UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF. 
 
 PROFESSOR FELICIEN VICTOR PAGET 
 
 BY BEQUEST OF MADAME PAGET 
 
Spiritual Interpretation of tfje Scriptures 
 
 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN WORCESTER 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS NEW-CHURCH UNION, 
 
 1 6 ARLINGTON STREET, 
 
 1898 
 
Copyright 18^7 
 BY JOHN WORCESTER. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE GENEALOGY IN MATTHEW 5 
 
 THE GENEALOGY IN LUKE 23 
 
 THE COMING OF THE LORD IN THE WORD 32 
 
 THE BAPTISM 40 
 
 THE TEMPTATIONS 41 
 
 THE MINISTRY IN GALILEE 45 
 
 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT 48 
 
 EFFECTS OF THE LORD'S PREACHING IN THE NATURAL 
 
 LIFE 57 
 
 THE MISSION OF THE APOSTLES 69 
 
 THE RELATION TO JOHN'S TEACHING . 72 
 
 CONFLICT WITH JEWISH TEACHING 76 
 
 DEATH OF JOHN 81 
 
 JESUS REVIVES JOHN'S WORK 83 
 
 MISSION TO THE GENTILES 87 
 
 THE TRANSFIGURATION . 91 
 
 LAST APPEALS IN GALILEE 97 
 
 THE LAW OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 100 
 
 EXPLORATION OF THE TEMPLE OF GOD 109 
 
 THE CONDEMNATION 119 
 
 PREDICTIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 123 
 
 JUDGMENT AND DELIVERANCE THE PASSOVER TIME. 130 
 
 THE LAYING DOWN THE LIFE 134 
 
 COERCION OF THE WORLD BY THE CHURCH 142 
 
 THE LAW OF THE RELATION TO GOD 147 
 
 THE NEW STATE OF THE CHURCH 152 
 
 RETURN TO GALILEE 154 
 
To be of use, this sketch of Matthew's Gospel must be read 
 in close connection with the Bible words. 
 
 The chapters on the Genealogies have their value as connect- 
 ing the New Testament with the Old, and indicating the lines of 
 interpretation of the Old Testament as the Word which was 
 made flesh. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION 
 OF THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 THE GENEALOGY IN MATTHEW. 
 
 'THHE genealogy of the Lord Jesus is called 
 
 in Matthew, " The book of the generation of 
 
 Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of 
 
 Abraham." Evidently this means 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 L that in Jesus is fulfilled the promise 
 
 to David, "thy seed will I establish for ever/' 
 and the promise to Abraham, "in thee shall all 
 families of the earth be blessed." In other 
 words, the line of representatives of the Lord, or 
 of the Divine which was to be made flesh and 
 dwell with men, leads to and is fulfilled in the 
 Lord Jesus, who is the son and the heir of David 
 and of Abraham. This is the common interpre- 
 
MATTHEWS GOSPEL. 
 
 tation of intelligent commentators, and does not 
 require any confirmation. 
 
 Still, it is worthy of notice that the narrative 
 by Matthew, whose other name was Levi, places 
 special emphasis upon the events of the Lord's 
 life as fulfilling the Scriptures frequently using 
 such expressions as, " Now all this is come to 
 pass that it might be fulfilled which was spoken 
 by the Lord through the prophet," or, "that it 
 might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord 
 through the prophet." Also it is Matthew who so 
 perfectly preserves the transformation of the 
 Jewish law into the Christian law, in the Sermon 
 on the Mount. 
 
 It might therefore be expected that a genealogy 
 of the Lord by Matthew would give us the steps 
 by which the Lord became the Word and the 
 fulfilment of it ; or, in other words, would be the 
 genealogy of the Lord as the Son of Man. 
 
 An examination of the genealogy itself con- 
 firms this view. It begins with Abraham. And 
 we are taught in the New Church that Abraham 
 
REPRESENTATIVES OF CHILDHOOD. 7 
 
 in his simple pastoral life, his call to leave the 
 land of his nativity, and his sojourn under the 
 Divine protection and guidance in the land of 
 Canaan, represents the child's first state of in- 
 struction, in which he is taught of God and 
 heaven, and of the possibilities of the life of 
 heaven, different from the natural life. As 
 applied to the Lord, he represents the Lord's 
 state in early boyhood, when His love of knowing 
 was awakened, and He was taught of the Father 
 the possibilities of His redeeming and saving 
 work for men. And this was the beginning of 
 the acquisition of the Word, from which the Lord 
 was called the Son of Man. 
 
 Abraham himself represents the affection for 
 being taught of Divine things, and the sense of 
 their holiness, which so touches the heart of a 
 little child when the Bible is reverently read to 
 him ; and which is a consequence of the openness 
 of childhood's innocence to the Lord and heaven, 
 and its sensitiveness to the presence of these in 
 the Scriptures. In the Lord it was the Divine 
 
8 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 Itself in the Word, received in its Divine holiness 
 in the child's inmost consciousness. Isaac then 
 represents the child's intelligence concerning 
 Divine and heavenly things ; which intelligence is 
 so full and clear that there is nothing of the Lord 
 and heaven which can be explained to manhood's 
 most highly trained reason, which cannot also be 
 presented as to its essential elements to the mind 
 of a child, and seen in clear light. Therefore 
 little children are in the province of the eyes in 
 the heavens, and they first receive in simplicity 
 the truths of life in which the Lord would instruct 
 the heavens. 
 
 If this simple intelligence of childhood in re- 
 gard to the living relations between God and man, 
 is represented by Isaac, the formulation of varied 
 knowledge from the Word in regard to the nature 
 of heaven, and of the life of heaven upon the 
 earth, is meant by Jacob and his twelve sons. 
 The further development of the memory of knowl- 
 edge is meant by their sojourn in Egypt. And 
 then the difficult training of the boy or girl to 
 
REPRESENTATIVES OF YOUTH. 
 
 habits of good order, in obedience to these truths 
 of good life now in the form of personal com- 
 mands is meant by the discipline of the wilder- 
 ness, and the life in Canaan under the Judges. 
 
 Thus the fourteen generations from Abraham 
 to David represent the complete instruction of 
 childhood in the truths of the Word, and the 
 training to obey them. 
 
 David and the generations from him, represent 
 the developments of youth which follow those of 
 childhood. For David and the seed of David 
 represent the Divine truth ruling in the church or 
 in the mind.* But it is the truth not now re- 
 ceived obediently as in childhood, but rationally ; 
 and applied to the arranging of all things of the 
 mind in their true relations and order, the com- 
 bating and expelling heterogeneous things, and 
 harmonizing the homogeneous. This was repre- 
 sented by the consolidation of the kingdom in 
 David's hands, and the subjugation of the nations 
 around. The constant warfare of David repre- 
 
 * Apocalypse Explained, 444. 
 
MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 sents the labor in temptations by which this was 
 accomplished in the Lord ; and the peacefulness 
 of the reign of Solomon represents the restful 
 enjoyment of good when the conflicts were over. 
 
 But king Solomon became a worshipper of 
 many gods ; and after his days the kingdom was 
 divided, and the northern and southern portions, 
 under separate lines of kings mostly evil, but 
 partly good entered upon a career which ended 
 in their respective captivities in Assyria and 
 Babylon. 
 
 The meaning of this is illustrated by the appli- 
 cation of the story to the church which the Lord 
 established. In this application, the temple which 
 Solomon built represents the church which re- 
 ceived the Lord truly ; but his many wives and 
 their idolatries represent the many religions which 
 received something of Christian life from the 
 Lord, together with much thatVas perverse and 
 false.* And then .the division of the kingdom, 
 and the separate development of the northern 
 
 * Divine Providence, 245. 
 
DE VEL 0PM ENT OF REASONING. j x 
 
 kingdom of Israel, represents the separation of the 
 thought of the church from the life, and the ele- 
 vation of standards of doctrine as the essentials of 
 the church. This change took place within the 
 first four centuries of the existence of the Chris- 
 tian Church ; and then what was left of the life of 
 the church was merely the natural benevolences, 
 defiled by the claim of Divine authority by the 
 priesthood, and by the worship of popes and saints 
 and relics. 
 
 The captivity in Assyria represented the vasta- 
 tion of spiritual truth by doctrinal reasoning from 
 self-intelligence, till there was no spiritual truth, 
 no living knowledge of the Lord and heaven, left 
 in the church. The captivity in Babylon meant 
 the vastation of the good of the church till there 
 was no spiritual good, no sense of inward life from 
 the Lord, left in the church ; but only natural 
 good and external worship. 
 
 At first glance it seems impossible that there 
 should have been any such development as this in 
 the Lord's life, or any application of this part of 
 
I2 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 the story to Him. And yet there was in Him a 
 change from the openness of infancy to the rela- 
 tive obscurity of later boyhood. And if the 
 development that we are now considering, is in 
 any sense a natural development of the human 
 mind, it is evident that it must have affected Him 
 as well as the church. That it was of this nature 
 will be evident from a little attention to the 
 quality of the Christian Church as first founded 
 by the Lord. 
 
 And first we observe that it came at the time 
 of the first development of the natural rationality 
 of the race, as exemplified in the Greek people. 
 No spiritual rationality, which would see the rela- 
 tion of correspondence between spiritual and 
 natural, which would see clearly the relation be- 
 tween the Divine and the Human in the Lord, 
 and understand the spiritual sense of the Word, 
 was then possible. The Christian experience of 
 the reception of good life from the Lord was re- 
 ceived in a simple childlike way. But as soon as 
 the explanation of it came in question, it was the 
 
RATIONALITY OF THE RACE. 13 
 
 natural reason that took the matter up, and lost 
 the life itself in discussion of its nature. 
 
 The best development of the Christian Church 
 was among the Asiatics who first received it in a 
 simple, childlike way.* But its largest develop- 
 ment was among Europeans, whose Aryan stock 
 is that of the rationality of the race in its latest 
 branch, the Teutonic of northern Europe, if we 
 may judge from him who was the Apostle of the 
 New Church, giving promise of a development of 
 spiritual rationality at some future time. 
 
 In the meanwhile this natural reason is very 
 full of self-conceit and of the service of self; and 
 it was inevitable that the treasures of Christianity 
 committed to its keeping should have suffered, 
 both from its incapacity to understand them, and 
 from the natural self to which this natural reason 
 seems to belong. 
 
 Now, if this is according to the order of human 
 nature, if the Christian experience does naturally 
 first come in the days of youth, when the natural 
 
 * Spiritual Diary, 4676. 
 
MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 reason is active, and the first experience rouses 
 both the natural reason to explain it, and some- 
 thing of selfish exultation in the possession of 
 what is so Divinely precious, must there not have 
 been some corresponding development in the 
 Lord ? In His early youth must He not have 
 exulted both in His splendid intelligence and in 
 the Divine saving power, the power to heal and to 
 protect ? Must He not have proved through hard 
 experience how the self in His human tended to 
 destroy the spiritual truth and love, from the 
 Divine, in an Assyrian and Babylonian captivity ? 
 and then have set Himself to build anew the 
 Divine kingdom in Himself on a surer basis ? 
 
 This building anew for the fuller, truer recep- 
 tion of the Divine, is perhaps a longer process 
 than we have supposed. We have thought that 
 it was only necessary for the light to come into 
 the world which would give men rational freedom, 
 and the kingdom of the Lord would be established 
 at once. But our story says that from the carry- 
 ing away into Babylon unto the Christ was 
 
{ UNIVERSITY I 
 V OF J 
 
 ^ 
 
 SLOW BUILDING OF THE CHURCH. i$ 
 
 another fourteen generations : and we must hold 
 clearly before our eyes the beautiful possibilities 
 of the Divine Presence, in a holy city with streets 
 of gold, through which runs the river of water of 
 life, with the tree of life growing in every street 
 by the banks of the river, and with abundant light 
 from the glory of God and the Lamb, to help us 
 realize how very far away is the attainment of the 
 ideal. We read that during the captivity, " Evil- 
 merodach, king of Babylon, lifted up the head of 
 Jehoiachin, king of Judah, and brought him forth 
 out of prison, and spake kindly unto him," which 
 Swedenborg interprets as " the beginning of the 
 establishment of the church."* We are taught 
 that Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon, who gave 
 the Jews their freedom to return, represents " the 
 Lord as to His Divine Human,"f Who judged 
 the Babylon in the spiritual world, and gave a new 
 freedom to men on earth. In the exercise of their 
 new freedom under Cyrus, the Jews began to re- 
 
 * Internal Sense of Prophets and Psalms, JEREMIAH Hi. 31. 
 t Ibid., ISAIAH xlv. i. 
 
1 6 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 build their temple on the ruins of its former self ; 
 which means the rebuilding of the church " with 
 those who become wise from the Word."* 
 
 The freedom to do this was to be from the 
 presence of the Divine Human of the Lord, 
 whereby the Babylon had already been judged ; 
 but many generations would pass before the 
 Christ would be born, and the Lord would really 
 come to His temple.f In the meantime we are 
 told that "the new church to be established by 
 the Lord . . . will live a long while without the 
 truths and goods of the church, but that when the 
 Lord comes they will become a church from Him, 
 and will acknowledge Him :": which is meant by 
 the children of Israel abiding " many days without 
 a king, and without a prince, and without a sacri- 
 fice, and without an image, and without an ephod, 
 and without teraphim," and afterward returning 
 and seeking the Lord their God and David their 
 king. 
 
 * Internal Sense of the Prophets and Psalms, HAGGAI i. 12-15. 
 | Ibid., HAGGAI ii. \ Ibid., HOSEA iii. 
 
A TRUE CHURCH DELAYED. 
 
 The length of time before the church can be 
 prepared to receive the Lord in fulness, is like- 
 wise indicated in Swedenborg's explanation of the 
 seven kings of Babylon, of whom " five are fallen, 
 and one is, and the other is not yet come." The 
 seven kings, he says, are the truths of the Word 
 which have been destroyed in the Church of 
 Rome, " except this one, that all power in heaven 
 and in earth was given to the Lord ; and except 
 another which has not yet come into question 
 and when it does it will not remain which is, 
 that the Lord's Human is Divine." And he adds 
 " that this will yet come in question, may be evi- 
 dent from the fact that it is here foretold in the 
 Apocalypse."* Nor has it yet come openly in 
 question ; and until it does, the rule of the love of 
 self in that great body of the church will not come 
 to its downfall. 
 
 Our present interest in this long period of 
 preparation of the church for the Lord, lies in the 
 fact that this is meant by the fourteen generations 
 
 * Apocalypse Revealed, 738. 
 
1 8 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 from the carrying away into Babylon unto the 
 Christ ; for it will be remembered that it was the 
 same Jehoiachin who was carried away from Jeru- 
 salem, to whom the king of Babylon afterward 
 spoke kindly ; and the second in the line from 
 him was the Zerubbabel who was rebuilding the 
 temple. The process which requires so long a 
 period is a complex one, involving the humbling 
 of the natural reason, and the development and 
 training of the spiritual reason. First the exulta- 
 tion of the natural reason in the possession of 
 Divine realities is to be wholly subdued, and the 
 lesson thoroughly learned that not anything which 
 is of self, or which appears to be of self, has sav- 
 ing power, but only the Lord alone. This is the 
 lesson of the captivity which was so earnestly in- 
 sisted upon by Jeremiah.* And then the spiritual 
 reason is slowly developed, which is capable of 
 discerning the Divine nature of the Lord, and of 
 His work for men, of distinguishing clearly be- 
 tween what has been from Him in the history of 
 
 * Internal Sense of Prophets and Psalms, Jeremiah xxxviii., xlii. 
 
THE PRIMITIVE AND THE FUTUKE FAITH. ^ 
 
 the church, and what from men, and which returns 
 to the teaching of the Gospels and of the Apos- 
 tolic Age, with earnest desire to rebuild the 
 church as the Lord built it which is meant by 
 the toilsome rebuilding of the house, and the re- 
 establishment of worship therein.* 
 
 And presently this same reason, which thus 
 discerns between what is of God and what is of 
 men, can be instructed in the spiritual sense of 
 the Bible, and understand the glorification of the 
 Lord's Human, and be prepared to follow Him 
 where at the first the apostles could not follow. 
 
 Through all this development the Lord passed 
 in becoming the Word made flesh, for it is of this 
 that the Word treats. And thus also He became 
 the Son of Man, and, in the subjection of these 
 human powers to the love of God, the Son of Man 
 glorified. 
 
 * Possibly the senge of the lack of conjunction with the Lord 
 during this period is meant by the absence of the ark from the 
 rebuilded temple; and the continued struggle to prevent the 
 natural reason from claiming and perverting spiritual truth, by 
 the wars with the Greeks which filled so large a place in this 
 period of the history. 
 
MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 A point of interest in this genealogy is the 
 mention of the women who became mothers in the 
 series. In the first fourteen we have mention of 
 Tamar and Rahab and Ruth ; in the second, of 
 the wife of Uriah; and in the third, of Mary. 
 Swedenborg tells us but little of their representa- 
 tion ; but that little is wholly good. " The Jewish 
 Church is described by Judah, and the genuine 
 church by Tamar," he says*; and again, "the 
 internal of the church here is Tamar, and the ex- 
 ternal is Judah. "f And if Judah represents here 
 the doctrine from the Word in regard to the 
 saving love of God, Tamar, whose name means a 
 palm tree, must represent a genuine affection for 
 such doctrine, not merely as knowledge, nor to 
 gratify selfish pride, but for the sake of life. 
 
