side channels. But it is not to be forgotten that this command- ment, stringent and necessary as it is, is second best. The man is maimed, although it was for Christ's sake that he cut off his hand, or put out his eye. His hand was given him that with it he might serve God, and the highest thing would have been that in hand and foot and eye he should have been anointed, like the priests of old, for the service of his Master. But until he is strong enough to use the faculty for God, the wisest thing is not to use it at all. Abandon the out- works to keep the citadel. And just as men pull down the pretty houses on the outskirts of a fortified city when a siege is impending, in order that they may afford no cover to the enemy, so we have to sweep away a great deal in our lives that is innocent and fair, in order that the foes of our spirit may find no lodgment there. It is second best, but for all that it is absolutely needful. We must lay ' aside every weight,' as well as ' the sin which so easily besets us.' We must run lightly if we would run well. We must cast aside 16 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xviii all burdens, even though they be burdens of treasure and delights, if we would ' run with patience the race that is set before us.' ' If thy foot offend thee,' do not hesitate, do not adopt half-measures, do not try moderation, do not seek to sanctify the use of the peccant member ; all these may be possible and right in time, but for the present there is only one thing to do — down with it on the block, and off with it ! * Cut it off and cast it from thee.' III. And now, lastly, a word as to the solemn exhortation by which this injunction is enforced. Christ rests His command of self-denial and self- mutilation upon the highest ground of self-interest. 'It is better for thee.' We are told nowadays that this is a very low motive to appeal to, that Christianity is a religion of selfishness, because it says to men, 'Your life or your death depends upon your faith and your conduct,' Well, I think it will be time for us to listen to fantastic objections of this sort when the men that urge them refuse to turn down another street, if they are warned that in the road on which they are going they will meet their death. As long as they admit that it is a wise and a kind thing to say to a man, ' Do not go that way or your life will be endangered,' I think we may listen to our Master saying to us, * Do not do that lest thou perish ; do this, that thou may'st enter into life.' And then, notice that a maimed man may enter into life, and a complete man may perish. The first may be a very poor creature, very ignorant, with a limited nature, undeveloped capacities, intellect and the like all but dormant in him, artistic sensibilities quite atrophied, and yet he may have got hold of Jesus Christ and His love, and be trying to love Him back again and V. 8] SELF-MUTILATION 17 serve Him, and so be entering into life even here, and be sure of a life more perfect yonder. And the complete man, cultured all round, with all his faculties polished and exercised to the full, may have one side of his nature undeveloped — that which connects him with God in Christ. And so he may be like some fair tree that stands out there in the open, on all sides extending its equal beauty, with its stem symmetrical, cylindrical, perfect in its green cloud of foliage, yet there may be a worm at the root of it, and it may be given up to rottenness and destruction. Cultivated men may perish, and uncultured men may have the life. The maimed man may touch Christ with his stump, and so receive life, and the complete man may lay hold of the world and the flesh and the devil with his hands, and so share in their destruction. Ay ! and in that case the maimed man has the best of it. It is a very plain axiom of the rudest common- sense, this of my text : * It is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than to go into hell-fire with both thy hands.' That is to say, it is better to live maimed than to die whole. A man comes into a hospital with gangrene in his leg ; the doctor says it must come off ; the man says, ' It shall not,' and he is dead to-morrow. Who is the fool — the man that says, ' Here, then, cut away ; better life than limb,' or the man that says, * I will keep it and I will die ' ? ' Better to enter into life maimed,' because you will not always be maimed. The life will overcome the maiming. There is a wonderful restoration of capa- cities and powers that have been sacrificed for Christ's sake, a restoration even here. As crustaceans will develop a new claw in place of one that they have thrown off in their peril to save their lives, so we, if we VOL. III. B 18 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xviii. have for Christ's sake maimed ourselves, will find that in a large measure the suppression v^ill be recompensed even here on earth. And hereafter, as the Rabbis used to say, ' No man will rise from the grave a cripple.' All the limitations which we have imposed upon ourselves, for Christ's sake, will be removed then. 'Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf be un- stopped ; then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing.' 'Verily I say unto thee, there is no man that hath left any ' of his posses- sions, affections, tastes, capacities, 'for My sake but he shall receive a hundredfold more in this life, and in the world to come, life everlasting.' No man is a loser by giving up anything for Jesus Christ. And, on the other hand, the complete man, complete in everything except his spiritual nature, is a fragment in all his completeness ; and yonder, there will for him be a solemn process of stripping. ' Take it from him, and give it to him that hath ten talents.' Ah! how much of that for which some of you are flinging away Jesus Christ will fade from you when you go yonder. • His glory shall not descend after him ' ; 'as he came, so shall he go.' 'Tongues, they shall cease; know- ledge, it shall vanish away ' ; gifts will fail, capacities will disappear when the opportunities for the exercise of them in a material world are at an end, and there will be little left to the man who would carry hands and feet and eyes all into the fire and forgot the ' one thing needful,' but a thin thread, if I may so say, of personality quivering with the sense of responsibility, and preyed upon by the gnawing worm of a too-late remorse. My brother, the lips of Incarnate Love spoke those V.8] THE LOST SHEEP 19 solemn words of my text, which it becomes not me to repeat to you as if they were mine ; but I ask you to weigh this, His urgent commandment, and to listen to His solemn assurance, by which He enforces the wisdom of the self-suppression: 'It is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands, to be cast into hell-fire.' Give your hearts to Jesus Christ, and set the follow- ing in His footsteps and the keeping of His command- ments high above all other aims. You will have to suppress much and give up much, but such suppression is the shortest road to becoming perfect men, com- plete in Him, and such surrender is the surest way to possess all things. ' He that loseth his life ' — which is more than hand or eye — for Christ's sake, 'the same shall find it.' THE LOST SHEEP AND THE SEEKING SHEPHERD ' If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them he gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray ? '—Matt, xviii. 12. We find this simple parable, or germ of a parable, in a somewhat more expanded form, as the first of the incomparable three in the fifteenth chapter of Luke's Gospel. Perhaps our Lord repeated the parable more than once. It is an unveiling of His inmost heart, and therein a revelation of the very heart of God. It touches the deepest things in His relation to men, and sets forth thoughts of Him, such as man never dared to dream. It does all this by the homeliest image and by an appeal to the simplest instincts. The most prosaic 20 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xviii. shepherd looks for lost sheep, and everybody has peculiar joy over lost things found. They may not be nearly so valuable as things that were not lost. The unstrayed may be many, and the strayed be but one. Still there is a keener joy in the recovery of the one than in the unbroken possession of the ninety-and- nine. That feeling in a man may be only selfishness, but homely as it is — when the loser is God, and the lost are men, it becomes the means of uttering and illus- trating that truth concerning God which no religion but that of the Cross has ever been bold enough to proclaim, that He cares most for the wanderers, and rejoices over the return of the one that went astray more than over the ninety-and-nine who never wan- dered. There are some significant differences between this edition of the parable and the form which it assumes in the Gospel according to Luke. There it is spoken in vindication of Christ's consorting with publicans and sinners ; here it is spoken in order to point the lesson of not despising the least and most insignificant of the sons of men. There the seeking Shepherd is obviously Christ ; here the seeking Shepherd is rather the Divine Father; as appears by the words of the next verse: 'For it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.' There the sheep is lost; here the sheep goes astray. There the Shepherd seeks till He find, here the Shep- herd, perhaps, fails to find ; for our Lord says, ^ If so he that he find it.' But I am not about to venture on all the thoughts which this parable suggests, nor even to deal with the main lesson which it teaches. I wish merely to look at the two figures — the wanderer and the seeker. V. 12] THE LOST SHEEP 21 I. First, then, let us look at that figure of the one wanderer. Of course I need scarcely remind you that in the immediate application of the parable in Luke's Gospel, the ninety-and-nine were the respectable people who thought the publicans and harlots altogether too dirty to touch, and regarded it as very doubtful conduct on the part of this young Rabbi from Nazareth to be mixed up with persons whom no one with a proper regard for whited sepulchres would have anything to do with. To them He answers, in effect — I am a shepherd ; that is my vindication. Of course a shepherd goes after and cares for the lost sheep. He does not ask about its worth, or anything else. • He simply follows the lost because it is lost. It may be a poor little creature after all, but it is lost, and that is enough. And so He vindi- cates Himself to the ninety-and-nine : ' You do not need Me, you are found. I take you on your own estimation of yourselves, and tell you that My mission is to the wanderers.' I do not suppose, however, that any of us have need to be reminded that upon a closer and deeper examina- tion of the facts of the case, every hoof of the ninety- and-nine belonged to a stray sheep too; and that in the wider application of the parable all men are wan- derers. Remembering, then, this universal applica- tion, I would point out two or three things about the condition of these strayed sheep, which include the whole race. The ninety-and-nine may shadow for us a number of beings, in unfallen worlds, immensely greater than even the multitudes of wandering souls that have lived here through weary ages of sin and tears, but that does not concern us now. The first thought I gather from the parable is that 22 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [cH.xvm. all men are Christ's sheep. That sounds a strange thing to say. What ? all these men and women who, having run away from Him, are plunged in sin, like sheep mired in a black bog, the scoundrels and the profligates, the scum and the outcasts of great cities ; people with narrow foreheads, and blighted, blasted lives, the despair of our modern civilisation — are they all His ? And in those great wide-lying heathen lands ■v^^here men know nothing of His name and of His love, are they all His too ? Let Him answer, ' Other sheep I have' — though they look like goats to-day — 'which are not of this fold, them also must I bring, and they shall hear My voice.' All men are Christ's, because He has been the Agent of divine creation, and the grand words of the hundredth Psalm are true about Him. 'It is He that hath made us, and we are His. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.' They are His, because His sacrifice has bought them for His. Erring, straying, lost, they still belong to the Shepherd. Notice next, the picture of the sheep as wandering. The word is, literally, ' which goeth astray,' not ' which is gone astray.' It pictures the process of wandering, not the result as accomplished. We see the sheep, poor, silly creature, not going anywhere in particular, only there is a sweet tuft of grass here, and it crops that ; and here is a bit of ground where there is soft walking, and it goes there; and so, step by step, not meaning anything, not knowing where it is going, or that it is going anywhere ; it goes, and goes, and goes, and at last it finds out that it is away from its beat on the hillside — for sheep keep to one bit of hillside generally, as any shepherd will tell you — and then it begins to bleat, and most helpless of creatures, flutter- V. 12] THE LOST SHEEP 23 ing and excited, rushes about amongst the thorns and brambles, or gets mired in some quag or other, and it will never find its way back of itself until some one comes for it. *So,' says Christ to us, 'there are a great many of you who do not mean to go wrong ; you are not going anywhere in particular, you do not start on your course with any intentions either way, of doing right or wrong, of keeping near God, or going away from Him, but you simply go where the grass is sweetest, or the walking easiest. But look at the end of it ; where you have got to. You have got away from Him.' Now, if you take that series of parables in Luke xv., and note the metaphors there, you will see three dif- ferent sides given of the process by which men's hearts stray away from God. There is the sheep that wanders. That is partly conscious, and voluntary, but in a large measure simply yielding to inclination and tempta- tion. Then there is the coin that trundles away under some piece of furniture, and is lost — that is a picture of the manner in which a man, without volition, almost mechanically sometimes, slides into sins and disappears as it were, and gets covered over with the dust of evil. And then there is the worst of all, the lad that had full knowledge of what he was doing. *I am going into a far-off country; I cannot stand this any longer — all restraint and no liberty, and no power of doing what I like with my own ; and always obliged to obey and be dependent on my father for my pocket-money! Give me what belongs to me, for good and all, and let me go!' That is the picture of the worst kind of wandering, when a man knows what he is about, and looks at the merciful restraint of the law of God, and says : ' No ! I had rather be far away ; and my own 24 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xviii. master, and not always be " cribbed, cabined, and confined " with these limitations.' The straying of the half-conscious sheep may seem more innocent, but it carries the poor creature away from the shepherd as completely as if it had been wholly intelligent and voluntary. Let us learn the lesson. In a world like this, if a man does not know very clearly where he is going, he is sure to go wrong. If you do not exercise a distinct determination to do God's will, and to follow in His footsteps who has set us an example ; and if your main purpose is to get succulent grass to eat and soft places to walk in, you are certain before long to wander tragically from all that is right and noble and pure. It is no excuse for you to say : * I never meant it'; 'I did not intend any harm, I only followed my own inclinations.' 'More mischief is wrought ' — to the man himself, as well as to other people — ' from want of thought than is wrought by ' an evil will. And the sheep has strayed as effectually, though, when it set out on its journey, it never thought of straying. Young men and women beginning life, remember ! and take this lesson. But then there is another point that I must touch for a moment. In the Revised Version you will find a very tiny alteration in the words of my text, which, yet, makes a large difference in the sense. The last clause of my text, as it stands in our Bible, is, 'And seeketh that which is gone astray'; the Revised Version more correctly reads, ' And seeketh that which is going astray.' Now, look at the difference in these two renderings. In the former the process is represented as finished, in the correct rendering it is represented as going on. And that is what I would press on you, the awful, solemn, necessarily progressive character of V. 12] THE LOST SHEEP 25 our wanderings from God. A man never gets to the end of the distance that separates between him and the Father, if his face is turned away from God. Every moment the separation is increasing. Two lines start from each other at the acutest angle and diverge more the further they are produced, until at last the one may be away up by the side of God's throne, and the other away down in the deepest depths of hell. So accordingly my text carries with solemn pathos, in a syllable, the tremendous lesson : ' The sheep is not gone, but going astray.' Ah ! there are some of my hearers who are daily and hourly increasing the distance be- tween themselves and their merciful Father. Now the last thing here in this picture is the con- trast between the description given of the wandering sheep in our text, and that in St. Luke. Here it is represented as wandering, there it is represented as lost. That is very beautiful and has a meaning often not noticed by hasty readers. Who is it that has lost it ? We talk about the lost soul and the lost man, as if it were the man that had lost himself, and that is true, and a dreadful truth it is. But that is not the truth that is taught in this parable, and meant by us to be gathered from it. Who is it that has lost it? He to whom it belonged. That is to say, wherever a heart gets ensnared and entangled with the love of the treasures and pleasures of this life, and so departs in allegiance and confidence and friendship from the living God, there God the Father regards Himself as the poorer by the loss of one of .His children, by the loss of one of His sheep. He does not care to possess you by the hold of mere creation and supremacy and rule. He desires you to love Him, and then He deems that He has you. And if 26 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xviii. you do not love Him, He deems that He has lost you. There is something in the divine heart that goes out after His lost property. We touch here upon deep things that we cannot speak of intelligently ; only re- member this, that what looks like self-regard in man is the purest love in God, and that there is nothing in the whole revelation which Christianity makes of the character of God more wonderful than this, that He judges that He has lost His child when His child has forgotten to love Him. II. So much, then, for one of the great pictures in this text. I can spare but a sentence or two for the other — the picture of the Seeker. I said that in the one form of the parable it was more distinctly the Father, and in the other more dis- tinctly the Son, who is represented as seeking the sheep. But these two do still coincide in substance, inasmuch as God's chief way of seeking us poor wan- dering sheep is through the work of His dear Son Jesus, and the coming of Christ is the Father's search- ing for His sheep in the ' cloudy and dark day.' According to my text God leaves the ninety-and-nine and goes into the mountains where the wanderer is, and seeks him. And this, couched in veiled form, is the great mystery of the divine love, the incarna- tion and sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Lord. Here is the answer by anticipation to the sarcasm that is often levelled at evangelical Christianity : ' You must think a good deal of human nature, and must have a very arrogant notion of the inhabitant of this little speck that floats in the great sea of the heavens, if you suppose that with all these millions of orbs he is so important that the divine Nature came down upon this little tiny molehill, and took his nature and died.' V. 12] THE LOST SHEEP 27 'Yes !' says Christ, 'not because man was so great, not because man was so valuable in comparison with the rest of creation — he was but one amongst ninety-nine unfallen and unsinful — but because he was so wretched, because he was so small, because he had gone so far away from God ; therefore, the seeking love came after him, and would draw him to itself.' That, I think, is answer enough to the cavil. And then, there is a difference between these two versions of the Parable in respect to their representa- tion of the end of the seeking. The one says 'seeks until He finds.' Oh ! the patient, incredible inex- haustibleness of the divine love. God's long-suffering, if I may take such a metaphor, like a sleuth-hound, will follow the object of its search through all its windings and doublings, until it comes up to it. So that great seeking Shepherd follows us through all the devious courses of our wayward, wandering footsteps doubling back upon themselves, until He finds us. Though the sheep may increase its distance, the Shep- herd follows. The further away we get the more tender His appeal; the more we stop our ears the louder the voice with which He calls. You cannot wear out Jesus Christ, you cannot exhaust the re- sources of His bounteousness, of His tenderness. How- ever we may have been going wrong, however far we may have been wandering, however vehemently we may be increasing, at every moment, our distance from Him, He is coming after us, serene, loving, long- suffering, and will not be put away. Dear friend! would you only believe that a loving, living Person is really seeking you, seeking you by my poor words now, seeking you by many a providence, seeking you by His Gospel, by His Spirit; and will 28 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xviii. never be satisfied till He has found you in your finding Him and turning your soul to Him ! But, I beseech you, do not forget the solemn lesson drawn from the other form of the parable which is given in my text : If so he that He find it. There is a possibility of failure. What an awful power you have of burying yourself in the sepulchre, as it were, of your own self-will, and hiding yourself in the darkness of your own unbelief! You can frustrate the seeking love of God. Some of you have done so — some of you have done so all your lives. Some of you, perhaps at this moment, are trying to do so, and consciously en- deavouring to steel your hearts against some softening that may have been creeping over them whilst I have been speaking. Are you yielding to His seeking love, or wandering further and further from Him ? He has come to find you. Let Him not seek in vain, but let the Good Shepherd draw you to Himself, where, lifted on the Cross, He ' giveth His life for the sheep.' He will restore your soul and carry you back on His strong shoulder, or in His bosom near His loving heart, to the green pastures and the safe fold. There will be joy in His heart, more than over those who have never wandered ; and there will be joy in the heart of the re- turning wanderer, such as they who had not strayed and learned the misery could never know, for, as the profound Jewish saying has it, 'In the place where the penitents stand, the perfectly righteous cannot stand.' THE PERSISTENCE OF THWARTED LOVE •If so be that he find it.'— Matt, xviii. 13. • Until he find it.'— Luke xv. i. Like other teachers, Jesus seems to have had favourite points of view and utterances which came naturally to His lips. There are several instances in the gospels of His repeating the same sayings in entirely different con- nections and with different applications. One of these habitual points of view seems to have been the thought of men as wandering sheep, and of Himself as the Shepherd. The metaphor has become so familiar that we need a moment's reflection to grasp the mingled tenderness, sadness, and majesty of it. He thought habitually of all humanity as a flock of lost sheep, and of Himself as high above them, unparticipant of their evil, and having one errand — to bring them back. And not only does He frequently refer to this sym- bol, but we have the two editions, from which my texts are respectively taken, of the Parable of the Lost Sheep. I say two editions, because it seems to me a great deal more probable that Jesus should have repeated Himself than that either of the Evangelists should have ventured to take this gem and set it in an alien setting. The two versions differ slightly in some unimportant expressions, and Matthew's is the more condensed of the two. But the most important varia- tion is the one which is brought to lignt by the two fragments which I have ventured to isolate as texts. ' If He find ' implies the possible failure of the Shep- herd's search ; ' till He find ' implies His unwearied persistence in the teeth of all failure. And, taken in 39 30 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xviii. conjunction, they suggest some very blessed and solemn considerations, which I pray for strength to lay upon your minds and hearts now. I. But first let me say a word or two upon the more general thought brought out in both these clauses — of the Shepherd's search. Now, beautiful and heart-touching as that picture is, of the Shepherd away amongst the barren mountains searching minutely in every ravine and thicket, it wants a little explanation in order to be brought into correspondence with the fact which it expresses. For His search for His lost property is not in ignorance of where it is, and His finding of it is not His dis- covery of His sheep, but its discovery of its Shepherd. We have to remember wherein consists the loss before we can understand wherein consists the search. Now, if we ask ourselves that question first, we get a flood of light on the whole matter. The great hundredth Psalm, according to its true rendering, says, ' It is He that hath made us, and we are His ; . . . we are . . . the sheep of His pasture.' But God's true possession of man is not simply the possession inherent in the act of creation. For there is only one way in which spirit can own spirit, or heart can possess heart, and that is through the voluntary yielding and love of the one to the other. So Jesus Christ, who, in all His seeking after us men, is the voice and hand of Almighty Love, does not count that He has found a man until the man has learned to love Him. For He loses us when we are alienated from Him, when we cease to trust Him, when we refuse to obey Him, when we will not yield to Him, but put Him far away from us. Therefore the search which, as being Christ's is God's in Christ, is for our love, our trust, our obedience ; V. 13] THWARTED LOVE 31 and in reality it consists of all the energies by which Jesus Christ, as God's embodiment and representative, seeks to woo and win you and me back to Himself, that He may truly possess us. If the Shepherd's seeking is but a tender metaphor for the whole aggregate of the ways by which the love that is divine and human in Jesus Christ moves round about our closed hearts, as water may feel round some hermetically sealed vessel, seeking for an entrance, then surely the first and chiefest of them, which makes its appeal to each of us as directly as to any man that ever lived, is that great mystery that Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of God, left the ninety-and-nine that were safe on the high pastures of the mountains of God, and came down among us, out into the wilder- ness, ' to seek and to save that which was lost.' And, brother, that method of winning — I was going to say, of earning — our love comes straight in its appeal to every single soul on the face of the earth. Do not say that thou wert not in Christ's heart and mind when He willed to be born and willed to die. Thou, and thou, and thou, and every single unit of humanity were there clear before Him in their individu- ality ; and He died for thee, and for me, and for every man. And, in one aspect, that is more than to say that He died for all men. There was a specific intention in regard to each of us in the mission of Jesus Christ ; and when He went to the Cross the Shepherd was not giving His life for a confused flock of which He knew not the units, but for sheep the face of each of whom He knows, and each of whom He loves. There was His first seeking ; there is His chief seeking. There is the seeking which ought to appeal to every soul of man, and which, ever since you were children, has been 32 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xviii. making its appeal to you. Has it done so in vain? Dear friend, let not your heart still be hard. He seeks us by every record of that mighty love that died for us, even when it is being spoken as poorly, and with as many limitations and imperfec- tions, as I am speaking it now. 'As though God did beseech you by us, pray you in Christ's stead.' It is not arrogance, God forbid ! it is simple truth when I say. Never mind about me ; but my word, in so far as it is true and tender, is Christ's word to you. And here, in our midst, that unseen Form is passing along these pews and speaking to these hearts, and the Shepherd is seeking His sheep. He seeks each of us by the inner voices and emotions in our hearts and minds, by those strange whisperings which sometimes we hear, by the suddenly upstarting convictions of duty and truth which sometimes, with- out manifest occasion, flash across our hearts. These voices are Christ's voice, for, in a far deeper sense than most men superficially believe, 'He is the true Light that lighteth every man coming into the world.' He is seeking us by our unrest, by our yearnings after we know not what, by our dim dissatisfaction which insists upon making itself felt in the midst of joys and delights, and which the world fails to satisfy as much as it fails to interpret. There is a cry in every heart, little as the bearer of the heart translates it into its true meaning — a cry after God, even the living God. And by all your unrests, your disappoint- ments, your hopes unfulfilled, your hopes fulfilled and blasted in the fulfilment, your desires that perish un- fruited ; by all the mystic movements of the spirit that yearns for something beyond the material and the visible, Jesus Christ is seeking His sheep. V.13] THWARTED LOVE 83 He seeks us by the discipline of life, for I believe that Christ is the active Providence of God, and that the hands that were pierced on the Cross do move the wheels of the history of the world, and mould the destinies of individual spirits. The deepest meaning of all life is that we should be won to seek Him who in it all is seeking us, and led to venture our hopes, and fling the anchor of our faith beyond the bounds of the visible, that it may fasten in the Eternal, even in Christ Himself, * the same yester- day and to-day and for ever ' when earth and its train- ing are done with. Brethren, it is a blessed thing to live, when we interpret life's smallnesses aright as the voice of the Master, who, by them all — our sadness and our gladness, the unrest of our hearts and the yearn- ings and longings of our spirits, by the ministry of His word, by the record of His sufferings — is echoing the invitation of the Cross itself, 'Come unto Me, all ye , . . and I will give you rest ! ' So much for the Shep- herd's search. II. And now, in the second place, a word as to the possible thwarting of the search. • If so be that He find.' That is an awful if, when we think of what lies below it. The thing seems an absurdity when it is spoken, and yet it is a grim fact in many a life — viz. that Christ's effort can fail and be thwarted. Not that His search is perfunctory or care- less, but that we shroud ourselves in darkness through which that love can find no way. It is we, not He, that are at fault when He fails to find that which He seeks. There is nothing more certain than that God, and Christ the image of God, desire the rescue of every man, woman, and child of the human race. Let no teaching blur that sunlight fact. There is nothing VOL. HI, 34 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xviii. more certain than that Jesus Christ has done, and is doing, all that He can do to secure that purpose. If He could make every man love Him, and so find every man, be sure that He would do it. But He cannot. For here is the central mystery of creation, which if we could solve there would be few knots that would resist our fingers, that a finite will like yours or mine can lift itself up against God, and that, having the capacity, it has the desire. He says, ' Come ! ' We say, 'I will not.' That door of the heart opens from within, and He never breaks it open. He stands at the door and knocks. And then the same solemn */ comes — ' If any man opens, I will come in ' ; if any man keeps it shut, and holds on to prevent its being opened, I will stop out. Brethren, I seek to press upon you now the one plain truth, that if you are not saved men and women, there is no person in heaven or earth or hell that has any blame in the matter but yourself alone. God appeals to us, and says, ' What more could have been done to My vineyard that I have not done unto it ? ' His hands are clean, and the infinite love of Christ is free from all blame, and all the blame lies at our own doors. I must not dwell upon the various reasons which lead so many men among us — as, alas ! the utmost charity cannot but see that there are — to turn away from Christ's appeals, and to be unwilling to 'have this Man ' either ' to reign over ' them or to save them. There are many such, I am sure, in my audience now ; and I would fain, if I could, draw them to that Lord in whom alone they have life, and rest, and holiness, and heaven. One great reason is because you do not believe that you need Him. There is an awful inadequacy in most V. 13] THWARTED LOVE 35 men's conceptions — and still more in their feelings — as to their sin. Oh dear friends, if you would only submit your consciences for one meditative half -hour to the light of God's highest law, I think you would find out something more than many of you know, as to what you are and what your sin is. Many of us do not much believe that we are in any danger. I have seen a sheep comfortably cropping the short grass on a down over the sea, with one foot out in the air, and a precipice of five hundred feet below it, and at the bottom the crawling water. It did not know that there was any danger of going over. That is like some of us. If you believed what is true — that * sin when it is finished, bringeth forth death,' and understood what * death ' meant, you would feel the mercy of the Shep- herd seeking you. Some of us think we are in the flock when we are not. Some of us do not like sub- mission. Some of us have no inclination for the sweet pastures that He provides, and would rather stay where we are, and have the fare that is going there. "We do not need to do anything to put Him away. I have no doubt that some of us, as soon as my voice ceases, will plunge again into worldly talk and thoughts before they are down the chapel steps, and so blot out, as well as they can, any vagrant and superficial impression that may have been made. Dear brethren, it is a very easy matter to turn away from the Shep- herd's voice. 'I called, and ye refused. I stretched out My hands, and no man regarded.' That is all! That is what you do, and that is enough. III. So, lastly, the thwarted search prolonged. ' Till He find ' — that is a wonderful and a merciful word. It indicates the infinitude of Christ's patient forgiveness and perseverance. We tire of searching. 36 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xvm •Can a mother forget' or abandon her seeking after a lost child ? Yes ! if it has gone on for so long as to show that further search is hopeless, she will go home and nurse her sorrow in her heart. Or, perhaps, like some poor mothers and wives, it will turn her brain, and one sign of her madness will be that, long years after grief should have been calm because hope was dead, she will still be looking for the little one so long lost. But Jesus Christ stands at the closed door, as a great modern picture shows, though it has been so long undisturbedly closed that the hinges are brown with rust, and weeds grow high against it. He stands there in the night, with the dew on His hair, unheeded or repelled, like some stranger in a hostile village seeking for a night's shelter. He will not be put away ; but, after all refusals, still with gracious finger, knocks upon the door, and speaks into the heart. Some of you have refused Him all your lives, and perhaps you have grey hairs upon you now. And He is speaking to you still. He * suffereth long, is not easily provoked, is not soon angry ; hopeth all things,' even of the obstinate rejecters. For that is another truth that this word 'till' preaches to us — viz. the possibility of bringing back those that have gone furthest away and have been longest away. The world has a great deal to say about incurable cases of moral obliquity and deformity. Christ knows nothing about ' incurable cases.' If there is a worst man in the world — and perhaps there is — there is nothing but his own disinclination to pre- vent his being brought back, and made as pure as an angel. But do not let us deal with generalities; let us bring the truths to ourselves. Dear brethren, I know nothing V. 13] FORGIVEN AND UNFORGIVING 87 about the most of you. I should not know you again if I met you j&ve minutes after we part now. I have never spoken to many of you, and probably never shall, except in this public way ; but I know that you need Christ, and that Christ wants you. And I know that, however far you have gone, you have not gone so far but that His love feels out through the remote- ness to grasp you, and would fain draw you to itself. I dare say you have seen upon some dreary moor, or at the foot of some * scaur ' on the hillside, the bleached bones of a sheep, lying white and grim among the purple heather. It strayed, unthinking of danger, tempted by the sweet herbage ; it fell ; it vainly bleated ; it died. But what if it had heard the shep- herd's call, and had preferred to lie where it fell, and to die where it lay ? We talk about ' silly sheep.' Are there any of them so foolish as men and women listen- ing to me now, who will not answer the Shepherd's voice when they hear it, with, ' Lord, here am I, come and help me out of this miry clay, and bring me back.' He is saying to each of you, ' Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die ? ' May He not have to say at last of any of us, • Ye would not come to Me, that ye might have life ! ' FORGIVEN AND UNFORGIVING 'Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times ; but. Until seventy times seven.'— Matt, xviii. 22. The disciples had been squabbling about pre-eminence in the kingdom which they thought was presently to appear. They had ventured to refer their selfish and ambitious dispute to Christ's arbitrament. He answered by telling them the qualifications of 'the 38 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xviil greatest in the kingdom ' — that they are to be humble like little children ; that they are to be placable ; that they are to use all means to reclaim offenders ; and that, even if the offence is against themselves, they are to ignore the personal element, and to regard the offender, not so much as having done them harm, as having harmed himself by his evil-doing. Peter evidently feels that that is a very hard com- mandment for a man of his temperament, and so he goes to Jesus Christ for a little further direction, and proposes a question as to the limits of this disposition : 'How often shall my brother sin?' The very question betrays that he does not understand what forgiveness means ; for it is not real, if the ' forgiven ' sin is stowed away safely in the memory. ' I can forgive, but I cannot forget,' generally means, * I do not quite forgive.' We are not to take the pardoned offence, and carry it to a kind of 'suspense account,' to be revived if another is committed, but we are to blot it out altogether. Peter thought that he had given a very wide allowance when he said 'seven times.' Christ's answer lifts the whole subject out of the realm of hard and fast lines and limits, for He takes the two perfect numbers ' ten ' and ' seven,' and multiplies them together, and then He multiplies that by ' seven ' once more ; and the product is not four hundred and ninety, but is innumerableness. He does not mean that the four hundred and ninety- first offence is outside the pale, but He suggests inde- finiteness, endlessness. So, as I say. He lifts the question out of the region in which Peter was keeping it, thereby betraying that he did not understand what he was talking about, and tells us that there are no limits to the obligation. The parable which follows, and follows with a » there- V. 22] FORGIVEN AND UNFORGIVING 39 fore,' does not deal so much with Peter's question as to the limits of the disposition, but sets forth its grounds and the nature of its manifestations. If we understand why we ought to forgive, and what forgiveness is, we shall not say, ' How often ? ' The question will have answered itself. I turn to the parable rather than the words which I have read as our starting-point, to seek to bring out the lessons which it contains in regard to our relations to God, and to one another. There are three sections in it : the king and his debtor ; the forgiven debtor and his debtor ; and the forgiven debtor unforgiven because unforgiving. And if we look at these three points I think we shall get the lessons intended. I. The king and his debtor. A certain king has servants, whom he gathers together to give in their reckoning. And one of them is brought that owes him ten thousand talents. Now, it is to be noticed at the very outset that the analogy between debt and sin, though real, is extremely im- perfect. No metaphor of that sort goes on all fours, and there has been a great deal of harm done to theology and to evangelical religion by carrying out too completely the analogy between money debts and our sins against God. But although the analogy is imperfect, it is very real. The first point that is to be brought out in this first part of the parable is the immense magnitude of every man's transgressions against God. Numismatists and arithmeticians may jangle about the precise amount represented by the thousand talents. It differs according to the talent which is taken as the basis of the calculation. There were several talents in use in the currency of ancient days. But the very point of the expression is not the 40 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xviii. specification of an exact amount, but the use of a round number which is to suggest an undefined magnitude. •Ten thousand talents,' according to one estimate, is some two millions and a quarter of pounds sterling. But I would point out that the amount is stated in terms of talents, and any talent is a large sum ; and there are ten thousand of these ; and the reason why the account is made out in terms of talents, the largest denomination in the currency of the period, is because every sin against God is a great sin. He being what He is, and we being what we are, and sin being what it is, every sin is large, although the deed which embodies it may be, when measured by the world's foot-rule, very small. For the essence of sin is rebellion against God and the enthroning of self as His victorious rival ; and all rebellion is rebellion, whether it is found in arms in the field, or whether it is simply sulkily refusing obedience and cherishing thoughts of treason. We are always apt to go wrong in our estimate of the great and small in human actions, and, although the terms of magnitude do not apply properly to moral questions at all, there is no more conspicuous misuse of language than when we speak of anything which has in it the virus of rebellion against God, and the breach of His law, as being a small Jt- sin. It may be a small act ; it is a great sin. Little rattlesnakes are snakes ; they have rattles and poison fangs as really as the most monstrous of the brood that coils and hisses in some cave. So the account is made out in terms of talents, because every sin is a great one. I need not dwell upon the numerousness that is suggested. ' Ten thousand ' is the natural current expression for a number that is not innumerable, but is only known to be very great. The psalmist says : V.22] FORGIVEN AND UNFORGIVING 41 • They are more than the hairs of my head.' How miany hairs had you in your head, David? Do you know? ' No ! ' And how many sins have you committed ? Do you know ? ' No ! ' The number is beyond count by us, though it may be counted by Him against whom they are done. Do you believe that about yourself, my friend, that the debit side of your account has filled all the page and has to be carried forward on to another? Do we any of us realise, as we all of us ought to do, the infinite number, and the transcendent greatness, of our transgressions against the Father ? But the next point to be noticed is the stern legal right of the creditor. It sounds harsh, cruel, almost brutal, that the man and his wife and his children should be sold into slavery, and all that he had should be taken from him, in order to go some little way towards the reduction of the enormous debt that he owed. Christ puts in that harsh and apparently cruel conduct in the story, not to suggest that it was harsh and cruel, but because it was according to the law of the time. A recognised legal right was exercised by the creditor when he said, 'Take him ; sell him for a slave, and bring me what he fetches in the open markets.' So that we have here suggested the solemn thought of the right that divine justice, acting according to strict retributive law, has over each of us. Our own consciences attest it as perfectly within the scope of the divine retributive justice that our enormous sin should bring down a tremendous punishment. I said that the analogy between sin and debt was a very imperfect one. It is imperfect in regard to one point — viz. the implication of other people in the con- sequences of the man's evil ; for although it is quite true that 'the evil that men do lives after them,' 42 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xvm. and spreads far beyond their sight, and involves many people, no other is amenable to divine justice for the sinner's debt. It is quite true that, when we do an evil action, we never can tell how far its wind-borne seeds may be carried, or where they may alight, or what sort of unwholesome fruit they may bear, or who may be poisoned by them ; but, on the other hand, we, and we only, are responsible for our individual transgressions against God. 