 Of Rahab we know that she was the woman of 
 Jericho who protected Joshua's spies ; whose 
 window was marked by a scarlet thread ; and who, 
 with her family, alone of the inhabitants of Jericho 
 was saved, and incorporated in Israel. 
 
 * Arcana Coelestia, 4811. t Ibid.> 4831 end. 
 
THE WOMEN OF THE SERIES. 2 1 
 
 If Jericho, the city of palm-trees, on the borders 
 of the Jordan, stands for a false security in the 
 teaching of false doctrines of life, Rahab, of good 
 heart although a harlot, represents a good affec- 
 tion which has been perverted by false teaching, 
 but desires to be instructed in the truth and saved 
 by the Lord. She is an affection which in later 
 childhood is willing to repent, and cooperate in 
 establishing a good orderly life. 
 
 Ruth, whose name perhaps means a friend, was 
 a Moabitess, innocent and good according to the 
 ways of the time. And as Moab represents a 
 love for what is naturally good and pleasant, in 
 seeking an alliance in Israel, she represents such 
 Gentile love desiring to be instructed in what is 
 genuinely good. 
 
 Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite. 
 Probably she too was a Hittite. At any rate she 
 represented affection for such truth as is meant 
 by him whose name was "the Light of Jah." The 
 Hittites were remains of the Most Ancient 
 Church* and represent the remains of childhood's 
 
 * Arcana Ccelestia, 4447. See also n. 2913, 2940. 
 
22 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 innocent love and thought. Therefore Bathsheba 
 represents affection for the light of childhood's 
 thought, uniting itself now with rational thought 
 concerning the Divine with men. 
 
 And Mary, whose name means bitterness, be- 
 trothed to Joseph, the last representative of the 
 coming Divine, stands for the despairing desire 
 for the opening of the representatives to the 
 Divine Itself the desire for the Divine truth 
 instead of mere representatives of it. 
 
 The whole series is the series of affections for 
 truth for the sake of life, and in the life, by which 
 the successive developments of acquisition of 
 knowledge, of obedience, of enjoyment, of rational 
 enlightenment, of the truth of God are attained. 
 They are the series of affections by which the 
 Son of Man attains His full development. 
 
THE GENEALOGY IN LUKE. 
 
 'TPHE building the mind into forms of truth, by 
 learning it, understanding it, and living it, is 
 called reformation. The descent of love from God 
 into the will, where it is received as love for good 
 life, is regeneration. To be built into forms of 
 truth is to become the Son of Man. To receive 
 the love of God into the heart and life is to be- 
 come the Son of God. Reformation precedes, 
 and regeneration follows as man overcomes evil 
 in temptations. Therefore it is said in Luke that 
 after Jesus was baptized, " the heaven was opened, 
 and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily shape 
 like a dove upon Him, and a voice came from 
 heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son ; in 
 Thee I am well pleased." And then immediately 
 follows the genealogy of Jesus the Son of God. 
 The genealogy as given in Matthew begins with 
 
 23 
 
24 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 Abraham and leads up to the birth of Jesus 
 tracing the developments of knowledge and obe- 
 dience, of understanding and conflict, of vastation 
 of the self-intelligence and self-love, till the love 
 of God could be manifested through Him who was 
 the perfect Son of Man. 
 
 The genealogy of Luke begins with Jesus as 
 He enters upon His Divine ministry at about 
 thirty years of age, and traces His return through 
 all the stages of His inheritance up to God. For 
 it is the law of regeneration that when one has 
 attained the full development of his manhood, he 
 must return and become again a little child. In 
 the return the later states come up first, and suc- 
 cessively those which are earlier. And it is not 
 now the truth or the intelligence of the states that 
 he cares for, but the love and the trustfulness. 
 
 First he revises the feelings and thoughts of his 
 manhood, chastens its pride, thoroughly humbles 
 its self-love, strengthens its acknowledgment that 
 none is good but God, and its contentment in 
 doing day by day the will of God. Then he 
 
THE RETURN TO CHILDHOOD. 
 
 comes to the ideals of youth, whose foolish exulta- 
 tions and ambitions he humbles severely, substi- 
 tuting for its love of clear, bright thoughts the 
 desire to understand the Lord's teaching of what 
 is wholly wise and helpful. And so he comes 
 back to the open-hearted innocence and trust of 
 childhood's obedience, which he renews and makes 
 unhesitating ; and of childhood's love of knowing 
 what is of God and heaven, which he deepens by 
 the contrast with his experience of evil. 
 
 Perhaps it is because of the difference in the 
 things regarded, the rejection of so much that is 
 of mere intellect, and the strengthening of the 
 less observed states of affection, that the line of 
 Luke passes by the kings, and follows, or appears 
 to follow, the line of personal descent ; taking up 
 again the same line with Matthew when they 
 reach David, who represents the youthful ideal of 
 the rule of the Divine in the Human, and the 
 period of the Judges, where the child's obedience 
 needs only to be strengthened and perfected. 
 
 But the line of Luke does not stop with Abra- 
 
2 6 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 ham, where that of Matthew began, but goes back 
 through the succession of churches before the 
 time of Abraham, as described in the eleventh 
 and the fifth chapters of Genesis, to Seth and 
 Adam, and to God. For before the awakening of 
 the childhood's love of knowing, there are some 
 years of innocent joys in the opening of the 
 senses, and in happy trustful love, of which there 
 is little or no memory. And back of this lie the 
 human possibilities formed in the embryo by lov- 
 ing influences from God and heaven, then immedi- 
 ately present, by virtue of which God and heaven 
 can ever be present in the interiors of the soul, 
 however the exteriors may be perverted. 
 
 Nearly the same was true with the Lord. 
 Before His coming into the world, the Divine was 
 revealed to men through the heavens which were 
 filled with the Spirit of the Lord, under the influ- 
 ence of which an angel of the Lord spake with 
 men, or did mighty works of God. This Divine 
 of the Lord in the heavens, Swedenborg tells us, 
 was the Divine Human before the Incarnation. 
 
THROUGH THE HEAVENS FROM GOD. 
 
 27 
 
 And he adds that the human assumed in the world 
 was superinduced upon this in Him Who was 
 born into the world. That is to say, there were 
 in His human spirit planes receptive of the 
 Divine, answering to the planes of the heavens, 
 formed by the influence of the Divine through the 
 heavens as full as could be borne. And in the 
 inmost plane, where in all other men is the inmost 
 finite receptacle of the life of God, in Him was 
 God Jehovah Himself unlimited. Now it is to be 
 remembered that the heavens which were the 
 mediums of the Divine influence in His spirit, 
 were from the churches that had existed upon the 
 earth, whose quality is described in the geneal- 
 ogies of Genesis. Therefore the enumeration of 
 these is really a description of the Divine influ- 
 ences embodied in the heavens, by which the in- 
 terior planes of His spirit were formed those 
 between Abraham and Noah representing the 
 happy states of sense development, when every 
 natural impression is filled with something of life 
 from heaven ; and those before the flood represent- 
 
2 8 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 ing the forms impressed upon the embryo by the 
 immediate presence of God and heaven. 
 
 No man upon the earth ever knows what is 
 stored up in his soul, or the deep possibilities of it. 
 After the death of the body, when the spirit is 
 prepared for heaven, new depths of consciousness 
 are opened in it, answering to the depths which 
 were formed in the embryo by the influence of the 
 heavens, of which nothing was known during the 
 life upon earth. But in the Lord, in the regener- 
 ation of His human nature, all that entered into it 
 became sensible to Him, even to the inmosts of 
 the human soul, where the Divine Life dwelt. 
 " No man hath seen God at any time," He said ; 
 " the only begotten Son Who is in the bosom of 
 the Father, He hath declared Him." "Not that 
 any man hath seen the Father, save He that is of 
 God; He hath seen the Father." 
 
 In the great story of human life which we call 
 the Bible, the first truly historical characters, the 
 first remembered figures> are those of Abraham 
 and his immediate ancestors. The long list of 
 
THROUGH THE HEAVENS TO GOD. 
 
 29 
 
 names back of these stand not for persons, but 
 for religions, or states of the church, the descrip- 
 tion of which has come down in this form from 
 prehistoric antiquity. They stand for the unre- 
 membered childhood of the race, for the most part 
 innocent, open to the Lord and heaven, yet, be- 
 cause it is subject to the will of man, having 
 possible tendencies to violent evils. As we have 
 seen, the men of that childhood in its good states, 
 constitute the heavens nearest the Lord ; and 
 from them in part come the influences which 
 mould the unconscious child's soul into forms of 
 heaven, which can afterward rise into heaven and 
 live the life of heaven. And therefore the series 
 of names which describes the descent of the 
 churches, is a true description of the formation of 
 the soul with its possibilities of life, even from 
 God. And these in the Lord's human life were 
 all successively opened to Him even to the 
 inmost. 
 
 It is not surprising that the Lord's mind, re- 
 turning through the stores successively laid up 
 
MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 from earliest infancy to manhood, should see them 
 in a different light from that in which they ap- 
 peared at the first. It is not now the truth that 
 is of interest, but the good ; not the knowledge 
 and the intelligence, but the love of use, of obedi- 
 ence, of innocent trust. Back through all the 
 states of life He passed, bringing every one to the 
 perfect form of the love of God. The powers of 
 manhood became powers of protecting, saving, and 
 blessing from the Father's love, with absolutely no 
 reflection upon self. The ideals of life became a 
 joy in the beauty of love. The willingness to 
 obey the truth became a boundless love for the 
 ways in which the Father's love might dwell. 
 The love of knowing of God and heaven, was win- 
 nowed of every trace of pride of knowledge, and 
 became a pure love of God Himself. The child's 
 delight in sense impressions became a joy in 
 every thing that expressed and revealed the 
 Father's love. And so away through depths of 
 inner consciousness that we cannot follow, at 
 length the very desire for life independent of the 
 
THE DIVINE HUMAN. 
 
 Father was put off ; the self -life was absolutely 
 laid down ; there was no life in the Human but 
 the Father's love ; the Human from inmost to 
 outmost became the Love of God perfectly 
 brought forth, working Divinely in human ways 
 to unite Itself with men, and men with Itself.* 
 
 * I see no reason to doubt the common explanation, that the 
 marked differences in the lines from Solomon to Shealtiel arise 
 from tracing the line, in the one case officially through the 
 Kings to the childless Jechoniah, and in the other personally 
 through Nathan the brother of Solomon to Shealtiel who suc- 
 ceeded Jechoniah ; and the lesser differences in the remainder of 
 the line seem to be also reasonably explained. The fact that the 
 generations from the carrying into Babylon to Christ as given in 
 Matthew number only thirteen, and the other matter of the in- 
 sertion of a Cainan or Kenan in Luke between Arpachshad and 
 Shelah, which does not appear in Genesis, will probably be ex- 
 plained when more perfect copies of the text are found. It is 
 idle to attempt to interpret, before we are sure of our basis. 
 
THE COMING OF THE LORD IN THE 
 WORD. 
 
 nr^HE Gospel story in its literal sense is the 
 story of the real coming of God to men, 
 in the early development of the rationality of the 
 race.* 
 
 The natural sense of the Gospels relates to the 
 natural reception of the Divine in the lives of 
 men, which was the essence and substance of the 
 Christian Church, and the spring of life of a new 
 Christian civilization. 
 
 On the same plane also is the coming of the 
 Lord now, into the experience of men, normally in 
 their early youth, as a power to restrain evil, and 
 to inspire new affections for good life. 
 
 * This period was represented by the Kings, especially by 
 David. Hence the Lord was called the Son of David. The 
 Kings themselves belonged to the period of the first natural 
 rationality, and did not receive any but natural ideals. But they 
 represented the reception of spiritual ideals in the natural, which 
 the Lord afterward brought to pass. 
 
RECEIVED BY THE HEART. 
 
 33 
 
 But this first coming of the Lord is itself repre- 
 sentative of His second coming to a more ad- 
 vanced state of rational development both of the 
 race and of the individual the state in which 
 the pride of intelligence and the appropriation to 
 self of the holy things of Christian worship and 
 life are ready for judgment, that the pure love of 
 the Lord may be received and do its work ; while 
 man humbly and gratefully acknowledges it as the 
 Lord's, fearing and dreading any appropriation to 
 self. 
 
 It is in this sense that the genealogy has been 
 interpreted, as leading up to Joseph, who stands 
 for the good of life which is capable of being en- 
 lightened and rationally understanding the Divine 
 of the Lord in the Word, and is the husband of 
 Mary the affection for the Divine truth which 
 is the Lord Himself the truth of His own life. 
 
 The lesson of the conception is that the reality 
 
 of the Lord's presence in the Word is not first 
 
 CHAPTER received by the rational understanding, 
 
 but the goodness of it appeals directly 
 
34 
 
 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 to the affection for truth, and it is received and 
 cherished as true before it is rationally understood. 
 
 And as this is not what the understanding 
 would expect, it doubts the legitimacy of it ; but 
 can be instructed that it is really of the Lord, and 
 as the Lord should come; and then it unites with 
 the affection for it in caring for and protecting it. 
 Mary was afterward the wife of Joseph, because 
 the understanding when enlightened does interpret 
 the truth of the Lord's life to the affection for it, 
 though the affection has been first to recognize it. 
 
 This coming of the Lord is indeed in the spiri- 
 tual sense of the Word ; but a knowledge of the 
 spiritual sense is not the coming of the Lord for 
 this can be taught from books, and committed to 
 memory ; neither is the rational understanding of 
 it, the coming of the Lord for this may be had 
 by mental training and combined with much pride 
 of intelligence. The Lord may indeed be present 
 in such knowledge, and introduced by such under- 
 standing ; but He is received by the heart, when 
 He is recognized and loved as the Divine Love 
 
THE FIRST AND THE SECOND COMING. 
 
 35 
 
 uniting Itself with men in a good life according to 
 the Commandments. 
 
 He was received in this way naturally in His 
 first coming, and now also both naturally and 
 spiritually in His second coming. And the differ- 
 ence is that to the life of benevolence and useful- 
 ness from His Spirit as received at first, is added 
 in maturer regenerate states, the rational under- 
 standing of the glorification of the Lord's Human, 
 and the regeneration of men by following in His 
 footsteps both of which are fully taught in the 
 spiritual sense of the Word. There is also added 
 the dread born of long and hard experience, of the 
 pride of holiness and the pride of understanding* 
 the shunning of which will forever preserve the 
 sense of the new life as the Lord's, given of the 
 
 * A new development of rationality has come to the race, es- 
 pecially in the growth of the European peoples, the youthful 
 pride in which has brought the Church to a sterile end of intel- 
 lect or faith alone. The prophecy of the birth of the Lord, not 
 begotten of man (!SAIAH vii. 14), promises new life from God 
 when this intellect shall be judged. It is this intellect which 
 first seizes upon the new truth, and which must be humbled be- 
 fore the Lord can reign in His Church. 
 
36 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 Divine Mercy to men who are in themselves only 
 vile and evil. 
 
 In Bethlehem, the House of Bread, the Lord 
 was born, because He was the living Bread by 
 CHAPTER which heavenly spirits are nourished. 
 In the land of Judah it was, because 
 this represents the plane of the mind in which the 
 love of God should be known. " In the days of 
 Herod the king," means when the pride of self-in- 
 telligence ruled in the church. For Herod was an 
 Edomite, and in the evil sense Edom means 
 " pride in one's own intelligence, and falsity from 
 it, destroying the church."* 
 
 The wise men of the east were a remnant of 
 ancient churches, having the remains of ancient 
 wisdom ; and they represent the surviving wisdom 
 of childhood's innocence and trustfulness. This 
 recognizes the Lord as King of the church, and 
 offers the acknowledgment that His human pres- 
 ence in the heart is itself life from the love of 
 God, the delight of spiritual intelligence, and the 
 
 * Apocalypse Explained, 410. 
 
THE THREE JOSEPHS. 37 
 
 healing and protection of natural truth repre- 
 sented by the gold, the frankincense, and the 
 myrrh, presented by the wise men. 
 
 It is interesting to note that the young life was 
 carried to Egypt, and there protected by Joseph 
 as once before, under the Divine Providence, a 
 Joseph went down into Egypt to save life, and to 
 lay the foundation of a new nation and a new 
 church. To two different periods the two Josephs 
 belong the one to the period of childhood's love 
 of knowing, and the other to the maturer love of 
 understanding. "The celestial of the spiritual" 
 is the technical formula by which Swedenborg 
 describes the quality represented by Joseph. And 
 by this he means the love which is the root of 
 faith in the Lord, and is capable of being in- 
 structed in Divine things. 
 
 The Joseph of the early days represents the 
 child's love for the Divine in the Word and in the 
 story of the Lord's life, which places the knowl- 
 edge of this above all other knowledge. The 
 Joseph of the later days represents the young 
 
38 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 man's love for that which is of God, which sees 
 the difference between what is of God and what is 
 of men, and rationally acknowledges the Divine in 
 the Lord. This it is that is capable of being in- 
 structed in the spiritual sense of the Word. 
 
 And besides these there was another Joseph, 
 high in the councils of the Jews, who, when the 
 Lord was crucified by the urgent insistence of the 
 Jews, courageously begged for the body, and with 
 all possible honor laid it in his own new tomb. 
 And he stands for the love for the Lord which 
 when the pride of spiritual intelligence and of 
 holiness, or elation in the possession of spiritual 
 truth, rejects the Divine life of love and service, 
 courageously defies it, and asks for itself no hope 
 of heaven but in that love from the Lord alone. 
 