'If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself; and if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it.' The same imperfection in the analogy applies to the next point in the parable — viz. the bankrupt debtor's prayer, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.' Easy to promise ! I wonder how long it would have taken a penniless bankrupt to scrape together two and a quarter millions of pounds ? He said a great deal more than he could make good. But the language of his prayer is by no means the language that becomes a penitent at God's throne. We have not to offer to make future satisfaction. No ! that is impossible. • What I have written I have written,' and the page, with all its smudges and blots and misshapen letters, cannot be made other than it is by any future pages fairly written. No future righteousness has any power to affect the guilt of past sin. There is one thing that does discharge the writing from the page. Do you remember Paul's words, ' blotting out the handwriting that was against us — nailing it to His Cross ' ? You sometimes dip your pens into red ink, and run a couple of lines across the page of an account that is done with. Jesus Christ does the same across our account, and the debt is non-existent, because He has died. But the prayer is the expression, if not of penitence yet of petition, and all the stern rigour of the law's V. 22] FORGIVEN AND UNFORGIVING 43 requirement at once melts away, and the king who, in the former words, seemed so harsh, now is almost incredibly merciful. For he not only cancels the debt, but sets the man free. ' Thy ways are not as our ways ; ... as the heavens are higher than the earth, so great is His mercy toward ' the sinful soul. II. So much, then, for the first part of this parable. Now a word as to the second, the forgiven debtor and his debt. Our Lord uses in the 27th and 28th verses of our text the same expression very significantly and emphatically. • The lord of that servant was moved with compassion.' And then again, in the 28th verse, 'But that servant went out and found one of his fellow-servants.' The repetition of the same phrase hooks the two halves together, emphasises the identity of the man, and the difference of his demeanour, on the two occasions. The conduct described is almost impossibly disgusting and truculent. ' He found his fellow-servant, who owed him a hundred pence' — some three pounds, ten shillings — and with the hands that a minute before had been wrung in agony, and extended in entreaty, j he throttled him ; and with the voice that had been plaintively pleading for mercy a minute before, he gruffly growled, ' Pay me that thou owest.' He had just come through an agony of experience that might have made him tender. He had just received a blessing that might have made his heart glow. But even the repeti- \ tion of his own petition does not touch him, and when the poor fellow-servant, with his paltry debt, says, •Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all,' it avails nothing. He durst not sell his fellow-servant. God's rights over a man are more than any man's over another. But he does what he can. He will not 44 GOSPEL OF ST. JMATTHEW [ch.xviii, do mucli towards recouping himself of his loan by- flinging the poor debtor into prison, but if he cannot get his ducats he will gloat over his ' pound of flesh.' So he hurries him off to gaol. Could a man have done like that ? Ah ! brethren, the things that would be monstrous in our relations to one another are common in our relations to God. Every day we see, and, alas ! do, the very same thing, in our measure and degree. Do you never treasure up somebody's slights? Do you never put away in a pigeon-hole for safe-keeping, endorsed with the doer's name on the back of it, the record of some trivial offence against you? It is but as a penny against a talent, for the worst that any of us can do to another is nothing as compared with what many of us have been doing all our lives toward God. I dare say that some of us will go out from this place, and the next man that we meet that 'rubs us the wrong way,' or does us any harm, we shall score down his act against him with as implacable and unmerciful an unf orgiving- ness as that of this servant in the parable. Do not believe that he was a monster of iniquity. He was just like us. We all of us have one human heart, and this man's crime is but too natural to us all. The essence of it was that having been forgiven, he did not forgive. So, then, our Lord here implies the principle that God's mercy to us is to set the example to which our dealings with others is to be conformed. 'Even as I had m6rcy on thee ' plainly proposes that miracle of divine forgiveness as our pattern as well as our hope. The world's morality recognises the duty of forgiveness. Christ shows us God's forgiveness as at once the model which is the perfect realisation of the idea in its com- pleteness and inexhaustibleness, and also the motive V. 22] FORGIVEN AND UNFORGIVING 45 which, brought into our experience, inclines and enables us to forgive. III. And now I come to the last point of the text — the debtor who had been forgiven falling back into the ranks of the unforgiven, because he does not forgive. The fellow-servants were very much disgusted, no doubt. Our consciences work a great deal more rapidly, and rigidly, about other people's faults than they do about our own. And nine out of ten of these fellow- servants that were very sorry, and ran and told the king, would have done exactly the same thing them- selves. The king, for the first time, is wroth. We do not read that he was so before, when the debt only was in question ; but such unforgiving harshness, after the experience of such merciful forgiveness, rouses his righteous indignation. The unmercif ulness of Christian people is a worse sin than many a deed that goes by very ugly names amongst men. And so the judgment that falls upon this evil-doer, who, by his truculence to his fellow-servant, had betrayed the baseness of his nature and the ingratitude of his heart, is, 'Put him back where he was ! Tie the two and a quarter millions round his neck again ! Let us see what he will do by way of discharging it now ! ' Now, do not let any theological systems prevent you from recognising the solemn truth that underlies that representation, that there may be things in the hearts and conduct of forgiven Christians which may cancel the cancelling of their debt, and bring it all back again. No man can cherish the malicious disposition that treasures up offences against himself, and at the same moment feel that the divine love is wrapping him round in its warm folds. If we are to retain our con- sciousness of having been forgiven by God, and received 46 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xix. into the amplitude of His heart, we must, in our measure and degree, im.itate that on which we trust, and be mirrors of the divine mercy which we say has saved us. Our parable lays equal stress on two things. First, that the foundation of all real mercifulness in men is the reception of forgiving mercy from God. We must have experienced it before we can exercise it. And, second, we must exercise it, if we desire to continue to experience it. ' Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.' That applies to Christian people. But behind that there lies the other truth, that in order to be merciful we must first of all have* received the initial mercy of cancelled transgression. So, dear friends, here are the two lessons for every one of us. First, to recognise our debt, and go to Him in whom God is well pleased, for its abolishment and forgiveness ; and then to go out into the world, and live like Him, and show to others love kindled by and kindred to that to which we trust for our own salva- tion. ' Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as God also hath loved us.' THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE KING ' And, behold, one came and said unto Him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life ? 17. And He said unto him, Why callest thou Me good? there is none good but One, that is, God : but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. 18. He saithunto Him, Which? Jesus said. Thou shalt do no murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalb not bear false witness, 19. Honour thy father and thy mother : and. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 20. The young man saith unto Him, All these things have I kept from my youth up : what lack I yet? 21. Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and come and follow Me. 22. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful : for he had great possessions. 23. Then said Jeans unto His disciples. Verily I say unto you. That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. 21. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel vs.16-26] REQUIREMENTS OF THE KING 47 to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. 25. When His disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying. Who then can be saved? 26. But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible ; but with God all things are possible.'— Matt. xix. 16-26. We have here one of the saddest stories in the gospels. It is a true soul's tragedy. The young man is in earnest, but his earnestness has not volume and force enough to float him over the bar. He wishes to have some great thing bidden him to do, but he recoils from the sharp test which Christ imposes. He truly wants the prize, but the cost is too great ; and yet he wishes it so much that he goes away without it in deep sorrow, which perhaps, at another day, ripened into the resolve which then was too high for him. There is a certain severity in our Lord's tone, an absence of recognition of the much good in the young man, and a naked stringency in His demand from him, which sound almost harsh, but which are set in their true light by Mark's note, that Jesus ' loved him,' and therefore treated him thus. The truest way to draw ingenuous souls is not to flatter, nor to make entrance easy by dropping the standard or hiding the requirements, but to call out all their energy by setting before them the lofty ideal. Easy-going disciples are easily made — and lost. Thorough-going ones are most surely won by calling for entire surrender. I. We may gather together the earlier part of the conversation, as introductory to the Lord's require- ment (vs. 16-20), in which we have the picture of a real though imperfect moral earnestness, and may note how Christ deals with it. Matthew tells us that the questioner was young and rich. Luke adds that he was a ' ruler ' — a synagogue official, that is — which was un- usual for a young man, and indicates that his legal blamelessness was recognised. Mark adds one of his 48 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xix. touches, which are not only picturesque, but character- revealing, by the information that he came 'running* to Jesus in the way, so eager was he, and fell at His feet, so reverential was he. His first question is singu- larly compacted of good and error. The fact that he came to Christ for a purely religious purpose, not seek- ing personal advantage for himself or for others, like the crowds who followed for loaves and cures, nor laying traps for Him with puzzles which might entangle Him with the authorities, nor asking theological questions for curiosity, but honestly and earnestly desiring to be helped to lay hold of eternal life, is to be put down to his credit. He is right in counting it the highest blessing. Where had he got hold of the thought of 'eternal life ' ? It was miles above the dusty speculations and casuistries of the rabbis. Probably from Christ Him- self. He was right in recognising that the conditions of possessing it were moral, but his conception of 'good' was superficial, and he thought more of doing good than of being good, and of the desired life as payment for meritorious actions. In a word, he stood at the point of view of the old dispensation. ' This do, and thou shalt live,' was his belief; and what he wished was further instruction as to what ' this ' was. He was to be praised in that he^ docilely brought his question to Jesus, even though, as Christ's answer shows, there was error mingling in his docility. Such is the char- acter — a young man, rich, influential, touched with real longings for the highest life, ready, so far as he knows himself, to do whatever he is bidden, in order to secure it. We might have expected Christ, who opened His arms wide for publicans and harlots, to have welconpied this fair, ingenuous seeker with some kindly word. But He y V8.16-26] REQUIREMENTS OF THE KING 49 Las none for him. We adopt the reading of the Revised Version, in which our Lord's first word is repellent. It is in effect — ' There is no need for your question, which answers itself. There is one good Being, the source and type of every good thing, and therefore the good, which you ask about, can only be conformity to His will. You need not come to Me to know what you are to do.' He relegates the questioner, not to his own conscience, but to the authoritative revealed will of God in the law. Modern views of Christ's work, which put all its stress on the perfection of His moral char- acter, and His office as a pattern of righteousness, may well be rebuked by the fact that He expressly dis- claimed this character, arid declared that, if He was only to be regarded as republishing the law of human conduct, His work was needless. Men have enough knowledge of what they must do to enter into life, with- out Jesus Christ. No doubt, Christ's moral teaching transcends that given of old ; but His special work was not to tell men what to do, but to make it possible for them to do it ; to give, not the law, but the power, both the motive and the impulse, which will fulfil the law. On another occasion He answered a similar question in a different manner. When the Jews asked Him, ♦What must we do, that we may work the works of God ? ' He replied by the plain evangelical statement : * This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.' Why did He not answer the young ruler thus? Only because He knew that he needed to be led to that thought by having his own self-com- placency shattered, and the clinging of his soul to earth laid bare. The whole treatment of him here is meant to bring him to the apprehension of faith as preceding all truly good work. VOL. III. d 50 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xix. The young man's second question says a great deal in its one word. It indicates astonishment at being remanded to these old, well-worn precepts, and might be rendered, 'What sort of commandments?' as if taking it for granted that they must be new and peculiar. It is the same spirit as that which in all ages has led men who with partial insight longed after eternal life, to seek it by fantastic and unusual roads of extraordinary sacrifices or services — the spirit which filled monasteries, and invented hair shirts, and fast- ings, and swinging with hooks in your back at Hindoo festivals. The craving for more than ordinary ' good works' shows a profound mistake in the estimate of the ordinary, and a fatal blunder as to the relation between ' goodness ' and ' eternal life.' So Christ answers the question by quoting the second ^half of the Decalogue, which deals with the homeliest 'duties, and appending to it the summary of the law, which requires love to our neighbour as to ourselves. Why does He omit the earlier half? Probably because He would meet the error of the question, by presenting only the plainest, most familiar commandments, and because He desired to excite the consciousness of defi- ciency, which could be most easily done in connection with these. There is a touch of impatience in the rejoinder, * All these have I kept,' and more than a touch of self- satisfaction. The law has failed to accomplish one of its chief purposes in the young man, in that it has not taught him his sinfulness. No doubt he had a right to say that his outward life had been free from breaches of such very elementary morality which any old woman could have taught him. He had never gone below the surface of the commandments, nor below vs.16-26] REQUIREMENTS OF THE KING 51 the surface of his acts, or he would not have answered so jauntily. He had yet to learn that the height of •goodness' is reached, not by adding some strange new performances to the threadbare precepts of everyday duty, but by digging deep into these, and bottoming the fabric of our lives on their inmost spirit. He had yet to learn that whoever says, ' All these have I kept,' thereby convicts himself of understanding neither them nor himself. Still he was not at rest, although he had, as he fancied, kept them all. His last question is a plaintive, honest acknowledgment of the hungry void within, which no round of outward obediences can ever fill. He knows that he has not the inner fountain springing up into eternal life. He is dimly aware of something wanting, whether in his obedience or no, at all events in his peace ; and he is right in believing that the reason for that conscious void is something wanting in his conduct. But he will not learn what Christ has been trying to teach him, that he needs no new com- mandment, but a deeper understanding and keeping of the old. Hence his question, half a wail of a hungry heart, half petulant impatience with Christ's reitera- tion of obvious duties. There are multitudes of this kind in all ages, honestly wishing to lay hold of eternal life, able to point to virtuous conduct, anxious to know and do anything lacking, and yet painfully certain that something is wanting somewhere. II. Now comes the sharp-pointed test, which pricks the brilliant bubble. Mark tells us that Jesus accom- panied His word with one of those looks which searched a soul, and bore His love into it. ' If thou wouldest be perfect,' takes up the confession of something ' lack- ing,' and shows what that is. It is unnecessary to 52 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xix. remark that this commandment to sell all and give to the poor is intended only for the individual case. No other would-be disciple was called upon to do so. It cannot be meant for others; for, if all were sellers, where would the buyers be? Nor need we do more than point out that the command of renunciation is only half of Christ's answer, the other being, 'Come, follow Me.' But we are not to slide easily over the pre- cept with the comfortable thought that it was special treatment for a special case. The principle involved in it is medicine for all, and the only way of healing for any. This man was tied to earth by the cords of his wealth. They did not hinder him from keeping the commandments, for he had no temptations to murder, or adultery, or theft, or neglect of parents. But they did hinder him from giving his whole self up, and from regarding eternal life as the most precious of all things. Therefore for him there was no safety short of entire outward denuding himself of them ; and, if he was in earnest out and out in his questions, here was a new thing for him to do. Others are hindered by other things, and they are called to abandon these. The one thing needful for entrance into life is at bottom self- surrender, and the casting away of all else for its sovereign sake. ' I do count them but dung ' must be the language of every one who will win Christ. The hands must be emptied of treasures, and the heart swept clear of lesser loves, if He is to be grasped by our hands, and to dwell in our hearts. More of us than we are willing to believe are kept from entire surrender to Jesus Christ, by money and worldly possessions ; and many professing Christians are kept shrivelled and weak and joyless because they love their wealth more than their Lord, and would think it madness to V8.16-26] REQUIREMENTS OF THE KING 53 do as this man was bidden to do. When ballast is thrown out, the balloon shoots up. A general unlading of the • thick clay ' which weighs down the Christian life of England, would let thousands soar to heights which they will never reach as long as they love money and what it buys as much as they do. The letter of this commandment may be only applicable in a special case (though, perhaps, this one young man was not the only human being that ever needed this treatment), but the spirit is of universal application. No man enters into life who does not count all things but loss, and does not die to them all, that he may follow Christ. III. Then comes the collapse of all the enthusiasm. The questioner's earnestness chills at the touch of the test. What has become of the eagerness which brought him running to Jesus, and of the willingness to do any hard task to which he was set ? It was real, but shallow. It deceived himself. But Christ's words cut down to the inner man, and laid bare for his own inspection the hard core of selfish worldliness which lay beneath. How many radiant enthusiasms, which cheat their subjects quite as much as their beholders, disappear like tinted mist when the hard facts of self-sacrifice strike against them ! How much sheer worldliness dis- guises itself from itself and from others in glistering garments of noble sentiments, which fall at a touch when real giving up is called for, and show the ugly thing below ! How much ' religion ' goes about the world, and gets made ' a ruler ' of the synagogue in recognition of its excellence, which needs but this Ithuriel's spear to start up in its own shape ! The com- pleteness and immediateness of the collapse are notice- able. The young man seems to speak no word, and to 54 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xix. take no time for reflection. He stands for a moment as if stunned, and then silently turns away. What a moment ! his fate hung on it. Once more we see the awful mystery enacted before our eyes, of a soul gathering up its power to put away life. Who will say that the decision of a moment, which is the outcome of all the past, may not fix the whole future ? This man had never before been consciously brought to the fork in the road; but now the two ways are before him, and, knowingly, he chooses the worse. Christ did not desire him to do so ; but He did desire that he should choose, and should know that he did. It was the truest kindness to tear away the veil of surface goodness which hid him from himself, and to force him to a conscious decision. One sign of grace he does give, in that he went away ' sorrowful.' He is not angry nor careless. He cannot see the fair prospect of the eternal life, which he had in some real fashion desired, fade away, without a pang. If he goes back to the world, he goes back feel- ing more acutely than ever that it cannot satisfy him. He loves it too well to give it up, but not enough to feel that it is enough. Surely, in coming days, that godly sorrow would work a change of the foolish choice, and we may hope that he found no rest till he cast away all else to make Christ his own. A soul which has travelled as far on the road to life eternal as this man had done, can scarcely thereafter walk the broad road of selfishness and death with entire satisfaction. IV. The section closes with Christ's comment on the sad incident. He speaks no word of condemnation, but passes at once from the individual to the general lesson of the difficulty which rich men (or, as He ex- plains it in Mark, men who ' trust in riches ') have in vs. 16-26] HEQUIREMENTS OF THE KING 55 entering the kingdom. The reflection breathes a tone of pity, and is not so much blame as a merciful recog- nition of special temptations which aifect His judg- ment, and should modify ours. A camel with its great body, long neck, and hump, struggling to get through a needle's eye, is their emblem. It is a new thing to pity rich men, or to think of their wealth as disqualify- ing them fbr anything. The disciples, with childish ndiveU, wonder. We may wonder that they wondered. They could not understand what sort of a kingdom it was into which capitalists would find entrance diffi- cult. All doors fly open for them to-day, as then. They do not find much difficulty in getting into the church, however hard it may be to get into the kingdom. But it still remains true that the man who has wealth has a hindrance to his religious character, which, like all hindrances, may be made a help by the use he makes of it ; and that the man who trusts in riches, which he who possesses them is wofuUy likely to do, has made the hindrance into a barrier which he cannot pass. That is a lesson which commercial nations, like England, have need to lay to heart, not as a worn- out saying of the Bible, which means very little for us, but as heavy with significance, and pointing to the special dangers which beset Christian perfection. So real is the peril of riches, that Christ would have His disciples regard the victory over it as beyond our human power, and beckons us away from the effort to overcome the love of the world in our strength, point- ing us to God, in whose mighty grace, breathed into our feeble wills and treacherous hearts, is the only force which can overcome the attraction of perishable riches, and make any of us willing or able to renounce them all that we may win Christ. The young ruler had 56 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xx. just shown that * with men this is impossible.' Perhaps he still lingered near enough to catch the assurance that the surrender, which had been too much for him to achieve, might yet be joyfully made, since * with God all things are possible.' NEAREST TO CHRIST ' To sit on My right hand, and on My left, is not Mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of My Father,'— Matt. xx. 23. You will observe that an unusually long supplement is inserted by our translators in this verse. That supplement is quite unnecessary, and, as is sometimes the case, is even worse than unnecessary. It positively obscures the true meaning of the words before us. As they stand in our Bibles, the impression that they -h leave upon one's mind is that Christ in them abjures the power of giving to His disciples their places in the kingdom of heaven, and declares that it belongs not to His function, but relegates it, to His own exclusion, to the Father ; whereas what He says is the very opposite of this. He does not put aside the granting of places at His right hand or His left as not being within His province, but He states the principles and conditions on which He does make such a grant, and so is really claiming it as in His province. All that would have been a great deal clearer if our translators had been contented to render the words that they found before them in the Book, without addition, and to ■*' read, ' To sit on My right hand, and on My left, is not Mine to give, but to them for whom it is prepared of My Father.' Another introductory remark may be made, to the V. 23] NEAREST TO CHRIST 57 effect that our Lord does not put aside this prayer of His apostles as if they were seeking an impossible thing. It is never safe, I know, to argue from the silence of Scripture. There may be many reasons for that silence beyond our ken in any given case ; but still it does strike one as noteworthy that, when this fond mother and her ambitious sons came with their prayer for pre-eminence in His kingdom, our Lord did not answer what would have been so obvious to answer if it had been true, * You are asking a thing which cannot be granted to anybody, for they are all upon one level in that kingdom of the heavens.' He says by implication the very opposite. Not only does His silence confirm their belief that when He came in His glory, some would be closer to His side than others ; but the plain statement of the text is that, in the depth of the eternal counsels, and by the preparation of divine grace, there were thrones nearest to His own which some men should fill. He does not say, 'You are asking what cannot be.' He does say, ' There are men for whom it is prepared of My Father.' And then, still further, Jesus does not condemn the prayer as indicating a wrong state of mind on the part of James and John, though good and bad were strangely mingled in it. We are told nowadays that it is a very selfish thing, far below the lofty height to which our transcendental teachers have attained, to be heartened and encouraged, strengthened and quickened, by the prospect of the crown and the rest that remain for the people of God. If so, Christ ought to have turned round to these men, and have rebuked the passion for reward, which, according to this new light, is so unworthy and so low. But, instead pf that. He confines Himself to explaining the condi- 58 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xx. tions on which the fulfilment of the desire is possible, and by implication permits and approves the desire. • You want to sit on My right hand and on My left, do you ? Then be it so. You may do so if you like. Are you ready to accept the conditions? It is well that you should want it, — not for the sake of being above your brethren, but for the sake of being nearest to Me. Hearken ! Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of?' They say unto Him (and I do not know that there are anywhere grander words than the calm, swift, unhesitating, modest, and yet confident answer of these two men), 'We are able.' ' You shall have your desire if you fulfil the conditions. It is given to them for whom it is prepared of My Father.' I. So, then, if we rightly understand these words, and take them without the unfortunate comment which our translators have inserted, they contain, first, the principle that some will be nearer Christ than others in that heavenly kingdom. As I have said, the words of our Lord do not merely imply, by the absence of all hint that these disciples' petition was impossible, the existence of degrees among the subjects of His heavenly kingdom, but articulately affirm that such variety is provided for by the preparation of the Father. Probably the two brothers thought that they were only asking for pre- eminence in an earthly kingdom, and had no idea that their prayer pointed beyond the grave ; but that con- fusion of thought could not be cured in their then stage of growth, and our Lord therefore leaves it untouched. But the other error, if it were an error, was of a different kind, and might, for aught that one sees, have been set right in a moment. Instead of which the answer adopts it, and seems to set Christ's V. 23] NEAREST TO CHRIST 59 own confirmation on it, as being no Jewish dream, but a truth. They were asking for earth. He answers — for heaven. He leaves them to learn in after days — when the one was slain with the sword, first martyr among the apostles, and the other lived to see them all pass to their thrones, while he remained the ' companion in tribulation ' of the second generation of the Church — how far off was the fulfilment which they fancied so near. We need not be surprised that so large a truth should be spoken by Christ so quietly, and as it were incidentally. For that is in keeping with His whole tone when speaking of the unseen world. One knows not whether to wonder more at the decisive authority with which He tells us of that mysterious region, or at the small space which such revelations occupy in His words. There is an air of simplicity and uncon- sciousness, and withal of authority, and withal of divine reticence about them all, which are in full harmony with the belief that Christ speaking of heaven speaks of that He knows, and testifies that He hath seen. That truth to which, as we think, our Lord's words here inevitably lead, is distinctly taught in many other places of Scripture. We should have had less difficulty about it, and should have felt more what a solemn and stimulating thought it is, if we bad tried a little more than most of us do to keep clear before us what really is the essential of that future life, what is the lustre of its light, the heaven of heaven, the glory of the glory. Men talk about physical theories of another life. I suppose they are possible. They seem to me infinitely unimportant. Warm imaginations, working by sense, 60 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xx. write books about a future state which wonderfully succeed in making it real by making it earthly. Some of them read more like a book of travels in this world than forecastings of the next. They may be true or not. It does not matter one whit. I believe that heaven is a place. I believe that the corporeity of our future life is essential to the perfection of it. I believe that Christ wears, and will wear for ever, a glorified human body. I believe that that involves locality, circumstance, external occupations ; and I say, all that being so, and in its own place very important, yet if we stop there, we have no vision of the real light that makes the lustre, no true idea of the glory that makes the blessedness. For what is heaven ? Likeness to God, love, purity, fellowship with Him ; the condition of the spirit and the relation of the soul to Him. The noblest truth about the future world flows from the words of our Master — ' This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.' Not ' this brings ' ; not ' this will lead up to ' ; not * this will draw after it'; but 'this is'; and whosoever pt.S8essei3 that eternal life hath already in him the germ of ail the glories that are round the throne, and the blesisednefes that fills the hearts of perfected spirits. If so, if already eternal life in the bud staindifcth in the knowledge of God iu Christ, what makes its fruitage and completdness ? Surely, not physical changes or the circumstances of heaven, at least not these primarily, however much such changes and circumstances may subserve our blessedness there, and the anticipation of them may help our sense- bound hopes here. But the completeness of heaven is the completion of our knowledge of God and Christ, V. 23] NEAREST TO CHRIST 61 with all the perfecting of spirit which that implies and produces. The faith, and love, and happy obedience, and consecration which is calm, that partially occupied and ruled the soul here, are to be thought of as enlarged, perfected, delivered from the interruption of opposing thoughts, of sensuous desires, of selfish purposes, of earthly and sinful occupations. And that perfect knowledge and perfect union and perfect likeness are perfect bliss. And that bliss is heaven. And if, whilst heaven is a place, the heaven of heaven be a state, then no more words are needed to show that, then, heaven can be no dead level, nor can all stand at the same stage of attainments, though all be perfect ; but that in that solemn company of the blessed, ' the spirits of just men made perfect,' there are indefinitely numerous degrees of approximation to the unattain- able Perfection, which stretches above them all, and draws them all to itself. We have not to think of that future life as oppressed, if I may so say, with the unbroken monotony of perfect identity in character and attainments. All indeed are like one another, because all are like Jesus, but that basis of similarity does not exclude infinite variety. The same glory belongs to each, but it is reflected at differing angles and received in divers measures. Perfect blessedness will belong to each, but the capacity to receive it will differ. There will be the same crown on each head, the same song on each lip, the same fulness of joy filling each heart ; but star differeth from star, and the great condition of happy intercourse on earth will not be wanting in heaven — a deep-seated similarity and a superficial diversity. Does not the very idea of an endless progress in that kingdom involve such variety? We do not think of 62 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xx. men passing into the heavens, and being perfected by a bound so as that there shall be no growth. We think of them indeed as being perfected up to the height of their then capacity, from the beginning of that celestial life, so as that there shall be no sin, nor any conscious incompleteness, but not so as that there shall be no progress. And, if they each grow through all the ages, and are ever coming nearer and nearer to Christ, that seems necessarily to lead to the thought that this endless progress, carried on in every spirit, will place them at different points of approximation to the one centre. As in the heavens there are planets that roll nearer the central sun, and others that circle farther out from its rays, yet each keeps its course, and makes music as it moves, as well as planets whose broader disc can receive and reflect more of the light than smaller sister spheres, and yet each blazes over its whole surface and is full to its very rim with white light ; so round that throne the spirits of the just made perfect shall move in order and peace — every one blessed, every one perfect, every one like Christ at first, and becoming liker through every moment of the eternities. Each perfected soul looking on his brother shall see there another phase of the one perfectness that blesses and adorns him too, and all taken together shall make up, in so far as finite creatures can make up, the reflection and manifesta- tion of the fulness of Christ. ' Having then gifts differ- ing according to the grace that is given to us ' is the law for the incompleteness of earth. ' Having then gifts differing according to the glory that is given to us ' will be the law for the perfection of the heavens. There are those for whom it is prepared of His Father, that they shall sit in special nearness to Him. V. 23] NEAREST TO CHRIST 63 II. Still further, these words rightly understood assert that truth which, at first sight, our Authorised Version's rendering seems to make them contradict, viz. that Christ is the giver to each of these various de- grees of glory and blessedness. 