 The Egypt to which the young child was car- 
 ried, was at that time the land of learning. There 
 were the great libraries of the world and the 
 schools of learning. It was the depository of the 
 knowledge of representative worship of all the old 
 world. Into this atmosphere of study and learn- 
 
THE STATE OF INSTRUCTION. 
 
 39 
 
 ing the Lord was taken, probably at the time 
 when His own love of knowing began to be 
 awakened ; and we are not going beyond the evi- 
 dent meaning if we think of His mind as stored 
 there with representative forms of every kind, and 
 having some intuition of what they meant. Just 
 at what age this took place is not clear. Herod 
 slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, from 
 two years old and under or, as some understand, 
 from the second year according to the time 
 that he had diligently inquired of the wise men. 
 We may infer that He was not over two years old. 
 Even this is young for the love of knowledge to 
 awaken ; but we know that His states did progress 
 much more rapidly than those of other men. 
 
 The significance of this as regards the second 
 coming of the Lord, is that after the first recogni- 
 tion of the Divine in the spiritual sense of the 
 Word, must follow a state of instruction in the 
 representatives by which the Word is written. 
 
 Herod's slaying all the boys in Bethlehem from 
 two years old and under, represents the extinction 
 
4 o MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 of all genuine truth of the Divine presence with 
 men, by the pride of intelligence the two years 
 meaning the sense of the love of the Lord in the 
 truth. Rachel is affection for genuine spiritual 
 truth from the Word, which mourns when the 
 truth is lost. 
 
 In Nazareth, which seems to mean Seclusion, 
 the next long period of the Lord's life was passed. 
 It was the period in which He was learning to live 
 the Divine life according to the truth of the Word. 
 He did not come forth until the natural self had 
 so far given place to the Divine, that whatever He 
 did and said was from the love of the Father for 
 saving men, and was a revelation of that love. 
 And this represents the long period of instruction 
 in spiritual truth, which is necessary to introduce 
 the spiritual life. 
 
 His first appearance was at the baptism of 
 
 John ; where, by submitting to be baptized, He 
 
 CHAPTER testified to the cleansing of the natural 
 
 life by the truth of the Word. And 
 
 where also the dove descending and lighting upon 
 
THE TEMPTATIONS. 
 
 Him testified to the reception of the Spirit of God 
 in the Human, according to its purification. The 
 voice from heaven testified to the Divine satisfac- 
 tion in the human work among men. 
 
 The story of the three temptations following, is 
 
 a representative account of the conflicts between 
 
 CHAPTER tne ev ^ influx received by the natural 
 
 self, and the Divine Spirit, interpreted 
 
 by the Word. 
 
 The first is the temptation of the barren re- 
 formatory state, when the understanding leads, to 
 be content with truths alone, and the ascetic 
 power of resistance ; ceasing the effort to sow the 
 Divine seed and reap the harvest of love and 
 good. 
 
 The second temptation in Matthew, to cast 
 Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple 
 is the temptation of weak human nature to de- 
 mand that the Divine should give the good of re- 
 generate holy states without doing its part in lay- 
 ing down the self-life. It is the temptation ex- 
 pressed in the words : " If it be possible, let this 
 
42 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 cup pass from Me ; nevertheless, not My will but 
 Thine be done." Of this also He said : " Thinkest 
 thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and 
 He shall presently give Me more than twelve 
 legions of angels ? But how then shall the Scrip- 
 tures be fulfilled, that. thus it must be ?" 
 
 The third, in the offer of all the kingdoms of 
 the world and the glory of them, is the temptation 
 to use His power for the exaltation of self, and 
 not for the Divine work of subduing self. It is 
 illustrated by the turbulence of the sea when the 
 multitude, excited by the miracle of the loaves, 
 would have made Him a King. And He came 
 quietly walking upon the sea to represent the vic- 
 tory in such temptation. 
 
 They are classes of temptations endured not 
 once for all, but throughout the regenerating life. 
 The desire to be content with truth is distinctly- 
 youthful, but is not wholly overcome until good 
 has absolute rule. The desire to be borne up in 
 lofty states, without the labor of temptations, also 
 begins early. Perhaps we have some expression 
 
PROTECTION BY THE WORD. 43 
 
 of it in the attempt to do the Father's work in the 
 temple at the age of twelve ; when, nevertheless, 
 whatever disappointment He may have felt, He 
 went back to Nazareth with Mary and Joseph, and 
 was subject unto them. And so again, the desire 
 for natural position and power does not first show 
 itself late in life, though it may be late in wholly 
 giving way.* 
 
 It is worthy of note that all the answers of the 
 Lord are from the Book of Deuteronomy, though 
 with reference to what has been described or said 
 in Exodus ; f for the Book of Deuteronomy con- 
 tains the Law as it appears at the close of the 
 wilderness journey when the rule of love is at 
 hand. 
 
 The ministry of angels when the devil left Him, 
 
 * Possibly the reversing the order of the second and third in 
 Luke means that Matthew's third was the more external and 
 easier to overcome Matthew, as in the Genealogies, giving the 
 order of development of the natural human, and Luke that of 
 the Divine development. Both call the tempter, " Satan," in 
 answer to the promise of the glory of the world implying that 
 it was a false illusion, more external than the other. 
 
 t DEUTERONOMY viii. 3; vi. 13 (x. 20) ; vi. 16. EXODUS xvi.; 
 xvii. I ; xxxiv. 14. 
 
44 
 
 MATTHEWS GOSPEL. 
 
 is the reception of Divine things as evils are re- 
 moved. 
 
 Thus began the Lord's public ministry, when 
 He was about thirty years of age, and perhaps in 
 early February. For if we allow forty days for 
 the temptations, then the journey to Cana and 
 the sojourn of " not many days " at Capernaum 
 will bring us near the end of March, when " the 
 Jews* Passover was at hand/' That Passover, with 
 the first cleansing of the temple and the conver- 
 sation with Nicodemus, was the beginning of the 
 Judean ministry. It lasted apparently until Jan- 
 uary ; for when He left Judea and passed through 
 Samaria, on the way to Galilee, it lacked only four 
 months of harvest time. It had been a season of 
 diligent teaching, the results of which, both 
 friendly and unfriendly, were to appear later. 
 
 A few weeks follow of which no account is 
 given, and then we hear again of a feast of the 
 Jews,* and of another visit to Jerusalem, with more 
 
 * JOHN v. 
 
IMPRISONMENT OF JOHN, 45 
 
 healing, and more preaching of the presence of the 
 Heavenly Father in Him, which was the burden 
 of the Judean message. But of all this, from the 
 time of the temptations, Matthew tells us nothing. 
 His mission is to tell of the giving of the Chris- 
 tian Law, and the application of the law to the 
 plane of natural life, which is represented by 
 Galilee. He takes up the story " When Jesus had 
 heard that John was cast into prison," that is, in 
 the second spring of His ministry, while still in 
 Judea. 
 
 Then the Lord left Judea, and departed into 
 Galilee. For the imprisonment of John by Herod 
 meant that lustfulness so far controlled the world 
 that it could no longer be openly taught that 
 adultery was a sin against God. The moral law 
 was no longer taught as the law of God ; though, 
 from regard for appearances, it was preserved, and 
 not yet wholly rejected, that the shameless love of 
 evil might have full sway as happened later, 
 when Herod beheaded John for Salome's sake. 
 
 The basis for the presence of God in the lives 
 
46 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 of men was departing. And yet this must always 
 be present, that man may be saved. Therefore 
 the Lord Himself came into that Galilee which 
 represents the plane of natural conduct, and Him- 
 self took up the teaching of the Divine presence 
 in a life, as to thought and affection as well as in 
 form, according to the Ten Commandments. 
 
 In Nazareth He had attained that union of the 
 Divine with the truth of life, from which He was 
 to teach. Nazareth was in the tribe of Zebulon, 
 which means such uniting together. But with 
 the people of Nazareth there had been a different 
 uniting of the love of evil with their false interpre- 
 tations of the Scriptures. Not there could His 
 teaching be received. So, " leaving Nazareth, He 
 came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the 
 sea coast, in the borders of Zebulon," but in the 
 domain of Naphtali. The life in Nazareth had 
 been on the plane of thought and intent of good 
 life. The life in Capernaum was upon the plane 
 of act, and of conflict with evil. It was appropri- 
 ate that this should be in Naphtali, for Naphtali 
 
THE MINISTRY IN GALILEE. 
 
 47 
 
 means strugglings, or, spiritually, temptations. 
 Capernaum perhaps means literally, the Village of 
 Consolations a good name for His home in the 
 time of strugglings. 
 
 Here by the borders of the sea, the confines of 
 spiritual life in natural, the people which now had 
 no idea of the presence of God in the life of men, 
 " saw great light, and to them which sat in the 
 region and shadow of death, light is sprung up." 
 
 A few disciples who had been previously drawn 
 to Him at the Baptism of John by the Jordan 
 were now gathered together ; and with them, 
 training them to the Divine service, He "went 
 about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and 
 preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing 
 all manner of sickness and all manner of disease 
 among the people." 
 
 Thus Matthew summarizes the opening of the 
 ministry in Galilee. Certain typical instances of 
 healing, typical of the effect of His teaching, and 
 of His presence with men, are related in chrono- 
 logical order by Mark and Luke. But Matthew 
 
48 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 gathers first a summary of the teaching, and then 
 exhibits the types of the effect of it. 
 
 This summary of the Lord's teaching of the 
 Divine law of life, we know as the Sermon on the 
 CHAPTER Mount. It begins with pronouncing 
 blessings upon the poor in spirit, the 
 mourning, the meek, the hungering and thirsting, 
 and all who are in heart in the ways of life taught 
 by the Ten Commandments. John had taught 
 the Commandments as the necessary preparation 
 for the coming of the Lord. Such teaching had 
 been forbidden and restrained. And now the 
 Lord came teaching of the joy of the Divine love 
 in such ways of life, as the ways of the life of God 
 on earth. From the power of that love in Him- 
 self He taught, and restored forever the moral law 
 as the Divine law of human life established for- 
 ever by His own love for it. 
 
 The parallel between the Blessings and the 
 Commandments is familiar, and will probably be 
 plain to one who will study the interpretation of 
 the two in the Book of Rites arid Sacraments for 
 
THE CHRISTIAN LA W. 49 
 
 the New Church. The remainder of the fifth 
 chapter of Matthew contains upon the face of it an 
 expansion of the same principles, offering many 
 parallels to the " Book of the Covenant " in 
 Deuteronomy, which is likewise an expansion of 
 the Commandments in a somewhat varied order. 
 
 The sixth chapter contains teaching of another 
 kind. Luke places this teaching in the third, the 
 CHAPTER l ast > winter of the Lord's ministry, after 
 
 VL He had left Galilee and sent forth the 
 
 seventy, and was abiding in Peraea, before the last 
 journey to Jerusalem. The fifth chapter has con- 
 tained the principles of outward conduct, includ- 
 ing those of the thought and affection which are 
 the essential substance of the conduct. The sixth 
 contains no new principles of conduct, but the 
 conditions of the Divine blessing in the good life. 
 It does not teach men to give alms. To do good 
 and lend, hoping for nothing again, has already 
 been taught. But it says : " When thou doest alms, 
 let not thy left hand know what thy right hand 
 doeth ; that thine alms may be in secret ; and thy 
 
50 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 Father Who seeth in secret shall reward thee 
 openly." That is, if the satisfaction of reflecting 
 upon the importance of what one does is the satis- 
 faction sought in doing it, this he may have. But 
 he has not the Lord except in doing it as the 
 Lord's work, with no reflection at all upon self. 
 
 And so with prayer. If to appear well before 
 men or the self-satisfaction of pious forms, be one's 
 purpose, this he may have. But there is no com- 
 muning with the Lord, and no answer from Him, 
 except in the depths of one's heart, when one 
 earnestly desires the Divine help, and the good of 
 the Divine life according to the Divine laws. 
 
 In fasting, again, or humbling the natural man, 
 the self indulges or glorifies the natural man by 
 parading its afflictions whereby their benefit to 
 the spiritual man is lost. It is the gladness of the 
 inner thought, in the hope of a purer life, freed 
 from self even through affliction, that the Lord 
 can comfort and bless. 
 
 The treasures of the heavenly life are distinctly 
 presented as the only treasures to be sought. It 
 
TO LIVE FROM GOD. 
 
 5 1 
 
 is pointed out that when from a single-hearted 
 love of good, one sees the truth, the whole life is 
 guided wisely. But if a root of self guides the 
 thought, it guides it into darkness. And the ne- 
 cessity is shown for choosing between the world 
 and the Lord, that there may be no reserve in serv- 
 ing the Lord with all the soul and heart, with no 
 secret reference to one's own advantage. And then 
 the beautiful appeal is made to the fowls of the 
 air and the lilies of the field, as illustrating the 
 Heavenly Father's care, and showing how inno- 
 cent and beautiful life is that is not distorted by 
 man's self, but is lived naturally and simply from 
 God as God's. This, then, should be the ideal 
 to live from God as simply and naturally as they, 
 with as absolute a trust as they; yet with the 
 human knowledge and acknowledgment of the 
 Divine which they have not. 
 
 And now the discourse turns toward the final 
 
 judgment, and the relation of the soul to God. 
 
 CHAPTER The reference to self which is natural 
 
 to one's thought, is by nature dispara- 
 
52 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 ging to others. It loves to exalt and justify self, 
 and therefore to see and exaggerate faults in 
 others. It judges harshly ; it metes out hard 
 measure. To cast .out first one's own desire to 
 justify self, surrendering wholly to the Spirit of 
 the Lord, is to look upon others with kind eyes, to 
 see clearly and helpfully, to prepare one's self for 
 the judgment of mercy. 
 
 To give not that which is holy unto the dogs, 
 nor to cast the pearls before swine, is a warning 
 that holy truths and knowledge of salvation are 
 not to be held in the service of the lusts of appro- 
 priating everything good to self; for these will 
 destroy them, and destroy also the soul. 
 
 These evil ways of the self are in strongest con- 
 trast to the Divine ways. To every one who 
 sincerely asks Him for good, the Father gives it ; 
 every one who sincerely seeks the truth of good 
 life, He causes to find it ; and to every one who 
 desires to enter an interior, better state of life, He 
 opens it. 
 
 Natural good even the evil will give to their 
 
THE TREE AND ITS FRUITS. 
 
 own, much more will the Lord give spiritual good 
 to His own not, as appears to the natural man, 
 mere condemnatory truths to one who desires the 
 enjoyment of good life, nor stinging discourage- 
 ment to one who desires a knowledge of good life ; 
 but things which he knows to be good, from Him- 
 self in heaven. To give to others what is good to 
 Himself is the law of His life. That men should 
 do the same is the whole lesson of the Scriptures 
 which He has given them. 
 
 The destroying way of the self-life was broad 
 and easy, and the Lord found very many pressing 
 into it. The way of heaven seemed strait and 
 narrow, not merely because it restrained the wan- 
 dering desires, but because so few were seeking 
 it.* 
 
 Scribes and Pharisees were teaching as the 
 good of the church that which was not good, 
 solely that they might be honored and made rich. 
 They were to be judged by their fruits. The 
 wisdom of charity did not come from teachings of 
 
 * Heaven and Hell, 534. 
 
54 
 
 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 exclusive holiness, nor kindly helpfulness from the 
 stinging of contemptuous thoughts. But as are 
 the thoughts of the heart, so is the real quality of 
 the life helpful and kindly if these be good, 
 evil and hurtful if they be evil. ' 
 
 Then follows the warning that not mere knowl- 
 edge of Him, nor teaching about Him, nor com- 
 bating errors, nor even wonderful success in con- 
 verting many* really means life from the Lord. 
 If these things be not from love for the Lord and 
 love for souls, but with the inner thought upon 
 self and the world, they are all of evil. 
 
 And the discourse closes with the parable of the 
 wise man who built his house upon a rock the 
 Rock being the Lord in his heart, and his house 
 his life, which stands protected and safe under 
 the wildest storms of temptation ; and of the fool- 
 ish man who built his house upon the sand the 
 sand being not the Lord, .but knowledge about 
 Him ; and the house the life based upon this but 
 with no living hold of the Lord ; which gives way 
 immediately, with the angry, destruction of all pro- 
 
 *Apocalypse Explained, 624. 
 
SUMMARY OF THE SERMON. 
 
 55 
 
 fessions of faith, when it appears plainly that there 
 is no advantage to self in them. 
 
 This is the Sermon. It begins with the bless- 
 ings of a life according to the Commandments. It 
 opens and expands the Commandments in their 
 application to the affections as well as to the acts 
 of conduct. 
 
 It shows the conditions of life from God in the 
 conduct that there be in it no reflection upon 
 self ; that it be full of prayer for life from God ; 
 that there be cheerful willingness in the humilia- 
 tion of self ; that the Lord and heaven be chosen 
 as the ends of life ; that the life be held freely and 
 naturally as His, with absolute trust in Him. 
 
 It teaches of the mercy of the Heavenly 
 Father's love, and of the charity with which men 
 should regard one another ; encourages persever- 
 ance in the way which at first seems strait and 
 narrow ; and the bringing forth patiently the 
 fruits of the Divine life. It builds the Christian 
 life upon the Lord. 
 
 No other word could be added. 
 
MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 Not as the scribes, from learning, did the Lord 
 teach these things; but from His life. He told 
 simply of the life He loved, of the life He was. 
 His words were the absolute truth of Divine 
 human life. They were the truth, and the 
 standard of truth. 
 
EFFECTS OF THE LORD'S PREACHING 
 IN THE NATURAL LIFE. 
 
 / T^HE Christian law has been given, the law 
 which shows the possibilities of human life 
 from the Spirit of God. 
 
 The chapters which immediately follow, relate 
 to the working out of this law in the natural life ; 
 CHAPTER later comes the application to the spir- 
 itual life ; and lastly to the inmost life, 
 which brings full conjunction of the Divine with 
 the Human, or, in the lesser degrees, of the Lord 
 with man. This is the whole of the story of 
 Matthew. 
 
 As regards the natural life, we have first, a 
 short series of beneficent works the healing of 
 a leper, of the palsied servant of the centurion, of 
 Peter's wife's mother, the first stilling of the sea, 
 the casting out of the swinish devils, the healing 
 
 57 
 
58 MATTHEWS GOSPEL. 
 
 of another paralytic, also of the woman who 
 touched His garments, the raising of the ruler's 
 daughter, the opening the eyes of the blind and 
 the lips of the dumb. 
 
 The first effect of the teaching of the Christian 
 law from the Divine love for what is good and 
 pure and orderly, showing the possibilities of a life 
 free from self, full of the Spirit of God, was, as it 
 still is, to reveal the deadness of the outward 
 forms of ordinary life. There were forms of or- 
 derly conduct, of piety, of service ; but there was 
 no sense of the Spirit of the Lord in them. They 
 were merely natural, conventional, full of self, 
 with no spiritual life in them.* And this sense of 
 
 * Cicero well illustrates the state of the world in this re- 
 spect: " But this indeed all mortals hold thus that external 
 goods, vineyards, corn-fields, olive-yards, the abundance of crops 
 and fruits, in fine, every outward advantage and good fortune, 
 they have from the gods; but virtue no one ever credits to a god. 
 . . . Who ever thanked the gods because he was a good man ? 
 but because he was rich, honored, or safe. De Natura Deorum. 
 Liber III. 86, 87. 
 
 " At that time there were not any spiritual men, because the 
 church was altogether destroyed; but they were all natural." 
 Swedenborg, in "The Apocalypse Explained," n. 513. 
 
 " Spiritual good is not given at the present day, but only nat- 
 ural good with some." "The Last Judgment," n. 38. 
 
LOYALTY TO LAW. 
 
 59 
 
 the deadness of the outward life, with no vital con- 
 nection with God, is a spiritual leprosy. No one 
 will doubt that the touch of Jesus did bring a sense 
 of new life from God into the life of man, and 
 made the dead forms of worship and of goodness 
 live. 
 
 The next effect of the reception of the Chris- 
 tian law, represented by healing the centurion's 
 servant, was the renewing of the life of obedience 
 to moral and civil law as a duty to God. 
 
 Rome stood for moral and civil law, not now 
 spiritual, yet spiritual in its origin, and capable of 
 again forming a basis for spiritual life. The 
 Roman centurion, or captain of a hundred, was 
 the representative of such law remaining. In the 
 best days of the Roman Republic, the spirit of 
 obedience to law as the highest duty, gave exam- 
 ples of civic virtue, and devotion to the public 
 good, perhaps the most splendid that are recorded 
 in History. But the republic was changing to the 
 empire. The idea of the will of God as embodied 
 in the law, was giving place to the idea of the ar- 
 
60 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 bitrary will of man. The joy of obedience to the 
 law as a duty to God was gone. The servant of 
 the centurion was palsied.* 
 
 The Lord by His example and by His love for 
 the law as the way of the Divine Love upon the 
 earth, restored the joy of obedience, and a zeal of 
 loyalty to the right, as a duty to God. The spirit 
 of love for the law as expressed in the hundred 
 and nineteenth Psalm, is the Spirit of the Lord, 
 and is the life of the new Christian civilization 
 which the Lord has raised up. It is built upon 
 Him ; and His love for the Divine law bears it up. 
 Israel and the modern successors of Israel may 
 ignore it ; but many shall come from the east and 
 from the west, and shall sit down with Abraham 
 and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven 
 the foundations of which are laid by a love of 
 obeying the Divine law as the law of life from 
 God. 
 
 * For an admirable account of the failure of the ancient loy- 
 alty and the establishment of the new, see Dean Church's lec- 
 tures on Roman Civilization, and Civilization after Chris- 
 tianity, in "Gifts of Civilization :" The Macmillan Co. 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW. 6 1 
 
 In Peter's house, his wife's mother was laid, and 
 sick of a fever. Peter stands for the new faith, 
 and his wife for the enjoyment in the life accord- 
 ing to it. Her mother stands for the enjoyment 
 or good of the former faith more formal and 
 literal, with much hope of reward. Her fever is 
 from fear of the loss of the good she had, in the 
 new and wiser ways of doing good which the Lord 
 taught. Thus, for example, the change in the 
 keeping of the Sabbath, from the formal represent- 
 ative passiveness, to the Christian laying aside of 
 self for the sake of instruction in truth and of 
 doing works of charity, must have caused much 
 disturbance to the faithful, until they received the 
 true Sabbath spirit from the Lord. The Lord's 
 touch gave her hand a pleasure in the wiser ser- 
 vice which He himself loved to do and to teach. 
 Her faithful loyalty gained a new expansion ; and 
 she arose and ministered unto them. 
 
 With the word of His own new life from God, 
 He relieved men from the pressure of many evils 
 and discouragements, that their life on this plane 
 of natural conduct and use might be full. 
 
62 MATTHEWS GOSPEL. 
 
 But there was another plane of life, that of rec- 
 reation, by enjoyment of natural pleasures of 
 instruction, of beauty, of food, of repose ; and this 
 was represented by the other side of the sea, 
 whither the Lord took His disciples to rest. Not 
 strictly of the Holy Land, yet occupied by the 
 half tribe of Manasseh, this land of Bashan repre- 
 sented the plane of recreation, which is not in 
 itself spiritual, yet is essential to the support of 
 the spiritual life. Jesus gave commandment to 
 depart thither. And then to a certain scribe who 
 offered to follow Him, He said : " The foxes have 
 holes, and the birds of the air nests ; but the Son 
 of Man hath not where to lay His head." That 
 is, in the outer natural man to which He was 
 going there are abiding places for deceitful lusts, 
 and thoughts for self, but no rest for the truth of 
 God. And to another who would first bury his 
 father representing the preserving and saving 
 of selfish desire, while one tries to follow the 
 Lord too He said, " Follow Me, and let the dead 
 bury their dead " that is, give it up wholly, 
 
CONTROL OF SENSUAL LUSTS. 63 
 
 leave it with the things that are past and gone 
 the two little incidents illustrating the thorough- 
 ness of self-surrender with which the Lord would 
 have men live the truth of God. 
 
 Passing over to the other side, " there arose a 
 great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship 
 was covered with the waves ; but He was asleep." 
 He was going to the plane of natural enjoyment 
 and upbuilding, now occupied by swine and lovers 
 of swine. He was about to cast out the greed for 
 self which naturally possesses that part of the 
 mind, and bring instead a peaceful, orderly enjoy- 
 ment in the good and beautiful things of nature 
 and of truth, which serve for illustration, delight, 
 and support to an orderly life from God. The 
 tumultuous resistance of the natural loves was 
 imaged by the tempest in the sea ; the apparent 
 absence of Divine care and control of natural en- 
 joyments, by His sleeping ; but the new sense of 
 His presence and power in this outward life, by 
 His awaking, and rebuking the waves and the sea. 
 His absolute power to subdue and control the dis- 
 
64 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 orderly appetites of the body, was both manifested 
 and represented by His casting out the many 
 devils ; which took on their true form when they 
 entered into the swine, and then rushed down into 
 the sea, which was a representative of their hell. 
 Would that that whole domain of the mind would 
 love to sit at the feet of Jesus clothed and in its 
 right mind, a clean and orderly support to good 
 life from the Lord in man, and hanker no more 
 after the swine ! With all who sincerely desire it, 
 this will be the case when the body is put off. 
 
 The Lord returned to the scene of His labor of 
 applying the law to the outward life, which 
 CHAPTER Matthew calls, " His own city." And 
 again they bring to Him a paralytic 
 not now a centurion's servant, representing the 
 need of a new love of obedience to law as the law 
 of God ; but one who needed the encouraging 
 words, " Son, be of good cheer ; thy sins be for- 
 given thee." The Lord had just cast out the 
 swinish devils, and now, returning to the plane 
 of conduct and service, it is represented that 
 
PURER MOTIVES OF LIFE. 65 
 
 the motive for useful service has been so largely 
 to obtain means for swinish indulgence, that 
 when the evil of this is seen and judged, paralysis 
 follows. The paralysis is healed by the removal 
 of the selfish motive, and the reception of new 
 motives from the Spirit of the Lord, in those who 
 trust in Him and serve obediently. To go to the 
 house is to return to normal states of usefulness. 
 To take up the bed is to carry into the use- 
 fulness the trust in the Lord, which recognized 
 the control of the Lord over the appetites of the 
 body, and suffices to bring one to the Lord, but 
 not until now has experience of the joy of orderly 
 life, free from selfish ends, from the Spirit of 
 the Lord. 
 
 Matthew, whose other name was Levi, and who 
 stands in the series of the apostles for the bless- 
 edness of a life according to the Commandments, 
 now follows the Lord ; though before, for selfish 
 gain, he had sat "at the receipt of custom.'* And 
 many other publicans and sinners sat down to 
 meat with Jesus and His disciples standing for 
 
66 MATTHEWS GOSPEL. 
 
 the many selfish motives of gain and pleasure, 
 which now give way to the Lord's own joy in an 
 orderly life according to the truth. He had not 
 come merely to preach repentance, but to bring 
 the kingdom of heaven. The disciples of John 
 and of the Pharisees might fast, in humility or for 
 show, but His disciples were at a marriage feast, 
 and were entering into the joys of a marriage life 
 that was good as well as true. They were to live 
 a new life, in which the formal representatives 
 of the old life were out of place. 
 
 Then came the ruler of the synagogue, whose 
 little daughter, representing a spiritual affection 
 for truth, was "even now dead;." but who said, 
 " Come, and lay Thy hand upon her, and she shall 
 live." Jesus arose and followed him. But before 
 He could revive the little daughter, He must heal 
 the woman with the issue of blood who repre- 
 sents the vain longing and effort to do good, 
 without knowing how. 
 
 His garments are His presentation of good life. 
 The hem or fringe of them is the formulation of it 
 
RECOGNITION OF THE NEW LIFE. 67 
 
 in precepts of what is to be done or not to be 
 done. To touch this is to have the efforts wisely 
 directed, with no more waste. When this is 
 accomplished, the spiritual affection for truth may 
 be revived; for the essence of the spiritual as 
 distinguished from the merely natural, is to love 
 truth for the sake of use, and not for the mere 
 knowing. 
 
 The blind men, who, bound by the old formal 
 teaching, could see neither good nor truth, now, 
 under the influence of His genuine teaching and 
 life, see both plainly. And he who, possessed by 
 the old self-life, had no belief in God to confess, 
 now, from the joy of the new life, can both con- 
 fess and praise Him. 
 
 It was a new life, never before so received in 
 the church. To those who were so full of self 
 that they could conceive of no other motive, it 
 was the pretence of a supreme selfishness. But 
 the good tidings of the kingdom of heaven went 
 forth, and the Spirit of the Lord brought health 
 and happy life wherever He was received. 
 
68 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 These are briefly the vivifying effects of the 
 Lord's love for the Divine commandments, when 
 received in the plane of conduct. It brings a 
 living connection between the Divine and what 
 are otherwise dead forms. It kindles a new joy 
 in obedience to law as a duty to God. It changes 
 a merely formal service to a service of usefulness. 
 It removes infestations and discouragements, that 
 the life may be free. It subdues and controls the 
 appetites of the body. It substitutes for motives 
 of self-indulgence, an enjoyment in usefulness 
 from the Spirit of the Lord. And for many dis- 
 orderly motives it brings the love of orderly life 
 according to the truth. It is not merely repress- 
 ive ; it brings new and purer joys in the place of 
 the old. It furnishes a Divine guidance to all 
 efforts to do good ; and kindles a spiritual affec- 
 tion for the truth for the sake of use. It opens 
 the eyes to see things as they really are ; and the 
 lips to praise the God of life. 
 
 This completes the series of the effects of the 
 Lord's preaching in the natural life. 
 
THE INSTRUCTION AND GATHERING 
 
 TOGETHER OF THOSE WHO WILL 
 
 RECEIVE THE LORD. 
 
 /P T^HE apostles now first are sent forth, the 
 whole nature of their message having been 
 made plain. They are twelve, representing as 
 CHAPTER many forms of reception of the Lord's 
 message. Arranged in three groups 
 of four each, they may be regarded as, first, a 
 celestial series, from hearing to love Simon and 
 Andrew, James and John ; second, a spiritual 
 series, from understanding to the blessedness of 
 the life of truth Philip and Bartholomew, 
 Thomas and Matthew ; and, lastly, a natural 
 series, from enjoyment in doing good, to, in its 
 redeemed, regenerate form, a despairing confes- 
 sion of the failure of the self, and full ascription 
 of all to the Lord James, the son of Alpheus, 
 and Lebbeus, Simon the zealot and Judas Iscariot. 
 
 69 
 
7 
 
 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 These were to bear the message of the Lord, 
 and, from the Spirit of the Lord, do for others 
 what He had done for them. They were not to 
 turn aside to those confirmed in evil and falsity, 
 but go to those who desired to be good. They 
 were to preach of the Divine goodness and truth 
 of the Lord, and teach the way of life from Him. 
 They were to overcome evils and discouragements, 
 and teach freely the new joy in life which the 
 Lord was giving them. They were not to claim 
 any truth of life as their own, nor to seek any 
 satisfaction to self-love. They were not to be 
 both their own and the Lord's, but the Lord's 
 alone. They were to go in the love of saving, and 
 abide in the love of saving, and bring the peace of 
 the Lord and heaven to all who would receive it. 
 They were to be innocent and prudent, speaking 
 not from themselves, but as the Lord should give 
 them to speak. Evil would fight against them 
 and falsity, but the Lord would protect His own ; 
 no real harm could come to them. Suffering 
 would only make them more fully the Lord's. 
 
PREACHING FROM THE LORD. 
 
 Conflict there would necessarily be between the 
 self-life and the new life from the Lord. If one 
 adhered to the self he would lose the Lord ; cru- 
 cifying it for the Lord's sake, he would find the 
 Lord. To love the truth for the sake of truth, 
 and good for the sake of good, would make them 
 forms of truth and good, with the joy of them. 
 Every least exercise of charity from obedience to 
 the Lord would bring something of heaven into 
 the life. 
 
THE RELATION TO JOHN'S TEACHING. 
 
 ^ I ^HERE were those who loved evil and falsity, 
 who would hate and resist the Lord. But 
 there were also those in more literal states of un- 
 CHAPTER derstanding and life, who would doubt, 
 and for a time not be able to receive. 
 John in the prison represents such literal truth, 
 denied by the world as Divine law, but held as a 
 useful servant of the civil law. They who are in 
 such truth look for a more manifest kingdom to 
 justify their faith. A spiritual kingdom hardly 
 seems to them real. Hence John's question 
 " Art thou He that should come, or look we for 
 another ? " 
 
 The answer was in the good that the presence 
 of the Lord was doing to the souls and lives of 
 men ; and that they who loved the literal truth for 
 the good that it would do, should find no stum- 
 
THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 
 
 73 
 
 bling block in the truth of the Lord's Spirit, which 
 was doing much greater good. 
 
 Then follows a comparison between the literal 
 truth and the spiritual; both justified as the chil- 
 dren of wisdom ; one the necessary preparation 
 for the other. The letter of the Word, as men in- 
 terpreted it, was turned to justify everything ; it 
 was a reed shaken by every wind.* It was a rude 
 outer garment for the soft and shining truth of 
 the inner life. It was the truth from God, sent 
 before His face to prepare the way for Himself, 
 Among the teachers of such truth, the outer form 
 of which was born of men, the greatest was John, 
 who gathered its essential lessons into one, and 
 applied them to prepare men for the Lord. And 
 yet the least understanding of the spirit of the 
 Law as the Lord revealed it, was greater than he. 
 The representatives of the Lord and His kingdom 
 had lasted until John ; but now the Lord had 
 opened the kingdom itself, and men were forcibly 
 and eagerly taking possession of it. 
 
 * Arcana Coelestia, 9372. 
 
74 
 
 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 The church of that generation rejected them 
 both. As children in their plays imitate the pro- 
 cessions of the funerals and the weddings wail- 
 ing to their fellows, or piping ; and they will 
 respond to neither so John had taught the sad 
 duty of repentance, and the laying down of natu- 
 ral evil pleasure ; and the Lord had brought the 
 glad tidings of a new life of joy from a marriage 
 with His Spirit ; and they rejected both. The 
 men of the old time, of Tyre and Sidon and 
 Sodom, had sinned against the literal truth ; but 
 the people of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, 
 where the works of His love and truth had been 
 most abounding, were sinning against a far 
 greater light than they. 
 
 This part of the story closes with the thanks- 
 giving of the Lord that they who were full of the 
 wisdom and intelligence of evil, did not receive 
 Him ; but only those who were innocent, attribu- 
 ting little to self, willing to be led ; and with His 
 merciful invitation to all who were laboring with 
 the burdens of the insatiable demands of self, to 
 
THE YOKE OF LOVE. 
 