'It is not Mine to give, save to them for whom it is prepared.' Then it is Thine to give it to them. To deny or to doubt that Christ is the giver of the blessedness, whatsoever the blessedness may be, that fills the hearts and souls of the redeemed, is to destroy His whole work, to destroy all the relations upon which our hopes rest, and to introduce confusion and contradiction into the whole miatter. For Scripture teaches us that He is God's unspeak- able gift; that in Him is given to us everything ; that He is the bestower of all which we need ; that ' out of His fulness,' as one of those two disciples long after- wards said, • all we have received, and grace for grace.' There is nothing within the compass of God's love to bestow of which Christ is not the giver. There is nothing divine that is done in the heavens and the earth, as I believe, of which Christ is not the doer. The representation of Scripture is uniformly that He is the medium of the activity of the divine nature ; that he is the energy of the divine will; that He is, to use the metaphor of the Old Testament, ' the arm of the Lord ' — the f orthputting of God's power ; that He is, to use the profound expression of the New Testament, the Word of the Lord, cognate with, and the utterance of, the eternal nature, the light that streams from the central brightness, the river that flows from the else sealed fountain. As the arm is to the body, and as is the word to the soul, so is Christ to God — the eternal divine utterance and manifestation of the divine 64 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xx. nature. And, therefore, to speak of anything that a man can need and anything that God can give as not being given by Christ, is to strike at the very founda- tion, not only of our hopes, but at the whole scheme of revealed truth. He is the giver of heaven and every- thing else which the soul requires. And then, again, let me remind you that on this matter we are not left to such general considerations as those that I have been suggesting, but that the plain statements of Scripture do confirm the assertion that Christ is the determiner and the bestower of all the differing grades of glory and blessedness yonder. For do we not read of Him that He is the Judge of the whole earth ? Do we not read of Him that His word is acquittal and His frown condemnation — that to ' be accepted of Him ' is the highest aim and end of the Christian life ? Do we not read that it is He who says, * Come, ye blessed of My Father, enter into the king- dom prepared for you ' ? Do we not read that the apostle, dying, solaced himself with the thought that • there was laid up for him a crown of glory, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, would give him at that day'? And do we not read in the very last book of Scripture, written by one of those two brothers, and containing almost verbal reference to the words of my text, the promise seven times spoken from the immortal lips of the glorified Son of Man, walking in the midst of the candlesticks, ' To him that overcometh will I give ' ? The fruit of the tree of life is plucked by His hands for the wearied conquerors. The crown of life is set by Him on the faithful witnesses' brows. The hidden manna and the new name are bestowed by Him on those who hold fast His name. It is He who gives the victors kingly power over the nations. He clothes in white garments V.23] NEAREST TO CHRIST 65 those who have not defiled their robes. His hand writes upon the triumphant foreheads the name of God. And highest of all, beyond which there is no bliss conceiv- able, ' To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne.' Christ is the bestower of the royalties of the heavens as of the redemptions of earth, and it is His to give that which we crave at His hands, when we ask pardon here and glory hereafter. ' To him that is athirst will He give of the water of life freely,' and to him that overcometh will He give the crown of glory. III. These words lead us, in the third place, to the further thought, that these glorious places are not given to mere wishing, nor by mere arbitrary will. ' You would sit on My right hand and on My left ? You think of that pre-eminence as conferred because you chose to ask it — as given by a piece of favouritism. Not so. I cannot make a man foremost in my kingdom in that fashion. There are conditions which must pre- cede such an elevation.' And there are people who think thus still, as if the mere desire, without anything more, were enough — or as if the felicities of the heavenly world were dependent solely on Christ's arbitrary will, and could be bestowed by an exercise of mere power, as an Eastern prince may make this man his vizier and that other one his water-carrier. The same principles which we have already applied to the elucidation of the idea of varieties and stages of nearness to Christ in His heavenly kingdom have a bearing on this matter. If we rightly understand that the essential blessedness of heaven is likeness to Christ, we shall feel that m.ere wishing carries no man thither, and that mere sovereign will and power do not avail to set us there. VOL. Ill, E 66 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xx. There are conditions indispensable, from the very nature of the case, and unless they are realised it is as impossible for us to receive, as for Him to give, a place at His side. If, indeed, the future blessedness con- sisted in mere external circumstances and happier con- ditions of life, it might be so bestowed. But if place and surroundings, and a more exquisite and ethereal frame, are but subordinate sources of it, and its real fountain is union with Jesus and assimilation to Him, then something else than idle desires must wing the soul that soars thither, and His transforming grace, not His arbitrary w^ill, must set us at His own right hand ' in the heavenly places.' Of all the profitless occupations with which men waste their lives, none are more utterly useless than wishing without acting. Our wishes are meant to impel us to the appropriate forms of energy by which they can be realised. When a pauper becomes a millionaire by sitting and vehemently wishing that he were rich, when ignorance becomes learning by stand- ing in a library and wishing that the contents of all these books were in its head, there will be some hope that the gates of heaven will fly open to your desire. Bat till then, * many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in and not be able.' Many shall seek ; you must strive. For wishing is one thing, and willing is another, and doing is yet another. And in regard to entrance into Christ's kingdom, our ' doing ' is trusting in Him who has done all for us. ' This is the work of God, that ye should believe on Him whom He hath sent.' Does our wish lead us to the acceptance of the condition? Then it will be fulfilled. If not, it will remain fruitless, will die into apathy, or will live as a pang and a curse. You wish, or fancy you wish, to pass into heaven V. 23] NEAREST TO CHRIST 67 when you die, I suppose. Some of its characteristics attract you. You believe in punishment for sin, and you would willingly escape that. You believe in a place of rest after toil, of happiness after sorrow, where nipping frosts of disappointment, and wild blasts of calamity, and slow, gnawing decay no more harm and kill your joys — and you would like that. But do you wish to be pure and stainless, to have your hearts fixed on God alone, to have your whole being filled with Him, and emptied of self and sense and sin ? The peace of heaven attracts you — but its praise repels, does it not ? Its happiness draws your wishes — does its holiness seem inviting? It would be joyful to be far away from punishment — would it be as joyful to be near Christ ? Ah ! no ; the wishes lead to no resolve, and therefore to no result, for this among other reasons, because they are only kindled by a part of the whole, and are exchanged for positive aversion when the real heaven of heaven is presented to your thoughts. Many a man who, by the set of his whole life, is drifting daily nearer and nearer to that region of outer darkness, is conscious of an idle wish for peace and joy beyond the grave. In common matters a man may be devoured by vain desires all his lifetime, because he will not pass beyond wishing to acting accordingly. ' The desire of the slothful killeth him ; because his hands refused to labour, he coveteth greedily all the day long.' And with like but infinitely more tragical issues do these vain wishes for a place in that calm world, where nothing but holiness enters, gnaw at many a soul. * Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his,' was the aspiration of that Gentile prophet, whose love of the world obscured even the prophetic illumination which he possessed — 68 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xx. and his epitaph is a stern comment on the uselessness of such empty wishes, ' Balaam, the son of Beor, they slew with the sword.' It needs more than a wish to set us at Christ's right hand in His kingdom. Nor can such a place be given by mere arbitrary will. Christ could not, if He would, set a man at His right hand whose heart was not the home of simple trust and thankful love, whose nature and desires were unprepared for that blessed world. It would be like taking one of those creatures — if there be such — that live on the planet whose orbit is farthest from the sun, accustomed to cold, organised for darkness, and carrying it to that great central blaze, with all its fierce flames and tongues of fiery gas that shoot up a thousand miles in a moment. It would crumble and disappear before its blackness could be seen against the blaze. His loving will embraces us all, and is the founda- tion of all our hopes. But it had to reach its purpose by a bitter road which He did not shrink from travel- ling. He desires to save us, and to realise the desire He had to die. *It became Him for whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suifering.' What He had to do, we have to accept. Unless we accept the mercy of God in Christ, no wish on our parts, nor any exercise of power on His, will carry us to the heaven which He has died to open, and of which He is at once the giver and the gift. IV. These glorious places are given as the result of a divine preparation. •To them for whom it is prepared of My Father.* We have seen that Christ is not to be regarded as abjuring the office, with which His disciples' confidence led them to invest Him — that of allotting to Hia V. 23] NEAREST TO CHRIST 69 servants their place in His kingdom. He neither refers it to the Father without Himself, nor claims it for Himself without the Father. The living unity of will and work which subsists between the Father and the Son forbids such a separation and distribution of office. And that unity is set forth on both its sides in His own deep words, ' The Son can do nothing of Him- self, but what He seeth the Father do : for whatsoever things He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.' So, then, while the gift of thrones at His side is His act and the Father's, in like manner the preparation of the royal seats for their occupants, and of the kings for their thrones, is the Father's act and His. Our text does not tell us directly what that prepara- tion is, any more than it tells us directly what the prin- ciples are on which entrance into and pre-eminence in the kingdom are granted. But we know enough in regard to both, for our practical guidance, for the vigour of our hope, and the grasp of our faith. There is a twofold divine preparation of the heavens for men. One is from of old. The kingdom is 'pre- pared for you before the foundation of the world.' That preparation is in the eternal counsel of the divine love, which calleth the things that are not as though they were, and before which all that is evolved in the generations of men and the epochs of time, lies on one plane, equally near to Him from whose throne diverge far beneath the triple streams of past, present, and future. And beside that preparation, the counsel of pardon- ing mercy and redeeming grace, there is the other preparation — the realisation of that eternal purpose in time through the work of Jesus Christ our Lord. His consolation to His disciples in the parting hour was, ' I 70 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xx. go to prepare a place for you.' How much was in- cluded in these words we shall never know till we, like Him, see of the travail of His soul, and like Him are satisfied. But we can dimly see that on the one hand His death, and on the other hand His entrance into that holiest of all, make ready for us the many man- sions of the Father's house. He was crucified for our oifences. He was raised again for our justification. He is passed through the heavens to stand our Forerunner in the presence of God — and by all these mighty acts He prepares the heavenly places for us. As the sun behind a cloud, which hides it from us, is still pouring out its rays on far-off lands, so He, veiled in dark, sun- set clouds of Calvary, sent the energy of His passion and cross into the unseen world and made it possible that we should enter there. ' When Thou didst over- come the sharpness of death. Thou didst open the gates of the kingdom of heaven to all believers.' As one who precedes a mighty host provides and prepares rest for their weariness, and food for their hunger, in some city on their line of march, and having made all things ready, is at the gates to welcome their travel-stained ranks when they arrive, and guide them to their repose ; so He has gone before, our Forerunner, to order all things for us there. It may be that unless Christ were in heaven, our brother as well as our Lord, it were no place for mortals. It may be that we need to have His glorified bodily presence in order that it should be pos- sible for human spirits to bear the light, and be at home with God. Be that as it may, this we know, that the Father prepares a place for us by the eternal counsel of His love, and by the all-sufficient work of Christ, by whom we have access to the Father. And as His work is the Father's preparation of the V.23] THE SERVANT-LORD 71 place for us by the Son, the issue of His work is the Father's preparation of us for the place, through the Son, by the Spirit. * He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God.' If so, then what follows ? This, among other things, that wishes are vain, for heaven is no gift of arbitrary favouritism, but that faith in Christ, and faith alone, leads us to His right hand — and the measure of our faith and growing Christlikeness here, will be the measure of our glory hereafter, and of our nearness to Him. It is possible to be ' saved, yet so as by fire.' It is possible to have ' an entrance ministered unto us abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.' If we would be near Him then, we must be near Him now. If we would share His throne, we must bear His cross. If we would be found in the like- ness of His resurrection, we must be ' conformable unto His death.' Then such desires as these true- hearted, and yet mistaken, disciples expressed will not be the voice of selfish ambition, but of dependent love. They will not be vain wishes, but be fulfilled by Him, who, stooping from amid the royalties of heaven, with love upon His face and pity in His heart, will give more than we ask. ' Seekest thou a place at My right hand ? Nay, I give thee a more wondrous dignity. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne.* THE SERYANT-LORD AND HIS SERVANTS • Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.' Matt. xx. 28. It seems at first sight strangely unsympathetic and irrelevant that the ambitious request of James and 72 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xx. John and their foolish mother, that they should sit at Christ's right hand and His left in His kingdom, should have been occasioned by, and have followed imme- diately upon, our Lord's solemn and pathetic an- nouncement of His sufferings. But the connection is not difficult to trace. The disciples believed that, in some inexplicable way, the sufferings which our Lord was shadowing forth were to be the immediate pre- cursors of His assuming His regal dignity. And so they took time by the forelock, as they thought, and made haste to ensure their places in the kingdom, which they believed was now ready to burst upon them. Other occasions in the Gospels in which we find similar quarrelling among the disciples as to pre- eminence are similarly associated with references made by our Lord to His approaching crucifixion. On a former occasion He cured these misplaced ambi- tions by setting a child in the midst of them. On this He cures them by a still more pathetic and wonderful example, His own ; and He says, ' I, in My lowliness and service, am to be your Pattern. In Me see the basis of all true greatness, and the right use of all influence and authority. The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.' I. So, then, let us look first at the perfect life of service of the Servant-Lord. Now, in order to appreciate the significance of that life of service, we must take into account the intro- ductory words, 'The Son of Man came.' They declare His pre-existence, His voluntary entrance into the con- ditions of humanity, and His denuding Himself of 'the glory which He had with the Father before the world was.' We shall never understand the Servant-Christ until we understand that He is the Eternal Son of the V. 28] THE SERVANT-LORD 78 Father. His service began long before any of His acts of sympathetic and self-forgetting lowliness rendered help to the miserable here upon earth. His service began when He laid aside, not the garments of earth, but the vesture of the heavens, and girded Himself, not with the cincture woven in man's looms, but with the flesh of our humanity, ' and being found in fashion as a man,' bowed Himself to enter into the conditions of earth. This was the first, the chief est of all His acts of service, and the sanctity and awfulness of it run through the list of all His deeds and make them un- speakably great. It was much that His hands should heal, that His lips should comfort, that His heart should bleed with sympathy for sorrow. But, oh ! it was more that He had hands to touch, lips to speak to human hearts, and the heart of a man and a brother to feel with as well as for us. ' The Son of Man came' — there is the transcendent example of the true use of greatness ; there is the conspicuous instance of the true basis of authority and rule. For it was because He was ' found in fashion as a Man ' that He has won a ' name that is above every name,' and that there have accrued to Him the ' many crowns ' which He wears at the Father's side. But then, passing beyond this, we may dwell, though all imperfectly, upon the features, familiar as they are, of that wonderful life of self-oblivious and self-sacri- ficing ministration to others. Think of the purity of the source from all which these wonders and blessed- nesses of service for man flowed. The life of Jesus Christ is self -forget ting love made visible. Scientists tell us that, by the arrangement of particles of sand upon plates of glass, there can be made, as it were, per- ceptible to the eye, the sweetness of musical sounds ; 74 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xx. and each note when struck will fling the particles into varying forms of beauty. The life of Jesus Christ presents in shapes of loveliness and symmetry the else invisible music of a divine love. He lets us see the rhythm of the Father's heart. The source from which His ministrations have flowed is the pure source of a perfect love. Ancient legends consolidated the sunbeams into the bright figure of the far-darting god of light. And so the sunbeams of the divine love have, as it were, drawn themselves together and shaped themselves into the human form of the Son of Man who * came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.' No taint of bye-ends was in that service; no side- long glances at possible advantages of influence or reputation or the like, which so often deform men's philanthropies and services to one another. No more than the sunbeam shines for the sake of collateral issues which may benefit itself, did Jesus Christ seek His own advantage in ministering to men. There was no speck of black in that lustrous white robe, but all was perfectly unselfish love. Like the clear sea, weed- less and stainless, that laves the marble steps of the palaces of Venice, the deep ocean of Christ's service to man was pure to the depths throughout. That perfect ministry of the Servant-Lord was ren- dered with strange spontaneity and cheerfulness. One of the evangelists says, in a very striking and beautiful phrase, that ' He healed them that had need of heal- ing,' as if the presence of the necessity evoked the supply, by the instinctive action of a perfect love. There was never in Him one trace of reluctance to have leisure broken in upon, repose disturbed, or even communion with God abbreviated. All men could come always; they never came inopportunely. We often V. 28] THE SERVANT-LORD 75 cheerfully take up a burden of service, but find it very hard to continue bearing it. But He was willing to come down from the mountain of Transfiguration because there was a demoniac boy in the plain ; and therefore He put aside the temptation — ' Let us build here three tabernacles.' He was willing to abandon His desert seclusion because the multitude sought Him. Interrupted in His communion with the Father by His disciples, He had no impatient word to say, but 'Let us go into other cities also, for therefore am I sent.' When He stepped from the fishing-boat on the other side of the lake to which He had fled for a moment of repose. He was glad when He saw the multitude who had pertinaciously outrun Him, and were waiting for Him on the beach. On His Cross He had leisure to turn from His own physical suffer- ings and the weight of a world's sin, which lay upon Him, to look at that penitent by His side, and He ended His life in the ministry of mercy to a brigand. And thus cheerfully, and always without a thought of self, ' He came to minister.' Think, too, of the sweep of His ministrations. They took in all men ; they were equally open to enemies and to friends, to mockers and to sympathisers. Think of the variety of the gifts which He brought in His ministry — caring for body and for soul; al- leviating sorrow, binding up wounds, purifying hearts ; dealing with sin, the fountain, and with miseries, its waters, with equal helpfulness and equal love. And think of how that ministering was always ministration by 'the Lord.' For there is nothing to me more remarkable in the Gospel narrative than the way in which, side by side, there lie in Christ's life the two elements, so difiicult to harmonise in fact, and 76 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xx. so impossible to have been harmonised in a legend, the consciousness of authority and the humility of a servant. The paradox with which John introduces his sweet pathetic story of our Lord's washing the disciples' feet is true of, and is illustrated by, every instance of more than ordinary lowliness and self- oblivion which the Gospel contains. * Jesus, knowing that He had come from God, and went to God, and that the Father had given all things into His hand' — did what? 'Laid aside His garments and took a towel and girded Himself.' The two things ever go i ... . together. And thus, in His lowliest abasement, as in a star entangled in a cloud, there shine out, all the more broad and conspicuous for the environment which wraps them, the beams of His uncreated lustre. That ministration was a service that never shrank from stern rebuke. His service was no mere soft and pliant, sympathetic helpfulness, but it could smite and stab, and be severe, and knit its brow, and speak stern words, as all true service must. For it is not service but cruelty to sympathise with the sinner, and say nothing in condemnation of his sin. And yet no sternness is blessed which is not plainly prompted by desire to help. Now, I know far better than you do how wretchedly inadequate all these poor words of mine have been to the great theme that I have been trying to speak of, but they may at least — like a little water poured into a pump — have set your minds working upon the theme, and, I hope, to better purpose. * The Son of Man came ... to minister.' II. Now, secondly, note the service that should be modelled on His. V. 28] THE SERVANT-LORD 77 Oh ! brethren, if we, however imperfectly, have taken into mind and heart that picture of Him who was and is amongst us as ' One that serveth,' how sharp a test, and how stringent, and, as it seems to us sometimes, impossible, a commandment are involved in the ' even as ' of my text. When we think of our grudging ' services ; when we think of how much more apt we are to insist upon what men owe to us than of what we owe to them ; how ready we are to demand, how slow we are to give ; how we flame up in what we think is warranted indignation if we do not get the observance, or the sympathy, or the attention that we require, and yet how little we give of these, we may well say, * Thou hast set a pattern that can only drive { us to despair.' If we would read our Gospels more than we do with the feeling, as we trace that Master through each of His phases of sympathy and self- oblivion and self-sacrifice and service, ' that is what I should be,' what a different book the New Testament would be to us, and what different people you and I would be ! There is no ground on which we can rest greatness or superiority in Christ's kingdom except this ground of service. And there is no use that we can make either of money or of talents, of acquirements or opportunities, except the use of helping our fellows with them, which will stand the test of this model and example. ' It is more blessed to give than to receive.' The servant who serves for love is highest in the hierarchy of Heaven. God, who is supreme, has stooped lower than any that are beneath Him, and His true rule follows, not because He is infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, or any of those other pompous Latin words which describe what men 78 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xx. call His attributes, but because He loves best, and does most for the most. And that is what you and I ought to be. We may well take the lesson to our- selves. I have no space, and, I hope, no need to en- large upon it ; but be sure of this, that if we are ever to be near the right and the left of the Master in His kingdom, there is one way, and only one way, to come thither, and that is to make self abdicate its authority as the centre of our lives, and to enthrone there Christ, and for His sake all our brethren. Be ambitious to be first, but remember. Noblesse oblige. He that is first must become last. He that is Servant of all is Master of all. That is the only mastery that is worth any- thing, the devotion of hearts that circle round the source from which they draw light and warmth. What is it that makes a mother the queen of her children? Simply that all her life she has been their servant, and never thought about herself, but always about them. Now much might be said as to the application of these threadbare principles in the Church and in society, but I do not enlarge on that ; only let me say in a word — that here is the one law on which pre- eminence in the Church is to be allocated. What becomes of sacerdotal hierarchies, what be- comes of the ' lords over God's heritage,' if the one ground of pre-eminence is service ? I know, of course, that there may be different forms embodying one principle, but it seems to me that that form of Church polity is nearest the mind of Christ in which the only dignity is dignity of service, and the only use of place is the privilege of stooping and helping. This fruitful principle will one day shape civil as well as ecclesiastical societies. For the present, our V. 28] THE SERVANT-LORD 79 Lord draws a contrast between the worldly and the Christian notions of rank and dignity. ' It shall not be so among you,' says He. And the nobler concep- tion of eminence and service set forth in His disciples, if they are true to their Lord and their duty, will leaven, and we may hope finally transform society, sweeping away all vulgar notions of greatness as depending on birth, or wealth, or ruder forms of powers, and marshalling men according to Christ's order of precedence, in which helpfulness is pre- eminence and service is supremacy, while conversely pre-eminence is used to help and superiority stoops to serve. One remark will close my sermon. You have to take the last words of this verse if you are ever going to put in practice its first words. ' Even as the Son of Man came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister,' — if Jesus Christ had stopped there He would only have been one more of the long roll of ineffectual preachers and prophets who show men the better way, and leave them struggling in the mire. But He did not stop there : ' Even as the Son of Man came ... to give His life a ransom for many.' Ah! the Cross, with its burden of the sacrifice for the world's sin, is the only power which will supply us with a sufficient motive for the loftiness of Christ- like service. I know that there is plenty of entirely irreligious and Christless beneficence in the world. And God forbid that I should say a word to seem to depreciate that. But sure I am that for the noblest, purest, most widely diffused and blessedly operative kinds of service of man, there is no motive and spring anywhere except * He loved me, and gave Himself for me.' And, bought by that service and that blood, it 80 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xx. will be possible, and it is obligatory upon all of us, to ' do unto others,' as He Himself said, ' as I have done to you.' ' The servant is not greater than his Lord.' WHAT THE HISTORIC CHRIST TAUGHT ABOUT HIS DEATH 'The Son of Man came ... to give His life a ransom for many.'— Matt. xx. 28. We hear a great deal at present about going back to 'the Christ of the Gospels.' In so far as that phrase and the movement of thought which it describes are a protest against the substitution of doctrines for the Person whom the doctrines represent, I, for one, re- joice in it. But I believe that the antithesis suggested by the phrase, and by some of its advocates avowed, between the Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of the Epistles, is false. The Christ of the Gospels is tte Christ of the Epistles, as I humbly venture to believe. And I cannot but see that there is a possibility of a movement which, carried out legitimately, should command the fullest sympathy of every Christian heart, degenerating into the rejection of all the super- natural elements in the nature and work of our Lord, and leaving us with a meagre human Christ, shrunken and impotent. The Christ of the Gospels, by all means ; but let it be the whole Christ of all the Gospels, the Christ over whose cradle angels sang, by whose empty grave angels watched, whose ascending form angels beheld and proclaimed that He should come again to be our Judge. Go back to that Christ, and all will be well. Now it seems to me that one direction in which there is a possibility of such movement as I have referred V.28] CHRIST'S TEACHING 81 to being one-sided and harmful is in reference to the conception which we form of the death of Jesus Christ. And therefore I ask you to listen for a few moments to me at this time whilst I try to bring out what is plain in the words before us ; and is, as I humbly believe, interwoven in the whole texture of all the Gospels — viz., the conception which Jesus Christ Him- self formed of the meaning of His death. I. The first thing that I notice is that the Christ of the Gospels thought and taught that His death was to be His own act. I do not think that it is an undue or pedantic pressing of the significance of the words before us, if I ask you to notice two of the significant expressions in this text. ' The Son of Man came,' and came ' to give His life.' The one word refers to the act of entrance into, the other to the act of departure from, this earthly life. They correspond in so far as that both bring into prominence Christ's own consent, volition, and action in the very two things about which men are least consulted, their being born and their dying. *The Son of Man came.' Now if that expression occurred but once it might be minimised as being only a synonym for birth, having no special force. But if you will notice that it is our Lord's habitual word about Himself, only varied occasionally by another one equally significant when he says that He ' was sent ' ; and if you will further notice that all through the Gospels He never but once speaks of Himself as being 'born,' I think you will admit that I am not making too much of a word when I say that when Christ, out of the depths of His conscious- ness, said • the Son of Man came,' He was teaching us that He lived before He was born, and that behind VOL. III. p 82 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xx. the natural fact of birth there lay the supernatural fact of His choosing to be incarnated for man's re- demption. The one instance in which He does speak of Himself as ' being born ' is most instructive in this connection. For it was before the Roman governor; and He accompanied the clause in which He said, ' To this end was I born' — which was adapted to Pilate's level of intelligence — with another one which seemed to be inserted to satisfy His own sense of fitness, rather than for any light that it would give to its first hearer, 'And for this cause came I into the world.' The two things were not synonymous ; but before the birth there was the coming, and Jesus was born because the Eternal Word willed to come. So says the Christ of the Gospels ; and the Christ of the Epistles is repre- sented as 'taking upon Him the form of a servant, and being found in fashion as a man.' Do you accept that as true of 'the historic Christ'? With precise correspondence, if we turn to the other end of His life, we find the equally significant ex- pression in my text which asserts for it, too, that the other necessity to which men necessarily and without their own volition bow was to Christ a matter of choice. ' The Son of Man came to give.' ' No man taketh it from Me,' as He said on another occasion. ' I lay it down of Myself.' ' The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.' 'My flesh ... I give for the world's life.' Now, brethren, we are not to regard these words as mere vague expressions for a willing surrender to the neces- sity of death, but as expressing what I believe is taught us all through Scripture, and is fundamental to any real grasp of the real Christ, that He died because He chose, and chose because He loved. What meant that 'loud voice' with which He said 'It is finished,' but V. 28] CHRIST'S TEACHING 83 that there was no phr ical exhaustion, such as was usually the immediate occasion of death by crucifixion ? What meant that surprising rapidity with which the last moment came in His case, to the astonishment of the stolid bystanders ? They meant the same thing as I believe that the Evangelists meant when they, with one consent, employed expressions to describe Christ's death, which may indeed be only euphemisms, but are apparently declarations of its voluntary character. • He gave up the ghost.' ' He yielded His Spirit.' He breathed forth His life, and so He died. As one of the old fathers said, ' Who is this that thus falls asleep when He wills ? To die is weakness, but thus to die is power.' 'The weakness of God is stronger than man.' The desperate king of Israel bade his slave kill him, and when the menial shrunk from such sacrilege he fell upon his own sword. Christ bade His servant Death, ' Do this,' and he did it ; and dying, our Lord and Master declared Himself the Lord and Master of Death. This is a part of the history of the historic Christ. Do you believe it ? IL Then, secondly, the Christ of the Gospels thought and taught that His death was one chief aim of His coming. I have omitted words from my text which intervene between its first and its last ones ; not because I regard them as unimportant, but because they would lead us into too wide a field to cover in one sermon. But I would pray you to observe how the re-insertion of them throws immense light upon the significance of the words which I have chosen. 'The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.' That covers the whole ground of His gracious and gentle dealings here on earth, His tenderness, self-abnega- 84 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xx. tion, sympathy, healing, and helpfulness. Then, side by side with that, and as the crowning manifestation of His work of service, without which His life — gracious, radiant, sweet as it is — would still want something of its power. He sets His death. Surely that is an altogether unexampled pheno- menon ; altogether a unique and unparalleled thing, that a man should regard that which for all workers, thinkers, speakers, poets, philanthropists, is the sad term of their activity, as being a part of His work; and not only a part, but so conspicuous a part that it was a purpose which He had in view from the very beginning, and before the beginning, of His earthly life. So Calvary was to Jesus Christ no interruption, tragic and premature, of His life's activities. His death was no mere alternative set before Him, which He chose rather than be unfaithful or dumb. He did not die because He was hounded by hostile priests, but He came on purpose that He might so end His career. I need not remind you of, and space would not permit me to dwell upon, other instances in the Gospels in which our Lord speaks the same language. At the very beginning of His public ministry He told the inquiring rabbi, who came to Him with the notion that He would be somewhat flattered by His recog- nition by one of the authoritative and wise pundits of the nation, that 'the Son of Man must be lifted up.' The necessity was before Him, but it was no unwelcome necessity, for it sprung from His own love. It was the very aim of His coming, to live a Servant and to die a Ransom. Dear brethren, let me press upon you this plain truth, that no conception of Christ's death which looks V.28] CHRIST'S TEACHING 85 upon it merely as the close, by pathetic sufferings, of a life to the activities of which it adds nothing but pathos, approaches the signification of it which inheres in the thought that this was the aim and purpose with which Jesus Christ was incarnate, that He should live indeed the pure and sweet life which He lived, but equally that He should die the painful and bitter death which He died. He was not merely a martyr, though the first of them, but something far more, as we shall see presently. If to you the death of Jesus Christ is the same in kind, however superior in degree, as those of patriots and reformers and witnesses for the truth and martyrs for righteous- ness, then I humbly venture to represent that, instead of going back to, you have gone away from, the Christ of the Gospels, who said, ' The Son of Man came . . . to give His life'; and that such a Christ is not a historic but an imaginary one. III. So, thirdly, notice that the Christ of the Gospels thought and taught that His death was a ransom. A ransom is a price paid in exchange for captives that they may be liberated ; or for culprits that they may be set free. And that was Christ's thought of what He had to die for. There lay the ' must.' I do not dwell upon the conception of our condition involved in that word. We are all bound and held by the chain of our sins. We all stand guilty before God, and, as I believe, there is a necessity in that loving divine nature whereby it is impossible that without a ransom there can be, in the interests of mankind and in the interests of righteousness, forgiveness of sins. I do not mean that in the words before us there is a developed theory of atonement, but I do mean that no man, dealing with them fairly, can strike out of them 86 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xx. the notion of vicarious suffering in exchange for, or in- stead of, 'the many.' This is no occasion for theological discussion, nor am I careful now to set forth a fully- developed doctrine ; but I am declaring, as God helps me, what is to me, and I pray may be to you, the central thought about that Cross of Calvary, that on it there is made the sacrifice for the world's sins. And, dear brethren, I beseech you to consider, how can we save the character of Jesus Christ, accepting these Gospels, which on the hypothesis about which I am now speaking are valid sources of knowledge, without recognising that He deliberately led His dis- ciples to believe that He died for — that is, instead of — them that put their trust in Him ? For remember that not only such words as these of my text are to be taken into account. Remember that it was the Christ of the Gospels who established that last rite of the Lord's Supper, in which the broken bread, and the separation between the bread and the wine, both indi- cated a violent death, and who said about both the one and the other of the double symbols, ' For you.' I do not understand how any body of professing believers, rejecting Christ's death as the sacrifice for sin, can find a place in their beliefs or in their practice for that institution of the Lord's Supper, or can rightly inter- pret the sacred words then spoken. This is why the Cross was Christ's aim. This is why He said, with His dying breath, 'It is finished.' This truth is the ex- planation of His words, ' The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.' And this truth of a ransom-price lies at the basis of all vigorous Christianity. A Christianity without a dying Christ is a dying Christianity. And history shows us that the expansiveness and elevating power V. 28] CHRIST'S TEACHING 87 of the Gospel depend on the prominence given to the sacrifice on the Cross. An old fable says that the only thing that melts adamant is the blood of a lamb. The Gospel reveals the precious blood of Jesus Christ, His death for us as a ransom, as the one power which subdues hostility and binds hearts to Him. The Christ of the Gospels is the Christ who taught that He died for us. IV. Lastly, the Christ of the Gospels thought and taught that His death had world-wide power. He says here, 'A ransom for Tnany.' Now that word is not used in this instance in contradistinction to ' all,' nor in contradistinction to 'few.' It is distinctly employed as emphasising the contrast between the single death and the wide extent of its benefits ; and in terms which, rigidly taken, simply express indefiniteness, it expresses universality. That that is so seems to me to be plain enough, if we notice other places of Scripture to which, at this stage of my sermon, I can but allude. For instance, in Romans v. the two expressions, ' the many ' and the ' all,' alternate in reference to the extent of the power of Christ's sacrifice for men. And the Apostle in another place, where probably there may be an allusion to the words of the text, so varies them as that he declares that Jesus Christ in His death was the ransom ' instead of all.' But I do not need to dwell upon these. ' Many ' is a vague word, and in it we see dim crowds stretching away beyond our vision, for whom that death was to be the means of salvation. I take it that the words of our text have an allusion to those in the great prophecy in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, in which we read, ' By His knowledge shall My righteous Servant' (mark the allusion in our text, •Who came to tninister') 'justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.' 88 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xx. So, brethren, I believe that I am not guilty of unduly widening out our Lord's thought when I say that the indefinite ' many ' is practically ' all.' And, brother, if * all,' then you ; if all, then me ; if all, then each. Think of a man, nineteen centuries ago, away in a little insignificant corner of the world, standing up and saying, ' My death is the price paid in exchange for the world ! ' That is meekness and lowliness of heart, is it? That is humility, so beautiful in a teacher, is it ? How any man can accept the veracity of these narratives, believe that Jesus Christ said anything the least like this, not believe that He was the Divine Son of the Father, the Sacrifice for the world's sin, and yet profess — and honestly profess, I doubt not, in many cases — to retain reverence and admiration, all but adoration, for Him, I confess that I, for my poor part, cannot understand. But I ask you, what you are going to do with these thoughts and teachings of the Christ of the Gospels. Are you going to take them for true ? Are you going to trust your salvation to Him? Are you going to accept the ransom and say, ' O Lord, truly I am Thy servant ; Thou hast loosed my bonds ' ? Brethren, the Christ of the Gospels, by all means; but the Christ that said, ' The Son of Man came to . . . give His life a ransom for many.' My Christ, and your Christ, and the world's Christ is ' the Christ that died ; yea, rather, that is risen again ; who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us/ THE COMING OF THE KING TO HIS PALACE 'And when they drew nigh nnto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, 2. Saying unto them. Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her : loose them, and bring them unto Me. 3. And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them ; and straightway he will send them. 4. All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, 5. Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King comelh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. 6. And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, 7. And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set Him thereon. 8. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way ; others cut down branches from the trees, and strawed them in the way. 9. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is He that Cometh in the name of the Lord ; Hosanna in the highest. 10. And when He was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying. Who is this? 11. And the multitude said. This is Jesus the prophet of Xazareth of Galilee. 12. And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, 13. And said unto them. It is written. My house shall be called the house of prayer ; but ye have made it a den of thieves. 14. And the bUnd and the lame came to Him in the temple ; and He healed them. 15. And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did. and the children crying in the temple, and saying. Hosanna to the Son of David, they were sore displeased, 16. And said tmto Him, Hearest Thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea ; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and suck- lings Thou hast perfected praise ? '—Matt. xxL 1-16. Jesus spent His last Sabbath in the quiet home at Bethany with Lazarus and his sisters. Some sense of His approaching death tinged the modest festivities of that evening with sadness, and spoke in Mary's 'anoint- ing of His body for the burying.' The pause was brief, and, with the dawn of Sunday, He set Himself again to tread the road to the cross. Who can doubt that He felt the relief of that momentary relaxation of the strain on His spirit, and the corresponding pressure of its renewed tightening ? This passage shows Him put- ting out from the quiet haven and facing the storm again. It is in two main sections, dealing respectively with the royal procession, and the acts of the King in the temple. I. The procession of the King. The first noteworthy point is that our Lord initiates the whole incident, aiid 90 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxi. deliberately sets Himself to evoke the popular enthusi- asm, by a distinct voluntary fulfilment of a Messianic prophecy. The allusion to the prophecy, in His send- ing for the colt and mounting it, may have escaped the disciples and the crowds of pilgrims ; but they rightly caught His intention to make a solemn triumphal entry into the city, and responded with a burst of enthusiasm, which He expected and wished. The poor garments flung hastily on the animals, the travel-stained cloaks cast on the rocky path, the branches of olive and palm waved in the hands, and the tumult of acclaim, which shrilly echoed the words of the psalm, and proclaimed Him to be the Son of David, are all tokens that the crowds hailed Him as their King, and were all permitted and welcomed by Him. All this is in absolute opposi- tion to His usual action, which had been one long effort to damp down inflammable and unspiritual Messianic hopes, and to avoid the very enthusiasm which now surges round Him unchecked. Certainly that calm figure, sitting on the slow-pacing ass, with the noisy multitude pressing round Him, is strangely unlike Him, who hid Himself among the hills when they sought to make Him a King. His action is the more remarkable, if it be remembered that the roads were alive with pilgrims, most of whom passing through Bethany would be Galileans ; that they had seen Lazarus walking about the village, and knew who had raised him ; that the Passover festival was the time in all the year when popular tumults were to be expected ; and that the crowds going to Jerusalem were met by a crowd coming from it, bent on seeing the doer and the subject of the great miracle. Into this heap of combustibles our Lord puts a light. He must have meant that it should blaze as it did. vs. 1-161 THE COMING OF THE KING 91 What is the reason for this contrast ? The need for the former reticence no longer existed. There was no fear now of His teaching and ministry being inter- rupted by popular outburst. He knew that it was finished, and that His hour had come. Therefore, the same raotive of filial obedience which had led Him to avoid what would prevent His discharging His Father's commission, now impelled Him to draw the attention of the nation and its rulers to the full extent of His claims, and to put the plain issue of their acceptance or rejection in the most unmistakable manner. A certain divine decorum, if we may so call it, required that once He should enter the city as its King. Some among the shouting crowds might have their enthusiasm purified and spiritualised, if once it were directed to Him. It was for us, no less than for them, that this one inter- ruption of His ordinary method was adopted by Him, that we too might ponder the fact that He laid His hand on that magnificent prophecy, and said, ' It is mine. I am the King.' The royal procession is also a revelation of the character of the King and the nature of His kingdom. A strange King this, indeed, who has not even an ass of His own, and for followers, peasants with palm branches instead of swords ! What would a Roman soldier or one of Herod's men have thought of that rustic procession of a pauper prince on an ass, and a hundred or two of weaponless, penniless men ? Christ's one moment of royal pomp is as eloquent of His humiliation as the long stretch of His lowly life is. And yet, as is always the case, side by side with the lowliness there gleams the veiled splendour. He had to borrow the colt, and the message in which He asks for it is a strange paradox. 'The Lord hath need of 92 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [^h. xxi. him' — so great was the poverty of so great a King. But it spoke, too, of a more than human kno(wledge, and of an authority which had only to require iln order to receive. Some farming villager, no doubt, wiho was a disciple but secretly, gladly yielded his beasts. The prophecy which Matthew quotes, with the oipaission , of some words, from Zechariah, and the addiition of ithe first clause from Isaiah, is symbolic, and \ would have been amply fulfilled in the mission and character of Christ, though this event had never taken* place. But just as it is symbolic, so this external fulfilment, which is intended to point to the real fulfilment,? s also symbolic. The chariot and the horse are the emblems of conquerors. It is fitting that the Prince of Peace should make His state entry on a colt, unridden b!ef ore, and saddled only with a garment. Zechariah raeant that Zion's King should not reign by the right Qf the strongest, and that all His triumphs should be won by lowly meekness. Christ meant the same by His remark- able act. And has not the picture of Him, throned thus, stamped for ever on the imagination of the world a profounder sense of the inmost nature of His king- dom than many words would have done? Have we learned the lesson of the gentleness which belongs to His kingdom, and of the unchristian character of war and violence? Do we understand what the Psalmist meant when he sang, ' In thy majesty ride on pros- perously, because of . . . meekness ' ? Let us not forget the other picture, ' Behold, a white horse, and He that sat thereon, called Faithful and True ; and in righteousness He doth judge and make war.' ' The entry may remind us also of the worthlessness of mere enthusiastic feeling in reference to Jesus Christ. The day was the Sunday. How many of that vs. 1-16] THE COMING OF THE KING 93 crowd were shouting as loudly, ' Crucify Him !' and ' Not this man, but Barabbas ! ' on the Friday ? The palm- branches had not faded, where they had been tossed, before the fickle crowd had swung round to the oppo- site mood. Perhaps the very exuberance of feeling at the beginning, had something to do with the bitterness of the execrations at the end, of the week. He had not answered their expectations, but, instead of heading a revolt, had simply taught in the temple, and meekly let Himself be laid hold of. Nothing succeeds like suc- cess, and no idol is so quickly forsaken as the idol of a popular rising. All were eager to disclaim connec- tion with Him, and to efface the remembrance of their Sunday's hosannas by their groans round His gibbet. But there is a wider lesson here. No enthusiasm can be too intense which is based upon a true sense of our need of Christ, and of His work for us ; but it is easy to excite apparently religious emotion by partial pre- sentations of Him, and such excitement foams itself away by its very violence, like some Eastern river that in winter time dashes down the wady with irresistible force, and in summer is bone dry. Unless we know Christ to be the Saviour of our souls and the Lamb of God, we shall soon tire of singing hosannas in His train, and want a king with more pretensions ; but if we have learned who and what He is to us, then let us open our mouths wide, and not be afraid of letting the i world hear our shout of praise. II. The coming of the King in the temple. The dis- cussion of the accuracy of Matthew's arrangement of events here is unnecessary. He has evidently grouped, as usual, incidents which have a common bearing, and wishes to put these three, of the cleansing, the healing, and the pleasure in the children's praise, as 94 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxi. the characteristic acts of the King in the temple. We can scarcely avoid seeing in the first of the three a reference to Malachi's prophecy, ' The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple. . . . And He shall purify the sons of Levi.' His first act, when in manhood He visited the temple, had been to cleanse. His first act when He enters it as its Lord is the same. The abuse had grown again apace. Much could be said in its vindication, as convenient and harmless, and it was too profitable to be lightly abandoned. But the altar of Mammon so near the altar of God was sacrilege in His eyes, and though He had passed the traders unmolested many times since that first driving out, now that He solemnly comes to claim His rights. He cannot but repeat it. It is perhaps signi- ficant that His words now have both a more sovereign and a more severe tone than before. Then He had spoken of ' My Father's house,' now it is ' My house,' which are a part of His quotation indeed, but not therefore necessarily void of reference to Himself. He is exercising the authority of a son over His own house, and bears Himself as Lord of the temple. Before, He charged them with making it a * house of merchandise ' ; now, with turning it into a robber's cave. Evil rebuked and done again is worse than before. Trafficking in things pertaining to the altar is even more likely than other trading to cross the not always very well defined line which separates trade from trickery and commerce from theft. That lesson needs to be laid to heart in many quarters jaow. There is always a fringe of moneyed interests round Christ's Church, seeking gain out of religious institu- tions ; and their stands have a wonderful tendency to creep inwards from the court of the Gentiles to holier vs. 1-16] THE COMING OF THE KING 95 places. The parasite grows very quickly, and Christ had to deal with it more than once to keep down its growth. The sellers of doves and changers of money into the sacred shekel were venial offenders compared with many in the Church, and the race is not extinct. If Christ were to come to His house to-day, in bodily form, who doubts that He would begin, as He did before, by driving the traders out of His temple ? How many ' most respectable ' usages and people would have to go, if He did ! The second characteristic, or we might say sym- bolical, act is the healing of the blind and lame. Royal state and cleansing severity are wonderfully blended with tender pity and the gentle hand of sove- reign virtue to heal. The very manifestation of the former drew the needy to Him ; and the blind, though they could not see, and the lame, though they could not walk, managed to grope and hobble their way to Him, not afraid of His severity, nor daunted by His royalty. No doubt they haunted the temple precincts as beggars, with perhaps as little sense of its sacred- ness as the money-changers ; but their misery kindled a flicker of confidence and desire, to which He who tends the dimmest wick till it breaks into clear flame could not but respond. Though in His house He casts out the traders, He will heal the cripples and the blind, who know their need, and faintly trust His heart and power. Such a trait could not be wanting in this typical representation of the acts of the King. Finally, He encourages and casts the shield of His approval round the children's praises. How natural it is that the children, pleased with the stir and not yet drilled into conventionalism, should have kept up their glad shouts, even inside the temple enclosure I 96 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxi. How their fresh treble voices ring yet through all these centuries ! The priests had, no doubt, been nurs- ing their wrath at all that had been going on, but they had not dared to interfere with the cleansing, nor, for very shame, with the healings ; but now they see their opportunity. This is a clear breach of all propriety, and that is the crime of crimes in the eyes of such people. They had kept quite cool and serenely con- temptuous, amid the stir of the glad procession, and they did not much care though He healed some beggars ; but to have this unseemly noise, though it was praise, was more than they could stand. Ecclesiastical mar- tinets, and men whose religion is mostly ceremony, are, of course, more ' moved with indignation ' at any breach of ceremonial regulations than at holes made in graver laws. Nothing makes men more insensitive to the ring of real worship than being accustomed to the dull decorum of formal worship. Christ answers their ' hearest thou ? ' with a ' did ye never read ? ' and shuts their mouths with words so apposite in their plainest meaning that even they are silenced. To Him these young ringing hosannas are ' perfect praise,' and worth any quantity of rabbis' preachments. In their deeper sense, His words declare that the ears of God and of His Son, the Lord of the temple, are more gladly filled with the praises of the ' little ones,' who know their weakness, and hymn His goodness with simple tongue, than with heartless eloquence of words or pomp of worship. The psalm from which the words are taken declares man's superiority over the highest works of God's hands, and the perfecting of the divine praise from his lips. "W^e are but as the little children of creation, but because we know sin and redemption, we lead the chorus of heaven. As St. Bernard says, vs. 1-16] A NEW KIND OF KING 97 • Something is wanting to the praise of heaven, if those be wanting who can say, " We went through fire and through water; and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place.'" In like manner, those praise Him most acceptably among men who know their feeble- ness, and with stammering lips humbly try to breathe their love, their need, and their trust. A NEW KIND OF KING ' All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying. Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass.'— Matt. xxi. i, 5. Our Lord's entrance into Jerusalem is one of the comparatively few events which are recorded in all the four Gospels. Its singular unlikeness to the rest of His life, and its powerful influence in bringing about the Crucifixion, may account for its prominence in the narratives. It took place probably on the Sunday of Passion Week. Before the palm branches were withered the enthusiasm had died away, and the shouting crowd had found out that this was not the sort of king that they wanted. They might have found that out, even by the very circumstances of the entrance, for they were profoundly significant; though their meaning, like so much of the rest of Christ's life, was less clear to the partakers and spectators than it is to us. ' These things understood not the disciples at the first,' says John in closing his narrative of the entrance, 'but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that they had done these things unto Hinr,/ My object in this sermon is not at all to attempt a pictorial treatment of this narrative, for these Gospels VOL. III. G 98 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxi. tell it us a great deal better than any of us can tell it after them ; but to seek to bring out, if it may be, two or three aspects of its significance. I. First, then, I ask you to consider its significance as an altogether exceptional fact in Christ's life. Throughout the whole of the preceding period. He had had two aims distinctly in view. One was to shun publicity ; and the other was to damp down the heated, ^ vulgar anticipations of the multitude, who expected a temporal king. And now here He deliberately, and of set purpose, takes a step which is like flinging a spark into a powder barrel. The nation was assembled in crowds, full of the unwholesome excitement which attended their meeting for the annual feast. All were in a quiver of expectation; and knowing that, Jesus Christ originates this scene by His act of sending the two disciples into the village over against them, to •bring the ass, and the colt the foal of an ass.' The reasons for a course so entirely opposed to all the pre- ceding must have been strong. Let us try to see what they were. First, He did it in order to precipitate the conflict which was to end in His death. Now, had He any right to do that ? Knowing as He did the ferment of expec- tation into which He was thrusting this new element of disturbance, and foreseeing, as He must have done, that it would sharpen the hostility of the rulers of the people to a murderous degree, how can He be acquitted of one of two things — either singular short- sightedness or rash foolhardiness m taking such a step ? Was He justified, or was He not ? If we are to loo]^ at His conduct from ordinary points of view, the answer must certainly be that He was not. And we can only understand this, and all the rest of vs. 4, 5] A NEW KIND OF KING 99 His actions during the fateful three or four days that followed it, if we recognise in them the fixed resolve of One who knew that His mission was not only to live and to teach by word and life, but to die, and by death to deliver the world. I take it that it is very hard to save the character of Jesus Christ for our reverence if we refuse to regard His death as for our redemption. But if He came, and knew that He came, not only * to minister ' but ' to give His life a ransom for many,' then we can understand how He hastened to the Cross, and deliberately set a light to the train which was to end in that great explosion. On any other hypothesis it seems to me immensely hard to account for His act here. Then, still further, looking at this distinctly excep- tional fact in our Lord's life, we see in it a very emphatic claim to very singular prerogative and posi- tion. He not only thereby presented Himself before the nation in their collective capacity as being the King of Israel, but He also did a very strange thing. He dressed Himself, so to speak, in order to fulfil a prophecy. He posed before the world as being the Person who was meant by sacred old words. And His Entrance upon the slow-pacing colt was His voluntary and solemn assertion that He was the Person of whom the whole stream and current of divinely sent pre- monitions and forecasts had been witnessing from the beginning. He claimed thereby to be the King of Israel and the Fulfiller of the divine promises that were of old. Now again, I have to ask the question, Was He right, or was He wrong ? If He was right, then He is a great deal more than a wise Teacher, and a perfect Example of excellence. If He was wrong, He is a great de 100 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxi. less. There is no escape from that alternative, as it seems to me, but by the desperate expedient of denying that He ever did this thing which this narrative tells us that He did. At all events I beseech you all, dear friends, to take fairly into your account of the char- lacter of Jesus Christ, this fact, that He, the meek, the gentle, said that He was meek, and everybody has ' believed Him ; and that once, in the very crisis of His life, and in circumstances which make the act most conspicuous. He who always shunned publicity, nor ' caused His voice to be heard in the streets,' and stead- fastly put away from Himself the vulgar homage that would have degraded Him into a mere temporal jmonarch, did assert that He was the King of Israel \ and the FulfiUer of prophecy. Ask yourselves, What does that fact mean ? And then, still further, looking at the act as excep- tional in our Lord's life, note that it was done in order to make one final, solemn appeal and offer to the men who beheld Him. It was the last bolt in His quiver. All else had failed, perhaps this might succeed. We know not the depths of the mysteries of that divine foreknowledge which, even though it foresees failure, ceases not to plead and to woo obstinate hearts. But this we may thankfully learn, that, just as with despairing hope, but with unremitting energy, Jesus Christ, often rejected, offered Himself once more if perchance He might win men to repentance, so the loving patience and long-suffering of our God cease not to plead ever with us. ' Last of all He sent unto i them His Son, saying. They will reverence My Son when they see Him ' ; and yet the expectation was ^disappointed, and the Son was slain. We touch deep ysteries, but the persistence of the pleading and vs. 4, 5] A NEW KIND OF KING 101 rejected love and pity of our God shine through this strange fact. II. And now, secondly, let me ask you to note its significance as a symbol. The prophecy which two out of the four evangelists — viz., Matthew and John — regard as having been, in some sense, fulfilled by the Entrance into Jerusalem, would have been fulfilled quite as truly if there had been no Entrance. For the mere detail of the prophecy is but a picturesque way of setting forth its central and essential point — viz., the meekness of the King. So our Lord's fulfilment is only an external, altogether subsidiary, accomplishment of the prophecy ; and in fact, like some other of the external correspondences between His life and the outward details of Old Testa- ment prophecy, is intended for little more than a picture or a signpost which may direct our thoughts to the inward correspondence, which is the true fulfil- ment. So then, the deed, like the prophecy after which it is moulded, is wholly and entirely of importance in its symbolical aspect. The symbolism is clear enough. This is a new kind of King. He comes, not mounted on a warhorse, or thundering across the battlefield in a scythe-armed chariot, like the Pharaohs and the Assyrian monarchs, who have left us their vainglorious monuments, but mounted on the emblem of meekness, patience, gentle- ness, and peace. And He is a pauper King, for He has to borrow the beast on which He rides, and His throne is draped with the poor, perhaps ragged, robes of a handful of fishermen. And His attendants are not warriors bearing spears, but peasants with palm branches. And the salutation of His royalty is not 102 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxi. the blare of trumpets, but the ' Hosanna ! ' from a thousand throats. That is not the sort of King that the world calls a King. The Roman soldiers might well have thought they were perpetrating an ex- quisite jest when they thrust the reed into His un- resisting hand, and crushed down the crown of thorns on His bleeding brows. But the symbol discloses the very secret of His Kingdom, the innermost mysteries of His own character and of the forces to which He intrusts the pA further progress of His word. Gentleness is royal and omnipotent ; force and violence are feeble. The Lord is in the still, small voice, not in the earthquake, nor the fire, nor the mighty wind. The dove's light pinion will fly further than the wings of Rome's eagles, with their strong talons and blood-dyed beaks. And the kingdom that is established in meekness, and rules by gentleness and for gentleness, and has for its only weapons the power of love and the omnipotence of patience, that is the kingdom which shall be eternal and universal. Now all that is a great deal more than pretty senti- ment; it has the closest practical bearing upon our lives. How slow God's Church has been to believe that the strength of Christ's kingdom is meekness 1 Professing Christian men have sought to win the world to their side, and by wealth or force or persecu- tion, or this, that, or the other of the weapons out of the world's armoury, to promote the kingdom of Christ. But it has all been in vain. There is only one power that conquers hate, and that is meek love. There is only one way by which Christ's kingdom can stand firm, and that is its unwoijldly contrast to all the manner of human dominion. Wheresoever God's Church has vs. 4, 5] A NEW KIND OF KING 103 allied itself with secular sovereignties, and trusted in the arm of flesh, there has the fine gold become dimmed. Endurance wears out persecution, patient submission paralyses hostile violence, for you cannot keep on striking down unresisting crowds with the sword. The Church of Christ is an anvil that has been beaten upon by many hammers, and it has worn them all out. Meekness is victorious, and the kingdom of Christ can only be advanced by the faithful proclama- tion of His gentle love, from lips that are moved by hearts which themselves are conformed to His patient image. Then, still further, let me remind you that this symbol carries in it, as it seems to me, the lesson of the radical incompatibility of war with Christ's kingdom and dominion. It has taken the world all these centuries to begin to learn that lesson. But slowly men are coming to it, and the day will dawn when all the pomp of warfare, and the hell of evil passions from which it comes, and which it stimulates, will be felt to be as utterly incompatible with the spirit of Christianity as slavery is felt to-day. The prophecy which underlies our symbol is very significant in this respect. Immediately upon that vision of the meek King throned on the colt the foal of an ass, follows this : ' And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horses from Jerusalem ; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and He shall speak peace unto the heathen.' Let me beseech you. Christian men and women, to lay to heart the duty of Christ's followers in reference to the influence and leavening of public opinion upon this matter, and to see to it that, in so far as we can help, we set ourselves steadfastly against that devilish spirit which still oppresses with an incubus almost 104 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch xxi. intolerable, the nations of so-called Christendom. Lift up your voice, be not afraid, but cry, 'We are the followers of the Prince of Peace, and we war against the war that is blasphemy against His dominion.' And so, still further, note the practical force of this symbol as influencing our own conduct. We are the followers of the meek Christ. It becomes us to walk in all meekness and gentleness. ' Spirited conduct ' is the world's euphemism for unchristian conduct, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred. The perspective of virtue has altered since Jesus Christ taught us how to love. The old heathen virtues of magnanimity, fortitude, and the like have 'with shame to take a lower room.' There is something better than these. The saint has all the virtues of the old heathen hero, and some more besides, which are higher than these, and those which he has in common, he has in different I proportion. The flaunting tulips and peonies of the ) garden of the world seem to outshine the white snow- \ drops and the glowing, modest little violets below I their leaves, but the former are vulgar, and they drop \ very soon, and the latter, if paler and more delicate, I are refined in their celestial beauty. The slow-pacing steed on which Jesus Christ rides will out-travel the fiery warhorse, and will pursue its patient, steadfast path till He 'bring forth righteousness unto judgment,' and ' all the upright in heart shall follow Him.' III. Lastly, notice the significance of this fact as a prophecy. It was, as I have pointed out, the last solemn appeal to the nation, and in a very real sense it was Christ's coming to judgment. It is impossible to look at it without seeing, besides all its other mean- ings, gleaming dimly through it, the anticipations of that other coming, when the Lord Himself 'shall vs. 4, 5] A NEW KIND OF KING 105 descend with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and the trump of God.' Let me bring into connection with the scene of my text three others, gathered from various parts of Scrip- ture. In the forty-fifth Psalm we find, side by side with the great words, * Ride on prosperously because of truth and meekness and righteousness,' the others, 'Thine arrows are sharp in the hearts of the king's enemies ; the people shall fall under Thee.' Now, though it is possible that that later warlike figure may be merely the carrying out of the thought which is more gently put before us in the former words, still it looks as if there were two sides to the conquering manifes- tation of the king — one being in ' meekness and truth and righteousness,' and the other in some sense de- structive and punitive. But, however that may be, my second scene is drawn from the last book of Scripture, where we read that, when the first seal was opened, there rode forth a Figure, crowned, mounted upon a white steed, bearing bow and arrow, 'conquering and to conquer.' And, though that again may be but an image of the victorious progress of the gentle Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the whole earth, still it comes as one in a series of judgments, and may rather be taken to express the punitive effects which follow its proclama- tion even here and now. But there can be no doubt with regard to the third of the scenes which I connect with the incident of which we are discoursing : ' And I saw heaven opened, and beheld a white horse ; and He that sat upon Him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness doth He judge and make war. . . . And out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it He should 106 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxi. smite the nations ; and He shall rule them with a rod of iron ; and He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.' That is the Christ who came into Jerusalem on the colt the foal of an ass. That is the Christ who is meek and long-suffering. There is a reserve of punitive and destructive power in the meek King. And oh ! what can be so terrible as the auger of meekness, the wrath of infinite gentleness ? In the triumphal entry, we find that, when the procession turned the rocky shoulder of Olivet, and the long line of the white city walls, with the gilding of the Temple glittering in the sunshine, burst upon their view, the multitude lifted up their voices in gladness. But Christ sat there, and as He looked across the valley, and beheld, with His divine prescience, the city, now so joyous and full of stir, sitting solitary and desolate, He lifted up His voice in loud wailing. The Christ wept because He must punish, but He punished though He wept. Our Judge is the gentle Jesus, therefore we can hope. The gentle Jesus is our Judge, therefore let us not presume. I beseech you, brethren, lay, as these poor people did their garments, your lusts and proud wills in His way, and join the welcoming shout that hails the King, ' meek and having salvation.' And then, when He comes forth to judge and to destroy, you will not be amongst the ranks of the enemies, whom He will ride down and scatter, but amongst 'the armies that follow Him, . . . clothed in fine linen, clean and pure.' ' Kiss the Son lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.' THE VINEYARD AND ITS KEEPERS 'Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vine- yard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country : 34. And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. 35. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. 36. Again, he sent other servants more than the first : and they did unto them likewise. 37. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying. They will reverence my son. 38. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves. This is the heir ; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. 39. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. 40. When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen ? 41. They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons. 42. Jesus saith unto them. Did ye never read in the scriptures. The stone which the builders rejected, the same ia become the head of the corner : this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes ? 43. Therefore say I unto you. The kingdon of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. 44. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken : but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. 45. And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard His parables, they perceived that He spake of them. 46. But when they sought to lay hands on Him, they feared the multitude, because they took Him for a prophet.'— Matt. xxi. 33-46. This parable was apparently spoken on the Tuesday of the Passion Week. It was a day of hand-to-hand conflict with the Jewish authorities and of exhausting toil, as the bare enumeration of its incidents shows. It included all that Matthew records between verse 20 of this chapter and the end of the twenty-fifth chapter — the answer to the deputation from the Sanhedrin ; the three parables occasioned by it, namely, those of the two sons, this one, and that of the marriage of the king's son ; the three answers to the traps of the Phari- sees and Herodians about the tribute, of the Sadducees about the resurrection, and of the ruler about the chief commandment ; Christ's question to His questioners about the Son and Lord of David ; the stern woes hurled at the unmasked hypocrites ; to which must be added, from other gospels, the sweet eulogium on the widow's mite, and the deep saying to the Greeks about the corn 107 108 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxi. of wheat, with, possibly, the incident of the woman taken in adultery; and then, following all these, the solemn prophecies of the end contained in Matthew xxiv. and xxv., spoken on the way to Bethany, as the evening shadows were falling. What a day ! What a fountain of wisdom and love which poured out such streams ! The pungent severity of this parable, with its transparent veil of narrative, is only appreciated by keeping clearly in view the circumstances and the listeners. They had struck at Jesus with their question as to His authority, and He parries the blow. Now it is His turn, and the sharp point goes home. I. The first stage is the preparation of the vineyard, in which three steps are marked. It is planted and furnished with all appliances needful for making wine, which is its great end. The direct divine origin of the religious ideas and observances of 'Judaism' is thus asserted by Christ. The only explanation of them is that God enclosed that bit of the wilderness, and with His own hands set growing there these exotics. Neither the theology nor the ritual is of man's establishing. We need not seek for special meanings for wall, wine- press, and tower. They simply express the complete- ness of the equipment of the vineyard, as in Isaiah's song, which lies at the foundation of the parable, and suggest his question, 'What could have been done more ? ' Thus furnished, the vineyard is next handed over to the husbandmen, who, in Matthew, are exclusively the rulers, while in Luke they are the people. No doubt it was 'like people, like priest.' The strange dominion of the Pharisees rested entirely on popular consent, and their temper accurately indexed that of the nation. The Sanhedrin was the chief object at vs. 33-46] THE VINEYARD 109 wbich Christ aimed the parable. But it only gave form and voice to the national spirit, and * the people loved to have it so.' National responsibilities are not to be slipped out of by being shifted on to the broad shoulders of governments or influential men. Who lets them be governments and influential ? • Guv'ment ain't to answer for it, God will send the bill to you.' Christ here teaches both rulers and ruled the ground and purpose of their privileges. They prided them- selves on these as their own, but they were only tenants. They made their ' boast of the law ' ; but they forgot that fruit was the end of the divine planting and equipment. Holiness and glad obedience were what God sought, and when He found them, He was refreshed as with ' grapes in the wilderness.' Having installed the husbandmen, the owner goes into another country. The cluster of miracles which inaugurate an epoch of revelation are not continued beyond its beginning. Centuries of comparative divine silence followed the planting of the vineyard. Having given us our charge, God, as it were, steps aside to leave us room to work as we will, and so to display what we are made of. He is absent in so far as conspicuous oversight and retribution are concerned. He is present to help, love, and bless. The faithful husbandman has Him always near, a joy and a strength, else no fruit would grow ; but the sin and misery of the unfaithful are that they think of Him as far off. II. Then comes the habitual ill-treatment of the messengers. These are, of course, the prophets, whose office was not only to foretell, but to plead for obedi- ence and trust, the fruits sought by God. The whole 110 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxi. history of the nation is summed up in this dark picture. Generation after generation of princes, priests, and people had done the same thing. There is no more remarkable historical fact than that of the uniform hostility of the Jews to the prophets. That a nation of such a sort as always to hate and generally to murder them should have had them in long succession, throughout its history, is surely inexplicable on any naturalistic hypothesis. Such men were not the natural product of the race, nor of its circumstances, as their fate shows. How did they spring up ? No ' philosophy of Jewish history' explains the anomaly except the one stated here, — ' He sent His servants.' We are told nowadays that the Jews had a natural genius for religion, just as the Greeks for art and thought, and the Romans for law and order, and that that explains the origin of the prophets. Does it explain their treatment ? The hostility of the husbandmen grows with indul- gence. From beating they go on to killing, and stoning is a specially savage form of killing. The opposition which began, as the former parable tells us, with polite hypocrisy and lip obedience, changed, under the stimulus of prophetic appeals, to honest refusal, and from that to violence which did not hesitate to slay. The more God pleads with men, the more self-conscious and bitter becomes their hatred ; and the more bitter their hatred, the more does He plead, sending other messengers, more perhaps in number, or possibly of more weight, with larger commission and clearer light. Thus both the antagonistic forces grow, and the worse men become, the louder and more beseeching is the call of God to them. That is always true; and it is also ever true that he who begins with *I go, sir,' vs. 33-46] THE VINEYARD 111 and goes not, is in a fair way to end with stoning the prophets. Christ treats the whole long series of violent rejec- tions as the acts of the same set of husbandmen. The class or nation was one, as a stream is one, though all its particles are different; and the Pharisees and scribes, who stood with frowning hatred before Him as He spoke, were the living embodiment of the spirit which had animated all the past. In so far as they inherited their taint, and repeated their conduct, the guilt of all the former generations was laid at their door. They declared themselves their predeces- sors' heirs ; and as they reproduced their actions, they would have to bear the accumulated weight of the consequences. III. Verses 37-39 tell of the mission of the Son and of its fatal issue. Three points are prominent in them. The first is the unique position which Christ here claims, with unwonted openness and decisiveness, as apart from and far above all the prophets. They con- stitute one order, but He stands alone, sustaining a closer relation to God. They were faithful ' as servants,' but He ' as a Son,' or, as Mark has it, ' the only and beloved Son.' The listeners understood Him well enough. The assertion, which seemed audacious blas- phemy to them, fitted in with all His acts in that last week, which was not only the crisis of His life, but of the nation's fate. Rulers and people must decide whether they will own or reject their King, and they must do it with their eyes open. Jesus claimed to fill a unique position. Was He right or wrong in His claim ? If He was wrong, what becomes of His wisdom. His meekness, His religion ? Is a religious teacher, who made the mistake of thinking that He was the 112 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxi. Son of God in a sense in which no other man is so, worthy of admiration ? If He was right, what becomes of a Christianity which sees in Him only the foremost of the prophets ? ,, The next point marked is the owner's vain hope, in sending his Son. He thought that He would be wel- comed, and He was disappointed. It was His last attempt. Christ knew Himself to be God's last appeal, as He is to all men, as well as to that generation. He is the last arrow in God's quiver. When it has shot that bolt, the resources even of divine love are ex- hausted, and no more can be done for the vineyard than He has done for it. We need not wonder at un- fulfilled hopes being here ascribed to God. The start- ling thought only puts into language the great mystery which besets all His pleadings with men, which are carried on, though they often fail, and which must, therefore, in view of His foreknowledge, be regarded as carried on with the knowledge that they will fail. That is the long-suffering patience of God. The diffi- culty is