 75 
 
 take His yoke, which was the yoke of love, and 
 learn from Him to do good, in meekness and low- 
 liness of heart. So should their labor of love be 
 easy, and their burden light. 
 
CONFLICT WITH JEWISH TEACHING. 
 
 *V\ 7E have followed the beneficent effects of 
 the truth of the Lord's love with the 
 good, the preparation for their instruction and 
 CHAPTER gathering together, the teaching to 
 those in more literal states. Now we 
 come to the teaching of those who are in the 
 evils of the church. The test comes here, as 
 both before and after at Jerusalem, in the keeping 
 of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was instituted as 
 a representative of the peacefulness of the love 
 of God in men, when the labors of conflict 
 with evil are over. The right keeping of the 
 Sabbath was emphasized both by Moses and by 
 the prophets as the evidence of faithfulness to 
 God. The emphasis of the law was naturally 
 placed upon the refraining from labor the 
 ceasing to do evil, in order that they might 
 
 76 
 
THE TRUE SABBATH. 
 
 77 
 
 learn to do well. And yet there were not 
 wanting suggestions of the happy life from the 
 Spirit of the Lord, which is the true purpose 
 of the Sabbath as in the beautiful passage in 
 Isaiah : " If thou turn away thy foot from the 
 Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day ; 
 and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of Je- 
 hovah, honorable ; and shalt honor Him, not doing 
 thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, 
 nor speaking thine own words ; then shalt thou 
 delight thyself in Jehovah ; and I will cause thee 
 to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed 
 thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father ; for the 
 mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it." (Iviii. 13, 14.) 
 The Jews had hedged about the keeping of the 
 Sabbath with vexatious guards which no one could 
 fully know, but in keeping which they had the 
 sense of supreme holiness and self-satisfaction. 
 The Lord came, keeping it as the day for the 
 special revealing of the Heavenly Father's love. 
 He led His disciples through the wheat-fields. 
 He was teaching them of heavenly uses, and 
 
7 8 MATTHEWS GOSPEL. 
 
 doing these before their eyes ; and as their minds 
 were fed, they plucked also the ears of the grain, 
 which corresponded to such uses, and did eat 
 The Pharisees reproved Him for permitting what 
 was not lawful. But the Lord replied that David, 
 whose representative life He was fulfilling, took 
 of the bread of the Divine Presence, and gave 
 to his followers ; and He was doing the same. 
 
 In their synagogue there was a man whose 
 hand was withered. Their own teaching withered 
 the hand that would do good from God. They 
 asked Him, " Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath 
 days? that they might accuse Him." He an- 
 swered, "It is lawful to do well on the Sabbath 
 days," and with the Father's own love of doing 
 good He restored the withered hand. 
 
 This brought the issue plainly to view. With 
 them their own pride of holiness was the good 
 of the Sabbath, and the purpose of the church. 
 To Him the revelation of the Father's love and 
 a fuller life from it was the good of the Sabbath, 
 and the purpose of the church. With the issue 
 
REJECTED BY THE PHARISEES. 79 
 
 thus stated, the Pharisees immediately " held a 
 council against Him, how they might destroy 
 Him ; " while He withdrew Himself from thence, 
 that He might show judgment to the Gentiles, 
 who would trust in His name. To the Pharisees 
 now He was as Beelzebub, the prince of the devils ; 
 while truly His work was of the Spirit of God. 
 It was not now against human imperfections that 
 they were speaking, but against the Spirit of God. 
 And they who so spoke were evil from the roots, 
 and could never be restored. An evil and adul- 
 terous generation they were, like Jonas refusing 
 the truth of God to the suffering world ; but 
 He, meeting and overcoming the depths of their 
 evil, would fulfil the mission which they had 
 refused. 
 
 The Gentiles would receive the truth reasonably 
 presented, and would repent ; but the Jews would 
 not. Among the Gentiles was affection for the 
 truth of heaven ; but not with them. 
 
 They had the Word of God, and professed to 
 know it ; but they had perverted it to confirm 
 
8o MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 worse evils than those who had it not. Yet there 
 were those who would be brother, and sister, and 
 mother to Him sharing His end of good, His 
 affection for truth, His love of doing the will of 
 the Father in heaven. 
 
 There follows immediately, " the same day/ 1 
 the parable of the Sower, and of the several 
 CHAPTER kinds of rejection and reception that 
 the Word would meet ; also of the tares 
 and the wheat, which must grow together until 
 the harvest ; and many parables illustrating the 
 preciousness of the kingdom of heaven, and its 
 separation from the evil. 
 
 Then is recounted His rejection at Nazareth, 
 here called " His own country," the beginning 
 of His rejection in Galilee ; of which it is only 
 to be said that as His own sojourn in that place 
 of Seclusion in the tribe of Zebulon represented 
 His labor of uniting the good of the Father's love 
 with the truth, so there was there a perverse 
 uniting of evil with falsity in those who were 
 related only to the outer nature which He was 
 putting off. 
 
DEATH OF JOHN. 
 
 Herod says of Jesus, " This is John the 
 Baptist; he is risen from the dead; and 
 therefore mighty works do show forth themselves 
 CHAPTER * n nmi >" which, in an important sense, 
 
 XIV * was the truth. 
 
 A study of his genealogy I think will show 
 that "that fox," Herod Antipas, son of Herod 
 the Great, stands for and was the lust of falsify- 
 ing, deceiving, for the sake of evil pleasure ; that 
 Herodias was and stands for love for living the 
 evil according to such deceitful falsity ; and that 
 her daughter Salome, the Peaceful, stands for en- 
 tirely shameless, unrestrained, enjoyment in evil. 
 
 Herod was a fox, with no real regard for the 
 Divine law except for the sake of appearances. 
 As a Roman governor he must pretend to esteem 
 it ; and on this account, as is said in another Gos- 
 
 81 
 
82 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 pel, "feared John, and kept him safe," and "was 
 perplexed" turning as a fox does; and though 
 he "would have put him to death, he feared the 
 multitude, because they counted him as a prophet." 
 But the day of the glorification of his self-intelli- 
 gence arrived, when, intoxicated by flattery, the 
 delight of unrestrained enjoyment of evil carried 
 him away, and he promised to share his kingdom 
 with it. The price of such enjoyment was the 
 total rejection of the Divine commands as of any 
 restraining authority. There was some regret in 
 yielding the appearance of regard for them for 
 hypocrites give up their pretences reluctantly; it 
 leaves the fox without a hole but evil and flat- 
 tery carried the day, and John was beheaded. 
 
 His disciples burying the body, and going and 
 telling Jesus, meant that the truth of the Divine 
 law of life, thus rejected by the world, the Lord 
 would raise up. For it is a necessity, in order 
 that the human race may exist upon the earth, 
 that somewhere the Divine Commandments should 
 be known and kept as the laws of God. 
 
JESUS REVIVES JOHN'S WORK. 
 
 "THEREFORE immediately Jesus departed 
 into a desert place apart. It was into the 
 wild land of Bashan that He went, in the borders 
 of which at Beth-abara, or Bethania (Roman, 
 Batanea) John had baptized, and Jesus had been 
 baptized by him. And here in His Divine way 
 He reoccupied the field from which John had 
 perished. 
 
 John had come neither eating bread nor drink- 
 ing wine. The Son of Man came eating and 
 drinking. John purified this natural plane of rest 
 and refreshment, from its self-indulgent excesses. 
 The Lord also had in this same country subdued 
 the swinish spirits. And now the Lord taught of 
 the kingdom of heaven and the order of heaven, 
 and fed the multitude with bread from heaven. 
 He filled the natural plane of life with its orderly 
 
 83 
 
84 MATTHEWS GOSPEL. 
 
 enjoyments, that it might give proper and full 
 support to the spiritual life. 
 
 From the account in John's Gospel we learn 
 that Jesus perceived that the people, excited by 
 the miracle, would come and take him by force 
 to make Him a King. The Lord "constrained 
 His disciples to get into a ship, and to go before 
 Him unto the other side while He sent the multi- 
 tudes away." The wind was contrary, and the 
 ship was tossed with waves, the disciples laboring 
 vainly to bring it to land. The tumult of their 
 own natural hopes was imaged thus ; and the 
 Lord's labor to quiet the tumult, by His praying 
 alone on the mountain. With His own heart 
 quiet, He came to them in the end of the night, 
 walking upon the sea. The disciples' faith and 
 the limits of it were shown by Peter's attempt to 
 go to Him on the sea. He believed in Him as 
 the Messiah Who was to come into the world ; 
 but this was not enough to save him from the 
 sea of worldliness. The power that lifted him 
 out of this was "of a truth . . . the Son of 
 God." 
 
CONFLICT WITH THE TRADITIONS. 85 
 
 They came to the land, and more wonderful 
 powers of healing than ever went forth from 
 Him. 
 
 But it was a Passover time, which is a time of 
 judgment as well as of deliverance. And we 
 learn from John that when the people heard that 
 it was only the bread of heaven that He would 
 give them, and not the riches of the world 
 separate from heaven, "many of His disciples 
 went back and walked no more with Him " 
 (JOHN vi.). It was the beginning of the end in 
 Galilee. 
 
 It is characteristic of Matthew's account to 
 present here the irreconcilable conflict between 
 CHAPTER tne traditions of the elders and the 
 commandments of God. The "scribes 
 and Pharisees which were of Jerusalem " were 
 the representatives of the traditions as received 
 from Jerusalem in Galilee. They blamed His 
 disciples for their neglect of the formal washing 
 of the hands, by which they themselves preserved 
 their supreme holiness ; but they made the com- 
 
86 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 mand to honor father and mother of none effect 
 by their tradition both as regarded natural 
 parents and the love of God and the truth of 
 the church which are the spiritual Father and 
 Mother. They made no account of the evil 
 thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, 
 false witness, blasphemies, which proceeded out 
 of the heart; but condemned for eating with 
 unwashen hands. They were a plant which the 
 Heavenly Father had not planted, and which 
 should be rooted up. 
 
MISSION TO THE GENTILES. 
 
 T TE left Capernaum, and departed into the 
 neighboring coasts of Tyre and Sidon ; 
 finding in this Gentile country the acknowledg- 
 ment that the God of Israel was the living God, 
 from Whom the Gentiles had the crumbs of 
 heavenly knowledge on which they subsisted ; 
 finding also that the evils of the church were 
 destroying the Gentile affection for the truth of 
 the church, which was restored by His presence 
 and His Divine fulfilment of the Word. 
 
 Once more He returns to the other side of 
 the sea of Galilee, recovering the lame, blind, 
 dumb, maimed, and many others, quickening all 
 the natural powers of mind and body to know 
 and serve and glorify the God of Israel. 
 
 Once more He fed a multitude upon the 
 mountain slope in Bashan. But it appears to 
 
 87 
 
88 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 have been a multitude gathered from the Gentile 
 cities of Decapolis, not as before following from 
 Gennesaret. With five loaves and two fishes He 
 before had filled five thousand men, leaving 
 twelve baskets full of fragments representing 
 the abundance of truth of happy life that He 
 could open to those that had the Word. But 
 they were so full of worldly expectations and 
 desires, that they rejected Him Who brought 
 them only the bread that came down from 
 heaven. But now of the Gentile multitude He 
 fed four thousand with seven loaves and a few 
 little fishes, and they took up of the fragments 
 that .were left, seven baskets full. It was a 
 different reception of the truth of heaven now, 
 both with the disciples who had passed through 
 the former temptation and been warned by it, 
 and by the more simple Gentile people who 
 partook with them. The seven loaves are such 
 truth of heaven as brings the Sabbath state of 
 conjunction with the Lord after temptation. The 
 four thousand are those who can receive the 
 
THE SIGNS OF THE SKY. 89 
 
 good of heaven from the Lord as well as the 
 truth about it. The seven baskets left are 
 the holy memories of such communion with the 
 Lord. 
 
 Not to Capernaum, but to "the coasts of 
 Magdala" Jesus now turned, meeting there the 
 CHAPTER Pharisees with the Sadducees rep- 
 resentatives of the pride of holiness 
 and the worldliness of the Jews. They knew the 
 signs of the sky, and could discern the red sky 
 of the evening from the red and lowering morn- 
 ing; but the state of the church they could 
 not discern. The reddening of the sun by the 
 evening exhalations of earth might mean only 
 the normal state of external enjoyments follow- 
 ing the labors of the day. But the morning sky 
 red and lowering, ready to precipitate when the 
 sun lifted the heavy air, meant the filling the 
 interiors of the mind with the world and self 
 instead of the Lord and heaven. This they took 
 for a day of beauty, when really the storm of 
 judgment was close at hand. Jonas was a sign 
 
9 
 
 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 to them that the truth was now to be preached 
 to the Gentiles for their salvation, while the 
 Jews would be left desolate and angry. 
 
 With a word of warning to His disciples, this 
 part of the story closes. They were to shun 
 all thought of eminence, either spiritual or natural, 
 as His disciples. The good that He gave, both 
 spiritual and natural, was abundant for all. It 
 was intended for uses to all, and not for the 
 exclusive eminence of any one. 
 
THE FULNESS OF THE DIVINE IN THE 
 NATURAL LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 XVII. 
 
 TT is probable that at this point, when the 
 work in Galilee was drawing to a close, 
 occurred the visit to Jerusalem at the Feast of 
 Tabernacles. In this feast was cele- 
 brated the full ripening of the fruits 
 of the year, especially of the oil and the wine. 
 It represented the ripening of the regenerate life, 
 especially as to its wisdom of charity and of the 
 mercy of the Lord. In the Lord the observance 
 of it was a representative of the ripening of the 
 Divine Human life, and the preparation to reject 
 that which had been only the means of receiving 
 and maturing the Divine. It marks the begin- 
 ning of the last winter of His life, which ended 
 with the cross, the resurrection, the ascension. 
 With all this fully in view, He returned to 
 
MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 Caesarea Philippi, under the slopes of the noble 
 Hermon, whose snows are the source of the 
 Jordan, and in some sort typify the formulas 
 of the Ancient Church, whence flow the cleansing 
 waters of the letter of our Scriptures. 
 
 There Peter renewed and deepened the con- 
 fession called forth by the stilling of the sea, 
 saying, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
 living God." And the Lord, accepting this as 
 the truth, and the foundation of His church, 
 nevertheless added the needed forewarning of 
 suffering and death before the Divine presence 
 with men could be perfect. He added also that 
 a similar loss of the natural life all must endure 
 who would be His disciples. 
 
 Then up into the high mountain He led His 
 three disciples, that they might see there the 
 ripening Divine Human which was His inner 
 self, and needed now not much but the rejection 
 of the finite body to be the presence of God 
 with men. 
 
 The mountain, no doubt, was Hermon, the 
 
THE GLORY OF THE WORD. 
 
 93 
 
 southern terminus of the Anti-Lebanon range. 
 The meaning of this range seems to be closely 
 related to that of the Lebanon, whose forests 
 of cedar it probably once shared. In relation 
 to Palestine when occupied by the Jewish 
 Church, it seems to stand for the wisdom of 
 the Ancient Church in its relation to the letter 
 of the Jewish Scriptures on a much higher 
 level than the Jewish Church, but now to it a 
 memory of representatives and formal precepts, 
 whence most of its laws and ceremonies were 
 derived. Whether that be so or not, the high 
 mountain on earth represents a high mountain 
 in heaven ; which at that time could be no other 
 than the mountain of the Ancient Heavens. To 
 open the eyes of the disciples to see Him there 
 was to cause them to see Him as the angels 
 of these heavens saw Him, His face shining 
 as the sun, and His raiment white as the light. 
 The appearance of Moses and Elias with Him 
 shows that it was as the Word fulfilled that 
 He so appeared, that it was the fulfilling of 
 
MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 the Word that had made Him what He was; 
 and it was that fulfilment of the Word which 
 as to its interiors did shine as the sun, and as 
 to its exteriors was white as the light. 
 
 The faith of the early church, represented 
 by Peter, was delighted with such glimpses as 
 they had of the Lord's fulfilment of the Scrip- 
 tures, and would have made them permanent if 
 they could. But they were not prepared for 
 the opening of the spiritual sense; nor for the 
 acknowledgment of the Lord as the Sun of 
 heaven, the God of heaven and earth. They 
 descended into the letter, whence once more, as 
 at the baptism, came the voice, " This is My be- 
 loved Son, in Whom I am well pleased." Even 
 this is more than the church has been able to 
 receive or bear ; and in Infinite gentleness the 
 Lord has touched them, and they have known 
 Him as Jesus only. 
 
 It was an astonishment to the disciples, and 
 brought up the doubt that Elias must first come. 
 The answer is that the letter of the Word must 
 
THE FIRST IMPERFECT FAITH. 
 
 95 
 
 indeed first be established ; and those who reject 
 that will reject the Lord, but those who receive 
 that will receive the Lord ; for He is the Word. 
 Under the mountain they met the multitude, 
 and the father whose son was lunatic and sore 
 vexed, possessed of a devil whom the disciples 
 could not cast out. The father is the good of 
 the former representative church, watching anx- 
 iously over the truth of the new Christian 
 Church. That truth almost from the beginning 
 has been lunatic and sore vexed, falling oft into 
 the fires of self-love and oft into the waters of 
 faith alone. And the church has not been able 
 to set it right because of her lack of faith in 
 her Lord as the God of heaven and earth. With 
 even the rudiments of such faith, the mountain 
 of self might be removed, and the sense of 
 living from the Lord alone might come ; and no 
 good would be impossible. Howbeit this was not 
 to come for long ages, until the church should 
 be humbled by prayer and fasting. In a larger 
 sense the love of being one's own had come 
 
9 6 
 
 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 upon the race as a child, and was not to be 
 cast out by faith like that of the apostles, nor 
 by any less faith than that the Lord is our 
 Heavenly Father, God Himself with us. And 
 this must have its roots in the desire to be 
 wholly His, and not one's own. 
 