common to the words of the parable and to the facts of God's unwearied pleading with impenitent men. Its surface is a difficulty, its heart is an abyss of all-hoping charity. The last point is the vain calculation of the husband- men. Christ puts hidden motives into plain words, and reveals to these rulers what they scarcely knew of their own hearts. Did they, in their secret conclaves, look each other in the face, and confess that He was the Heir? Did He not Himself ground His prayer for their pardon on their ignorance ? But their ignorance was not entire, else they had had no sin ; neither was their knowledge complete, else they had had no pardon. Beneath many an obstinate denial of Him lies a secret vs. 33-46] THE VINEYARD 113 confession, or misgiving, which more truly speaks the man than does the loud negation. And such strange contradictions are men, that the secret conviction is often the very thing which gives bitterness and eager- ness to the hostility. So it was with some of those whose hidden suspicions are here set in the light. How was the rulers' or the people's wish to ' seize on His inheritance ' their motive for killing Jesus? Their great sin was their desire to have their national prerogatives, and yet to give no true obedience. The ruling class clung to their privileges and forgot their responsibilities, while the people were proud of their standing as Jews, and careless of God's service. Neither wished to be re- minded of their debt to the Lord of the vineyard, and their hostility to Jesus was mainly because He would call on them for fruits. If they could get this un- welcome and persistent voice silenced, they could go on in the comfortable old fashion of lip-service and real selfishness. It is an account, in vividly parabolic language, not only of their hostility, but of that of many men who are against Him. They wish to possess life and its good, without being for ever pestered with reminders of the terms on which they hold it, and of God's desire for their love and obedience. They have a secret feeling that Christ has the right to ask for their hearts, and so they often turn from Him angrily, and sometimes hate Him. With what sad calmness does Jesus tell the fate of the son, so certain that it is already as good as done ! It loas done in their counsels, and yet He does not cease to plead, if perchance some hearts may be touched and withdraw themselves from the confederacy of m^urder. IV. We have next the self-condemnation from un- VOL. III. H 114 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxi. willing lips. Our Lord turns to the rulers with start- ling and dramatic suddenness, which may have thrown them off their guard, so that their answer leaped out before they had time to think whom it hit. His solemn earnestness laid a spell on them, which drew their own condemnation from them, though they had penetrated the thin veil of the parable, and knew full well who the husbandmen were. Nor could they refuse to answer a question about legal punishments for dishonesty, which was put to them, the fountains of law, without incurring a second time the humiliation just inflicted when He had forced them to acknowledge that they, the fountains of knowledge, did not know where John came from. So from all these motives, and perhaps from a mingling of audacity, which would brazen it out and pretend not to see the bearing of the question, they answer. Like Caiaphas in his counsel, and Pilate with his writing on the Cross, and many another, they spoke deeper things than they knew, and confessed beforehand how just the judgments were, which followed the very lines marked out by their own words. V. Then come the solemn application and naked truth of the parable. We have no need to dwell on the cycle of prophecies concerning the corner-stone, nor on the original application of the psalm. We must be content with remarking that our Lord, in this last portion of His address, throws away even the thin veil of parable, and speaks the sternest truth in the nakedest words. He puts His own claim in the plainest fashion, as the corner-stone on which the true kingdom of God was to be built. He brands the men who stood before Him as incompetent builders, who did not know the stone needed for their edifice when they saw it. He vs. 33-46] THE VINEYARD 115 declares, with triumphant confidence, the futility of opposition to Himself — even though it kill Him. He is sure that God will build on Him, and that His place in the building, which shall rise through the ages, will be, to even careless eyes, the crown of the manifest wonders of God's hand. Strange words from a Man who knew that in three days He would be crucified! Stranger still that they have come true ! He is the foundation of the best part of the best men ; the basis of thought, the motive for action, the pattern of life, the ground of hope, for countless individuals ; and on Him stands firm the society of His Church, and is hung all the glory of His Father's house. Christ confirms the sentence just spoken by the rulers on themselves, but with the inversion of its clauses. All disguise is at an end. The fatal ' you ' is pronounced. The husbandmen's calculation had been that killing the heir would make them lords of the vineyard ; the grim fact was that they cast themselves out when they cast him out. He is the heir. If we desire the inheritance, we must get it through Him, and not kill or reject, but trust and obey Him. The sentence declares the two truths, that possession of the vineyard depends on honouring the Son, and on bringing forth the fruits. The kingdom has been taken from the churches of Asia Minor, Africa, and Syria, because they bore no fruit. It is not held by us on other conditions Who can venture to speak of the awful doom set forth in the last words here ? It has two stages : one a lesser misery, which is the lot of him who stumbles against the stone, while it lies passive to be built on ; one more dreadful, when it has acquired motion and comes down with irresistible impetus. To stumble at Christ, or to refuse His grace, 116 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxi. and not to base our lives and hopes on Him, is maiming and damage, in many ways, here and now. But sup- pose the stone endowed with motion, what can stand against it ? And suppose that the Christ, who is now offered for the rock on which we may pile our hopes and never be confounded, comes to judge, will He not crush the mightiest opponent as the dust of the summer threshing-floor ? THE STONE OF STUMBLING ' Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken : but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.'— Matt. xxi. ii. As Christ's ministry drew to its close, its severity and its gentleness both increased ; its severity to the class to whom it was always severe, and its gentleness to the class from whom it never turned away. Side by side, through all His manifestation of Himself, there were the two aspects : ' He showed Himself froward ' (if I may quote the word) to the self-righteous and the Pharisee; and He bent with more than a woman's tenderness of yearning love over the darkness and sinfulness, which in its great darkness dimly knew itself blind, and in its sinfulness stretched out a lame hand of faith, and groped after a divine deliverer. Here, in my text, there are only words of severity and awful foreboding. Christ has been telling those Pharisees and priests that the kingdom is to be taken from them, and given to a nation that brings forth the fruits thereof. He interprets for them an Old Testa- ment figure, often recurring, which we read in the 118th Psalm (and I may just say, in passing, that we get here His interpretation of that psalm, and the V. 44] THE STONE OF STUMBLING 117 vindication of our application of it, and other similar ones, to Him and His office); 'The stone which the builders rejected,' said He, *is become the head of the corner ' ; and then, falling back on other Old Testament uses of the same figure, He weaves into one the whole of them — that in Isaiah about the 'sure foundation,' and that in Daniel about 'the stone cut out without hands, which became a great mountain,' crushing down all opposition, — and centres them all in Himself; as fulfilled in Himself, in His person and His work. The two clauses of my text figuratively point to two different classes of operation on the rejecters of the Gospel. What are these two classes? 'Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken : but on whom- soever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.' In the one case, the stone is represented as passive, lying quiet ; in the other, it has acquired motion. In the one case, the man stumbles and hurts himself; a remediable injury, a self-inflicted injury, a natural injury, without the active operation of Christ to produce it at all ; in the other case the injury is worse than remediable, it is utter, absolute, grinding destruction, and it comes from the active operation of the 'stone of stumbling.' That is to say, the one class represents the present hurts and harms which, by the natural operation of things, without the action of Christ judicially at all, every man receives in the very act of rejecting the Gospel ; and the other represents the ultimate issue of that rejection, which rejection is darkened into opposi- tion and fixed hostility, when the stone that was laid ' for a foundation ' has got wings (if I may so say), and comes down in judgment, crushing and destroying the antagonist utterly. 'Whosoever falls on this stone is broken,' here and now; and 'on whomsoever it 118 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxi. shall fall, it will grind him to powder,' hereafter and yonder. Taking, then, into account the weaving together in this passage of the three figures from the Old Testa- ment to which I have already referred, — the rejected stone, the foundation, and the mountain-stone of Daniel, and looking in the light of these, at the twofold issues, one present and one future, which the text distinctly brings before us, — we have just three points to which I ask your attention now. First, Every man has some kind of contact with Christ. Secondly, Rejection of Him, here and now, is harm and maiming. And, lastly. Rejection of Him, hereafter and yonder, is hopeless, endless, utter destruction. I. In the first place, every man has some kind of connection with Christ. I am not going to enter at all now upon any ques- tion about the condition of the ' dark places of the earth ' where the Gospel has not come as a well-known preached message; we have nothing to do with that; the principles on which they are judged is not the question before us now. I am speaking exclusively about persons who have heard the word of salvation, and are dwelling in the midst of what we call a Christian land. Christ is offered to each of us, in good faith on God's part, as a means of salvation, a foundation on which w^e may build. A man is free to accept or to reject that offer. If he reject it, he has not thereby cut himself off from all contact and connection with that rejected Saviour, but he still sustains a relation to Him ; and the message that he has refused to believe, is exercising an influence upon his character and his destiny. Christ comes, I say, offered to us all in good faith on V. 44] THE STONE OF STUMBLING 119 the part of God, as a foundation upon which we may- build. And then conies in that strange mystery, that a man, consciously free, turns away from the offered mercy, and makes Him that was intended to be the basis of his life, the foundation of his hope, the rock on which, steadfast and serene, he should build up a temple-home for his soul to dwell in, — makes Him a stumbling-stone against which, by rejection and un- belief, he breaks himself ! My friend, will you let me lay this one thing upon your heart, — you cannot hinder the Gospel from in- fluencing you somehow. Taking it in its lowest aspects, it is one of the forces of modern society, an element in our present civilisation. It is everywhere, it ob- trudes itself on you at every turn, the air is saturated with its influence. To be unaffected by such an all- pervading phenomenon is impossible. To no individual member of the great whole of a nation is it given to isolate himself utterly from the community. Whether he oppose or whether he acquiesce in current opinions, to denude himself of the possessions which belong in common to his age and state of society is in either case impracticable. 'That which cometh into your mind,' said one of the prophets to the Jews who were trying to cut themselves loose from their national faith and their ancestral prerogatives, 'That which cometh into your mind shall not be at all, that ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries to serve wood and stone.' Vain dream ! You can no more say, I will pass the Gospel by, and it shall be nothing to me, I will simply let it alone, than you can say, I will shut myself up from other influences proper to my time and nation. You cannot go back to the old naked barbarism, and you cannot reduce the 120 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxi. influence of Christianity, even considered merely as one of the characteristics of the times, to zero. You may fancy you are letting it alone, but it does not let you alone ; it is here, and you cannot shut yourself off from it. But it is not merely as a subtle and diffused influence that the Gospel exercises a permanent effect upon us. It is presented to each of us here individually, in the definite form of an actual offer of salvation for each, and of an actual demand of trust from each. The words pass into our souls, and thenceforward we can never be the same as if they had not been there. The smallest ray of light falling on a sensitive plate pro- duces a chemical change that can never be undone again, and the light of Christ's love, once brought to the knowledge and presented for the acceptance of a soul, stamps on it an ineffaceable sign of its having been there. The Gospel once heard, is always the Gospel which has been heard. Nothing can alter that. Once heard, it is henceforward a perpetual element in the whole condition, character, and destiny of the hearer. Christ does something to every one of us. His Gospel will tell upon you, it is telling upon you. If you dis- believe it, you are not the same as if you had never heard it. Never is the box of ointment opened without some savour from it abiding in every nostril to which its odour is wafted. Only the alternative, the awful ' either, or,' is open for each — the ' savour of life unto life, or the savour of death unto death.' To come back to the illustration of the text, Christ is something, and does something to every one of us. He is either the rock on which I build, poor, weak, sinful creature as I am, getting security, and sanctity, and strength y. 44] THE STONE OF STUMBLING 121 from Him, I being a living stone,' built upon * the living stone,' and partaking of the vitality of the foundation ; or else He is the other thing, ' a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to them which stumble at the word.' Christ stands for ever in some kind of relation to, and exercises for ever some kind of influence on, every man who has heard the Gospel. II. The immediate issue of rejection of Him is loss and maiming. * Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken.' Just think for a moment, by way of illustrating this principle, first of all, of the positive harm which you do to yourself in the act of turning away from the mercy offered you in Christ ; and then think for a moment of the negative loss which you sustain by the same act. Note the positive harm. Am I uncharitable when I say that no man ever yet passively neglected the message of love in God's Son ; but that always this is the rude outline of the experience of people who know what it is to have a Saviour offered to them, and know what it is to put Him away, — that there is a feeble and transi- tory movement of heart and will; that Conscience says, ' Thou oughtest ' ; that Will says, • I would ' ; that the heart is touched by some sense of that great and gentle vision of light and love which passes before the eye ; that the man, as it were, like some fever-ridden patient, lifts himself up for an instant from the bed on which he is lying, and puts out a hand, and then falls back again, the vacillating, fevered, paralysed will recoiling from the resolution, and the conscience having power to say, ' Thou oughtest,' but no power to enforce the execution of its decrees, and the heart turning away from the salvation that it would have found in the love of love, to the loss that it finds in the V 122 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxi. love of self and earth? Or in other words, is it not true that every man who rejects Christ does in simple verity reject Him, and not merely neglect Him ; that there is always an efPort, that there is a struggle, feeble, perhaps, but real, which ends in the turning away? It is not that you stand there, and simply let Him go past. That were bad enough ; but the fact is worse than that. It is that you turn your back upon Him. It is not that His hand is laid on yours, and yours remains dead and cold, and does not open to clasp it; but it is that His hand being laid on yours, you clench yours the tighter, and will not have it. And so every man (I believe) who rejects Christ does these things thereby — wounds his own conscience, hardens his own heart, makes himself a worse man, just because he has had a glimpse, and has willingly, and almost consciously, 'loved darkness rather than light.' Oh, brethren, the message of love can never come into a human soul, and pass away from it unreceived, with- out leaving that spirit worse, with all its lowest characteristics strengthened, and all its best ones depressed, by the fact of rejection. I have nothing to do now with pursuing that process to its end ; but the natural result — if there were no future Judgment at all, if there were no movement ever given to the stone that you ought to build on — the natural result of the simple rejection of the Gospel is that, bit by bit, all the lingering remains of nobleness that hover about the man, like scent about a broken vase, pass away ; and that, step by step, through the simple process of saying, * I will not have Christ to rule over me,' the whole being degenerates, until manhood becomes devil- hood, and the soul is lost by its own want of faith. Unbelief is its own judgment; unbelief is its own V. 44] THE STONE OF STUMBLING 123 condemnation ; unbelief, as sin, is punished, like all other sins, by the perpetuation of deeper and darker forms of itself. Every time that you stifle a convic- tion, fight down a conviction, or drive away a convic- tion ; and every time that you feebly move towards the decision, 'I will trust Him, and love Him, and be His,' yet fail to realise it, you have harmed your soul, you have made yourself a worse man, you have lowered the tone of your conscience, you have enfeebled your will, you have made your heart harder against love, you have drawn another horny scale over the eye, that will prevent you from seeing the light that is yonder ; you have, as much as in you is, withdrawn from God, and approximated to the other pole of the universe (if I may say that), to the dark and deadly antagonist of mercy, and goodness, and truth, and grace. • Whosoever falls on this stone,' by the natural result of his unbelief, * shall be broken ' and maimed, and shall mar his own nature. I need not dwell on the negative evil results of un- belief ; the loss of that which is the only guide for a man, the taking away, or rather the failing to possess, that great love above us, that divine Spirit in us, by which only we are ever made what we ought to be. This only I would leave with you, in this part of my subject. Whoever is not in Christ is maimed. Only he that is ' a man in Christ ' has come ' to the measure of the stature of a perfect man.' There, and there alone, do we get the power which will make us full-grown. There alone is the soul planted in that good soil in which, growing, it becomes as a rounded, perfect tree, with leaves and fruits in their season. All other men are half-men, quarter-men, fragments of men, parts of humanity exaggerated and contorted and distorted >fC 124 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxl from the reconciling whole which the Christian ought to be, and in proportion to his Christianity is on the road to be, and one day will assuredly and actually be, a ' complete and entire man, wanting nothing ' ; nothing maimed, nothing broken, the realisation of the ideal of humanity, the renewed copy ' of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven.' There is another consideration closely connected with this second part of my subject, that I just men- tion and pass on. Not only by the act of rejection of Christ do we harm and maim ourselves, but also all attempts at opposition — formal opposition — to the Gospel as a system, stand self-convicted and self- condemned to speedy decay. What a commentary upon that word, ' Whosoever falls on this stone shall be broken,' is the whole history of the heresies of the Church and the assaults of unbelief! Man after man, rich in gifts, endowed often with far larger and nobler faculties than the people who oppose him, with indomitable perseverance, a martyr to his error, sets himself up against the truth that is sphered in Jesus Christ ; and the great divine message simply goes on its way, and all the babblement and noise are >^ like so many bats flying against a light, or like the sea-birds that come sweeping up in the tempest and the night, to the hospitable Pharos that is upon the rock, and smite themselves dead against it. Sceptics well known in their generation, who made people's hearts tremble for the ark of God, what has become of i them ? Their books lie dusty and undisturbed on the top shelf of libraries ; whilst there the Bible stands, with all the scribblings wiped off the page, as though they had never been ! Opponents fire their small shot "^^ against the great Rock of Ages, and the little pellets V. 44] THE STONE OF STUMBLING 125 fall flattened, and only scale off a bit of the moss that has gathered there ! My brother, let the history of the past teach you and me, with other deeper thoughts, a very calm and triumphant confidence about all that opponents say nowadays; for all the modern opposition to this Gospel will go as all the past has done, and the newest systems which cut and carve at Christianity, will go to the tomb where all the rest have gone ; and dead old infidelities will rise up from their thrones, and say to the bran-new ones of this generation, when their day is worked out, 'Are ye also become weak as we ? art thou also become like one of us ? ' ' Whoso- ever shall fall on this stone shall be broken ' : per- sonally, he will be harmed ; and his opinions, and his books, and his talk, and all his argumentation, will come to nothing, like the waves that break into im- potent foam against the rocky cliffs. III. Last of all, the issue, the ultimate issue, of un- belief is irremediable destruction when Christ begins to move. The former clause has spoken about the harm that naturally follows unbelief whilst the Gospel is being preached; the latter clause speaks about the active agency of Christ when the end shall have come, and the preaching of the Gospel shall have merged into the act of judgment. I do not mean to dwell, brethren, upon that thought : it seems to me far too awful a one to be handled by my hands, at any rate. Let us leave it in the vagueness and dreadfulness of the words of Him who never spoke exaggerated words, and who, when He said, * It shall grind him to powder,' meant (as it seems to me) nothing less than a destruction which, con- trasted with the former remediable wounding and breaking, was a destruction utter, and hopeless, and 126 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxii. everlasting, and without remedy. Ground — ground to powder! Any life left in that? any gathering up of that, and making a man of it again ? All the humanity battered out of it, and the life clean gone from it ! Does not that sound very much like ' everlasting destruction from the presence of God and from the glory of His power ' ? Christ, silent now, will begin to speak ; passive now, will begin to act. The stone comes down, and the fall of it will be awful. I remember, away up in a lonely Highland valley, where beneath a tall black cliif, all weather-worn, and cracked, and seamed, there lies at the foot, resting on the greensward that creeps round its base, a huge rock, that has fallen from the face of the precipice. A shepherd was passing beneath it ; and suddenly, when the finger of God's will touched it, and rent it from its ancient bed in the everlasting rock, it came down, leaping and bounding from pinnacle to pinnacle — and it fell; and the man that was beneath it is there now ! * Ground to powder.' Ah, my brethren, that is not rtiy illustration — that is Christ's. Therefore I say to you, since all that stand against Him shall become ' as the chaff of the summer threshing-floor,' and be swept utterly away, make Him the foundation on which you build ; and when the storm sweeps away every ' refuge of lies,' you will be safe and serene, builded upon the Rock of Ages. TWO WAYS OF DESPISING GOD'S FEAST •And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said, 2. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, 3. And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding : and they would not come. 4. Again, he sent forth other servants, saying. Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner : my oxen and my fatlinga are killed, and all things are ready : come unto the marriage. 5. But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his farm, another to his merchandise: vs. l-U] DESPISING GOD'S FEAST 127 6. 'And the remnant took hia servants, and entreated them spitefully, and slew them. 7. But wlien the king heard thereof, he was wroth : and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. 8. Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were nob worthy. 9. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage. 10. So those servants went out inio the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good : and the wedding was furnished with guests. 11. And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding-garment : 12. And he saith unto him. Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having a wedding-garment? And he was speechless. 13. Then said the king to the servants. Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast hira into outer darkness ; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 14. For many are called, but few are chosen.'— Matt. xxii. 1-14. This parable, and the preceding one of the vine-dressers, make a pair. They are closely connected in time, as well as subject. ' Jesus answered.' What? Obviously, the unspoken murderous hate, restrained by fear, which had been raised in the rulers' minds, and flashed in their eyes, and moved in their gestures. Christ answers it by repeating His blow ; for the present parable is, in outline, identical with the preceding, though differing in colouring, and carrying its thoughts farther. That stopped with the transference of the kingdom to the Gentiles; this passes on to speak also of the develop- ment among the Gentiles, and ends with the law ' many called, few chosen,' which is exemplified in Jew and Gentile. There are, then, two parts in it : verses 1-9 covering the same ground as the former; verses 10-14 adding new matter. I. The judgment on those who refuse the offered joys of the kingdom. In the previous parable, the kingdom was presented on the side of duty and service. The call was to render obedience. The vineyard was a sphere for toil. The owner had given it indeed, but, having given, he required. That is only half the truth, and the least joyful half. So this parable dismisses all ideas of work, duty, service, requirement, and instead gives the emblem of a marriage feast as the picture of the kingdom. It therein unites two familiar prophetic >- ( 128 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxii. images for the Messianic times — those of a festival and of a marriage. As Luther says, ' He calls it a marriage feast, not a time of toil or a time of sorrow, but a tim^e of holiday and a time of joy ; in which we make our- selves fine, sing, play, dance, eat, drink, are glad, and have a good time ; else it would not be a wedding feast, if people were to be working, mourning, or crying. Therefore, Christ calls His Christianity and gospel by the name of the highest joy on earth ; namely, by the name of a marriage feast.' How pathetic this designation of His kingdom is on Christ's lips, when we remember how near His bitter agony He stood, and that He tasted its bitterness already ! It is not the whole truth any more than the vineyard emblem is. Both must be united in our idea of the kingdom, as both may be in experience. It is possible to be at once toiling among the vines in the hot sunshine, and feasting at the table. The Chris- tian life is not all grinding at heavy tasks, nor all enjoyment of spiritual refreshment; but our work may be so done as to be our ' meat ' — as it was His — and our glad repose may be unbroken even in the midst of toil. We are, at one and the same time, labourers in the king's vineyard, and guests at the king's table; and the same duality will, in some unknown fashion, continue in the perfect kingdom, where there will be both work and feasting, and all the life shall be both in one. The second point to be noticed is the invitations of the king. There had been an invitation before the point at which the parable begins, for the servants are sent to summon those who had already been 'called.* That calling, which lies beyond the horizon of our parable, is the whole series of agencies in Old Testament times. So this parable begins almost where the former vs. 1-14] DESPISING GOD'S FEAST 129 leaves off. They only slightly overlap. The first ser- vants here are Christ Himself, and His follovrers in their ministry during His life ; and the second set are the apostles and preachers of the gospel during the period between the completion of the preparation of the feast (that is, the death of Christ) and the destruc- tion of Jerusalem. The characteristic difference of their message from that of the servants in the former parable, embodies the whole difference between the preaching of the prophets, as messengers demanding the fruit of righteousness, and the glad tidings of a gospel of free grace which does not demand, but offers, and does not say ' obey ' until it has said ' eat, and be glad.' The reiterated invitations not only correspond to the actual facts, but, like the facts, set the miracle of God's patience in a still brighter light than the former story did; for while it is wonderful that the lord of the vineyard should stoop to ask so often for fruit, it is far more wonderful that the founder of the feast, who is king too, should stoop to offer over and over again the refused abundance of his table. Mark, further, the refusal of the invitations : ' They would not (or " did not wish to ") come.' That is Christ's gentle way of describing the unbelief of His generation. It is the second set of refusers who are painted in darker colours. We are accustomed to think that the sin of His contemporaries was great beyond parallel, but he seems here to hint that the sin of those who reject Him after the Cross and the Resurrection, is blacker than theirs. At any rate, it clearly is so. But note that the parable speaks as if the refusers were the same persons throughout, thus taking the same point of view as the former one did, and regarding the generations of the Jews as one whole. There is a real VOL. III. I ) 130 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxii. unity, though the individuals be different, if the spirit actuating successive generations be the same. Note the two classes of rejecters. The first simply pay no attention, because their heads are full of busi- ness. They do not even speak more or less lame ex- cuses, as the refusers in Luke^'s similar parable had the decency to do. The king's messenger addresses a group, -i who pause on their road for a moment, to listen listlessly to what he has to say, and, when he has done, disperse without a word, each man going on his road, as if nothing had happened. The ground of their indifference lies in their absorption with this world's good, and their belief that it is best. ' His own farm,' as the original puts it emphatically, holds one man by the solid delight of possessing acres that he can walk over and till ; his merchandise draws another, by the excitement of speculation and the lust of acquiring. It is not only the hurry and fever of a great commercial city, but the quiet and leisure of country life, which shut out taste for God's feast. Strange preference of toil and risk of loss to abundance, repose, and joyl Savages barter gold for glass beads. We choose lives of weary work and hunting after uncertain riches, rather than listen to His call, despising the open-handed housekeeping of our Father's house, and trying to fill our hunger with the swine's husks. The suicidal madness of refusing the kingdom is set in a vivid light in these quiet words. But stranger still is the conduct of the rest. Why should they kill men whose only fault was bringing them a hospitable invitation? The incongruity of the representation has given offence to some interpreters, who are not slow to point out how Christ could have improved His parable. But the reality is more incon- gruous still, and the unmotived outburst of wrath vs. 1-14] DESPISING GOD'S FEAST 131 against the innocent bearers of a kindly invitation is only too true to life. Mark the distinction drawn by our Lord between the bulk of the people who simply neglected, and the few who violently opposed. He does not charge the guilt on all. The murderers of Him and of His first followers were not the mass of the nation, who, left to themselves, would not have so acted, but the few who stirred up the many. But, though He does not lay the guilt at the doors of all, yet the punishment falls on all, and, when the city is burned, the houses of the negligent and of the slayers are equally consumed ; for simple refusal of the message and slaying the messengers were but the positive and superlative degrees of the same crime — rebellion against the king, whose invitation was a command. The fatal issue is presented, as in the former parable, in two parts : the destruction of the rebels, and the passing over of the kingdom to others. But the differ- ences are noteworthy. Here we read that 'the king was wroth.' Insult to a king is worse than dishonesty to a landlord. The refusal of God's proffered grace is even more certain to awake that awful reality, the wrath of God, than the failure to render the fruits of the good possessed. Love repelled and thrown back on itself cannot but become wrath. That refusal, which is rebellion, is fittingly described as punished by force of arms and the burning of the city. We can scarcely help seeing that our Lord here, in a very striking and unusual way, mingles prose prediction with parabolic imagery. Some commentators object to this, and take the armies and the burning to be only part of the imagery, but it is difficult to believe that. Note the forcible pronouns, * His armies,' and ' their city.' The terrible Roman legions were His soldiers for the time 132 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxii. being, the axe which He laid to the root of the tree. The city had ceased to be His, just as the temple ceased to be ' My house,' and became, by their sin, * your house.' The legend told that, before their destruction, a mighty voice was heard saying, ' Let us depart,' and, with the sound of rushing wings. His presence left sanctuary and city. When He was no longer * the glory in the midst,' He was no longer * a wall of fire round about,' and the Roman torches worked their will on the city which was no longer ' the city of our God.' The command to gather in others to fill the vacant places follows on the destruction of the city. This may seem to be opposed to the facts of the transfer- ence of the kingdom to the Gentiles, which certainly was begun long before Jerusalem fell. But its fall was the final and complete severance of Christianity from Judaism, and not till then had the messengers to give up the summons to Israel as hopeless. Perhaps Paul had this parable floating in his memory when he said to the howling blasphemers at Antioch in Pisidia, 'Seeing ye . . . judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us.' * They which were bidden were not worthy,' and their unworthiness consisted not in any other moral demerit, but solely in this, that they had refused the proffered blessings. That is the only thing which makes any of us unworthy. And that will make the best of us unworthy. II. Verses 10-14 carry us beyond the preceding parable, and show us the judgment on the unworthy accepters of the invitation. There are two ways of sinning against God's merciful gift: the one is refusing to accept it; the other is taking it in outward seeming, but continuing in sin. The former was the sin of the VS.1-U] DESPISING GOD'S FEAST 133 Jews ; the latter is the sin of nominal Christians. We may briefly note the points of this appendix to the parable. The first is the indiscriminate invitation, which is more emphatically marked as being so, by the mention of the ' bad ' before the good among the guests. God's offer is for all, and, in a very real sense, is specially sent to the worst, just as the doctor goes first to the most severely wounded. So the motley crew, without the least attempt at discrimination, are seated at the table. If the Church understands its business, it will have nothing to do in its message with distinctions of character any more than of class, but, if it makes any difference, will give the outcast and disreputable the first place in its efforts. Is that what it does ? The next point is the king's inspection. The word rendered ' behold ' implies a fixed and minute observa- tion. When does that scrutiny take place ? Obviously, from the sequel, the final judgment is referred to, and it is remarkable that here there is no mention of the king's son as the judge. No parable can shadow forth all truth, and though the Father ' has committed all judgment to the Son,' the Son's judgment is the Father's, and the exigencies of the parable required that the son as bridegroom should not be brought into view as judge. Note that there is only one guest without the dress needed. That may be an instance of the lenity of Christ's charity, which hopeth all things ; or it may rather be intended to suggest the keenness of the king's glance, which, in all the crowded tables, picks out the one ragged losel who had found his way there — so individual is his knowledge, so impossible for us to hide in the crowd. Mark that the feast has not begun, though the guests 134 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxii. are seated. The judgment stands at the threshold of the heavenly kingdom. The king speaks with a certain coldness, very unlike the welcome fit for a guest ; and his question is one of astonishment at the rude boldness of the man who came there, knowing that he had not the proper dress. (That knowledge is implied in the form of the sentence in the Greek.) What, then, is the wedding garment? It can be nothing else than righteousness, moral purity, which fits for sitting at His table in His kingdom. And the man who has it not, is the nominal Christian, who says that he has accepted God's invitation, and lives in sin, not putting off ' the old man with his deeds,' nor putting on ' the new man, which is created in righteousness.' How that garment was to be obtained is no part of this parable. We know that it is only to be received by faith in Jesus Christ, and that if we are to pass the scrutiny of the king, it must be as * not having our own righteousness,' but His made ours by faith which makes us righteous, and then by all holy effort, and toil in His strength, we must clothe our souls in the dress which befits the ban- queting hall ; for only they who are washed and clothed in fine linen, clean and white, shall sit there. But Christ's purpose here was not to explain how the robe was to be procured, but to insist that it must be worn. ' He was speechless," — or, as the word means, 'muzzled.' The man is self-condemned, and, having nothing to say in extenuation, the solemn promise is pronounced of ejection from the lighted hall, with limbs bound so that he cannot struggle, and consignment to the blackness outside, of which our Lord adds, in words not put into the king's mouth, but which we have heard from Him before, 'There shall be the [well- known and terrible] weeping and gnashing of teeth vs. 1-14] THE TABLES TURNED 135 — awful though figurative expressions for despair and passion. Both parts of the parable come under one law, and exemplify one principle of the kingdom, that its invita- tions extend more widely than the real possession of its gifts. The unbelieving Jew, in one direction, and the unrighteous Christian in another, are instances of this. This is not the place to discuss that wide and well- worn question of the ground of God's choice. That does not enter into the scope of the parable. For it, the choice is proved by the actual participation in the feast. They who do not choose to receive the invitation, or to put on the wedding garment, do, in different ways, show that they are not ' chosen ' though ' called.' The lesson is, not of interminable and insoluble questionings about God's secrets, but of earnest heed to His gracious call, and earnest, believing effort to make the fair garment our very own, ' if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.' THE TABLES TURNED : THE QUESTIONERS QUESTIONED 'But when the Pharisees had heard that He had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. 35. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked Him a question, tempting Him, and saying, 36. Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37. Jesus said unto him. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. 41. While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42. Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose Son is He? They say unto Him, The son of David. 43. He saith unto them. How then doth David in spirit call Him Lord, saying, 44. The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand, till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool? 45. If David then call Him Lord, how is He his son ? 46. And no man was able to answer Him a word ; neither durst any man, from that day forth, ask Him any more questions.'