 Again the Lord speaks of His own death, 
 which was necessary in order that nothing might 
 limit the presence and work of the Divine Love 
 in Him. 
 
 He acknowledges indeed that the truth by 
 which His Human was re-formed to be the hab- 
 itation of God with men, was learned from the 
 Word and the church by His natural love of 
 learning. The fish He permitted to pay tribute 
 for Him. But He was now the Son of God, the 
 love itself of God with men, and needed not to 
 be redeemed by the truth. 
 
LAST APPEALS IN GALILEE. 
 
 pHERE follows now the series of discourses 
 which go so deep into the hearts of men, 
 and reveal so deeply the saving love of the Father 
 CHAPTER m t ne Lord. The disciples were think- 
 ing of greatness in the kingdom of 
 heaven a thought which has never yet left 
 the Christian Church. But the Lord told them 
 that to be a little child, to claim nothing for 
 self and desire nothing for self, was the great- 
 ness of heaven ; and to lose this innocence was 
 to sink into the depths of the sea. 
 
 Experience of evil would come with the devel- 
 opment of the natural life, but it was to be 
 rejected as soon as recognized. Whatever ap- 
 pealed -to one's self-love, by allurement or flat- 
 tery or self indulgence, was to be rejected, that 
 the life might be simple, from God, and obe- 
 
 97 
 
98 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 dient. Whatever suggested a thought of evil 
 with desire, was to be rejected, that the idea of 
 God and heaven might ever be before the mind. 
 Innocence as of little children would always be- 
 hold the face of the Father in Heaven. It was 
 such innocence as this that the Lord had come 
 to recover. It existed in the ninety and nine in 
 heaven ; but here upon earth it had almost per- 
 ished. In its tenderness arid gratefulness when 
 rescued He would greatly rejoice. 
 
 He had come as a brother to brethren to 
 save and not to condemn to show them their 
 fault and their danger, that they might hear and 
 be saved. He was ready to illustrate in every 
 way, by what was good and what was true and 
 what was practically useful or necessary. He 
 was ready to appeal to all that was known of 
 good life or of the teachings of God. If all 
 was rejected, men still were not condemned ; they 
 themselves refused the good of heaven. What 
 they accepted or refused on earth, they would 
 accept or refuse for ever. 
 
ENDLESS FORGIVENESS. 
 
 99 
 
 Thus was He working for men, and so must 
 His disciples work. And wherever they worked 
 from both love and truth, His spirit would be 
 in them, and the Divine blessing would be in 
 their work. 
 
 The spirit of forgiveness is the supreme test 
 of the quality of the church. The faith of the 
 church, represented by Peter, was ready to for- 
 give as a duty as often as it was required. But 
 true charity would forgive endlessly. So does 
 the Lord forgive. For all that one has and is 
 he is indebted to the Lord, and he can pay the 
 debt only by devoting all that he has and is to 
 the Lord's service. The Lord forgives him the 
 debt gives him his freedom, that he may pay 
 as he will. If he from his heart forgives others, 
 his powers are in the Lord's service, and he is 
 paying the debt as he can. But if he does not 
 forgive, even the Infinite Mercifulness cannot 
 save him from the torment of a cankered heart 
 and acrid thought, which no kindness can relieve. 
 
THE LAW OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE, 
 
 'THHUS Jesus finished His work in Galilee. He 
 had given them the Christian law, which 
 was the law of the Heavenly Father's love. He 
 CHAPTER k ac * brought the love of the Father 
 down into the plane of obedience to 
 the truth. He had subdued the disorderly nat- 
 ural appetites ; had given the love of orderly 
 living, with knowledge of genuine good, and 
 affection for truth for the sake of good. He 
 had gathered together and instructed those who 
 received these things. He had exposed the er- 
 rors and harmfulness of the teachings of the 
 church, and set men free from bondage to them. 
 He had taught and illustrated the exceeding 
 goodness of the heavenly life and of its enjoy- 
 ments. He had done all that Infinite gentleness 
 and Infinite wisdom could do to save men. The 
 
 100 
 
THE SPIRITUAL LINK. 
 
 Gentiles had received Him. The church in Gal- 
 ilee, following the scribes and Pharisees which 
 were of Jerusalem, had rejected Him ; but great 
 multitudes were gathered out from it who fol- 
 lowed Him, and were healed by Him. 
 
 He left Galilee, taking with Him a multitude 
 of those who believed on Him taking also His 
 own gains of the Divine saving love, with its 
 power of beneficent work in human life and 
 came into the country beyond the Jordan, through 
 which lay His road to Jerusalem. This road was 
 parallel to the one through Samaria, and was the 
 connecting link between Galilee and Judea.* 
 
 *In one of the journeys to Jerusalem, He "sent messengers 
 before His face ; and they went, and entered into a city of the 
 Samaritans, to make ready for Him. And they did not receive 
 Him, because His face was as though He would go to Jerusa- 
 lem." Of this Swedenborg says : " The city of the Samaritans 
 signifies the false doctrine of those who reject the Lord; because 
 the Samaritans did not receive Him " (Apocalypse Explained, 
 n. 223 ; see also 391,653). When false doctrines prevail, His 
 teaching is not received ; but it may be, in the parallel Gentile 
 state of good works with desire for spiritual instruction. The 
 road on the other side of the Jordan was mostly through the 
 territory of Gad (a Troop), which signifies an abundance of good 
 works. 
 
102 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 Much more is told by John and Luke of the 
 work in Samaria and of the journeys between 
 Galilee and Judea, which represent the prepara- 
 tion of the spiritual mind to see clearly the rela- 
 tion between the Divine in the inmost and the 
 outward life, and to be the uniting medium be- 
 tween the celestial and the natural. In Matthew 
 and Mark, only so much is told as is necessary to 
 establish the connection. 
 
 And first comes the teaching about the single- 
 ness and permanence of marriage in answer to 
 the question of those who united the truth re- 
 vealed from God with the lusts of self-love. To 
 them He said substantially, that every truth from 
 God was one with good in God, and must be 
 united with its own good in men men leaving 
 the evils of their natural inheritance and desire, 
 and cleaving to the good from God. The hard- 
 ness of men's hearts separated truth from good ; 
 and this must be permitted, that men may be 
 regenerated in freedom ; but it was not so from 
 the beginning, nor is it of the Divine purpose. 
 
DEGREES IN MARRIAGE. 
 
 103 
 
 In three degrees men may be pure in heart, and 
 may come into the marriage of truth from God 
 with love from God : they may receive truth 
 immediately into the life and thus grow up in the 
 heavenly marriage ; or they may receive it intel- 
 ligently into the understanding, and come into 
 the life of charity by living it faithfully ; or they 
 may come into some degree of purity and of 
 spiritual marriage by a simple obedience as of 
 themselves, "for the kingdom of heaven's sake." 
 In one of these degrees the good love from God 
 must, be united with the truth, or man has 
 nothing of the kingdom of heaven in him. 
 
 Then follows the bringing of the little children, 
 "that He should put His hands on them, and 
 pray." For the Divine is communicated to those 
 who are innocent, neither claiming nor seeking 
 aught for themselves, but depending wholly on 
 their Heavenly Father, as His little children. 
 
 And now follows a most important lesson for 
 all to learn, who have been diligent in acquiring 
 the truth and learning to live it that there 
 
104 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 must be no pride in knowing the truth, nor in 
 faithful abundant good life from it, that there 
 may be a sense of conjunction with God in it. 
 The thought of these as one's own, or of the 
 possibility of having any good as one's own, is 
 incompatible with the sense of living from God 
 which constitutes the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 The disciples as yet knew of no other way 
 than to do good of themselves. The Lord alone, 
 from the Divine in Him, knew the Divine way, 
 the way of conjunction between God and man. 
 
 Peter's question showed the willingness of 
 those who are living the truth, to give up the 
 self-life for the Lord, and yet also the expecta- 
 tion of reward. The Lord's answer taught that 
 the truths they lived should, when reborn of God, 
 share in the Divine glory. And that just so far 
 as they gave up the possessions of self and the 
 care for self they should receive what was inno- 
 cent and deep, and full of life from God.* 
 
 * Apocalypse Explained, 724. 
 
HE A VEN FROM THE LORD'S MERCY. 
 
 I0 5 
 
 And then in the beautiful parable of the 
 laborers in the vineyard, He taught that not 
 CHAPTER according to the labors in acquiring 
 truths and living them necessary 
 though these may be are the rewards of 
 heaven ; but according to the innocence, whether 
 preserved unharmed from childhood, or regained 
 through toil. And those who think they have 
 earned much, will receive heaven more tardily 
 than they who know they have earned nothing, 
 but receive of the Divine Mercy that to which 
 they, being only evil, have no claim. 
 
 The Lord's own thorough surrender of that 
 which could claim aught for self was expressed 
 in what He now again foretold as His purpose 
 in going up to Jerusalem. The very slight im- 
 pression made upon the disciples, the very slight 
 impression it has ever made upon the Christian 
 Church, is shown by the petition now offered by 
 the mother of Zebedee's children * that her two 
 
 * It will be remembered that it was Zebedee who remained in 
 the ship with the hired servants, when James and John followed 
 
io6 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 sons might sit, one on the right hand and one 
 on the left, in His kingdom. The Lord answered 
 that they would be purified in following Him, even 
 as He was purified, and according as they were 
 prepared they would receive from the Father. 
 And then He emphasized the last and supreme 
 lesson of the journey, that a gentle humility 
 which had no regard to self, but would minister 
 and serve without any restraint or limit, was the 
 only greatness He possessed, the only greatness 
 He had to bestow. 
 
 These, then, are the lessons of the last journey 
 to Jerusalem. They will be seen to belong to 
 the inner mind, where is the spiritual or truly 
 rational thought, which brings the outer life of 
 good conduct into relation with the inner pres- 
 ence of the Lord. They teach the unity of the 
 truth from God with the love of God ; the ne- 
 cessity for innocence, the ascribing of nothing 
 
 the Lord ; and now the mother of his children seeks their great- 
 ness. So does the zeal of natural affection for even the noblest 
 truths of the church, mingle the hope of greatness with the love 
 of them. 
 
LESSONS OF THE JOURNEY. 107 
 
 to self, that the love of God which is heaven 
 may enter. They teach that pride in the truth 
 and in faithful labor is a hindrance to happy life 
 from the Spirit of God ; and that the acknowledg- 
 ment that good is of the Divine mercy alone is 
 the essential condition of receiving good ; also 
 that the essence of the Divine goodness is a 
 gentleness that loves to serve only, and would 
 perish if the thought of greatness should intrude. 
 These surely are just the lessons needed to open 
 the plane of good conduct to the sense of life 
 from God. And it will not have escaped notice 
 that they are in substance those of the sixth 
 chapter of Matthew not to have any reflection 
 upon self, or sense of merit, in good works ; to 
 keep the heart open to the Lord with innocent 
 acknowledgment that all good is from Him ; to 
 bear willingly and cheerfully the chastening ne- 
 cessary to remove the self ; to care only for the 
 Lord and heaven, rejecting self and the world; 
 to be trustful and innocent as the birds and the 
 lilies, caring only to do the work of each day from 
 
io8 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 the Spirit of the Lord, and trusting all else to 
 Him.* 
 
 The opening the eyes of the blind, is now the 
 revelation of the beautiful life of service from the 
 Spirit of God, made possible by the presence of 
 that Spirit in the Divine Human of the Lord. 
 It is the opening of heaven to those who before 
 saw nothing but the earth. 
 
 * Luke places a large part of this teaching, together with 
 much more, in this same region beyond the Jordan not in the 
 story of this last journey, but in another of the same winter. 
 
OF THE 
 
 { UNIVERSITY ) 
 
 OF 
 
 EXPLORATION OF THE TEMPLE 
 OF GOD. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 XXI. 
 
 TT 7E have dwelt long upon the Lord's work 
 on the plane of conduct, and have fol- 
 lowed His exploration of the plane of motives, by 
 which the conduct is connected with 
 the Divine. Now we come to the 
 direct relation of the soul with the Divine Pres- 
 ence. That Presence existed representatively in 
 the temple at Jerusalem. It had been felt in an 
 innocent unrational way by the earliest church 
 upon earth. It had been known rationally, its 
 quality perceived in contrast with the inner self, 
 by no one. A new development of the rational 
 faculty, capable of apprehending these deeper 
 things in the soul, was necessary before this 
 could be grasped, and the inmost conscious mind 
 set in order for the dwelling-place of the Divine. 
 
 109 
 
MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 This rational development then existed in the 
 Lord alone, and is only now slowly taking place in 
 the human race. And this is meant by the colt, 
 the foal of an ass, on which* never man sat, on 
 which Jesus now came to explore the temple and 
 the church at Jerusalem. The ass also was with 
 the colt ; for the new understanding is supported 
 by the old, and is not different from it except in 
 being a new development of it. As a King the 
 Lord came, the King of the daughter of Zion, 
 because He was now the supreme truth which 
 was to set humanity from its inmosts in true 
 relation to God. They put their clothes upon 
 the colt, or spread them in the way, and cut 
 down branches from the trees and strewed them 
 in the way, representing the submission of all 
 forms of life and all perceptions of truth to this 
 supreme truth of the relation of man to God. 
 They cried, " Hosanna to the Son of David; 
 Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the 
 Lord ; Hosanna in the Highest," because in Him 
 and through Him God was now the Saviour of 
 men. 
 
APPROPRIA TION OF THE DIVINE. 1 1 1 
 
 In the temple He found those that sold and 
 bought, the money-changers and them that sold 
 doves true examples and representatives of the 
 human self in its disposition to make gain of 
 holy truths and holy goods, to appropriate to 
 self and make gain from even the light and the 
 love of the Spirit of God. 
 
 He healed there the blind and the lame 
 those who knew not and yet would know the 
 reality of the Divine Presence revealed only in 
 Him ; and those who felt their inability to live 
 from it, as no man could but from Him. And 
 there the children cried Hosanna, in innocent 
 recognition. But the chief priests and scribes, 
 representing the selfish pride in holy good and in 
 holy truth from God, were sore displeased. 
 
 In Bethany, where Lazarus was, representing 
 a new charity from the Spirit of God, He lodged ; 
 and from there returned to the city. He hun- 
 gered for something good from those with whom 
 the Presence of God vainly rested. But they 
 were a tree with knowledge from the Word, but 
 
!I2 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 no good of life. And now their end was come, 
 and the kingdom was to depart from them. 
 
 He tested them by their recognition of the 
 Divine authority of the truth of life which John 
 taught ; but to them it had no such authority. 
 And to whom that basis of acknowledgment is 
 lacking, there can be no recognition of the Divine 
 in deeper truth. 
 
 Those who had sinned through love of the 
 world and of pleasure, suffered themselves to be 
 corrected and saved. But to those who professed 
 to love holy things, but instead of correcting their 
 lives by them used them to justify and exalt self, 
 no salvation was possible. 
 
 The vineyard of God had been placed in their 
 care, but every demand for the fruits of it they 
 had resented ; and now they would destroy Him 
 Whom the Father's Love had sent to save them 
 Who was that saving Love itself teaching and 
 reasoning with them. 
 
 And yet He Whom they rejected would be the 
 corner stone of a new chureh which now would 
 
THE MARRIAGE FEAST. 
 
 rise as they should pass away. Some might 
 unheedingly stumble upon it, as did the publicans 
 and harlots, and would suffer for their heedless- 
 ness ; but they upon whom it should fall, in total 
 condemnation of their misuse of the truth, would 
 be ground to powder. 
 
 They saw now that they must destroy Him, or 
 they would be destroyed. 
 
 But Jesus continued, in further exploration of 
 their relation to the Divine : In Him a marriage 
 CHAPTER w i tn tne Divine was offered to all, and 
 the good things of heaven by means 
 of it ; but they despised it. The simple and 
 uninstructed would be gathered in, and those who 
 received instruction would be clothed in the gar- 
 ments of heaven, but those who trusted in their 
 own goodness would be cast out. 
 
 Thus ended the Divine exploration of the 
 church which should be the means of conjunction 
 between God and men. They made the Lord's 
 house of prayer a den of thieves. They had the 
 Word, but bore not its fruit. They kept not its 
 
MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 teachings of life either literal or spiritual. They 
 were unfaithful husbandmen, rendering nothing 
 of the fruitfulness for which the vineyard had 
 been entrusted to them. They were rejecting 
 Him Who was the very Presence of God with 
 men, and upon Whom the church must be built. 
 They were refusing the heavenly marriage, and 
 the good of heaven, which God in Him had pro- 
 vided for them. 
 
 But falsity confirmed by perversions of the 
 Scriptures, does not yield without an attempt to 
 destroy the truth. The love of self, in the form 
 of Pharisaical pride in holiness, combines with 
 the love of the world, and presently with the love 
 of the body only, to ensnare Him with their false 
 reasonings. The first two bring the question 
 about tribute to Caesar. Neither cares anything 
 for God except in name. They are in antagonism 
 with each other, the one .caring only for a free 
 and easy life in the world as the highest good, 
 and the other for a self-holiness apart from the 
 contamination of the world. But they unite to 
 
TRIBUTE TO 
 
 ensnare Him Who is the Presence of God with 
 men. If He permits tribute to Caesar, the pride 
 of holiness in the name of God will flame, and 
 condemn Him as not of God. If He forbids it, 
 He is not of the world, and should be condemned 
 and rejected by the world. 
 
 He answers them with an even justice which 
 silences them both. From their own lips He 
 gathers the confession that the forms of life are 
 of necessity from the world, though the substance 
 of good is from God. And so was He. The 
 stamp He had, the forms of truth He learned, as 
 the Son of Man. The life and substance were 
 of God. And so should be the church with them 
 in the world and adapted to the world, yet 
 of God. 
 
 The lovers of the body only, who deny that 
 there is any life apart from the body, next attack 
 Him. They tell Him of seven brethren, who 
 may stand for themselves, mere forms of bodily 
 lusts ; of a woman, who is the truth of the church 
 with them, a church of the body only, with no 
 
n6 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 spiritual internal. Serving the body only the 
 truth of the church is united with f its lusts, and 
 in the end is totally destroyed, so that neither to 
 it nor to them is there any resurrection to life. 
 This was their condition. Out of their own 
 mouth they were judged. Had they known the 
 Scriptures which are the truth of life from God, 
 and the power of God which is the love of the 
 good life according to the truth, they would have 
 entered into the heavenly marriage on earth, and 
 in the resurrection would have been angels of 
 God in heaven. For all who are in the marriage 
 of good and truth of any degree of the child's 
 innocence represented by Abraham, of the intel- 
 ligence represented by Isaac, or the obedience 
 represented by Jacob live in heaven with heav- 
 enly life from God, though they who are spirit- 
 ually dead acknowledge Him not. 
 
 The account in Mark indicates that it was 
 of good intent that the " lawyer " now asked 
 Him, Which is the great commandment of the 
 Law? to learn what He held as the essential 
 
NO LONGER THE SON OF DA VID. 
 
 117 
 
 truth. And He answered : " Thou shalt love the 
 Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
 soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first 
 and great commandment. And the second is like 
 unto it : Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 
 On these two commandments hang all the Law 
 and the Prophets " the absolutely unselfish 
 commandments of the Divine life. 
 
 And then He asked them in turn : " What 
 think ye of Christ ? Whose Son is He ? " And 
 their answer showed that there was nought in 
 the Christ but what was of them, that they would 
 recognize ; while His reply was, that the Divine 
 in Him would put all that they valued under foot. 
 
 Their effort to entangle Him was ended. It 
 had brought from Him the truth of God by which 
 they should be judged that the church should 
 be in the world, and adapted to the world, yet of 
 God : that the truth of the church with them 
 was made to serve their own lusts, and was 
 destroyed thereby ; whereas the truth of God 
 should be united with the love of God in a mar- 
 
n8 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 riage unto eternal life : that the law of love to 
 God and the neighbor was the Divine law of 
 heaven and earth : that the Divine of God 
 should rule in all things, and whatever is of 
 man should serve in the lowest place. 
 
 So clear and simple is this truth of God, that 
 the subtleties of evil can make no answer, but 
 must submit to be judged by it. 
 
THE CONDEMNATION. 
 
 A ND now their judgment follows, which would 
 free the simple-hearted from their yoke : 
 They had the law, and taught truth from it for 
 the common people, even if they perverted it 
 CHAPTER f r themselves. Their requirements 
 were heavy for people who must live 
 in the world, but they separated themselves from 
 the world, and bore none of the burdens.* They 
 taught truth showily, that they might be seen of 
 men, and have honor as teachers of men. The 
 Lord's followers should not try to be leaders, but 
 brethren, loving the Lord, children of one Father. 
 They should not care to be great, but to serve 
 and do good. But they who were in pride of 
 truth and of holiness, neither sought the life of 
 heaven, nor permitted others to seek it, but 
 
 * Arcana Coelestia, 9825 ; Apocalypse Explained, 395. 
 
 119 
 
MATTHEWS GOSPEL. 
 
 turned the faces of all to themselves.* Those 
 who were in good and desired truth they misled. 
 They had the Word and should have led to God 
 and heaven, but instead they led to hell, even by 
 teachings which they themselves did not believe. 
 The gold and the gift which were of men they 
 held to be more holy, and swearing by them more 
 binding, than the altar and the temple when 
 yet the altar with its fires stood for the Lord 
 uniting men to Himself, which alone gives holi- 
 ness to the gifts of affection ; and the temple 
 for His teaching of truth, which makes holy the 
 good of their lives. 
 
 Their own wills were their standard, not the 
 Lord. Outward symbols were to them of sole im- 
 portance, while the essentials judgment, mercy, 
 and faith they cared not for. They strained out 
 and condemned small errors of appearances only, 
 but fundamental false principles of morality, like 
 making purity in mere ceremonials the essential 
 of life, they accepted. The outward forms or 
 
 *See Arcana Coelestia, 4844; Apocalypse Explained, 1121. 
 
THE SUM OF ALL EVIL. I2 i 
 
 receptacles of truth and goodness were all they 
 attended to, not heeding the falsity and evil with 
 which they were filled.* Woe was denounced 
 upon them because they were of hell and tended 
 thither. They professed the extremest righteous- 
 ness of life toward God and men, but within were 
 full of hypocrisy and iniquity. They knew the 
 wickedness of their fathers in rejecting the warn- 
 ings of God, yet they themselves were rejecting 
 and destroying much more. The Lord Himself, 
 with His teachings of truth and of good, was 
 the fulfilment of all that the prophets had repre- 
 sented. Abel the keeper of sheep stands for 
 those who keep charity and mutual love ; and 
 Zachariasf who warned the people who were 
 serving idols and representatives of evil, "Why 
 transgress ye the commandment of Jehovah ? " 
 stands for such warning of evil. Both the love 
 and the warning they had in. Him, and were abso- 
 lutely rejecting them. 
 
 * Apocalypse Explained, 659. 
 t 2 CHRON. xxiv. 20-22; Apocalypse Explained, 329, 624, 655. 
 
122 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 The Love of God in Him was yearning over 
 them, and would instruct and protect them; but 
 they rejected both its kindness and its truth. 
 The church with them was a waste. A new 
 church must now be raised up which should 
 acknowledge the Divine in His Human, and 
 receive the good and truth of heaven through 
 that acknowledgment. 
 
 Thus ended the teaching in the temple, the 
 public teaching of Jesus in Jerusalem. He had 
 shown that they who had the Word, and upon 
 whom rested the duties of the Church of God, 
 and whose temple and altar represented the 
 Presence of God with men, had nothing of that 
 Presence in their hearts, had nothing of the Word 
 in their lives, did nothing of the duty of the 
 church ; but were destroying every truth and 
 good from God. Also that now the time was 
 come for their mere shell of a church to be ended, 
 and a new church to be established which should 
 rest upon Him, and receive of the truth and love 
 of God from Him. 
 
PREDICTIONS OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 CHURCH. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 XXIV. 
 
 HPHE Lord had explored the church at Jerusa- 
 lem, where was the presence of God and 
 heaven in holy representatives, and had shown 
 that the love and the truth of that 
 Divine and heavenly Presence were 
 totally destroyed in the church that the holy 
 representatives were a husk only, with no good 
 fruit, but decay and corruption within. The 
 Jews were doing nothing of the use of a church 
 in making known and interpreting to mankind 
 the Presence of God. And now their house 
 should be deserted, and the Divine Presence, 
 with the duty and the privileges of the church 
 of God, should be given to those who would 
 recognize and receive the Divine in the Divine 
 Human. With this prediction the Lord left their 
 temple forever. 
 
 But it was needful that He should give warn- 
 
I2 4 
 
 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 ing of the affliction that should come upon the 
 Christian Church also. And He made use of 
 the imagery of the impending destruction of 
 Jerusalem to describe the even greater misery 
 which for a little time should come upon His 
 own church. He spoke of the preaching of the 
 gospel of the kingdom unto all nations ; of the 
 abomination of desolation standing in the holy 
 place ; of the Son of Man coming in the clouds 
 of heaven with power and great glory words 
 which had scarce any application to the times 
 immediately at hand, but were to have a thorough 
 and deep fulfilment when men had learned how 
 self would appropriate and destroy the Christian 
 good and truth also, and should be able to 
 receive the Lord once more in a profounder, 
 juster humility. The stones of the temple of 
 which He was thinking were the Christian 
 truths of which He was even now building His 
 church, and which should presently be thrown 
 down.* 
 
 * Summary Exposition of the Doctrine of the New Church, 
 71; Apocalypse Revealed, 191. 
 
THE END OF HIS CHURCH. 
 
 I2 5 
 
 He " sat upon the Mount of Olives/' in a 
 state of interior union with the Divine, from 
 which He saw all the states of the church. To 
 the disciples * who were in most interior states 
 of faith and love and good life, He foretold that 
 the church would come into temptations from 
 the love of rule by means of Christian truth, 
 so that it would " not know what was good and 
 what true." f Falsified truths would be taught 
 instead of genuine ; \ quarrels and strife would 
 arise, and conflict of evil with evil, and falsity 
 with falsity, until everything good and true in 
 the church of the Lord was destroyed. 
 
 There is no part of the Gospel story more 
 fully and minutely explained by Swedenborg than 
 these chapters. We need not, therefore, dwell 
 upon them here, further than to note that "the 
 abomination of desolation " is the heavy cloud 
 of evil spirits within the borders of the Chris- 
 
 * Peter and James and John and Andrew asked Him privately. 
 (MARK xiii. 3.) 
 
 t Arcana Ccelestia, 3481. 
 \ Apocalypse Explained, 735. Ibid., 734. 
 
I2 6 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 tian heaven, cutting off the influence of heaven 
 from men upon the earth ; * that Daniel the 
 prophet is the truth of the Word as to judg- 
 ment ; and that unless the Lord had come again 
 to judgment, mankind must have perished from 
 the earth. 
 
 In the clouds of heaven He would come 
 a figure familiarly understood as the opening 
 of the parables and representatives of the 
 Bible to show the Divine life pictured every- 
 where in it. And by the truth of that Divine 
 life the church should be judged. They would 
 be living heedlessly, as if the Lord were not. 
 But He should come with the fulness of Divine 
 light and power, and the light should search 
 through all the world, separating everywhere the 
 evil from the good. 
 
 Not mere knowledge or profession should then 
 avail; men should be known as the Lord's dis- 
 CHAPTER c ipl es solely by their love for one 
 
 xxv< another. 
 
 * The Last Judgment, posthiimous. 
 
THE FREEDOM OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 127 
 
 It was of necessity that He should appear 
 to go into a far country; for the race was just en- 
 tering upon its young manhood, and must choose 
 its course in freedom. He would entrust to 
 them the abundant experience of Christian love 
 which His Spirit would store up in them, repre- 
 sented by five talents ; the charity that should 
 come later, in the early days of doctrinal dis- 
 cussion ; and the truth of life that they still 
 might live if they would when these failed. 
 Wherever love and charity and use were chosen 
 as the things to be sought and cherished, the 
 happy things of heaven would be multiplied in 
 the church, and men would be fitted for a joyful 
 expansion of life from the Spirit of the Lord. 
 But knowledge alone, unless men by using it 
 gathered intelligence and love of use, was a 
 barren thing, which they who did not live it 
 would themselves care nothing for.* 
 
 And last of these direct predictions of the 
 Christian Church is the parable of the separation 
 
 * Arcana Ccelestia, 5291 ; Apocalypse Explained, 193. 
 
I2 8 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 of the sheep from the goats. The sheep are 
 they who would cultivate charity and love ; of 
 them the Lord would form His Christian heaven. 
 The goats are they who would care only for 
 knowledge ; they could serve only as warnings. 
 
 These two chapters thus briefly indicate the 
 whole history of the first Christian Church. It 
 is also the history of the first Christian experience 
 in those who later come to see how the love of 
 self appropriates that experience to its own pride 
 and assurance, and how the pride of intelligence 
 cares for nothing but the knowledge of Christian 
 truth, with no regard to use. It is inevitable 
 that there should be such manifestations, at least 
 of the tendencies of the self, before the devel- 
 oping man sees reason for the deeper exploration 
 and judgment, which are necessary to the removal 
 of the self from the inmost consciousness, and 
 the surrender there to the love of the Lord. 
 
 These things were fulfilled in the Lord's own 
 Human at the time He was speaking, though 
 they were not to be fulfilled in the church for 
 
HIS RIPE EXPERIENCE. I2 g 
 
 ages to come. There was no tendency to evil 
 and misappropriation in His inherited human 
 which He did not thoroughly explore and reject. 
 There was no depth of the humiliation of the 
 self which He did not attain. There was no 
 conceivable opening of the human heart to the 
 Divine love which was not effected in Him, 
 even to the absolute union of the Divine and 
 the Human. From His own experience of the 
 human tendencies and possibilities in Himself, 
 He foresaw and foretold what was coming to 
 the church. 
 
JUDGMENT AND DELIVERANCE. 
 
 "DESIDES these deeper tendencies which He 
 was exploring for judgment, there yet 
 remained to be completed the judgment upon 
 CHAPTER tne Jewish Church, and upon that 
 which He had in common with them. 
 The judgment and rejection of this in Himself 
 was also the judgment and rejection of the 
 deeper tendencies which He had already ex- 
 plored in Himself, and which would appear with 
 the development of a maturer rationality in the 
 church. The historical events recorded in the 
 coming chapters relate to both, and describe 
 the judgment upon the Jewish Church, while 
 they represent the judgment upon the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 The Passover was at hand the feast which 
 from the time of its institution in Egypt had 
 
 130 
 
THE ANOINTING. 131 
 
 commemorated both judgment and deliverance. 
 The forces of appropriation to self were gathered 
 together to destroy the Divine of the Lord, which 
 would only serve and minister.* " In Bethany " 
 the Lord was, on the Mount of Olives in the 
 lowly states of those who would know the merci- 
 ful love of God. " In the house of Simon the 
 leper," is with those in the good of faithful 
 worship who are conscious that their worship 
 has not brought conjunction with the living God, 
 but to whom the merciful love of God is present 
 and is becoming known in the Lord Jesus. The 
 woman who anointed Him is the affection for 
 the truth of the new life of charity from God. 
 The ointment is the symbol of the Divine with 
 which He was anointed from the Lord Jehovah. 
 The alabaster box may represent the facts of her 
 own experience of it. Her pouring it on His 
 head signifies her recognition of the Divine in 
 Him and in all His life. The protest of the 
 
 * " Not on the feast day " is equivalent to " in the absence of 
 the multitude," because the simple good believed in Him. 
 
I 3 2 
 
 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 disciples reveals the tendency of the church to 
 make gain to self of the Divine love of her 
 Lord. But in the eyes of the Lord such grate- 
 ful acknowledgment of the Divine in Him is an 
 essential of His church which will always be 
 recorded and remembered. 
 
 Judas now separates himself from the others, 
 as representing the desire for advantage to self 
 from the holy good and the holy truth of the 
 Divine in the Lord's Human. He allied himself 
 with the chief priests, because this spirit in the 
 Christian Church is the same as in the Jewish. 
 The thirty pieces of silver represent the small 
 account it makes of the saving work of the Lord.* 
 His betraying the Lord to the priests, means the 
 giving up of this redeeming work, that the love 
 of advantage to self might still live. 
 
 The whole history of the Christian Church 
 shows at how low a price the Lord's redemption 
 from evil has been valued, and how this has been 
 waived that the love of making gain of holy good 
 
 * Arcana Coelestia, 2966. 
 
THE HOLY SUPPER. 
 
 133 
 
 and holy truth might live and profit by Him. 
 The experience of every one who reflects will 
 show how strong this tendency still is. 
 
 But the feast of unleavened bread, betokening 
 the reception of pure good from the Lord, was 
 also to be celebrated. And in this He instituted 
 a visible memorial of Himself which should be 
 as Himself when He should not be visible. For 
 He would be present in it with His love of 
 service in the bread, and His thought for the 
 good of men in the wine. They should testify, 
 as they do testify, that the Divine Human of the 
 Lord is ever with us, a redeeming, saving Pres- 
 ence to every one who will receive it. 
 
 To the Lord Himself the time was at hand for 
 
 
 
 the laying off of the last remnant of self, and 
 the infilling with the Divine. After which from 
 the fulness of the Divine Spirit in Him all might 
 drink, and in their drinking He would drink with 
 them. 
 
THE LAYING DOWN THE LIFE. 
 
 TDUT the time was come. They knew not 
 what was meant by laying down the self- 
 life to live from God. He alone knew. He alone 
 must overcome the accumulated love of self of 
 the whole human race, resisting in Him the desire 
 for the Divine life. He must meet it and over- 
 come it, for Himself and for men, and be Himself 
 the Divine Presence with them, or men would 
 never know that such a change was possible. 
 Except for Him it would neither be possible nor 
 conceivable. But after it was accomplished in 
 Him, He said that He would be with them again 
 on the plane of good conduct, where the work 
 must begin in them. 
 
 With sincerity, and all unconscious of the self 
 that is in it, the first natural Christian faith be- 
 lieves that it will be equal to any test of disciple- 
 
GETHSEMANE. 135 
 
 ship. The Lord knows what is within, and what 
 it must pass through, for He Himself has experi- 
 enced it. 
 