— Matt. xxii. 34-46. Herodians, Sadducees, Pharisees, who were at daggers drawn with each other, patched up an alliance against 136 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxii. Jesus, whom they all hated. Their questions were cunningly contrived to entangle Him in the cobwebs of casuistry and theological hair-splitting, but He walked through the fine-spun snares as a lion might stalk away with the nooses set for him dangling behind him. The last of the three questions put to Jesus, and the one question with which He turned the tables and silenced His questioners, are our subject. In the former, Jesus declares the essence of the law or of religion; in the latter. He brings to light the essential loftiness of the Messiah. I. The two preceding questions are represented to have been asked by deputations ; this is specially noted as emanating from an individual. The ' lawyer ' seems to have anticipated his colleagues, and possibly his question was not that which they had meant to put. His motive in asking it was that of ' tempting ' Jesus, but we must not give that word too hostile a sense, for it may mean no more than 'testing' or trying. The legal expert wished to find out the attainments and standpoint of this would-be teacher, and so he proposed a question which would bring out the where- abouts of Jesus, and give opportunity for a theological wrangle. He did not ask the question for guidance, but as an inquisitor cross-examining a suspected heretic. Probably the question was a stereotyped one, and there are traces in the Gospels that the answer recognised as orthodox was that which Jesus gave (Luke X. 27). The two commandments are quoted from Deuteronomy vi. 5 and Leviticus xix. 18 respect- ively. The lawyer probably only desired to raise a discussion as to the relative worth of isolated precepts. Jesus goes deep down below isolated precepts, and unifies, as well as transforms, the law. Supreme and ^> vs. 34-46] THE TABLES TURNED 137 undivided love to God is not only the great, but also the first, commandment. In more modern phrase, it is the sum of man's duty and the germ of all goodness. Note that Jesus shifts the centre from conduct to character, from deeds to affections. ' As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,' said the sage of old ; Christ says, ' As a man loves, so is he.' Two loves we have, — either the dark love of self and sense, or the white love of God, and all character and conduct are de- termined by which of these sways us. Note, further, that love to God must needs be undivided. God is one and all; man is one and finite. To love such an object with half a heart is not to love. True, our weakness leads astray, but the only real love corre- sponding to the natures of the lover and the loved is whole-hearted, whole-souled, whole-minded. It must be ' all in all, or not at all.' • A second is like unto it,' — love to man is the under side, as it were, of love to God. The two commandments are alike, for both call for love, and the second is second because it is a consequence of the first. Each sets up a lofty standard ; ' with all thy heart ' and * as thyself ' sound equally impossible, but both result necessarily from the nature of the case. Religion is the parent of all morality, and especially of benevolent love to men. Innate self-regard will yield to no force but that of love to God. It is vain to try to create brotherhood among men unless the sense of God's fatherhood is its foundation. Love of neighbours is the second com- mandment, and to make it the first, as some do now, is to end all hope of fulfilling it. Still further, Jesus hangs law and prophets on these two precepts, which, at bottom, are one. Not only will all other duties be done in doing these, since * love is the fulfilling of the 138 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxii. law,' but all other precepts, and all the prophets' appeals and exhortations, are but deductions from, or helps to the attainment of, these. All our forms of worship, creeds, and the like, are of worth in so far as they are outcomes of love to God, or aid us in loving Him and our neighbours. Without love, they are * as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.' II. The Pharisees remained ' gathered together,' and may have been preparing another question, but Jesus had been long enough interrogated. It was not fitting that He should be catechised only. His questions teach. He does not seek to * entangle' the Pharisees ' in their speech,' nor to make them contradict them- selves, but brings them full up against a difficulty, that they may open their eyes to the great truth which is its only solution. His first question, 'What think ye of the Christ ? ' is simply preparatory to the second. The answer which He anticipated was given, — as, of course, it would be, for the Davidic descent of the Messiah was a commonplace universally accepted. One can fancy that the Pharisees smiled complacently at the attempt to puzzle them with such an elementary question, but the smile vanished when the next one came. They interpreted Psalm 110 as Messianic, and David in it called Messiah 'my Lord.' How can He be both? Jesus' question is in two forms, — 'If He is son, how does David call Him Lord?' or, if He is Lord, 'how then is He his son?' Take either designa- tion, and the other lands you in inextricable difficulties. Now what was our Lord's purpose in thus driving the Pharisees into a corner? Not merely to 'muzzle' them, as the word in verse 34, rendered ' put to silence,' literally means, but to bring to light the inadequate conceptions of the Messiah and of the nature of His vs. 34-46] THE KING'S FAREWELL 139 kingdom, to which exclusive recognition of his Davidic descent necessarily led. David's son would be but a king after the type of the Herods and Caesars, and his kingdom as ' carnal ' as the wildest zealot expected, but David's Lord, sitting at God's right hand, and having His foes made His footstool by Jehovah Him- self, — what sort of a Messiah King would that be? The majestic image, that shapes itself dimly here, was a revelation that took the Pharisees' breath away, and made them dumb. Nor are the words without a half-disclosed claim on Christ's part to be that which He was so soon to avow Himself before the high priest as being. The first hearers of them probably caught that meaning partly, and were horrified ; we hear it clearly in the words, and answer, ' Thou art the King of glory, O Christ I Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.' Jesus here says that Psalm 110 is Messianic, that David was the author, and that he wrote it by divine inspiration. The present writer cannot see how our Lord's argument can be saved from collapse if the psalm is not David's. THE KING'S FAREWELL • Woe Tinto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. 28. Even so ye also outwardly appear right- eous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. 29. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, 30. And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. 31. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. 32. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. 33. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the dam- nation of hell? 34. 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 Bcourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city : 35. That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of 140 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxiii. righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew be- tween the temple and the altar. 36. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. 37. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the pro- phets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not ! 38. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. 39. For I say unto you. Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shaU say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.'— Matt. xxiiL 27-39. If, with the majority of authorities, we exclude verse 14 from the text, there are, in this chapter, seven woes, like seven thunders, launched against the rulers. They are scathing exposures, but, as the very word implies, full of sorrow as well as severity. They are not de- nunciations, but prophecies warning that the end of such tempers must be mournful. The wailing of an infinite compassion, rather than the accents of anger, sounds in them ; and it alone is heard in the outburst of lamenting in which Christ's heart runs over, as in a passion of tears, at the close. The blending of stern- ness and pity, each perfect, is the characteristic of this wonderful climax of our Lord's appeals to His nation. Could such tones of love and righteous anger joined have been sent echoing through the ages in this Gospel, if they had not been heard ? I. The woe of the * whited sepulchres.' The first four woes are directed mainly to the teachings of the scribes and Pharisees ; the last three to their characters. The two first of these fasten on the same sin, of hypo- critical holiness. There is, however, a difference between the representation of hypocrites under the metaphor of the clean outside of the cup and platter, and that of the whited sepulchre. In the former, the hidden sin is 'extortion and excess'; that is, sensual enjoyment wrongly procured, of which the emblems of cup and plate suggest that good eating and drinking are a chief part. In the latter, it is 'iniquity' — a more general and darker name for sin. In the former, the vs. 27-39] THE KING'S FAREWELL 141 Pharisee is * blind,' self-deceived in part or altogether ; in the latter, stress is rather laid on his • appearance unto men.' The repetition of the same charge in the two woes teaches us Christ's estimate of the gravity and frequency of the sin. The whitened tombs of Mohammedan saints still gleam in the strong sunlight on many a knoll in Palestine. If the Talmudical practice is as old as our Lord's time, the annual whitewashing was lately over. Its purpose was not to adorn the tombs, but to make them conspicuous, so that they might be avoided for fear of defilement. So He would say, with terrible irony, that the apparent holiness of the rulers was really a sign of corruption, and a warning to keep away from them. What a blow at their self-com- placency ! And how profoundly true it is that the more punctiliously white the hypocrite's outside, the more foul is he within, and the wider berth will all discerning people give him ! The terrible force of the figure needs no dwelling on. In Christ's estimate, such a soul was the very dwelling-place of death ; and foul odours and worms and corruption filled its sickening recesses. Terrible words to come from His lips into which grace was poured, and bold words to be flashed at listeners who held the life of the Speaker in their hands! There are two sorts of hypocrites, the con- scious and the unconscious ; and there are ten of the latter for one of the former, and each ten times more dangerous. Established religion breeds them, and they are specially likely to be found among those whose business is to study the documents in which it is embodied. These woes are not like thunder-peals rolling above our heads, while the lightning strikes the earth miles away. A religion which is mostly 142 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxiii. whitewash is as common among us as ever it was in Jerusalem; and its foul accompaniments of corrup- tion becoming more rotten every year, as the white- wash is laid on thicker, may be smelt among us, and its fatal end is as sure. II. The woe of the sepulchre builders (vs. 29-36). In these verses we have, first, the specification of another form of hypocrisy, consisting in building the prophets' tombs, and disavowing the fathers' murder of them. Honouring dead prophets was right ; but honouring dead ones and killing living ones was conscious or un- conscious hypocrisy. The temper of mind which leads to glorifying the dead witnesses, also leads to supposing that all truth was given by them ; and hence that the living teachers, who carry their message farther, are false prophets. A generation which was ready to kill Jesus in honour of Moses, would have killed Moses in honour of Abraham, and would not have had the faintest apprehension of the message of either. It is a great deal easier to build tombs than to accept teachings, and a good deal of the posthumous honour paid to God's messengers means, ' It 's a good thing they are dead, and that we have nothing to do but to put up a monument.' Bi-centenaries and ter-centen- aries and jubilees do not always imply either the understanding or the acceptance of the principles supposed to be glorified thereby. But the magnifiers of the past are often quite unconscious of the hoUow- ness of their admiration, and honest in their horror of their fathers' acts ; and we all need the probe of such words as Christ's to pierce the skin of our lazy rever- ence for our fathers' prophets, and let out the foul matter below — namely, our own blindness to God's messengers of to-day. vs. 27-39] THE KING'S FAREWELL 143 The statement of the hypocrisy is followed, in verses 31-33, vii'ith its unmasking and condemnation. The V7ords glow with righteous wrath at white heat, and end in a burst of indignation, most unfamiliar to His lips. Three sentences, like triple lightning flash from His pained heart. With almost scornful subtlety He lays hold of the words which He puts into the Pharisees' mouths, to convict them of kindred with those whose deeds they would disown. 'Our fathers, say you? Then you do belong to the same family, after all. You confess that you have their blood in your veins ; and, in the very act of denying sympathy with their conduct, you own kindred. And, for all your protestations, spiritual kindred goes with bodily descent.* Christ here recognises that children probably 'take after their parents,' or, in modern scientific terms, that 'heredity* is the law, and that it works more surely in the trans- mission of evil than of good. Then come the awful words bidding that generation 'fill up the measure of the fathers.' They are like the other command to Judas to do his work quickly. They are more than permission, they are command ; but such a command as, by its laying bare of the true character of the deed in view, is love's last effort at prevention. Mark the growing emotion of the lan- guage. Mark the conception of a nation's sins as one through successive generations, and the other, of these as having a definite measure, which being filled, judg- ment can no longer tarry. Generation after genera- tion pours its contributions into the vessel, and when the last black drop which it can hold has been added, then comes the catastrophe. Mark the fatal necessity by which inherited sin becomes darker sin. The fathers' crimes are less than the sons'. This inherit- 144 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxiii. ance increases by each transmission. The clock strikes one more at each revolution of the hands. It is hard to recognise Christ in the terrible words that follow. We have heard part of them from John the Baptist; and it sounded natural for him to call men serpents and the children of serpents, but it is somewhat of a shock to hear Jesus hurling such names at ev6n the most sinful. But let us remember that He who sees hearts, has a right to tell harsh truths, and that it is truest kindness to strip off masks which hide from men their own real character, and that the revelation of the divine love in Jesus would be a partial and impotent revelation if it did not show us the righteous love which is wrath. There is nothing so terrible as the anger of gentle compassion, and the fiercest and most destructive wrath is ' the wrath of the Lamb.' Seldom, indeed, did He show that side of His character; but it is there, and the other side would not be so blessed as it is, unless that were there too. The woe ends with the double prophecy that that generation would repeat and surpass the fathers' guilt, and that on it would fall the accumulated penalties of past bloodshed. Note that solemn 'therefore,' which looks back to the whole preceding context, and for- ward to the whole subsequent. Because the rulers professed abhorrence of their fathers' deeds, and yet inherited their spirit, they too would have their pro- phets, and would slay them. God goes on sending His messengers, because we reject them; and the more deaf men are, the more does He peal His words into their ears. That is mercy and compassion, that all men may be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth ; but it is judgment too, and its foreseen effect vs. 27-39] THE KING'S FAREWELL 145 must be regarded as part of the divine purpose in it. Christ's desire is one thing, His purpose another. His desire is that all should find in His gospel ' the savour of life ' ; but His purpose is that, if it be not that to any, it shall be to them the savour of death. Mark, too, the authority with which He, in the face of these scowling Pharisees, assumes the distinct divine pre- rogative of sending forth inspired men, who, as His messengers, shall stand on a level with the prophets of old. Mark His silence as to His own fate, which is only obscurely hinted at in the command to fill up the measure of the fathers. Observe the detailed enum- eration of His messengers' gifts, — 'prophets' under direct inspiration, like those of old, which may especi- ally refer to the apostles ; ' wise men,' like a Stephen or an ApoUos ; * scribes,' such as Mark and Luke and many a faithful servant since, whose pen has loved to write the name above every name. Note the detailed prophecy of their treatment, which begins with slaying and goes down to the less severe scourging, and thence to the milder persecution. Do the three punishments belong to the three classes of messengers, the severest falling to the lot of the most highly endowed, and even the quiet penman being hunted from city to city ? We need not wriggle and twist to try to avoid admitting that the calling of the martyred Zacharias, * the son of Barachias,' is an error of some one who confused the author of the prophetic book with the person whose murder is narrated in 2 Chronicles xxiv. We do not know who made the mistake, or how it appears in our text, but it is not honest to try to slur it over. The punishment of long ages of sin, carried on from father to son, does in the course of that history of the world, which is a part of the judgment of the world, VOL. III. K 146 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxiii. fall upon one generation. It takes long for the mass of heaped-up sin to become top-heavy; but when it is so, it buries one generation of those who have worked at piling it up, beneath its down-rushing avalanche. f The mills of God grind slowly, J But they grind exceeding small.' The catastrophes of national histories are prepared for by continuous centuries. The generation that laid the first powder-hornful of the train is dead and buried, long before the explosion which sends consti- tuted order and institutions sky-high. The misery is that often the generation which has to pay the penalty has begun to awake to the sin, and would be glad to mend it, if it could. England in the seventeenth century, France in the eighteenth, America in the nineteenth, had to reap harvests from sins sown long before. Such is the law of the judgment wrought out by God's providence in history. But there is another judgment, begun here and perfected hereafter, in which fathers and sons shall each bear their own burden, and reap accurately the fruit of what they have sown. ' The soul that sinneth, it shall die.' III. The parting wail of rejected love. The lightning flashes of the sevenfold woes end in a rain of pity and tears. His full heart overflows in that sad cry of lamentation over the long-continued foiling of the efforts of a love that would fain have fondled and defended. What intensity of feeling is in the re- doubled naming of the city! How yearningly and wistfully He calls, as if He might still win the faith- less one, and how lingeringly unwilling He is to give up hope! How mournfully, rather than accusingly. He reiterates the acts which had run through the whole vs. 27-39] THE KING'S FAREWELL 147 history, using a form of the verbs which suggests continuance. Mark, too, the matter-of-course way in which Christ assumes that He sent all the prophets whom, through the generations, Jerusalem had stoned. So the lament passes into the solemn final leave- taking, with which our Lord closes His ministry among the Jews, and departs from the temple. As, in the parable of the marriage-feast, the city was emphati- cally called ' their city,' so here the Temple, in whose courts He was standing, and which in a moment He was to quit for ever, is called 'your house,' be- cause His departure is the withdrawing of the true Shechinah. It had been the house of God : now He casts it off, and leaves it to them to do as they will with it. The saddest punishment of long-continued rejection of His pleading love, is that it ceases at last to plead. The bitterest woe for those who refuse to render to Him the fruits of the vineyard, is to get the vineyard for their own, undisturbed. Christ's utmost retribution for obstinate blindness is to withdraw from our sight. All the woes that were yet to fall, in long, dreary succession on that nation, so long continued in its sin, so long continued in its misery, were hidden in that solemn departure of Christ from the hencefor- ward empty temple. Let us fear lest our unfaithfulness meet the like penalty ! But even the departure does not end His yearnings, nor close the long story of the conflict between God's bese*»'-' l^g love and their un- belief. The time shall come when the nation shall once more lift up, with deeper, truer adoration, the hosannas of the triumphal entry. And then a believing Israel shall see their King, and serve Him. Christ never takes final leave of any man in this world. It is ever possible that dumb lips may be opened to welcome 148 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxiv. Him, though long rejected; and His withdrawals are His efforts to bring about that opening. When it takes place, how gladly does He return to the heart which is now His temple, and unveil His beauty to the long- darkened eyes ! TWO FORMS OF ONE SAYING ' He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.'— Matt. xxiv. 13, R.V. ' In your patience possess ye your souls.'— Luke xxi. 19. These two sayings, different as they sound in our Version, are probably divergent representations of one original. The reasons for so supposing are manifold and obvious on a little consideration. In the first place, the two sayings occur in the Evangelists' reports of the same prophecy and at the same point therein. In the second place, the verbal resemblance is much greater than appears in our Authorised Version, because the word rendered ' patience ' in Luke is de- rived from that translated ' endureth ' in Matthew ; and the true connection between the two versions of the saying would have been more obvious if we had had a similar word in both, reading in the one * he that endureth,' and in the other ' in your endurance.' In the third place, the difference between these two say- ings presented in our Version, in that the one is a promise and the other a command, is due to an incor- rect reading of St. Luke's words. The Revised Version substitutes for the imperative ' possess ' the promise •ye shall possess,' and with that variation the two sayings are brought a good deal nearer each other. In both endurance is laid down as the condition, which in both is followed by a promise. Then, finally, there V.13] TWO FORMS OF ONE SAYING 149 need be no difficulty in seeing that ' possessing,' or, more literally, ' gaining your souls,' is an exact equiva- lent of the other expression, ' ye shall be saved.' One cannot but remember our Lord's solemn antithetical phrase about a man ' losing his own soul.' To ' win one's soul ' is to be saved ; to be saved is to win one's soul. So I think I have made out my thesis that the two sayings are substantially one. They carry a great weight of warning, of exhortation, and of encourage- ment to us all. Let us try now to reap some of that harvest. I. First, then, notice the view of our condition which underlies these sayings. It is a sad and a somewhat stern one, but it is one to which, I think, most men's hearts will respond, if they give themselvdfe leisure to think ; and if they ' see life steadily, and see it whole.' For howsoever many days are bright, and howsoever all days are good, yet, on the whole, ' man is a soldier, and life is a fight.' For some of us it is simple endurance ; for all of us it has sometimes been agony ; for all of us, always, it presents resistance to every kind of high and noble career, and especially to the Christian one. Easy-going optimists try to skim over these facts, but they are not to be so lightly set aside. You have only to look at the faces that you meet in the street to be very sure that it is always a grave and sometimes a bitter thing to live. And so our two texts presuppose that life on the whole demands endurance, whatever may be included in that great word. Think of the inward resistance and outward hin- drances to every lofty life. The scholar, the man of culture, the philanthropist — all who would live for 150 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxiv. anything else than the present, the low, and the sensual — find that there is a banded conspiracy, as it were, against them, and that they have to fight their way by continual antagonism, by continual persist- ence, as well as by continual endurance. Within, weak- ness, torpor, weariness, levity, inconstant wills, bright purposes clouding over, and all the cowardice and animalism of our nature war continually against the better, higher self. And without, there is a down- dragging, as persistent as the force of gravity, coming from the whole assemblage of external things that solicit, and would fain seduce us. The old legends used to tell us how, whensoever a knight set out upon any great and lofty quest, his path was beset on either side by voices, sometimes whispering seductions, and sometimes shrieking maledictions, but always seeking to withdraw him from his resolute march onwards to his goal. And every one of us, if we have taken on us the orders of any lofty chivalry, and especially if we have sworn ourselves knights of the Cross, have to meet the same antagonism. Then, too, there are golden apples rolled upon our path, seeking to draw us away from our steadfast endurance. Besides the hindrances in every noble path, the hin- drances within and the hindrances without, the weight of self and the drawing of earth, there come to us all — in various degrees no doubt, and in various shapes — but to all of us there come the burdens of sorrows and cares, and anxieties and trials. Wherever two or three are gathered together, even if they gather for a feast, there will be sonie of them who carry a sorrow which they know well will never be lifted off their shoulders and their hearts, until they lay down all their burdens at the grave's mouth; and it is weary V. 13] TWO FORMS OF ONE SAYING 151 work to plod on the path of life with a weight that cannot be shifted, with a wound that can never be stanched. Oh, brethren, rosy-coloured optimism is all a dream. The recognition of the good that is in the evil is the devout man's talisman, but there is always need for the resistance and endurance which my texts prescribe. And the youngest of us, the gladdest of us, the least experienced of us, the most frivolous of us, if we will question our own hearts, will hear their Amen to the stern, sad view of the facts of earthly life which underlies this text. Though it has many other aspects, the world seems to me sometimes to be like that pool at Jerusalem in the five porches of which lay, groaning under various diseases, but none of them without an ache, a great multitude of impotent folk, halt and blind. Astro- nomers tell us that one, at any rate, of the planets rolls on its orbit swathed in clouds and moisture. The world moves wrapped in a mist of tears. God only knows them all, but each heart knows its own bitterness and responds to the words, ' Ye have need of patience.' II. Now, secondly, mark the victorious temper. That is referred to in the one saying by 'he that endureth,' and in the other ' in your endurance.' Now, it is very necessary for the understanding of many places in Scripture to remember that the notion either of patience or of endurance by no means exhausts the power of this noble Christian word. For these are passive virtues, and however excellent and needful they may be, they by no means sum up our duty in regard to the hindrances and sorrows, the burdens and weights, of which I have been trying to speak. 152 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxiv. For you know it is only ' what cannot be cured ' that 'must be endured,' and even incurable things are not merely to be endured, but they ought to be utilised. It is not enough that we should build up a dam to keep the floods of sorrow and trial from overflowing our fields ; we must turn the turbid waters into our sluices, and get them to drive our mills. It is not enough that we should screw ourselves up to lie un- resistingly under the surgeon's knife; though God knows that it is as much as we can manage some- times, and we have to do as convicts under the lash do, get a bit of lead or a bullet into our mouths, and bite at it to keep ourselves from crying out. But that is not all our duty in regard to our trials and difficul- ties. There is required something more than passive endurance. This noble word of my texts does mean a great deal more than that. It means active persistence as well as patient submission. It is not enough that we should stand and bear the pelting of the pitiless storm, un- murmuring and unbowed by it; but we are bound to go on our course, bearing up and steering right onwards. Persistent perseverance in the path that is marked out for us is especially the virtue that our Lord here enjoins. It is well to sit still unmurmuring ; it is better to march on undiverted and unchecked. And when we are able to keep straight on in the path which is marked out for us, and especially in the path that leads us to God, notwithstanding all oppos- ing voices, and all inward hindrances and reluctances ; when we are able to go to our tasks of whatever sort they are, and to do them, though our hearts are beat- ing like sledge-hammers ; when we say to ourselves, »It does not matter a bit whether I am sad or glad, V. 13] TWO FORMS OF ONE SAYING 153 fresh or wearied, helped or hindered by circumstances, this one thing I do,' then we have come to understand and to practise the grace that our Master here enjoins. The endurance which wins the soul, and leads to salva- tion, is no mere passive submission, excellent and hard to attain as that often is ; but it is brave perseverance in the face of all difficulties, and in spite of all enemies. Mark how emphatically our Lord here makes the space within which that virtue has to be exercised conterminous with the whole duration of our lives. I need not discuss what ' the end ' was in the original application of the words ; that would take us too far afield. But this I desire to insist upon, that right on to the very close of life we are to expect the necessity of putting forth the exercise of the very same persist- ence by which the earlier stages of any noble career must necessarily be marked. In other departments of life there may be relaxation, as a man goes on through the years ; but in the culture of our characters, and in the deepening of our faith, and in the drawing near to our God, there must be no cessation or diminution of earnestness and of effort right up to the close. There are plenty of people, and I dare say that I address some of them now, who began their Christian career full of vigour and with a heat that was too hot to last. But, alas, in a year or two all the fervency was past, and they settled down into the average, easy- going, unprogressive Christian, who is a wet blanket to the devotion and work of a Christian church. I wonder how many of us would scarcely know our own former selves if we could see them. Christian people, to how many of us should the word be rung in our ears : ' Ye did run well ; what did hinder you ' ? The answer is — Myself, 154 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxiv. But may I say that this emphatic * to the end ' has a special lesson for us older people, who, as natural strength abates and enthusiasm cools down, are apt to be but the shadows of our old selves in many things ? But there should be fire within the mountain, though there may be snow on its crest. Many a ship has been lost on the harbour bar; and there is no excuse for the captain leaving the bridge, or the engineer coming up from the engine-room, stormy as the one position and stifling as the other may be, until the anchor is down, and the vessel is moored and quiet in the desired haven. The desert, with its wild beasts and its Bedouin, reaches right up to the city gates, and until we are within these we need to keep our hands on our sword-hilts and be ready for conflict. * He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.' III. Lastly, note the crown which endurance wins. Now, I need not spend or waste your time in mere verbal criticism, but I wish to point out that that word * soul ' in one of our two texts means both the soul and the life of which it is the seat ; and also to remark that the being saved and the winning of the life or the soul has distinct application, in our Lord's words, primarily to corporeal safety and preservation in the midst of dangers ; and, still further, to note the emphatic ' in your patience,' as suggesting not only a future but a present acquisition of one's own soul, or life, as the result of such persevering endurance and enduring perseverance. All which things being kept in view, I may expand the great promise that lies in my text, as follows : — First, by such persevering persistence in the Christian path, we gain ourselves. Self-surrender is self-posses- sion. We never own ourselves till we have given up T. 13] TWO FORMS OF ONE SAYING 155 owning ourselves, and yielded ourselves to that Lord who gives us back saints to ourselves. Self-control is self-possession. We do not own ourselves as long as it is possible for any weakness in flesh, sense, or spirit to gain dominion over us and hinder us from doing what we know to be right. We are not our own masters then. 'Whilst they promise them liberty, they themselves are the bond-slaves of corruption.' It is only when we have the bit well into the jaws of the brutes, and the reins tight in our hands, so that a finger- touch can check or divert the course, that we are truly lords of the chariot in which we ride and of the animals that impel it. And such self-control which is the winning of our- selves is, as I believe, thoroughly realised only when, by self-surrender of ourselves to Jesus Christ, we get His help to govern ourselves and so become lords of ourselves. Some little petty Rajah, up in the hills, in a quasi-independent State in India, is troubled by mutineers whom he cannot subdue ; what does he do ? He sends a message down to Lahore or Calcutta, and up come English troops that consolidate his dominion, and he rules securely, when he has consented to become a feudatory, and recognise his overlord. And so you and I, by continual repetition, in the face of self and sin, of our acts of self-surrender, bring Christ into the field ; and then, when we have said, ' Lord, take me ; I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me ' ; and when we daily, in spite of hindrances, stand to the surrender and repeat the consecration, then * in our perseverance we acquire our souls.' Again, such persistence wins even the bodily life, whether it preserves it or loses it. I have said that the words of our texts have an application to bodily 156 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxiv. preservation in the midst of the dreadful dangers of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem. But so regarded they are a paradox. For hear how the Master intro- duces them : ' Some of you shall they cause to be put to death, but there shall not a hair of your heads perish. In your perseverance ye shall win your lives.' ' Some of you they will put to death,' but ye ' shall win your lives,' — a paradox which can only be solved by experience. Whether this bodily life be preserved or lost, it is gained when it is used as a means of attaining the higher life of union with God. Many a martyr had the promise, ' Not a hair of your head shall perish,' fulfilled at the very moment when the falling axe shore his locks in twain, and severed his head from his body. Finally, full salvation, the true possession of himself, and the acquisition of the life which really is life, comes to a man who perseveres to the end, and thus passes to the land where he will receive the recom- pense of the reward. The one moment the runner, with flushed cheek and forward swaying body, hot, with panting breath, and every muscle strained, is straining to the winning-post; and the next moment, in utter calm, he is wearing the crown. ' To the end,' and what a contrast the next moment will be! Brethren, may it be true of you and of me that * we are not of them that draw back unto per- dition, but of them that believe to the winning of their souls I ' THE CARRION AND THE VULTURES ' Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles he gathered together.' Matt. xxiv. 28. This grim parable has, of course, a strong Eastern colouring. It is best appreciated by dwellers in those lands. They tell us that no sooner is some sickly animal dead, or some piece of carrion thrown out by the way, than the vultures — for the eagle does not prey upon carrion — appear. There may not have been one visible a moment before in the hot blue sky, but, taught by scent or by sight that their banquet is prepared, they come flocking from all corners of the heavens, a hideous crowd round their hideous meal, fighting with flapping wings and tearing it with their strong talons. And so, says Christ, wherever there is a rotting, dead society, a carcase hopelessly corrupt and evil, down upon it, as if drawn by some unerring attraction, will come the angels, the vultures of the divine judgment. The words of my text were spoken, according to the version of them in Luke's Gospel, in answer to a ques- tion from the disciples. Our Lord had been discoursing, in very solemn words, which, starting from the historical event of the impending fall of Jerusalem, had gradually passed into a description of the greater event of His second coming. And all these solemn warnings had stirred nothing deeper in the bosoms of the disciples than a tepid and idle curiosity which expressed itself in the one almost irrelevant question, ' Where, Lord ? ' He answers — Not here, not there, but everywhere where there is a carcase. The great event which is referred to in our Lord's solemn words is a future judgment, 167 158 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxiv. which is to be universal. But the words are not ex- hausted in their reference to that event. There have been many ' comings of the Lord,' many ' days of the Lord,' which on a smaller scale have embodied the same principles as are to be displayed in world-wide splendour and awf ulness at the last. I. The first thing, then, in these most true and solemn words is this, that they are to us a revelation of a law which operates with unerring certainty through all the course of the world's history. We cannot tell, but God can, when evil has become incurable; or when, in the language of my text, the mass of any community has become a carcase. There may be flickerings of life, all unseen by our eyes, or there may be death, all unsuspected by our shallow vision. So long as there is a possibility of amendment, ' sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily'; and God dams back, as it were, the flow of His retri- butive judgment, ' not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth.' But when He sees that all is vain, that no longer is restoration or recovery possible, then He lets loose the flood ; or, in the language of my text, when the thing has become a carcase, then the vultures, God's scavengers, come and clear it away from off the face of the earth. Now that is the law that has been working from the beginning, working as well in regard to the long delays as in regard to the swift execution. There is another metaphor, in the Old Testament, that puts the same idea in a very striking form. It speaks about God's • awakening,' as if His judgment slumbered. All round that dial the hand goes creeping, creeping, creeping slowly, but when it comes to the appointed line, then V.28] THE CARRION AND VULTURES 159 the bell strikes. And so years and centuries go by, all chance of recovery departs, and then the crash ! The ice palace, built upon the frozen blocks, stands for a while, but when the spring thaws come, it breaks up. Let me remind you of some instances and illustra- tions. Take that story which people stumble over in the early part of the Old Testament revelation — the sweeping away of those Canaanitish nations whose hideous immoralities had turned the land into a perfect sty of abominations. There they had been wallowing, and God's Spirit, which strives with men ever and always, had been striving with them, we know not for how long, but when the time came at which, according to the grim metaphor of the Old Testament, 'the measure of their iniquity was full,' then He hurled upon them the fierce hosts out of the desert, and in a whirlwind of fire and sword swept them off the face of the earth. Take another illustration. These very people, who had been the executioners of divine judgment, settled in the land, fell into the snare — and you know the story. The captivities of Israel and Judah were other illustrations of the same thing. The fall of Jerusalem, to which our Lord pointed in the solemn context of these words, was another. For millenniums God had been pleading with them, sending His prophets, rising early and sending, saying, ' Oh, do not do this abomin- able thing which I hate ! ' ' And last of all He sent His Son.' Christ being rejected, God had shot His last bolt. He had no more that He could do. Christ being refused, the nation's doom was fixed and sealed, and down came the eagles of Rome, again God's scavengers, to sweep away the nation on which had been lavished such wealth of divine love, but which had now come to be a rotting abomination, and to this day remains in a 160 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxiv. living death, a miraculously preserved monument of God's judgments. Take another illustration how, once more, the execu- tants of the law fall under its power. That nation which crushed the feeble resources of Judaea, as a giant might crush a mosquito in his grasp, in its turn became honeycombed with abominations and immoralities ; and then down from the frozen north came the fierce Gothic tribes over the Roman territory. One of their captains called himself the ' Scourge of God,' and he was right. Another swooping down of the vultures flashed from the blue heavens, and the carrion was torn to fragments by their strong beaks. Take one more illustration — that French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. The fathers sowed the wind, and the children reaped the whirlwind. Generations of heartless luxury, selfishness, careless- ness of the cry of the poor, immoral separation of class from class, and all the sins which a ruling caste could commit against a subject people, had prepared for the convulsion. Then, in a carnival of blood and deluges of fire and sulphur, the rotten thing was swept off the face of the earth, and the world breathed more freely for its destruction. Take another illustration, through which many of us have lived. The bitter legacy of negro slavery that England gave to her giant son across the Atlantic, which blasted and sucked the strength out of that great republic, went down amidst universal execration. It took centuries for the corpse to be ready, but when the vultures came they made quick work of it. And so, as I say, all over the world, and from the beginning of time, with delays according to the pos- sibilities of restoration and recovery which the divine V. 28] THE CARRION AND VULTURES 161 eye discerns, this law is working. Verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth. 'The wheels of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.' 'Where- soever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.' And has the law exhausted its force ? Are there going to be no more applications of it ? Are there no European societies at this day that in their godlessness and social iniquities are hurrying fast to the condition of carrion? Look around us — drunkenness, sensual immorality, commercial dishonesty, senseless luxury amongst the rich, heartless indifference to the wail of the poor, godlessness over all classes and ranks of the community. Surely, surely, if the body politic be not dead, it is sick nigh unto death. And I, for my part, have little hesitation in saying that as far as one can see, European society is driving as fast as it can, with its godlessness and immorality, to such another ' day of the Lord ' as these words of my text suggest. Let us see to it that we do our little part to be the * salt of the earth ' which shall keep it from rotting, and so drive away the vultures of judgment. II. But let me turn to another point. We have here a law which is to have a far more tremendous accom- plishment in the future. There have been many comings of the Lord, many days of the Lord, when, as Isaiah says in his magnificent vision of one such, * the loftiness of man has been bowed down, and the haughtiness of man made low, and the Lord alone exalted in that day when He arises to shake terribly the earth.' And all these ' days of the Lord ' are prophecies, and distinctly point to a future * day,' when the same principles which have been disclosed as working on a small scale in them, VOL. III. L 162 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxiv. shall be manifested in full embodiment. These ' days of the Lord ' proclaim ' the day of the Lord.' In the prophecies both of the Old and New Testaments that universal future judgment is seen glimmering through the descriptions of the nearer partial judg- ments. So interpreters are puzzled to say at what point in a prophecy the transition is made from the smaller to the greater. The prophecies are like the diagrams in treatises on perspective, in which diverg- ing lines are drawn from the eye, enclosing a square or other figure, and which, as they recede further from the point of view, enclose a figure, the same in shape but of greater dimensions. There is a histori- cal event foretold, the fall of Jerusalem. It is close up to the eyes of the disciples, and is comparatively small. Carry out the lines that touch its corners and define its shape, and upon the far distant curtain of the dim future there is thrown a like figure im- mensely larger, the coming of Jesus Christ to judge the world. All these little premonitions and foretastes and anticipatory specimens point onwards to the assured termination of the world's history in that great and solemn day, when all men shall be gathered before Christ's throne, and He shall judge all nations — judge you and me amongst the rest. That future judgment is distinctly a part of the Christian revela- tion. Jesus Christ is to come in bodily form as He went away. All men are to be judged by Him. That judgment is to be the destruction of opposing forces, the sweeping away of the carrion of moral evil. It is therefore distinctly a part of the message that is to be preached by us, under penalty of the awful condemnation pronounced on the watchman who seeth the sword coming and gives no warning. It is not V. 28] THE CARRION AND VULTURES 163 becoming to make such a solemn message the oppor- tunity for pictorial rhetoric, which vulgarises its great- ness and weakens its power. But it is worse than an offence against taste ; it is unfaithfulness to the preach- ing which God bids us, treason to our King, and cruelty to our hearers, to suppress the warning — ' The day of the Lord cometh.' There are many temptations to put it in the background. Many of you do not want that kind of preaching. You want the gentle side of divine revelation. You say to us in fact, though not in words, ' Prophesy to us smooth things. Tell us about the infinite love which wraps all mankind in its embrace. Speak to us of the Father God, who " hateth nothing that He hath made." Magnify the mercy and gentle- ness and tenderness of Christ. Do not say anything about that other side. It is not in accordance with the tendencies of modern thought.' So much the worse, then, for the tendencies of modern thought. I yield to no man in the ardour of my belief that the centre of all revelation is the revelation of a God of infinite love, but I cannot forget that there is such a thing as ' the terror of the Lord,' and I dare not disguise my conviction that no preaching sounds every string in the manifold harp of God's truth, which does not strike that solemn note of warning of judgment to come. Such suppression is unfaithfulness. Surely, if we preachers believe that tremendous truth, we are bound to speak. It is cruel kindness to be silent. If a tra- veller is about to plunge into some gloomy jungle infested by wild beasts, he is a friend who sits by the wayside to warn him of his danger. Surely you would not call a signalman unfeeling because he held out a red lamp when he knew that just round the curve 164 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxiv. beyond his cabin the rails were up, and that any train that reached the place would go over in horrid ruin. Surely that preaching is not justly charged with harsh- ness which rings out the wholesome proclamation of a day of judgment, when we shall each give account of ourselves to the divine-human Judge. Such suppression weakens the power of the Gospel, which is the proclamation of deliverance, not only from the power, but also from the future retribution of sin. In such a maimed gospel there is but an enfeebled meaning given to that idea of deliverance. And though the thing that breaks the heart and draws men to God is not terror, but love, the terror must often be evoked in order to lead to love. It is only * judgment to come ' which will make Felix tremble, and though his trem- bling may pass away, and he be none the nearer the kingdom, there will never any good be done to him unless he does tremble. So, for all these reasons, all faithful preaching of Christ's Gospel must include the proclamation of Christ as Judge. But, if I should be unfaithful, if I did not preach this truth, what shall we call you if you turn away from it ? You would not think it a wise thing of the engine- driver to shut his eyes if the red lamp were shown, and to go along at full speed and to pay no heed to that ? Do you think it would be right for a Christian minister to lock his lips and never say, ' There is a judgment to come ' ? And do you think it is wise of you not to think of that, and to shape your conduct accordingly ? Oh, dear friends ! I do not doubt that the centre of all divine revelation is the love of God, nor do I doubt that incomparably the highest representation of the power of Christ's Gospel is that it draws men away from the love and the practice of evil, and makes them V.28] THE CARRION AND VULTURES 165 pure and holy. But that is not all. There is not only the practice and the power of sin to be fought against, but there is the penalty of sin to be taken into account ; and as sure as you are living, and as sure as there is a God above us, so sure is it that there is a Day of Judgment, when ' He will judge the world in right- eousness by the Man whom He hath ordained.' The believing of that is not salvation, but the belief of that seems to me to be indispensable for any vigorous grasp of the delivering love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. III. And so the last thing that I have to say is that this is a law which need never touch you, nor you know anything about but by the hearing of the ear. It is told us that we may escape it. When Paul reasoned of righteousness, and temperance, and judg- ment to come, his hearer trembled as he listened, but there w^as an end. But the true effect of this message is the effect that Paul himself attached to it when he said in the hearing of Athenian wisdom, ' God hath commanded all men everywhere to repent, because He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness.' Judgment faithfully preached is the preparation for preaching that ' there is no con- demnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.' If we trust in that great Saviour, we shall be quickened from the death of sin, and so shall not be food for the vul- tures of judgment. Can these corpses live ? Can this eating putrescence, which burrows its foul way through our souls, be sweetened ? Is there any antiseptic for it? Yes, blessed be God, and the hand whose touch healed the leper will heal us, and ' our flesh will come again as the flesh of a little child.' Christ has bared His breast to the divine judgments against sin, and if by 166 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxiv. faith we shelter ourselves in Him, we shall never know the terrors of that awful day. Be sure that judgment to come is no mere figure dressed up to frighten children, nor the product of blind superstition, but that it is the inevitable issue of the righteousness of the All-ruling God. You and I and all the sons of men have to face it. * Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness before Him in the Day of Judgment.' Betake your- selves, as poor sinful creatures who know something of the corruption of your own hearts, to that dear Christ who has died on the Cross for you, and all that is obnoxious to the divine judgments will, by His trans- forming life breathed into you, be taken out of your hearts ; and when that * day of the Lord ' shall dawn, you, trusting in the sacrifice of Him who is your Judge, will 'have a song as when a holy solemnity is kept.' Take Christ for your Saviour, and then, when the vultures of judgment, with their mighty black pinions, are wheeling and circling in the sky, ready to pounce upon their prey. He will gather you ' as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings,' and beneath their shadow you will be safe. WATCHING FOR THE KING •Watch therefore : for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. 43. But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. 44. Therefore be ye also %eady : for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh. 45. Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season ? 46. Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. 47. Verily 1 say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods. 48. But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart. My lord delayeth his coming ; 49. And shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken ; 50. The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not vs. 42-51] WATCHING FOR THE KING 167 for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, 51. And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'— Matt. xxiv. 42-51. The long day's work was nearly done. Christ had left the temple, never to return. He took His way across the Mount of Olives to Bethany, and was stayed by the disciples' question as to the date of the destruction of the temple, which He had foretold, and of the ' end of the world,' which they attached to it. They could not fancy the world lasting without the temple ! We often make a like mistake. So there, on the hillside, looking across to the city lying in the sad, fading evening light, He spoke the prophecies of this chapter, which begin with the destruction of Jerusalem, and insensibly merge into the final coming of the Son of Man, of which that was a prelude and a type. The difficulty of accurately apportioning the details of this prophecy to the future events which fulfil them is common to it with all prophecy, of which it is a characteristic to blend events which, in the fulfilment, are far apart. From the mountain top, the eye travels over great stretches of country, but does not see the gorges, separating points which seem close together, fore- shortened by distance. There are many comings of the Son of Man before His final coming for final judgment, and the nearer and smaller ones are themselves prophecies. So, we do not need to settle the chronology of unfulfilled prophecy in order to get the full benefit of Christ's teachings here. In its moral and spiritual effect on us, the uncertainty of the time of our going to Christ is nearly identical with the uncertainty of the time of His coming to us. I. The command of watchfulness enforced by our ignorance of the time of His coming (vs. 42-44). The 168 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxiv. two commands at the beginning and end of the para- graph are not quite the same. 'Be ye ready' is the consequence of watchfulness. Nor are the two appended reasons the same ; for the first command is grounded on His coming at a day when * ye know not,' and the second on His coming 'in an hour that ye think not,' that is to say, it not only is uncertain, but unexpected and surprising. There may also be a difference worth noting in the different designations of Christ as ' your Lord,' standing in a special relation to you, and as ' the Son of Man,' of kindred with all men, and their Judge. What is this ' watchfulness ' ? It is literally wakefulness. We are beset by perpetual temptations to sleep, to spiritual drowsiness and torpor. ' An opium sky rains down soporifics.' And without continual effort, our perception of the unseen realities and our alertness for service will be lulled to sleep. The religion of multitudes is a sleepy religion. Further, it is a vivid and ever-present conviction of His certain coming, and consequently a habitual realising of the transience of the existing order of things, and of the fast-approach- ing realities of the future. Further, it is the keeping of our minds in an attitude of expectation and desire, our eyes ever travelling to the dim distance to mark the far-off shining of His coming. What a miserable con- trast to this is the temper of professing Christendom as a whole ! It is swallowed up in the present, wide awake to interests and hopes belonging to this ' bank and shoal of time,' but sunk in slumber as to that great future, or, if ever the thought of it intrudes, shrinking, rather than desire, accompanies it, and it is soon hustled out of mind. Christ bases His command on our ignorance of the time of His coming. It was no part of His purpose in vs. 42-51] WATCHING FOR THE KING 169 this prophecy to remove that ignorance, and no calcula- tions of the chronology of unfulfilled predictions have pierced the darkness. It was His purpose that from generation to generation His servants should be kei)t in the attitude of expectation, as of an event that may come at any time and must come at some time. The parallel uncertainty of the time of death, though not what is meant here, serves the same moral end if rightly used, and the fact of death is exposed to the same danger of being neglected because of the very uncer- tainty, which ought to be one chief reason for keeping it ever in view. Any future event, which combines these two things, absolute certainty that it will happen, and utter uncertainty when it will happen, ought to have power to insist on being remembered, at least, till it was prepared for, and would have it, if men were not such fools. Christ's coming would be oftener con- templated if it were more welcome. But what sort of a servant is he, who has no glow of gladness at the thought of meeting his lord ? True Christians are ' all them that have loved His appearing.' The illustrative example which separates these two commands is remarkable. The householder's ignorance of the time when the thief would come is the reason why he does not watch. He cannot keep awake all night, and every night, to be ready for him ; so he has to go to sleep, and is robbed. But our ignorance is a reason for wakefulness, because we can keep awake all the night of life. The householder watches to prevent, but we to share in, that for which the watch is kept. The figure of the thief is chosen to illustrate the one point of the unexpected stealthy approach. But is there not deep truth in it, to the effect that Christ's coming is like that of a robber to those who are 170 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxiv. asleep, depriving them of earthly treasures? The word rendered 'broken up' means literally 'dug through,' and points to a clay or mud house, common in the East, which is entered, not by bursting open doors or windows, but by digging through the wall. Death comes to men sunk in spiritual slumber, to strip them of good which they would fain keep, and makes his entrance by a breach in the earthly house of this tabernacle. So St. Paul, in his earliest Epistle, refers to this saying (a proof of the early diffusion of the gospel narrative), and says, ' Ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.' II. The picture and reward of watchfulness. The general exhortation to watch is followed by a pair of contrasted parable portraits, primarily applicable to the apostles and to those 'set over His household.' But if we remember what Christ taught as the con- dition of pre-eminence in His kingdom, we shall not confine their application to an order. ' The least flower with a brimming cup may stand, ' And share its dew-drop with another near,' and the most slenderly endowed Christian has some crumb of the bread of life intrusted to him to dispense. It is to be observed that watchfulness is not mentioned in this portraiture of the faithful servant. It is pre- supposed as the basis and motive of his service. So we learn the double lesson that the attitude of continual outlook for the Lord is needed, if we are to discharge the tasks which He has set us, and that the true effect of watchfulness is to harness us to the car of duty. Many other motives actuate Christian faithfulness, but all are reinforced by this, and where it is feeble they vs. 42-61] WATCHING FOR THE KING 171 are more or less inoperative. We cannot afford to lose its influence. A Church or a soul which has ceased to be looking for Him will have let all its tasks drop from its drowsy hands, and will feel the power of other con- straining motives of Christian service but faintly, as in a half -dream. On the other hand, true waiting for Him is best expressed in the quiet discharge of accustomed and appointed tasks. The right place for the servant to be found, when the Lord comes, is * so doing ' as He com- mands, however secular the task may be. That was a wise judge who, when sudden darkness came on, and people thought the end of the world was at hand, said, ' Bring lights, and let us go on with the case. We can- not be better employed, if the end has come, than in doing our duty.' Flighty impatience of common tasks is not watching for the King, as Paul had to teach the Thessalonians, who were 'shaken' in mind by the thought of the day of the Lord ; but the proper attitude of the watchers is * that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business.' Observe, further, the interrogative form of the parable. The question is the sharp point which gives penetrating power, and suggests Christ's high estimate of the worth and difficulty of such conduct, and sets us to ask for ourselves, ' Lord, is it I ? ' The servant is 'faithful' inasmuch as he does his Lord's will, and rightly uses the goods intrusted to him, and ' wise ' inasmuch as he is 'faithful.' For a single-hearted devotion to Christ is the parent of insight into duty, and the best guide to conduct ; and whoever seeks only to be true to his Lord in the use of his gifts and posses- sions, will not lack prudence to guide him in giving to each his food, and that in due season. The two charac- 172 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxiv. teristics are connected in another way also ; for, if the outcome of faithfulness be taken into account, its wisdom is plain, and he who has been faithful even unto death will be seen to have been wise though he gave up all, when the crown of eternal life sparkles on his forehead. Such faithfulness and wisdom (which are at bottom but two names for one course of con- duct) find their motive in that watchfulness, which works as ever in the great Taskmaster's eye, and as ever keeping in view His coming, and the rendering of account to Him. The reward of the faithful servant is stated in language similar to that of the parable of the talents. Faithfulness in a narrower sphere leads to a wider. The reward for true work is more work, of nobler sort and on a grander scale. That is true for earth and for heaven. If we do His will here, we shall one day exchange the subordinate place of the steward for the authority of the ruler, and the toil of the ser- vant for the 'joy of the Lord.' The soul that is joined to Christ and is one in will with Him has all things for its servants; and he who uses all things for his own and his brethren's highest good is lord of them all, while he walks amid the shadows of time, and will be lifted to loftier dominion over a grander world when he passes hence. III. The picture and doom of the un watchful servant. This portrait presupposes that a long period will elapse before Christ comes. The secret thought of the evil servant is the thought of a time far down the ages from the moment of our Lord's speaking. It would take centuries for such a temper to be developed in the Church. What is the temper ? A secret dismissal of the anticipation of the Lord's return, and that not vs. 42-51] WATCHING FOR THE KING 173 merely because He has been long in coming, but as think- ing that He has broken His word, and has not come when He said that He would. This unspoken dimming over of the expectation and unconfessed doubt of the firmness of the promise, is the natural product of the long time of apparent delay which the Church has had to encounter. It will cloud and depress the religion of later ages, unless there be constant effort to resist the tendency and to keep awake. The first generations were all aflame with the glad hope • Maranatha ' — ' The Lord is at hand.' Their successors gradually lost that keenness of expectation, and at most cried, ' Will not He come soon ? ' Their successors saw the starry hope through thickening mists of years ; and now it scarcely shines for many, or at least is but a dim point, when it should blaze as a sun. He was an * evil ' servant who said so in his heart. He was evil because he said it, and he said it because he was evil ; for the yielding to sin and the withdrawal of love from Jesus dim the desire for His coming, and make the whisper that He delays, a hope ; while, on the other hand, the hope that He delays helps to open the sluices, and let sin flood the life. So an outburst of cruel masterfulness and of riotous sensuality is the consequence of the dimmed expectation. There would have been no usurpation of authority over Christ's heritage by priest or pope, or any other, if that hope had not become faint. If professing Christians lived with the great white throne and the heavens and earth fleeing away before Him that sits on it, ever burning before their inward eye, how could they wallow amid the mire of animal indulgence? The corruptions of the Church, especially of its official members, are traced with sad and prescient hand in 174 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxiv. these foreboding words, which are none the less a prophecy because cast by His forbearing gentleness into the milder form of a supposition. The dreadful doom of the unwatchful servant is couched in terms of awful severity. The cruel punish- ment of sawing asunder, which, tradition says, was suffered by Isaiah and was not unfamiliar in old times, is his. What concealed terror of retribution it signifies we do not know. Perhaps it points to a fate in which a man shall be, as it were, parted into two, each at enmity with the other. Perhaps it implies a retribution in kind for his sin, which consisted, as the next clause implies, in hypocrisy, which is the sundering in twain of inward conviction and practice, and is to be avenged by a like but worse rending apart of conscience and will. At all events, it shadows a fearful retribution, which is not extinction, inasmuch as, in the next clause, we read that his portion — his lot, or that condition which belongs to him by virtue of his character — is with 'the hypocrites.' He was one of them, because, while he said ' my lord,' he had ceased to love and obey, having ceased to desire and expect ; and therefore whatever is their fate shall be his, even to the ' dividing asunder of soul and spirit,' and setting eternal discord among the thoughts and intents of the heart. That is not the punishment of unwatchfulness, but of what unwatchfulness leads to, if una wakened. Let these words of the King ring an alarum for us all, and rouse our sleepy souls to watch, as becomes the children of the day. THE WAITING MAIDENS ' Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. 2. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. 3. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them : 4. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. 5. While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. 6. And at midnight there was a cry made. Behold, the bridegroom cometh ; go ye out to meet him. 7. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. 8. And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil ; for our lamps are gone out. 9. But the wise answered, saying, Not so ; lest there be not enough for us and you : but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. 10. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came ; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage : and the door was shut. 11. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying. Lord, Lord, open to us. 12. But he answered and said. Verily I say unto you, I know you not. 13. Watch therefore ; for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh.'— Matt. xxv. 1-13. We shall best understand this beautiful but difficult parable if we look on to its close. Our Lord appends to it the refrain of all this context, the exhortation to watch, based upon our ignorance of the time of His coming. But as in the former little parable of the wise servant it was his faithful, wise dispensing of his lord's goods, and not his watchfulness, which was the point of the eulogium passed on him, so here it is the readi- ness of the wise virgins to take their places in the wedding march which is commended. That readiness consists in their having their lamps burning and their '- oil in store. This, then, is the main thing in the parable. It is an exhibition, under another aspect, of what constitutes fitness for entrance into the festal chamber of the bridegroom, which had just been set forth as consisting in faithful stewardship. Here it is presented as being the possession of lamp and oil. I. The first consideration, then, must be, What is the meaning of these emblems ? A great deal of fine-spun ingenuity has been expended on subordinate points in the parable, such as the significance of the number of m i 176 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxv. maidens, the conclusions from the equal division into wise and foolish, the place from which they came to meet the bridegroom, the point in the marriage proces- sion where they are supposed to join it, whether it was at going to fetch the bride, or at coming back with her ; whether the feast is held in her house, or in his, and so on. But all these are unimportant questions, and as Christ has left them in the background, we only destroy the perspective by dragging them into the front. In no parable is it more important than in this to restrain the temptation to run out analogies into their last results. The remembrance that the virgins, as the emblem of the whole body of the visible Church, are the same as the bride, w^ho does not appear in the parable, might warn against such an error. They were ten, as being the usual number for such a company, or as being the round number naturally employed when definiteness was not sought. They were divided equally, not because our Lord desired to tell, but be- cause He wished to leave unnoticed, the numerical pro- portion of the two classes. One set are ' wise ' and the other ' foolish,' because He wishes to show not only the sin, but the absurdity, of unreadiness, and to teach us that true wisdom is not of the head only, but far more of the heart. The conduct of the two groups of maidens is looked at from the prudent and common- sense standpoint, and the provident action of the one sets in relief the reckless stupidity of the other. There have been many opinions as to the meaning of the lamps and the oil, which it is needless to repeat. Surely the analogy of scriptural symbolism is our best guide. If we follow it, we get a meaning which per- fectly suits the emblems and the whole parable. In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord uses the same figure vs. 1-13] THE WAITING MAIDENS 177 of the lamp, and explains it: 'Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works.' II. Note the sleep of all the virgins. No blame is \ hinted on account of it. It is not inconsistent v^^ith the wisdom of the wise, nor does it interfere with their readiness to meet the bridegroom. It is, then, such a sleep as is compatible with watching. Our Lord's in- troduction of this point is an example of His merciful allowance for our weakness. There must be a certain slackening of the tension of expectation when the bridegroom tarries. Centuries of delay cannot but modify the attitude of the waiting Church, and Jesus here implies that there will be a long stretch of time before His advent, during which all His people will feel the natural effect of the deferring of hope. But the sleep which He permits, unblamed, is light, and such as one takes by snatches when waiting to be called. He does not ask us always to be on tiptoe of expecta- tion, nor to refuse the teaching of experience; but counts that we have watched aright, if we wake from our light slumbers when the cry is heard, and have our lamps lit, ready for the procession. III. Then comes the midnight cry and the waking of the maidens. The hour, ' of night's black arch the keystone,' suggests the unexpectedness of His coming ; "^ the loudness of the cry, its all-awaking effect; the broken words of the true reading, * Behold the bride- groom ! ' the closeness on the heels of the heralds with which the procession flashes through the darkness. The virgins had 'gone forth to meet him' at the be- ginning of the parable, but the going forth to which they are now summoned is not the same. The Christian soul goes forth once when, at the begin- ning of its Christian life, it forsakes the world to VOL. III. M 178 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxv. wait for and on Christ, and again, when it leaves the world to pass with Him into the banquet. Life is the slumber from which some are awaked by the voice of death, and some who ' remain ' shall be awaked by the trumpet of judgment. There is no interval between the cry and the appearance of the bridegroom ; only a moment to rouse themselves, to look to their lamps, and to speak the hurried words of the foolish and the answer of the wise, and then the procession is upon them. It is all done as in a flash, ' in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.' This impression of swiftness, which leaves no time for delayed preparation, is the uniform impression conveyed by all the Scripture references to the coming of the Lord. The swoop of the eagle, the fierce blaze of lightning from one side of the sky to the other, the bursting of the flood, that morning's work at Sodom, not begun till dawn and finished before the * sun was risen on the earth,' are its types. Foolish indeed to postpone preparation till that moment when cry and coming are simultaneous, like lightning and thunder right overhead ! The foolish virgins' imploring request and its answer are not to be pressed, as if they meant more than to set forth the hopelessness of then attempting to procure the wanting oil, and especially the hopelessness of attempting to get it from one's fellows. There is a world of suppressed terror and surprise in that cry, * Our lamps are going out.' Note that they burned till the bridegroom came, and then, like the magic lamps in old legends, at his approach shivered into darkness. Is not that true of the formal, outward religion, which survives everything but contact with His all-seeing eye and perfect judgment ? These foolish maidens were as much astonished as alarmed at seeing their vs. 1-13] THE WAITING MAIDENS 179 lights flicker down to extinction ; and it is possible for professing Christians to live a lifetime, and never to be found out either by themselves or by anybody else. But if there has been no oil in the lamp, it will be quenched when He appears. The atmosphere that surrounds His throne acts like oxygen on the oil -fed flame, and like carbonic acid gas on the other. The answer of the wise is not selfishness. It is not from our fellows, however bright their lamps, that we can ever get that inward grace. None of them has more than suffices for his own needs, nor can any give it to another. It may be bought, on the same terms as the pearl of great price was bought, ' without money ' ; but the market is closed, as on a holiday, on the day of the king's son's marriage. That is not touched upon here, except in so far as it is hinted at in the absence of the foolish when he enters the banqueting chamber, and in their fruitless prayer. They had no time to get the oil befora he came, and they had not got it when they returned. The lesson is plain. We can only get the new life of the Spirit, which will make our lives a light, from God; and we can get it now, not then. IV. We see the wise virgins within and the foolish without. They are, indeed, no longer designated by these adjectives, but as * ready ' and * the others ' ; for preparedness is fitness, and they who are found of Him in possession of the outward righteousness and of its inward source. His own divine life in them, are pre- pared. To such the gates of the festal chamber fly open. In that day, place is the outcome of character, and it is equally impossible for the 'ready' to be shut out, and for ' the others ' to go in. 180 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxv. 'When the bridegroom with his feastful friends passes to bliss at the mid hour of night,' they who have 'filled their odorous lamps with deeds of light' have surely ' gained their entrance.' There is silence as to the unspeakable joys of the wedding feast. Some faint sounds of music and dancing, some gleams from the lighted windows, find their way out; but the closed door keeps its secret, and only the guests know the gladness. ^V That closed door means security, perpetuity, untold blessedness, but it means exclusion too. The piteous reiterated call of the shut-out maidens, roused too late, and so suddenly, from songs and laughter to vain cries, evokes a stern answer, through which shines the awful reality veiled in the parable. We do not need to regard the prayer for entrance, and its refusal, as conveying more than the fruitlessness of wishes for entrance then, when unaccompanied with fitness to enter. Such desire as is expressed in this passionate beating at the closed door, with hoarse entreaties, is not fitness. If it were, the door would open ; and the reason why it does not lies in the bridegroom's awful answer, ' I know you not.' The absence of the qualification prevents his recognising them as his. Surely the unalleviated dark- ness of a hopeless exclusion settles down on these sad five, standing, huddled together, at the door, with the extinguished lamps hanging in their despairing hands. *^ ' Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now.' The wedding bell has become a funeral knell. They were not the enemies of the bridegroom, they thought themselves his friends. They let life ebb without securing the one thing needful, and the neglect was irremediable. There is a tragedy underlying many a life of outward religiousness and inward emptiness, and a dreadful VB. 1-13] DYING LAMPS 181 discovery will flare in upon such, when they have to say to themselves, •This might have been once, And we missed it, lost it for ever,' DYING LAMPS * Our lamps are gone out.'— Matt. xxv. 8. This is one of the many cases in which the Revised Version, by accuracy of rendering the tense of a verb, gives a much more striking as well as correct repro- duction of the original than the Authorised Version does. The former reads 'going out,' instead of 'gone out,' a rendering which the Old Version has, unfortun- ately, relegated to the margin. It is clearly to be pre- ferred, not only because it more correctly represents the Greek, but because it sets before us a more solemn and impressive picture of the precise time at which the terrible discovery was made by the foolish five. They woke from their sleep, and hastily trimmed their lamps. These burned brightly for a moment, and then began to flicker and die down. The extinction of their light was not the act of a moment, but was a gradual process, which had advanced in some degree before it attracted the attention of the bearers of the lamps. At last it roused the half -sleeping five into startled, wide- awake consciousness. There is a tone of alarm and fear in their sudden exclamation, ' Our lamps are going out.' They see now the catastrophe that threatens, and understand that the only means of averting it is to replenish the empty oil- vessels before the flame has quite expired. But their knowledge and 182 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxv. their dread were alike too late, and, as they went on their hopeless search for some one to give them what they once might have had in abundance, the last faint flicker ceased, and they had to grope their way in the dark, with their lightless lamps hanging useless in their slack hands, while far off the torches of the bridal procession, in which they might have had a part, flashed through the night. We have nothing to do with the tragical issue of the process of extinction ; but solemn lessons of universal application gather round the picture of that process, as represented in our text, and to these we turn now. I. We must settle the meaning of the oil and the lamps. The Old Testament symbolism is our best guide as to the significance of the oil. Throughout it, oil symbolises the divine influences that come down on men appointed by God to their several functions, and which are there traced to the Spirit of the Lord. So the priests were set apart by unction with the holy oil ; so Samuel poured oil on the black locks of Saul. So, too, the very name Messiah means ' anointed,' and the great prophecy, which Jesus claimed for His own in His first sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth, put into the Messiah's lips the declaration, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me.' But there are Old Testament symbols which bear still more closely on the emblems of our text. Zechariah saw in vision a golden lamp-stand with seven lamps, and on either side of it an olive tree, from which oil flowed through golden pipes to feed the flame. The inter- pretation of the vision was given by the 'angel that talked with ' the prophet as being, ' not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.