 To the place of the oil-press He went, where 
 the olives were crushed that the pure oil might 
 flow freely. For so would He yield His human 
 thought and effort and desire, that the love of 
 God for men might flow forth from Him without 
 limitation or impediment. 
 
 All the disciples went with Him to the garden ; 
 three went with Him a little further, even into 
 the state of sorrow and heaviness ; but He went 
 alone a little further still, and in lowliest prostra- 
 tion, the flesh shrinking and sweating great drops 
 of blood under the conflict, He prayed three 
 times that if the cup might not pass except He 
 drank it, the Father's will might still be done. 
 All this was densely obscure to the disciples. It 
 was deep beyond their knowledge. They could 
 give no help. But the conflict paused, and He 
 told them they could rest. He was quiet, no 
 longer struggling, but with a Divine majesty of 
 self-submission ready to lay down the life of self. 
 
136 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 Judas is here the love of gain to self from the 
 holy good and truth of the Divine in the Lord. 
 The chief priests are the same in the Jewish 
 Church ; the elders are the doctrines of evil life 
 agreeing therewith ; the great multitude are the 
 subordinate evil loves and teachings ; the swords 
 and staves are their principles of falsity and evil. 
 The kiss is the token of recognition and affection, 
 here for advantage to self. The defence with 
 the sword is by the faith which has so much of 
 self in it that it presently would deny the Lord. 
 And because it expresses the spirit of condemna- 
 tion and not the love of saving, itself is con- 
 demned. The Lord would not pray that the 
 angels might protect Him, or the Divine Om- 
 nipotence. He would fulfil the Scriptures, and 
 Himself lay down the life of self, that in Him 
 the Divine love of saving might dwell with men 
 in fulness. 
 
 He seemed to them a thief because He was 
 taking from them the kingdom they loved. 
 Truly they themselves were thieves and robbers, 
 
THE TABERNACLE OF GOD. 
 
 in taking the holy things of God to themselves. 
 They had made the Father's house a den of 
 thieves ; but He sat daily there, teaching of the 
 Heavenly Father, and they could not condemn 
 Him, because the common people loved it. To 
 them it was the Bread of Life. 
 
 But now the love of self was to have its way, 
 and He was to meet it by laying down absolutely 
 His own love of self. He was going too deep 
 for the disciples to follow. He alone knew the 
 meaning of the Scriptures of the prophets. He 
 must fulfil it alone. Afterward from afar off men 
 would slowly follow Him. 
 
 False witnesses accused Him of saying, " I am 
 able to destroy the temple of God, and to build 
 it in three days." It was false because it was 
 they who had destroyed the truth of God, and 
 would destroy the temple of His body. His part 
 was to restore the Divine Truth, and to build the 
 Divine Human which should be the Tabernacle 
 of God with men for ever. 
 
 Even so no evil could be shown in the charge ; 
 
I3 8 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 but it suggested the real issue between them 
 that their pride of holiness must give place to 
 the Father's Presence in Him. This issue the 
 high priest now was determined to force ; and he 
 said: "I adjure Thee by the living God, that 
 Thou tell us whether Thou be the Christ, the Son 
 of God." "Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said ; 
 nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall 
 see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of 
 power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." 
 This was blasphemy to them, for it was the de- 
 struction of their claim to be the church of God. 
 In following so closely the application to the 
 Jewish Church, we nevertheless may have in mind 
 the deeper application to the tendency of human 
 nature to appropriate to self the holy good and 
 the holy truth of the Divine Presence in the Lord. 
 This tendency He Himself was meeting at that 
 very time, and overcoming by the total surrender 
 of the self-life, for no possible gain to self, pres- 
 ent or future, but for the Divine end of saving 
 men. 
 
FAILURE OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 139 
 
 The patient submission to buffeting and spit- 
 ting, is significant of the humiliation of the self, 
 and the prevalence of the Divine love of saving. 
 
 The faith of the Christian Church was not 
 equal to this strain. The apostles through all 
 their lives never lost the hope and expectation of 
 sitting upon thrones in heaven, judging the twelve 
 tribes of Israel. The church has never met and 
 overcome the tendency to use holy good and holy 
 truth for advantage to self ; but on the contrary 
 has been overcome and destroyed by it. 
 
 That this would be so, was represented by 
 Peter's denial of the Lord. The discernment of 
 this root of evil, the repentance of the church, 
 and the hope of a deeper, more humble acknowl- 
 edgment of the Lord, are represented by the 
 bitter weeping. 
 
 The church has rejected the Lord as the Pres- 
 ence of the Heavenly Father, and has incited the 
 CHAPTER world to reject Him. By perverting 
 
 xxvn * its faith and its charity, it has de- 
 stroyed His true character, and made Him in the 
 eyes of the world a fraud and a pretender. 
 
140 
 
 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 Judas had acted out his self-love, as Peter also 
 had shown his. And he too repents, bringing 
 back, as now worthless, what the self had desired, 
 and despairing because of the loss of the Lord. 
 Will not the church in like manner repent of her 
 sin of appropriating holy good and holy truth to 
 self, and, despairing of ever being able to receive 
 them worthily, condemn herself utterly. And 
 then may there not be given so strong a sense 
 that these holy things are the Lord's, and are 
 with us of His Mercy, that they will not be so 
 misappropriated ? 
 
 The sin of Judas was the same as that of the 
 priests ; yet he repented, and they did not. Is 
 not this a sign of hope for the Christian Church, 
 as well as for Judas ? 
 
 The thirty pieces of silver Swedenborg says 
 stands for the "little esteem for the merit of the 
 Lord and redemption and salvation by Him ; the 
 potter, for reformation and regeneration."* That 
 the silver was given for the potter's field, "to 
 
 * Arcana Ccelestia, 2276. 
 
A CHURCH OF THE GENTILES. 
 
 bury strangers in," means then that the Lord's 
 redemption and salvation, so lightly esteemed, 
 were made over to the Gentiles for their reforma- 
 tion and regeneration, and thus resurrection to 
 life. 
 
COERCION OF THE WORLD BY THE 
 CHURCH. 
 
 " HPHE governor" is the government of the 
 world, the rule of natural law. Before 
 this Jesus stands, confessedly the fulfilment and 
 exemplification of the Scriptures " the King 
 of the Jews." To the many accusations by self- 
 love and perverse doctrines He answers nothing, 
 for they do not touch the Reality which He is. 
 It is the Passover, a feast of condemnation 
 and a feast of release. Jesus stands for the 
 subjection of the self to the Divine love of doing 
 good ; and Barabbas, for the murderous turbu- 
 lence and violence of the self, throwing off re- 
 straint. We remember .Christian centuries in 
 which the church with its Inquisition stood for 
 cruelty and violence, and compelled the rulers 
 of the world to do its bidding. We recognize 
 
CRUELTY OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 the same tendency, in the love of gain from holy 
 things, to enmity and violence, whenever it is 
 crossed. 
 
 All that tendency to resentment and violence 
 the Lord was now meeting, and subduing in 
 Himself by the power of the Divine Love. The 
 conflict was tremendous, the victory complete. 
 Quietly and gently He bore all that they could 
 do to Him. 
 
 Not Pilate, but the priests, condemned Him. 
 Not natural, moral, or civil law, but the church, 
 has incited the cruelest things that have ever 
 been done in Christendom. And this has been 
 because the love of appropriating to self the holy 
 good and the holy truth of the Lord, is the 
 cruelest, wickedest thing there is in the heart 
 of man. The moral good of the community, 
 the moral sense, protests ; though not under- 
 standing the evil, which is as a dreadful dream. 
 The moral and civil rule is free from the blame. 
 The tyranny of the church bears all before it. 
 
 The world yields, accepting the judgment of 
 
144 
 
 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 the church of her own King. They ignore the 
 humility and unpretentiousness with which the 
 Lord came to save men, and ridicule His claim 
 to royal goodness and truth and power. In His 
 own raiment of humility, as the truth of God 
 accommodated to men in love and mercy, they 
 crucify Him. Another Simon, from a Gentile 
 country, their violence compels to share in His 
 condemnation.* 
 
 In the place of a skull where are only the 
 bony externals of the Word, with no life in them 
 they crucify Him ; for such was the Word 
 with the church. In the evil thinking of the 
 church He had no part. The letter of the Scrip- 
 tures treating of Him they rent and shaped as 
 they pleased. The spirit was protected from 
 them by the Providence of God. His accusation, 
 for which He was condemned, was that He would 
 have saved men from the evil of their self -life, 
 
 * " He bearing His cross," means bearing His own condem- 
 nation. To bear it for Him would be an act of sympathy. 
 
 Simon was "the father of Alexander and Rufus," who appear 
 to have been well known Christians later. (ROMANS xvi. 13.) 
 
THE HOUR OF DARKNESS. 
 
 and taught them the life of charity Jesus, the 
 King of Jews. 
 
 With thieves * they crucified Him, because His 
 resisting the appropriation of holy things to self 
 would take the kingdom from them. They 
 taunted Him with inability to save His own life, 
 when in fact at that very time He was laying 
 down the life of self which He abhorred, that He 
 might take on the Divine life, pure and sweet 
 and loving, in which He delighted. If He would 
 have saved the self-life they would have accepted 
 Him. The Divine in Him they despised and 
 rejected. At the hour which should have stood 
 for the brightest light, there was darkness over 
 all the church until the night drew near. 
 
 The words of the twenty-second Psalm describe 
 the sense of the Human mind that it was left 
 alone ; which was indeed so that it might of itself 
 
 *The thieves perhaps represent those who followed Him, and 
 shared in His condemnation " the same as by the sheep and 
 the goats; wherefore it was said to the one who acknowledged 
 the Lord, that he should be with Him in Paradise." Apocalypse 
 Explained, 600. 
 
146 MATTHEWS GOSPEL. 
 
 use its Divine power to put off the self and unite 
 with the Father's love. The rejoicing with which 
 the Psalm closes, we may also ascribe to the Lord 
 when this was attained. 
 
 The sympathy of men was limited to the letter 
 of truth, and their imperfect understanding of its 
 life. He accepts such sympathy ; but even the 
 letter teaches the laying down of the life ; and 
 this the Lord obeys. 
 
 It was not merely the love for physical life, 
 and for self-vindication and honor from men that 
 He laid down, but the claim to holiness and honor 
 for the possession of the Divine Spirit, which 
 the self-love afterward produced in the Christian 
 Church, for its destruction ; and the further pride 
 of understanding the deep things of the Word, 
 which the same self-love must still produce. 
 Absolutely all the desires of the self for advan- 
 tage from holy things He gave up, turning from 
 them and separating Himself from them in volun- 
 tary surrender to the Father's love. He gave 
 them up for ever ; and all in Him that could admit 
 such desires, He put off. 
 
THE LAW OF THE RELATION TO GOD. 
 
 'T^HE work at Jerusalem was finished ; and in 
 it we see illustrated the full meaning of 
 the third section of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 the Christian Law. They had judged Him to 
 death, rejecting in Him the love and the truth 
 of God and all that makes heaven. This was 
 their own judgment. Their whole care was given 
 to the motes of external observance, and they 
 gave no thought to the beam of pride of holiness 
 which shut out from their sight everything good 
 and true from God and heaven. The holy things 
 of the Word and of worship were given to the 
 selfish lusts represented by dogs and swine, and 
 were trampled in the mire of foul life, while 
 spiritual life was destroyed. The Lord had 
 brought to them in their temple the Presence 
 of the Heavenly Father, and offered them the 
 
 147 
 
148 MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 good gifts that the Father loved to give. These 
 they might have for the asking ; with the condi- 
 tion that they would observe the law of heaven : 
 " All things whatsoever ye would that men should 
 do to you, do ye even so to them." They were 
 warned to enter heaven by this gate; but they 
 preferred the broad way of the love of self. 
 They were false prophets, professing to be the 
 flock of God, but really ravening wolves chil- 
 dren of the devil. They were an evil tree bear- 
 ing evil fruits. They professed to worship the 
 God of heaven, to teach His Word, and to make 
 many proselytes. But it was all for their own 
 glory. The God of heaven was not in their 
 work. 
 
 The Lord Himself had exemplified the keep- 
 ing of the Law. He had come to save, not to 
 condemn ; and had condemned evil only to save 
 the good. His judgment was the judgment of 
 the love of God, with self-love wholly removed. 
 No dogs or swine in Him defiled or resented 
 the holy truth and good of God. The gifts 
 
THE DIVINE EXAMPLE. 
 
 149 
 
 of the Spirit of God to Him He offered them, 
 knowing how exceedingly good they were. The 
 way which led to life He walked and showed. 
 The truth of love He taught, not for Himself, 
 but from Love itself. He was a good tree, the 
 very Tree of Life, bearing every good fruit. 
 The Heavenly Father was with Him, well pleased 
 with His saving work. 
 
 His house was the house of God, built upon 
 the eternal Rock, and nothing that they could 
 do could shake it ; while theirs was built upon 
 the disconnected letter of the Word, with no 
 hold upon Him Who was the life of the Word ; 
 and now it was falling, and great was the fall 
 of it. What He had of their nature from them 
 fell too ; but it was only the removing of the 
 scaffolding to disclose the glorious temple within. 
 
 The veil of mere representatives was now rent 
 in twain from the top to the bottom, that the 
 love and the truth of God might come forth 
 unveiled.* The change that was coming over 
 
 * Apocalypse Explained, 400. 
 
MATTHEW'S GOSPEL. 
 
 the church was represented by the quaking of 
 the earth ; the breaking up of false dogmas, 
 by the rending of the rocks ; the new freedom 
 to the spirits of men in both worlds, by the 
 opening of the graves, and the appearance of 
 the saints to many. 
 
 The candid world has seen these changes in 
 the past, and is seeing them in their present 
 more wonderful form ; and it will say, " Truly 
 this was the Son of God." Women are watch- 
 ing afar off, which are affections for truth cen- 
 tring in Him, and must wait until He is re- 
 vealed to them in the fullest sense, as the life 
 of the Word. And the recognition of and love 
 for the Divine in the Lord, for which Joseph 
 stands, lays up the memory of His life in its 
 own ideal and hope of heaven, which the Lord 
 has taught it to hew out in the Word.* 
 
 The Marys are watching and waiting Mary 
 Magdalene, the affection for Him as the truth 
 
 * As burial stands for the resurrection, so the tomb stands for 
 the place of resurrection, or heaven. Also for the regenerate 
 state. 
 
WAITING FOR THE WORD. 
 
 which saves from evil ; and Mary the Mother, 
 affection for the truth which reveals the good- 
 ness of God. 
 
 They wait for the Word to open ; while self- 
 love and pride in holiness would seal up the 
 spirit of love and charity in the Word that 
 nothing of it might appear, for their condem- 
 nation. These impress upon the Word the seal 
 of their interpretation, to keep it closed. 
 
THE NEW STATE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 'T^HE representative of a Sabbath, with the 
 
 Spirit of the Lord rejected, and nought 
 
 but the pride of holiness and of self-intelligence 
 
 CHAPTER in it, has ended. Even as the Marys 
 
 xxvin. are com j n g to seCj anc j to testify to the 
 
 holiness of the truth they have seen and known, 
 the angel of the Divine Presence opens the Word, 
 and inaugurates a new state of the church.* It 
 is to be a state of good life, in which the Lord 
 should be with them, and be seen of them. Jesus 
 Himself, the saving Love of God, they see, which 
 confirms this promise. 
 
 The love of self and the love of self-intelli- 
 gence, give large rewards of flattery and wealth 
 to their minions to deny the reality of the Pres- 
 ence of the Lord in the Word, and make it a 
 
 * Apocalypse Explained, 400. 
 
 152 
 
THE DIVINITY OF THE WORD DENIED. 
 
 '53 
 
 fiction of the credulous ; and even so does it 
 appear to this day to the lovers of self and the 
 world. 
 
RETURN TO GALILEE. 
 
 "OUT upon "the mountain" in Galilee the 
 same words which describe the place where 
 the Christian law was given,* and representing 
 the presence of the Love of God in the plane 
 of good life He who is now the fulfilment of 
 the Law again appears to the faithful, though at 
 first not clearly understood. He comes as the 
 truth of the love of God, with all the power of 
 that love in heaven and on earth. 
 
 He has taught the law of Christian life as the 
 law of God, and has made the plane of conduct 
 wholesome and orderly, use-loving and wise, from 
 His presence in it, protected from evil infesta- 
 tions. He has taught purity and unselfishness 
 of motive in good conduct ; with no claim of 
 merit or reflection upon self ; but faithful love 
 
 * MATTHEW v. i. 
 
 154 
 
THE LORD IN THE WORD FOREVER. 155 
 
 for Him Who alone is good and wise, and inno- 
 cent ascription of all good to Him. He has 
 taught the entire surrender of the heart and 
 soul and mind to the Father's love, with no 
 pride of holiness or of intelligence, and no desire 
 for any good in life but the good of living from 
 His Spirit, under His protection. 
 
 All this He has taught and lived. In the 
 glory of the Heavenly Father's Love He comes 
 now in the plane of good life, filling it from the 
 inmost with the sense of the Presence of God. 
 And to those who receive Him He gives the 
 charge to make Him known to all who are in 
 good, that they may be enrolled among those 
 who receive the Father's Love in the Truth of 
 His Human life, and live from His Spirit. 
 
 And this Gospel through Matthew closes with 
 the exhortation to observe all things of this 
 Christian Law which the Lord has commanded ; 
 and the promise of His presence always, as 
 long as the church shall endure. Amen. 
 
 \ & R Afl 
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