* V.8] DYING LAMPS 183 So, then, we follow the plainly marked road and Scripture use of a symbol when we take the oil in this parable to be that which every listener to Jesus, who was instructed in the old things which he was bringing forth with new emphasis from the ancient treasure- house of the word of God, would take it to be — namely, the sum of the influences from Heaven which were bestowed through the Spirit of the Lord. Such being the meaning of the oil, what was meant by the lamp? We have no intention of discussing here the many varying interpretations which have been given to the symbol. To do so would lead us too far afield. We can only say that the interpretation of the oil as the influence of the Holy Spirit necessarily involves the explanation of the lamp which is fed by it, as being the spiritual life of the individual, which is nourished and made visible to the world as light, by the continual communication from God of these hallowing influences. Turning again to the Old Testa- ment, I need only remind you of the great seven- branched lamp which stood in the Tabernacle, and afterwards in the Temple. It was the symbol of the collective Israel, as recipient of divine influences, and thereby made the light of a dark world. Its rays streamed out over the desert first, and afterwards shone from the mountain of the Lord's house, beaming illumination and invitation to those who sat in dark- ness to behold the great light, and to walk in the light of the Lord. Zechariah's emblem was based on the Temple lamp. In accordance with the greater promi- nence given by the Old Testament to national than to individual religion, both of these represented the people as a whole. In accordance with the more advanced individualism of the New Testament, our 184 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxv. text so far varies the application of the emblem, that each of the ten virgins who, as a whole, stand for the collective professing Church, has her own lamp. But that is the only difference between the Old and the New Testament uses of the symbol. I need not remind you how the same metaphor re- curs frequently in the teachings of our Lord and of the Apostles. Sometimes the Old Testament collective point of view is maintained, as in our Lord's saying in the Sermon on the Mount, ' Ye are the light of the world,' but more frequently, the characteristic individualis- ing of the figure prevails, and we read of Christians shining ' as lights in the world,' and each holding forth, as a lamp does its light, ' the word of life.' Nor must we forget the climax of the uses of this emblem, in the vision of the Apocalypse, where John once more saw the Lord, on whose bosom his head had so often peacefully lain, 'walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks.' There, again, the collective rather than the individual bearing of the figure is prominent, but with significant differences from the older use of it. In Judaism there was a formal, outward unity, represented by the one lamp with its manifold lights, all welded together on the golden stem ; but the churches of Asia Minor were distinct organisations, and their oneness came, not from outward union of a mechanical kind, but from the presence in their midst of the Son of God. The sum of all this course of thought is that the lamp is the Christian life of the individual sustained by the communication of the influences of God's Holy Spirit. II. We note next the gradual dying out of the light, f Our lamps are going out.' V. 8] DYING LAMPS 185 All spiritual emotions and vitality, like every other kind of emotion and vitality, die unless nourished. Let no theological difficulties about ' the final perseverance of the saints,' or * the indef easibleness of grace,' and the impossibility of slaying the divine life that has once been given to a man, come in the V7ay of letting this parable have its full, solemn weight. These foolish virgins had oil and had light, the oil failed by their fault, and so the light went out, and they were startled, when they awoke from their slumber, to see bow, instead of brilliant flame, there was smoking wick. Dear brethren, let us take the lesson. There is nothing in our religious emotions which has any guarantee of perpetuity in it, except upon certain con- ditions. We may live, and our life may ebb. We may trust, and our trust may tremble into unbelief. We may obey, and our obedience may be broken by the mutinous risings of self-will. We may walk in the * paths of righteousness,' and our feet may falter and turn aside. There is certainty of the dying out of all communicated life, unless the channel of communica- tion with the life from which it was first kindled, be kept constantly clear. The lamp may be ' a burning and a shining light,' or, more accurately translating the phrase of our Lord, ' a light kindled and ' (there- fore) ' shining,' but it will be light ' for a season ' only, unless it is fed from that from which it was first set alight ; and that is from God Himself. ' Our lamps are going out,' — a slow process that ! The flame does not all die into darkness in a minute. There are stages in its death. The white portion of the flame becomes smaller and the blue part extends ; then the flame flickers, and finally shudders itself, as 186 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxv. it were, off the wick; then nothing remains but a charred red line along the top ; then that line breaks up into little points, and one after another these twinkle out, and then all is black, and the lamp is gone out. And so, slowly, like the ebbing away of the tide, like the reluctant, long-protracted dying of summer days, like the dropping of the blood from some fatal wound, by degrees the process of extinction creeps, creeps, creeps on, and the lamp that was going is finally gone out. III. Again, we note that extinction is brought about simply by doing nothing. These five foolish virgins did not stray away into any forbidden paths. No positive sin is alleged against them. They were simply asleep. The other five were asleep too. I do not need to enter, here and now, into the whole interpretation of the parable, or there might be much to say about the difference between these two kinds of sleep. But what I wish to notice is that it was nothing except negligence darkening into drowsiness, which caused the dying out of the light. It was not of set purpose that the foolish five took no oil with them. They merely neglected to do so, not having the wit to look ahead and provide against the contingency of a long time of waiting for the bride- groom. Their negligence was the result, not of de- liberate wish to let their lights go out, but of their heedlessness ; and because of that negligence they earned the name of 'foolish.' If we do not look for- ward, and prepare for possible drains on our powers, we shall deserve the same adjective. If we do not lay in stores for future use, we may be sent to school to the harvesting ant and the bee. That lesson applies to all departments of life ; but it is eminently applicable V.8] DYING LAMPS 187 to the spiritual life, which is sustained only by com- munications from the Spirit of God. For these com- munications will be imperceptibly lessened, and may be altogether intercepted, unless diligent attention is given to keep open the channels by which they enter the spirit. If the pipes are not looked to, they will be choked by masses of matted trifles, through which the * rivers of living water,' which Christ took as a symbol of the Spirit's influences, cannot force a way. The thing that makes shipwreck of the faith of most professing Christians that do come to grief is no positive wickedness, no conduct which would be branded as sin by the Christian conscience or even by ordinary people, but simply torpor. If the water in a pond is never stirred, it is sure to stagnate, and green scum to spread over it, and a foul smell to rise from it. A Christian man has only to do what I am afraid a good many of us are in great danger of doing — that is, nothing — in order to ensure that his lamp shall go out. Do you try to keep yours alight ? There is only one way to do it — that is to go to Christ and get Him to pour His sweetness and His power into our open hearts. When one of the old patriarchs had committed a great sin, and had unbelievingly twitched his hand out of God's hand, and gone away down into Egypt to help himself instead of trusting to God, he was commanded, on his return to Palestine, to go to the place where he dwelt at the first, and begin again, at the point where he began when he first entered the land. Which being translated is just this — the only way to keep our spirits vital and quick is by having recourse, again and again, to the same power which first imparted life to them, and this is done by the first means, the means of simple reliance upon Christ in the consciousness of our own 188 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxv. deep need, and of believingly waiting upon Him for the repeated communication of the gifts which we, alas ! have so often misimproved. Negligence is enough to slay. Doing nothing is the sure way to quench the Holy Spirit. And, on the other hand, keeping close to Him is the sure way to secure that He will never leave us. You can choke a lamp with oil, but you cannot have in your hearts too much of that divine grace. And you receive all that you need if you choose to go and ask it /. from Him. Remember the old story about Elisha and the poor woman. The cruse of oil began to run. She brought all the vessels that she could rake together, big and little, pots and cups, of all shapes and sizes, and set them, one after the other, under the jet of oil. They were all filled ; and when she brought no more vessels the oil stayed. If you do not take your empty hearts to God, and say, ' Here, Lord, fill this cup too ; poor as it is, fill it with Thine own gracious influences,' be very sure that no such influences will come to you. But if you do go, be as sure of this, that so long as you hold out your emptiness to Him, He will flood it with His fulness, and the light that seemed to be sputtering to its death will flame up again. He will not quench the smoking wick, if only we carry it to Him ; but as the priests in the Temple walked all through the night to trim the golden lamps, so He who walks amidst the seven candlesticks will see to each. lY. And now one last word. That process of gradual extinction may be going on, and may have been going on for a long while, and the virgin that carries the lamp be quite unaware of it. How could a sleeping woman know whether her lamp was burning or not ? How can a drowsy Christian V.8] 'THEY THAT WERE READY* 189 tell whether his spiritual life is bright or not ? To be unconscious of our approximation to this condition is, I am afraid, one of the surest signs that we are in it. I suppose that a paralysed limb is quite comfortable. At any rate, paralysis of the spirit may be going on without our knowing anything about it. So, dear friends, do not put these poor words of mine away from you and say, ' Oh ! they do not apply to me.' I am quite sure that the people to whom they do apply will be the last people to take them to themselves. And while I quite believe, thank God ! that there are many of us who may feel and know that our lamps are not going out, sure I am that there are some of us whom everybody but themselves knows to be carrying a lamp that is so far gone out that it is smoking and stinking in the eyes and noses of the people that stand by. Be sure that nobody was more surprised than were the five foolish women when they opened their witless, sleepy eyes, and saw the state of things. So, dear friends, ' let your loins be girt about, aud your lamps burning; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord.' 'THEY THAT WERE READY* ' They that were ready went in with him to the marriage.'— Matt. xxv. 10. It is interesting to notice the variety of aspects in w^hich, in this long discourse, Jesus sets forth His Second Coming. It is like the flood that swept away a world. It is like a thief stealing through the dark, and breaking up a house. It is like a master reckoning with his servants. These three metaphors suggest solemn, 190 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxv. one might almost say alarming, images. But then this parable comes in and tells how that coming is like that of a bridegroom to the bride's house, with joy and music. I am afraid that the average Christian, when he thinks at all of Christ's coming, takes these three first aspects rather than the last one, and so loses what is meant to be a bright hope and a great stimulus. It is not in human nature to think much about a terrible future. It is not in human nature to avoid thinking a great deal about a blessed future. And although one does not wish to preach carelessness, or the ignoring of the solemn side of that coming, sure I am that our Christian lives would be stronger and purer, brighter and better able to front the solemn side, if the blessed side of it were more often the object of our contempla- tion. Turning to the words of my text, which seem to me to be the very centre and heart of this parable, I ask : — I. What makes readiness ? There have been many answers given to that question. One has been that to be ready means to be perpetually having before us the thought of the coming of the Lord, and that has been taken to be the meaning of the watchfulness which is enjoined in the context. But the parable itself points in an altogether different direction. Who, according to it, were ready ? The five who had lamps and oil. To have these was readiness. It is beautiful to notice how these five who were ready when the Master came had ' slumbered and slept ' like the other five. Ah! that touch in the picture shows that ' He knoweth our frame ; He remembereth that we are dust.' It is not in human nature to keep up permanently a tension of expectation for a far-off good ; and in profound knowledge of the weakness of v.io] * THEY THAT WERE READY' 191 humanity, our Lord, in this parable, says : * While the Bridegroom tarried they all slumbered ' — and yet the five were ready when the Bridegroom came. In like manner, Christian men and women who have no expec- tation at all that the Second Coming of the Lord will occur during their lifetimes, may nevertheless be ready, if they have the burning lamps and the store of oil. The question then* comes to be, What is meant by these ? Perhaps harm has been done by insisting upon too minute and specific interpretation. But, at the same time, we must not forget that, from the very beginning of the Jewish Revelation, from the time when the \ seven-branched candlestick was appointed for the Tabernacle, right down to the day when the Apoca- lyptic Seer saw in Patmos the Son of Man walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, the metaphor has had one meaning. The aggregate of God's people are intended to be, as Jesus told us immediately after He had drawn the character of a true disciple, in the wonderful outlines of the Beatitudes, ' the light of the, world,' and they will be so in the measure in which the gentle radiance of that character shines through their lives, as the light of a lamp through frosted glass. But the aggregate is made up of units, and individual Christians are to shine ' as lights in the world,' and their separate brightnesses are to coalesce in the clustered light of the whole Church. What makes an individual Christian a light is a Christ-like life, derived from that Life which was ' the Light of men.' The lamp which the five wise virgins bear is the same as the light which the consistent Christian is. The inn^r self illuminated from Christ, the source of all our illufnination, lights up the outward life, which each of 192 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxv. us may be conceived as carrying in our hands. It is not ourselves, and yet it is ourselves made visible. It is not ourselves, but Christ in us; and so we shine as lights in the world, only by 'holding forth the word of life.' That modification of the figure by Paul is profoundly true and important, for after all we are not so much lights as candelabra, and only as we bear aloft the flashing light of Christ shall we shine 'in a naughty world.' Our lamps, then, are Christ-like characters derived from Christ, and to have and bear these is the first element in being ready for the Bridegroom. Dear friends, remember that this whole parable is spoken to professing Christians and real members of Christ's Church; and that there is no meaning in it unless it is possible to quench the light of the lamp. Remember that our Lord said once, ' Let your loins be girt,' and put that as the necessary condition of lamps burning. ' Let your loins be girt ' with resolved effort of faith and dependence, and make sure that you have the provision for the continuance of the light. So, and only so, shall any man be of the happy company of them that were ready. II. Note that this readiness is the condition of entrance. 'They that were ready went in with Him to the marriage.' Now faith alone unites a man to Jesus Christ, and makes him an heir of salvation. But faith alone, if that were possible, would not admit a man to the marriage-feast. Of course the supposed case is an impossible case, for as James has taught us in his plain moral way, faith which is alone dies, or perhaps never lived. But what our Lord tells us here is that moral character, which is of such a sort as to shine in the world's V. 10] 'THEY THAT WERE READY' 193 darkness, is the condition of entrance. People say that salvation is by faith. Yes, that is true ; but salvation is by works also, only that the works are made possible through faith. In the very necessity and nature of things nothing but the readiness which consists in continued Christ-like character will ever allow a man to pass the threshold. Now do you believe that ? Or are you saying, ' I trust to Jesus Christ, and so I am sure I shall go to Heaven.' No, you will not, unless your faith is making you heavenly, in your temper and conduct. For to talk about the next world as a place of retribution is but an imperfect statement of the case. It is not a place of retribution so much as of outcome, and the apostle gives a completer view when he says, ' Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' That future life is not the reward of goodness so much as the necessary consequence of holiness. Holiness and blessedness are, in some measure, sepa- rated here; there they are two names for the one condition. ' No man shall see the Lord,' without that holiness. * They that were ready went in.' Of course they did. Am I ready ? That question means. Am I, by my faith in Jesus Christ, receiving into my heart the anointing which that great anointed One gives us ? Am I living a life that is a light in the world ? If so, and not else, my entrance is sure. We have seen what this readiness consists in, and how it is the condition of entrance. There is one last thought — III. To delay preparation is madness. There is nothing in all Christ's parables more tragical, more pathetic, than this picture of the hapless five when they woke up to find their lamps going out. They heard the procession coming, the sound of feet VOL. III. N 194 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxv. drawing nearer, and the music borne every moment more loudly on the midnight air. And there were they, with dying lamps and empty oil-cans. Their shock, their alarm, their bewilderment, are all expressed in that preposterous request of theirs, ' Give us of your oil.' The answer of the wise virgins has been said to be cold and unfeeling. It is not that ; it is simply a plain statement of facts. The oil that belongs to me cannot be given to you. That is the first lesson taught us by the request of the foolish and the answer of the wise. ' If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself ; and if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it.' ' Every man shall bear his own burden.' There is no possible trans- ference of moral character or spiritual gifts in that fashion. The awful individuality of each soul, and its unshareable personal responsibility, come solemnly to view in the words which superficial readers pass by: 'Not so, lest there be not enough for us and you.' You cannot share your brother's oil. You may share many of his possessions ; not this. ' Go to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.' The question of whether there was time to buy was not for the five wise to answer. There was not much chance that the would-be buyers would find a shop open and anybody waiting to sell them oil at twelve o'clock at night. But they risked it ; and when they came back they were too late. Now, dear friends, all the lessons of this parable may be taken by us, though we do not believe, and think we have good reason for not believing, that the literal return of Jesus Christ is to take place in our time. It does not matter very much, in so far as the teaching of this parable is concerned, whether the Bridegroom comes to us, or whether we go to the Bridegroom. I v.io] TRADERS FOR THE MASTER 195 do not for a moment say that there is no such thing as coming to Jesus Christ in the last hours of life, and becoming ready to enter even then, but I do say that it is a very rare case, and that there is a terrible risk in delaying till then. But I pray you to remember that our parable is addressed to, and contemplates the case of, not people who are away from Jesus Christ, but Christians, and that it is to them that its message is chiefly brought. It is they whom it warns not to put off making sure that they have provision for the con- tinuance of the Christ-life. We have, day by day, to go to Him that sells and 'buy for ourselves.' And we know, what it did not fall within our Lord's purpose to say in this parable, that the price of the oil is the surrender of ourselves, and the opening of our hearts to the entrance of that divine Spirit. Then there will be no fear but that the lamp will hold out to burn, and no fear but that ' when the Bridegroom, with His feastful friends, passes to bliss, at the mid-hour of night/ we shall gain our entrance. TRADERS FOR THE MASTER ' For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. 15. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one ; to every man according to his several ability ; and straightway took his journey. 16. Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents. 17. And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. 18. But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money. 19. After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. 20. And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, say- ing. Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents : behold, I have gained beside them five ttilents more. 21. His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant : thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things : enter thou into the joy of thy lord. 22. He also that had received two talents came and said. Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents : behold, I have gained two other talents beside them. 23. His lord said unto him. Well done, good and faithful servant ; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things : enter thou into the joy of thy lord. 24. Then be which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou 196 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxv. art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed : 25. And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth : lo, there thou hast that is thine. 26. His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed : 27. Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. 28. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. 29. 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. 30. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing 6t teeth.'— Matt. xxv. 11-30. The parable of the Ten Virgins said nothing about their working whilst they waited. This one sets forth that side of the duties of the servants in their master's absence, and so completes the former. It is clearly in its true historical connection here, and is closely knit to both the preceding and following context. It is a strange instance of superficial reading that it should ever have been supposed to be but another version of Luke's parable of the pounds. The very resemblances of the two are meant to give force to their differences, which are fundamental. They are the converse of each other. That of the pounds teaches that men who have the same gifts intrusted to them may make a widely different use of these, and will be rewarded differently, in strictly graduated proportion to their unlike diligence. The lesson of the parable before us, on the other hand, is that men with dissimilar gifts may employ them with equal diligence ; and that, if they do, their reward shall be the same, however great the endowments of one, and slender those of another. A reader who has missed that distinction must be very shortsighted, or sworn to make out a case against the Gospels. I. We may consider the lent capital and the business done with it. Masters nowadays do not give servants their money to trade with, when they leave home; but the in- vs. 14-30] TRADERS FOR THE MASTER 197 cident is true to the old-world relations of master and slave. Our Lord's consciousness of His near de- parture, which throbs in all this context, comes out emphatically here. He is preparing His disciples for the time when they will have to work without Him, like the managers of some branch house of business whose principal has gone abroad. What are the ' talents ' with which He will start them on their own account? We have taken the word intol common language, however little we remember the teaching of the parable as to the hand that gives ' men of talent ' their endowments. But the natural powers usually called by the name are not what Christ means here, though the principles of the parable may be extended to include them. For these powers are the * ability ' according to which the talents are given. Butl the talents themselves are the spiritual knowledge and endowments which are properly the gifts of the J ascended Lord to His Church. Two important lessons as to these are conveyed. First, that they are distri- buted in varying measure, and that not arbitrarily, by the mere will of the giver, but according to his discern- ment of what each servant can profitably administer. The * ability ' which settles their amount is not more closely defined. It may include natural faculty, for Christ's gifts usually follow the line of that ; and the larger the nature, the more of Him it can contain. But it also includes spiritual receptiveness and faith- fulness, which increase the absorbing power. The capacity to receive will also be the capacity to ad- minister, and it will be fully filled. The second lesson taught is that spiritual gifts are given for trading with. In other words, they are here considered not so much as blessings to the pos- 198 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxv. sessor as his stock-in-trade, which he can employ for the Master's enrichment. We are all tempted to think of them mostly as given us for our own blessing and joy ; and the reminder is never unseason- able that a Christian receives nothing for himself alone. God hath shined into our hearts, that we may give to others the light of the knowledge which has flashed glad day into our darkness. The Master in- trusts us with a portion of His wealth, not for expending on ourselves, but for trading with. ■ A third principle here is that the right use of His gifts increases them in our hands. ' Money makes money.' The five talents grow to ten, the two to four. The surest way to increase our possession of Christ's grace is to try to impart it. There is no better way of strengthening our own faith than to seek to make others share in it. Christian convictions, spoken, are confirmed, but muffled in silence are weakened. * There is that scattereth and yet increaseth.' Seed heaped and locked up in a granary breeds weevils and moths ; flung broadcast over the furrows, it multiplies into seed that can be sown again, and bread that feeds the sower. So we have in this part of the parable almost the complete summary of the principles on which, the purposes for which, and the results to faithful use with which, Christ gives His gifts. The conduct of the slenderly endowed servant who hides his talent will be considered farther on. II. We note the faithful servants' balance-sheet and reward. Our Lord again sounds the note of delay — • After a long time' — an indefinite phrase which we know carries centuries in its folds, how many more we know not, nor are intended to know. The two faithful vs. 14-30] TRADERS FOR THE MASTER 199 servants present their balance-sheet in identical words, and receive the same commendation and reward. Their speech is in sharp contrast with the idle one's excuse, inasmuch as it puts a glad acknowledgment of the lord's giving in the forefront, as if to teach that the thankful recognition of his liberality underlies all joyful and successful service, and deepens while it makes glad the sense of responsibility. The cords of love are silken ; and he who begins with setting before himself the largeness of Christ's gifts to him, will not fail in using these so as to increase them. In the light of that day, the servant sees more clearly than when he was at work the results of his work. We do not know what the year's profits have been till stock- taking and balancing-time conies. Here we often say, ' I have laboured in vain.' There we shall say, ' I have gained five talents.' The verbatim repetition of the same words to both servants teaches the great lesson of this parable as contrasted with that of the pounds, that where there has been the same faithful work, with different amounts of capital, there will be the same reward. Our Master does not care about quantity, but about quality and motive. The slave with a few shillings, enough to stock meagrely a little stall, may show as much business capacity, diligence, and fidelity, as if he had millions to work with. Christ rewards not actions, but the graces which are made visible in actions ; and these can be as well seen in the tiniest as in the largest deeds. The light that streams through a pin-prick is the same that pours through the widest window. The crystals of a salt present the same facets, flashing back the sun at the same angles, whether they be large or microscopically small. Therefore the 200 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxv. judgment of Christ, which is simply the utterance of fact, takes no heed of the extent but only of the kind of service, and puts on the same level of recompense all who, with however widely varying powers, were one in spirit, in diligence, and devotion. The eulogium on the servants is not ' successful ' or * brilliant,' but ' faithful,' and both alike get it. The words of the lord fall into three parts. First comes his generous and hearty praise, — the brief and emphatic monosyllable ' Well,' and the characterisation of the servants as 'good and faithful.' Praise from Christ's lips is praise indeed ; and here He pours it out in no grudging or scanty measure, but with warmth and evident delight. His heart glows with pleasure, and His commendation is musical with the utterance of His own joy in His servants. He 'rejoices over them with singing ' ; and more gladly than a fond mother speaks honeyed words of approval to her darling, of whose goodness she is proud, does He praise these two. When we are tempted to disparage our slender powers as compared with those of His more conspicuous servants, and to suppose that all which we do is nought, let us think of this merciful and loving estimate of our poor service. For such words from such lips, life itself were wisely flung away; but such words from such lips will be spoken in recognition of many a piece of service less high and heroic than a martyr's. ' Good and faithful' refers not to the more general notion of goodness, but to the special excellence of a servant, and the latter word seems to define the former. Fidelity is the grace which He praises, — manifested in the recog- nition that the capital was a loan, given to be traded with for Him, and to be brought back increased to Him. He is faithful who ever keeps in view, and acts on, the vs. 14-30] TRADERS FOR THE MASTER 201 conditions on which, and the purposes for which, he has received his spiritual wealth ; and ' he who is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much.' The second part of the lord's words is the appointment to higher office, as the reward of faithfulness. Here on earth, the tools come, in the long run, to the hands that can use them, and the best reward of faithfulness in a narrower sphere is to be lifted to a wider. Pro- motion means more to do ; and if the world were rightly organised, the road to advancement would be diligence; and the higher a man climbed, the wider would be the horizon of his labour. It is so in Christ's kingdom, and should be so in His visible Church. It will be so in heaven. Clearly this saying implies the active theory of the future life, and the continuance in some ministry of love, unknown to us, of the energies which were trained in the small transactions of earth. * If five talents are " a few things," how great the •' many things " will be ! ' In the parable of the pounds, the servant is made a ruler; here being 'set over' seems rather still to point to the place of a steward or servant. The sphere is enlarged, but the office is un- altered. The manager who conducted a small trade rightly will be advanced to the superintendence of a larger business. ' We doubt not that for one so true There must be other, nobler work to do,' and that in that work the same law will continue to operate, and faithfulness be crowned with ever-growing capacities and tasks through a dateless eternity. The last vrords of the lord pass beyond our poor attempts at commenting. No eye can look undazzled at the sun. When Christ was near the Cross, He left 202 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxv. His disciples a strange bequest at such a moment, — His joy ; and that is their brightest portion here, even though it be shaded with many sorrows. The enthroned Christ welcomes all who have known ' the fellowship of His sufferings ' into the fulness of His heavenly joy, unshaded, unbroken, unspeakable ; and they pass into it as into an encompassing atmosphere, or some broad land of peace and abundance. Sympathy with His purposes leads to such oneness with Him that His joy is ours, both in its occasions and in its rapture. * Thou makest them drink of the river of Thy pleasures,' and the lord and the servant drink from the same cup. III. The excuse and punishment of the indolent servant. His excuse is his reason. He did think hardly of his lord, and, even though he had His gift in his hand to confute him, he slandered Him in his heart as harsh and exacting. To many men the requirements of religion are more prominent than its gifts, and God is thought of as demanding rather than as * the giving God.' Such thoughts paralyse action. Fear is barren, love is fruitful. Nothing grows on the mountain of curses, which frowns black over against the sunny slopes of the mountain of blessing with its blushing grapes. The indolence was illogical, for, if the master was such as was thought, the more reason for diligence ; but fear is a bad reasoner, and the absurd gap between the pre- mises and the conclusion is matched by one of the very same width in every life that thinks of God as rigidly requiring obedience, which, therefore, it does not give ! Still another error is in the indolent servant's words. He flings down the hoarded talent with ' Lo, thou hast thine own.' He was mistaken. Talents hid are not, when dug up, as heavy as they were when buried. This vs. 14-30] TRADERS FOR THE MASTER 203 gold does rust, and a life not devoted to God is never carried back to Him unspoiled. The lord's answer again falls into three parts, corre- sponding to that to the faithful servants. First conies the stern characterisation of the man. As w^ith the others' goodness, his badness is defined by the second epithet. It is slothf ulness. Is that all ? Yes ; it does not need active opposition to pull down destruction on one's head. Simple indolence is enough, the negative sin of not doing or being what we ought. Ungirt loins, unlit lamps, unused talents, sink a man like lead. Doing nothing is enough for ruin. The remarkable answer to the servant's charge seems to teach us that timid souls, conscious of slender endow- ments, and pressed by the heavy sense of responsibility, and shrinking from Christian enterprises, for fear of incurring heavier condemnation, may yet find means of using their little capital. The bankers, who invest the collective contributions of small capitalists to advan- tage, may, or may not, be intended to be translated into the Church; but, at any rate, the principle of united service is here recommended to those who feel too weak for independent action. Slim houses in a row hold each other up; and, if we cannot strike out a path for ourselves, let us seek strength and safety in numbers. The fate of the indolent servant has a double horror. It is loss and suffering. The talent is taken from the slack hands and coward heart that would not use it, and given to the man who had shown he could and would. Gifts unemployed for Christ are stripped off a soul yonder. How much will go from many a richly endowed spirit, which here flashed with unconsecrated genius and force I We do not need to wait for eternity 204 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch. xxv. to see that true possession, which is use, increases powers, and that disuse, which is equivalent to not possessing, robs of them. The blacksmith's arm, the scout's eye, the craftsman's delicate finger, the student's intellect, the sensualist's passions, all illustrate the law on its one side; and the dying out of faculties and tastes, and even of intuitions and conscience, by reason of simple disuse, are melancholy instances of it on the other. But the solemn words of this condemnation seem to point to a far more awful energy in its work- ing in the future, when everything that has not been consecrated by employment for Jesus shall be taken away, and the soul, stripped of its garb, shall * be found naked.' How far that process of divesting may affect faculties, without touching the life, who can tell? Enough to see with awe that a spirit may be cut, as it were, to the quick, and still exist. But loss is not all the indolent servant's doom. Once more, like the slow toll of a funeral bell, we hear the dread sentence of ejection to the * mirk midnight ' with- out, where are tears undried and passion unavailing. There is something very awful in the monotonous repetition of that sentence so often in these last discourses of Christ's. The most loving lips that ever spoke, in love, shaped this form of words, so heart- touching in its wailing, but decisive, proclamation of blackness, homelessness, and sorrow, and cannot but toll them over and over again into our ears, in sad knowledge of our forgetfulness and unbelief, — if per- chance we may listen and be warned, and, having heard the sound thereof, may never know the reality of that death in life which is the sure end of the indolent who were blind to His gifts, and therefore would not listen to His requirements. WHY THE TALENT WAS BURIED 'Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed : 25. And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth.'— Matt. xxv. 24, 25. That was a strangely insolent excuse for indolence. To charge an angry master to his face with grasping greed and injustice was certainly not the way to con- ciliate him. Such language is quite unnatural and in- congruous until we remember the reality which the parable was meant to shadow — viz., the answers for their deeds which men will give at Christ's judgment bar. Then we can understand how, by some irresistible necessity, this man was compelled, even at the risk of increasing the indignation of the master, to turn him- self inside out, and to put into harsh, ugly words the half-conscious thoughts which had guided his life and caused his unfaithfulness. ' Every one of us shall give account of himself to God.' The unabashed impudence of such an excuse for idleness as this is but putting into vivid and impressive form this truth, that then a man's actions in their true character, and the ugly motives that underlie them, and which he did not always honestly confess to himself, will be clear before him. It will be as much of a surprise to the men them- selves, in many cases, as it could be to listeners. Thus it becomes us to look well to the under side of our lives, the unspoken convictions and the unformulated motives which work all the more mightily upon us because, for the most part, they work in the dark. This is Christ's explanation of one very operative and fruitful cause of the refusal to serve Him. I. I ask you, then, to consider, first, the slander here and the truth that contradicts it, 206 206 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxv. 'I knew thee that thou art an hard man,' says he, * reaping where thou hast not sown ' (and he was stand- ing with the unused talent in his hand all the while), 'and gathering where thou hast not strawed.' That is to say, deep down in many a heart that has never said as much to itself, there lies this black drop of gall — a conception of the divine character rather as demanding than as giving, a thought of Him as exacting. What He requires is more considered than what He bestows. So religion is thought to be mainly a matter of doing certain things and rendering up certain sacrifices, instead of being regarded, as it really is, as mainly a matter of receiv- ing from God. Christ's authority makes me bold to say that this error underlies the lives of an immense number of nominal Christians, of people who think themselves very good and religious, as well as the lives of thousands who stand apart from religion alto- gether. And I want, not to drag down any curtain by my own hand, but to ask you to lift away the veil which hides the ugly thing in your hearts, and to put your own consciousness to the bar of your own conscience, and say whether it is not true that the uppermost thought about God, when you think about Him at all, is, ' Thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown.' It is not difficult to understand why such a thought of God should rise in a heart which has no delight in Him nor in His service. There is a side of the truth as to God's relations to man which gives a colour of plausibility to the slander. Grave and stringent re- quirements are made by the divine law upon each of us ; and our consciences tell us that they have not been kept. Therefore we seek to persuade ourselves that they are too severe. Then, further, we are, by reason of our own selfishness, almost incapable of rising to vs. 24, 25] THE BURIED TALENT 207 the conception of God's pure, perfect, disinterested love ; and we are far too blind to the benefits that He pours upon us all every day of our lives. And so from all these reasons taken together, and some more besides, it comes about that, for some of us, the blessed sun in the heavens, the God of all mercy and love, has been darkened into a lurid orb shorn of all its beneficent beams, and hangs threatening there in our misty sky. • I knew Thee that Thou art an hard man.' Ah ! I am sure that if we would go down into the deep places of our own hearts, and ask ourselves what our real thought of God is, many of us would acknowledge that it is something like that. Now turn to the other side. What is the truth that smites this slander to death ? That God is perfect, pure, unmingled, infinite love. And what is love? The infinite desire to impart itself. His 'nature and property ' is to be merciful, and you can no more stop God from giving than you can shut up the rays of the sun within itself. To be and to bestow are for Him one and the same thing. His love is an infinite longing to give, which passes over into perpetual acts of beneficence. He never reaps where He has not sown. Is there any place where He has not sown? Is there any heart on which there have been no seeds of goodness scattered from His rich hand ? The calumniator in the text was speaking his slanders with that in his hand which should have stopped his mouth. He who complained that the hard master was asking for fruit of what He had not given would have had nothing at all, if he had not obtained the one talent from His hand. And there is no place in the whole wide universe of God where His love has not scattered its beneficent gifts. There are no fallow 208 GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW [ch.xxv. fields out of cultivation and unsown, in His great farm. He never asks where He has not given. He never asks until after He has given. He begins with bestowing, and it is only after the vineyard has been planted on the very fruitful hill, and the hedge built round about it, and the winepress digged, and the tower erected, and miracles of long-suffering mercy and skilful patience have been lavished upon it, that then He looks that it should bring forth grapes. God's gifts precede His requirements. He ever sows before He reaps. More than that. He gives what He asks, helping us to render to Him the hearts that He desires. He, by His own merciful communications, makes it possible that we should lay at His feet the tribute of loving thanks. Just as a parent will give a child some money in order that the child may go and buy the giver a birthday present, so God gives to us hearts, and enriches them with many bestowments. He scatters round about us good from His hand, like drops of a fragrant perfume from a blazing torch, in order that we may catch them up and have some portion of the joy which is especially His own — the joy of giving. It would be a poor affair if our sole relation to God were that of receiving. It would be a tyrannous affair if our sole relation to God were that of rendering up. But both relations are united, and if it be ' more blessed to give than to receive,' the Giver of all good does not leave us without the opportunity of entering in even to th